When he shall give his victory, The whole
land of Calvary Shall know the
glory and glory Of the living King.
A glorious morning all will be free, Glory
to his name through ages of old.
Amen.
We are so proud for Jesus.
We are so proud to be His.
We are so proud for Jesus.
...say goodbye for the time being.
I know I was of your prayers for
the work of the school.
The problem is that we have more than
twenty.
When we send out prayer requests, it really
isn't for finances.
We don't have the possibility of doing anything
with it.
So it's just a pure request for prayer.
Our greatest needs are for persons.
We need a cook or a
director for the overseas.
So we'd appreciate your prayers for the school.
Well, the magnitude of the correspondence course ministry
is that so far we've sent out 2
,500,000 courses.
In the goodness of God, I think that
he may have had the largest study course
program in the world today.
And it's been done without benefit of human
advertising.
It's been done really by word of mouth
advertising.
And many of you have had firsthand acquaintance
with it.
How many of you have ever taken one?
...continues to bless.
We have up to 50 courses.
...which means that you can...
...through New Testament Greek.
And when you've taken them all...
Let's return this morning to Mark chapter
8, please, beginning with verse 34.
The 8th chapter of Mark's gospel, beginning with
the 34th verse.
Mark 8, 34.
And when he had called the people unto
him with his disciples also, he said unto
them, Whosoever will come after me, let him
deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose
it.
But whosoever shall lose his life for my
sake and the gospel, the same shall save
it.
For what shall it profit a man if
he shall gain the whole world and lose
his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and
of my words in this adulterous and sinful
generation, of him also shall the Son of
Man be ashamed when he cometh in the
glory of his Father with the holy angels.
I'd like to think with you this morning
about the question of the Lord Jesus in
verses 36 and 37.
For what shall it profit if he shall
gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?
If you were to ask me what is
the greatest question that was ever asked, I'd
have to refer you to these two verses.
It's the question of all questions that pierces
to the very heart of life and introduces
us to the central meaning of existence.
Some years ago an atheist wrote a tract,
and in that tract he said, if I
really believed that the knowledge and practice of
religion in this life influenced destiny in another,
then religion would be to me everything.
It would be the first waking thought when
I arose in the morning and the last
thought before sleep which sank me into unconsciousness
at night.
I would labor in its cause alone.
I would cast away earthly cares as follies
and earthly pleasures as dross.
I would go out to the world and
preach to it in season and out of
season, and my text would be, what shall
it profit a man if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?
I don't usually say complimentary things about atheists,
but I have to compliment that man on
the choice of his text.
What shall it profit a man if he
shall gain the whole world and lose his
own soul?
The Lord Jesus never asked a question because
he didn't know the answer.
He asked a question so that we would
find the answers.
And if we look closely in this verse
this morning, these verses, we'll find some very,
very important instruction from his lips.
And the first major thing that I see
as I look into this passage of the
Word of God is that you and I
have an undying soul.
There is that about us, define it as
you will, that will never cease to exist.
Just think of that.
And mind you, we don't go through life
with that consciousness.
We go through life as if the body
were everything and care-scant, pay-scant attention
to the soul.
But this passage in the scripture tells me
the body is not all.
It's the soul that counts.
And what shall it profit you if you
gain everything and lose that soul?
Man lives to cater to the body.
If you'll just think of the round of
existence and of activity and of what man
does from Monday through Sunday, you'll find that
most human activity is directed toward the care
of the body.
Go down to Bristol after the meeting and
just make a little study of the stores.
You'll find most of the stores sell either
food or clothing.
Food for the body or clothing for the
body.
Look around you, you'll see the hospitals, the
doctors, the dentists, Blue Cross and Silver Cross
and Red Cross and all the other crosses,
drugstores, places of pleasure and amusement.
And most of it all, most of the
activity of life is devoted toward the satisfaction
of bodily appetite.
And you know, the amazing thing, the amazing
thing is that body of ours is going
to die.
Death is going to come to that body
of ours.
