Your Soul Self

Your Soul Self

"What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" Mark 8:36

Intro: Today we are going to talk about your most valuable possession.

It is you. It is the essence of what you are.

It is your soul.

Your soul will go on living forever, long after everything else is long turned to dust.

When the sun, moon, and stars have burned themselves out

Your soul will still go on.

Endless, measureless, timeless.

Your soul.

Made in the image of God…, is worth more than all the houses, property, stocks, bonds, rubies, diamonds, silver and gold in the whole earth.

Your soul is what goes on forever into eternity.

Your body may be killed.

Your body may return to dust. But your soul will never ever cease to exist.

From the very beginning when God formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of human life: man became a living soul.

You don't just possess a soul

You are your soul.

There is one thing that God said when he made you that He did not say about all the other things He created.

It is what makes you different.

It is what makes you unique.

God said He made you in His image.

You have a soul.

You live in a body.

And you are created in the image of God.

The problem with many of us is that.

We pamper the body and we neglect the soul.

Our body can send us the smallest of signals and we will almost immediately respond to its needs.

For example: The body says, I am hungry or thirsty and we will almost immediately

or a soon as possible find something to eat or drink.

The body says, I am too hot or too cold. We will almost immediately work to adjust the temperature.

The body says, I have a hurt or a pain or some other need.

We pamper the body, we feed the body, we rest the body

But the soul is often left for days, weeks or even month without proper attention and care.

"What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" Mark 8:36

The word "soul" appears some 458 times throughout the bible.

If you start at the beginning and work your way through the bible all the way through the ending

You can see an interesting pattern of understanding develop over the course of the several thousand years from Genesis to Revelations.

In the early beginning, they understood the soul was alive

The soul can be cut off from God

The soul clings to a loved one, son or daughter or spouse

The soul departs this world

Then we get into the book of Leviticus and the law

And we discover the soul can sin. Leviticus 4:2

Deuteronomy 2:29 we read that the soul can find God when we seek God with our heart and all thy soul.

The soul can become bitter

The soul can thirst

The soul can be blessed

The soul can be satisfied.

Then we come to a revelation that some seek to destroy the soul.

The devil has an interest in your soul.

Jesus said the devil is the prince of this world.

The devil is greatly at work in our world, and he is after your soul.

God never meant that there would be suffering and war and death.

But Satan came.

The devil was a mighty angel, possibly the greatest of all of God's created beings, and he rebelled against God.

When God built the earth,

He put humans in charge of the earth.

God wanted someone in the universe whom He could love and who would return love to Him.

So He gave man freedom of choice. God said to man, "I put one tree in this garden—you are not to eat its fruit. If you eat it, you will suffer and die" (Cf. Genesis 3:3).

God was testing man. He gave man the freedom of will.

But the devil told man, "God doesn't mean what he says. You're not going to die. If you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will be as great as God" Genesis 3:4-6

So Eve ate the fruit first and then Adam, her husband, ate it too.

And that was the first rebellion by people against God.

God had to keep His word or He would not be a just God.

He had said, "If you eat the fruit of that tree you will suffer and die."

Man ate of the tree, and since then he has been suffering and dying.

But God had a plan. God said, "In spite of their rebellion, I am going to save the human race.