Sermon Tone Analysis

7-8

What is the most important thing in our lives?

I naturally assume we are going to say that Jesus is but perhaps He is not so this needs to be rectified soon.

I hope it was not the football for it is now all over!

At least until Swansea play their first game of the season.

Jesus is the One who needs to be first – He does not need it, we do – Jesus, on the other hand, commands it.

So, let me ask a further question: What are the most important things in our lives?

We have gone from what is the single most important thing to a list of the things which are most important.

Jesus talked about counting the cost.

Someone who does not count the cost will likely, in due time, dilute what it is to follow Jesus.

We cease to be useful for the Kingdom of God – men will throw you out and any message you claim to have.

Did we see verse 33 there?

‘So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.’

This is no easy Christian life of easy-believism – coming to faith in Christ is easy – it is by faith alone – but the life expected thereafter is one of full, dedicated, unbridled commitment to Jesus leaving behind anything that does not help to serve Him and the Kingdom of God.

There is no room for anything other than Jesus in our lives.

Whilst Paul did not hear Jesus directly preach the message of the cost of following Him, He was, nevertheless, doing so.

What does Paul say? Found in verses 7 and 8:

7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

What was Paul counting loss?

All his accolades, all his heritage, all his triumphs, all his academic credentials, all his religious leanings.

All this loss was, before, the very life of Paul.

And the terms that Paul uses are accounting terms: to count, loss and gain.

These are rudimentary terms about profit and loss.

For indeed Paul then goes on to say:

8b for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.

For Paul the scales balanced in favour of Christ.

All the losses on one side of the scale and Jesus on the other tips it over completely towards Jesus.

And if we were to add up all the things we could lose for following Jesus how would the scales tip?

The gains Paul had were really a loss, a disadvantage to him.

And if this is the case then why not lose them?

He could have boasted about his heritage and life and were, in fact, once his boast.

Yet with his list of 7 so-called gains on one side of the scale there was only One on the other side of the scale and made the other side a loss.

The One outweighed the many, Paul thought of that divine one, that brother of our souls who was born at Bethlehem, the Kinsman, Redeemer of his people; Christ, the living, loving, bleeding, dying, buried, risen, ascended, glorified Christ; this was the glorious person whom he placed on the other side of the scales.

Friends, it is a grand thing to have led an upright life: it is a matter for which to praise God to have been kept in the very centre of the paths of morality: but this blessing may, by our own foolishness, become a curse to us if we place our moral qualities in opposition to the righteousness of our Lord Jesus, and begin to dream that we have no need of a Saviour.

If our character is in our own esteem so good that it makes a passable garment for us, and therefore we reject the robe of Christ’s righteousness, it would have been better for us if our character had been by our own confession a mass of rags, for then we should have been willing to be clothed with the robe of righteousness which divine love has prepared.

Even if we had led a sinless life both outwardly and inwardly we would not be worthy.

Remember that Adam fell through one sin and lost Paradise and lost us all.

Spurgeon, C. H. (1877).

Edited for this sermon by Thomas, I. M. and quoted throughout this sermon (2014) The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol.

23, p. 316-24).

London: Passmore & Alabaster.

The curse of sin has infected the whole human race.

People today blame God and ask why there is so much pain and suffering in the world and we can point back to Adam.

Today people reject Adam too as having no historical basis rejecting God and His creation and so do away with the explanation that Adam and we are to blame for the world’s troubles whether by war or by famine or by exploitation or by earthquake or by hate or by tsunami – the human race is to blame not God whose commandments we despise.

But the One whom we discard is the very One who sent His own Son to pay the price of sin.

It may seem very cold indeed to sit down and calculate whether following Jesus is worth it but unless we are willing to lose everything for the cause of Christ then we have not yet truly decided, there will always be something we’ll hold back.

Jesus, who said ‘count the cost’, was willing to lose all who were following Him at that very moment for He does not compromise the terms in which we can come to Him.

Are we ready to turn back?

Is the cost too much?

If we have put our hand to the plough will we keep going straight or veer off when we are tempted by what this world has to offer?

Is there something we have to lose to keep following Jesus?

It is right to think about these things.

If we cannot give 100% in time, money, gifts, heart, body and soul then we cannot be His disciples.

We are asked to weigh up the temporal and the eternal?

Which shall it be?

Are we tempted to follow Christ no matter what?

Have we worked out this is something we are willing to do, for sure, with no reservations?

Are we willing to be considered fanatics for Jesus?

Of course, there is always going to be an enduring conflict in us.

The battle between the flesh and the Spirit.

So, every day we need to decide to follow Jesus.

It needs to be a daily, and perhaps hourly, conscious decision.

There will be days and times when we really do not want to and what will pull us through?

But the decision is always ours.

And God is ready to help us:

Often we just need to remember who God is and remember He is love and His ways are best and He has made a way through Jesus for us to know Him.

So, Paul now re-emphasis his stance.

He has been a Christian for at least two decades by now and those things he counted loss for Christ is now being re-evaluated: In verse:

8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

Yet indeed just adds more weight to the former statement.

In fact he goes further than before.

The list of seven items is not enough – he now says I count all things loss.

He’s saying: ‘If I missed anything out because of my heritage or life or accomplishments then add these to the list too.’

And here we see it is so much more personal.

It is for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

My Lord.

Knowing Him is better than anything else.

Nothing else can compare.

Our divine Lord is better loved as he is better known.

For Paul, and for us, the knowledge of Jesus is better than anything else.

He knew that Jesus was his Saviour who had saved him.

For us this is what we need to know too.

The more we know Him the more we love Him, the more we love Him the more we know Him.

What is it to know Jesus?

It is to know His love for us and others.

To know His care for those whom He had created.

To know of His zeal for His Father.

To know His self-sacrifice and readiness to die on our behalf.

All other knowledge added up together will come nowhere near the knowledge we have when Jesus is our Lord and Saviour and Friend and Redeemer and Brother.

The One whose name is love is all that matters.

Jesus demonstrated His love for us by doing what He calls us to do.

He laid down His life so that we could live.

And now we are to lay down our lives for His.

An illustration by Spurgeon shows what it is to suffer loss:

It reminds me of a ship in a storm.

When the captain leaves the harbour he has a cargo on board of which he takes great care, but when a tremendous wind is blowing and the ship labours, being too heavily laden, and there is great fear that she will not outride the storm, see how eagerly the sailors lighten the ship.

They bring up from the hold with all diligence the very things which before they prized, and they seem rejoiced to heave them into the sea.

Never men more eager to get than these are to throw away.

There go the casks of flour, the bars of iron, the manufactured goods: overboard go valuable bales of merchandise; nothing seems to be worth keeping.

How is this?