But the soul goes on forever.
And it's amazing, isn't it, how we can
devote our time to seeing that this body
gets three square meals a day and yet
men and women in Virginia and Tennessee and
this state of this union today are careful
about three meals for the body and not
careful about food for the soul.
And yet it's the soul that really counts.
It's amazing how fastidious people are to take,
to take a bath, for instance.
And the fact that their soul is stained
with sin that will drag them down to
an ever-burning hell.
It's amazing how careful people can be to
brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste three times
a day.
Those teeth will just return to the dust
from which they were made.
Those same people can pass through life and
never be deeply anxious about the salvation of
their soul.
Isn't that amazing?
We have an undying soul.
Death affects the body, but it doesn't affect
the soul.
And what happens to the body is not
as important as what happens to the soul.
You know, it's an interesting thing to me
that even in heathen religions there seems to
be the consciousness of life beyond the grave.
You go and you dig up the tombs
of Egypt and you find in the tombs
of Egypt the things that they put in
with the body which indicate that they believed
that this wasn't the end, that there was
something beyond.
And you go up and you dig the
mounds of the Indians in our own country
and you find the same landscape in the
human mind, in the human consciousness.
In fact, this life is just a grain
of sand on the seashore of eternity.
That's about what it is.
Because if you stop to figure out the
years that you will probably spend on the
earth, what will they be?
60, 70, 80 years.
And then a long eternity.
What is eternity?
Somebody said eternity is an ocean without shores.
Think of that for a moment.
Eternity, my mind just bulges.
The brain hits the sides of the skull
and you just can't think any further.
An ocean without shores, I can't conceive of
it.
Well, I can't conceive of eternity either.
And so there's my little life, whatever it
might be, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100
years, supposing it were.
And yet, unending eternity, forever and ever and
ever.
Just think of it, the long after the
present civilization has molded away, everybody in the
meeting this morning will continue to exist.
We shall never cease to be.
It's wonderful to me that when the Lord
Jesus spoke, He dealt with fundamental issues.
He never wasted His time talking about trivial
things, but always had a way of coming
to the heart of the matter.
And my, as we sit quietly this morning
and just think of this, we realize He
certainly came to the heart of the matter
here when He said, What shall it profit
a man if he shall gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?
For what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?
We have an undying soul.
But that isn't the only thing I find
in this passage of Scripture.
I learned something else.
And I learned this, that the soul of
man is of priceless value.
Your soul and my soul are of priceless
value.
And what the Lord Jesus was saying here
in so many words was this.
Take all the money that's in the world
today and pile it into a great mountain.
And mind you, it would be a great
mountain.
Take all the gold and silver and platinum
and uranium that are in the world today
and pile that in a big mountain.
Take all the deeds for real estate that
are in the world today and heap them
all together.
And all the stocks and bonds and negotiable
securities on the New York Exchange and the
Chicago Exchange and the San Francisco Exchange.
And then take all the jewelry that you
could find in the world and anything of
value that there is a gigantic heap and
you try to add up the value of
it.
But supposing you could do it.
Supposing you could get a bank of IBM
computers and somehow or other reach your
soul.
We have long ago reached the conclusion that
we're not going to get all that money.
But the Lord Jesus said if you could
get it and in the process of getting
it you lost your soul, it would be
a bad bargain.
And what that means is that your soul
is worth more than all that wealth.
More than all...
You know, my mind goes down to Skid
Row in Chicago where you can see some
very, very degraded forms of humanity.
Men and women that have stooped so low
that in some ways they're hardly recognizable as
human beings anymore.
They've sold themselves over to sin and corruption
and degradation.
And yet the word of God tells me
that the soul of any one of those
persons tremendous is.
But you know, when I want to learn
the value of the human soul I don't
go to the New York Stock Exchange.
And I don't go to the First National
Bank of Chicago.
And I don't go to the IBM computers.
But I go to the cross.
Because on the cross of Calvary God set
a value on my soul.
He sent the Son of His love the
Lord Jesus Christ into this world to suffer,
bleed, and die.
How much is my soul worth?
The blood of God's only Son.
That was the price tag He set on
you and on me.
A couple of years ago I was speaking
to a man after a meeting in Lombard,
Illinois.
This man was a drunkard.
And he was all broke up.
He was ashamed of himself and he was
a physical wreck.
And he was a moral wreck and a
spiritual wreck.
And I said to him as I was
speaking to him, Look, if you had an
only son would you give him to die
for a drunkard?
And he said to me, I wouldn't do
it.
And I reminded him God had done it
for him.
Our soul is of priceless value.
That's what Peter reminds us in his first
epistle.
For as much as you know you were
not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received by
tradition from the fathers but with the precious
blood of Christ as of a lamb without
spot and without limits.
Dear friends, just think of the least lovely
person in all the world whom you've ever
seen or known or met.
Remember, that soul, that soul is estimated by
God to be of priceless value.
And God sees in every human being a
potential worshipper of the Lamb of God throughout
all eternity.
God's purpose for every human soul is to
conform that person to the image of his
own beloved Son.
We have a never-dying soul.
That soul is of priceless value.
Dear friends, as I look at my passage
of Scripture this morning I learn something else
and that's very, very solemn.
Now that is this, that the soul of
man may be lost.
That soul that's worth more than all the
wealth of the world, that soul for which
the Son of God died on Calvary's cross,
that soul may be lost.
Isn't that pathetic?
You think of that little baby born into
the world, you think of that child growing
up, a lovely child, so affectionate and so
devoted and in such a nice way, and
yet you see him growing on up into
manhood and he starts, the effects of sin,
of indwelling sin, start to take their course.
And that fellow drifts on and on down
the by-paths of sin till finally his
body is placed in a Christless grave.
There was that baby, so innocent, so loved
by his mother, and the end of the
trail is a lost eternity.
The soul of man can be lost.
But you know, there are several ways in
which man can lose his soul.
Man can lose his soul by a life
of outright sin.
I want to tell you there are men
and women in the world today who in
a cold, cool, calculating way have just decided
to abandon themselves to sin and immorality.
They came face-to-face with a choice,
and they chose sin.
And some of those people, their brain has
become so seared and so perverted and so
defiled that from all human appearances they seem
to be beyond the gospel.
You can abandon yourself to a life of
profligacy and lasciviousness and immorality and sin.
And this is the way some people hurtle
down to hell.
But that isn't all.
A person can abandon himself to hell through
turning himself over to false cults and false
religions.
There are people in the world like that
today.
There are people in the world today who
have heard the sweet gospel of the grace
of God.
Jesus, the only Savior.
And they knew the issues involved, but they
wouldn't accept Him.
And instead, some cultists came along and they
lent an ear and they deliberately apostatized from
Jesus Christ and turned themselves over to false
religions.
But I want to tell you that by
far the greater part of lost souls in
the world today are lost, they're lost through
neglect and sheer indecision.
That's why men are lost.
They're lost because they go through life taking
what comes to them, but they never make
a deliberate choice of the Son of God.
They never make a positive commitment of their
lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I would say that when the annals
of eternity are written, that most people in
hell will be there because they just drifted.
Because they just drifted.
They came to the crossroads time and time
again.
They heard the gospel call.
The Spirit of God knocked at their hearts.
They just put them up.
And you can do that.
You can do that.
You don't have to make a decision.
You can just drift and take what comes
to you in life and perish forever.
And I want to tell you this, that
the loss of the soul is the greatest
of all losses.
Because when the soul is lost, it's lost
forever.
I tell you, it's hard for me to
even conceive of such a thing.
A person living in this world, hearing of
the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that He's the
only Savior, and yet failing to embrace Him
as Lord and Savior, and going out into
eternity, lost forever and forever.
And I'd like to remind you that every
unsaved person today is in danger of losing
his soul.
Jesus said, What shall it profit a man
that he shall gain the whole world and
lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?
We have a never-dying soul.
That soul is of priceless value.
That soul can be lost.
But I'm glad that we don't have to
stop there, because if this passage of Scripture
teaches us all that, it teaches us something
else.
And that is that the soul of man
can be saved.
The soul of man can be saved.
God has made wonderful provision for taking sinners
from the dung heap, washing them from their
sins, saving them by His matchless grace, and
taking them home to Heaven.
You'd never think He could do it with
such raw material.
But He did it because He sent His
Son to die as a substitute for sinners.
And because on the cross of Calvary the
Lord Jesus pays the penalty that our sins
deserve.
And when I come to Him and acknowledge
my sins and receive Him as my Savior,
God credits to my account all the value
of the person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
And He saves me, and He saves me
righteously.
Not because of what I am in myself,
but because of who the Savior is, and
because of what He has done.
And so what a wonderful thing it is
that we can tell you today, anybody can
be saved, because Jesus died and was buried
and rose again and ascended back to God
where He is today, at the right hand
of God.
And we don't have to stop there either.
In our meditation, in this passage of Scripture,
we can say anybody can be saved, and
we can go further and say anybody can
be saved right now.
Anybody can be saved right now.
God never promises to save anybody tomorrow.
God's word is right now.
Now is the accepted time.
Behold, now is the day of salvation.
And here we stand, July 5th, 1964.
God calling yet.
The lovely expression in the last part of
the 10th chapter of Romans.
He says, All day long have I stretched
forth my hands to a gainsaying and disobedient
generation.
A gainsaying and disobedient people.
What a picture of God.
You know, your hands can get mighty weary
stretching them forth all day.
So wonder to me that God's hands haven't
wearied long before.
They're so different.
They're all, they're stretched out today.
They're stretched out to you.
All day long have I stretched forth my
hands to a gainsaying and disobedient people.
I wonder as the Son of God stands
before you this morning.
As the Holy Spirit speaks to you this
morning.
As God the Father speaks to, woo and
win you to himself this morning.
I wonder if today you'll say yes.
I'll come today.
Just as I am without one seed.
But that thy blood was shed for me
and that thou didst me come to.
I'd like to close my message this morning.
First of all, with a word of affectionate
warning to everyone in this meeting who does
not have the assurance.
That word of affectionate warning is this.
Do not neglect your soul.
A never dying soul.
A soul of priceless value.
A soul that can be lost.
Lost forever.
And then I'd like to close my message
this morning with a word of affectionate invitation
to those who are unsaved, and that is
come to Christ and come today.
Whether you're poor or rich.
Whether you're young or old.
Whether you're well or ill.
Whatever your circumstances in life.
The Savior waits before you right now.
On bended knee.
He whose hands and feet are scarred with
the nails of Calvary.
Whose side is the scar of the spear
wound.
And whose brow has the scars of the
crown of thorns.
He's before you this morning.
I tell you on bended knee.
Seeking to save you.
But you have to make the choice.
He will not save you against your will.
And then I'd like to close my message
with a word of loving entreaty to Christians.
And that is that we should cleave to
the Lord with all purpose of heart and
speak to precious souls about it.
Those relatives.
Those friends.
Those who are near and dear to us
and our neighbors.
That we might speak to them a word
in season that they may be snatched as
brands from the burning.
Now shall we sing in closing that lovely
invitation hymn.
And how my heart yearns to see someone
this morning say this for the first time
from the depths of his or her heart.
Number 149.
And a brother Jim will come and lead
us in this.
Just as I am.
Without one plea.
Notice verse 3.
Just as I am, though tossed about with
many a conflict, many a doubt, fighting and
fears within without.
All you've got to say is O Lamb
of God I come.
You say that and he'll do the rest.
Just as I am, without one
plea.
My prayer and my love are here before
thee.
And when the wind be tossed through the
air and
the land of the empty sea and the
land of the empty sea beyond
my eyes I hear