In a world that celebrates the wealth of millionaires and billionaires, the Bible says you possess something of much higher value: your soul. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah explores the truth of this notion, guided by two insightful questions Jesus asked his followers. From his series, "The Battle for Your Soul," here's David to introduce today's message: Your most valuable possession. And I thank you for joining us today.
This day is going to be kind of like the signature message for this whole series. It is the passage of scripture that asks the profound question: "What shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?" That passage of scripture, which is Matthew chapter sixteen and verse twenty-six. Will burn its way into your heart and mind if you listen carefully today and tomorrow. We are excited to let you know that in just a few weeks we will be headed for our annual conference cruise to the Caribbean. It begins on the 26th of December and it goes through the 2nd of January, taking us to some beautiful places in the Caribbean: San Juan, the Grand Turk, Saint Thomas, Half Moon Cay.
We'll have some great music. I'll be teaching the Word of God. We'll have great fellowship, a beautiful ship, a wonderful way to close down the old year and begin the new year with a flurry for the Lord. I hope you will come and join with us. We'll have a Great time together.
You can find out more about it at davidjeremiah dot org. And now, friends, let's turn in our Bibles to Matthew sixteen and verse twenty six, where the Lord asks this question, and let's examine it from His perspective and from ours. Just recently, the financial headlines have focused on the arrival of the world's first trillionaire. Millionaires have been around for a long time. More recently, billionaires have become quite popular.
But now, for the first time, someone has become richer than most of us can comprehend. As it turns out, one trillion is such a large number and so far beyond the human imagination that we can't wrap our minds around it. The sheer magnitude of a trillion is almost impossible for us to fathom. To put it in perspective, a million seconds equals less than twelve days. A trillion seconds is more than thirty-one thousand years.
David Linley, a Netflix data scientist and Indiana University adjunct professor, said that we are living in a world we are not built to understand. And there's a lot truth to that, but there's one who understands this world, and he has perfectly created it, so he knows what makes it tick and how it all works, and how we're supposed to work within it. And while the world is fascinated with the value of a trillion dollars, Jesus asks a far more important question: not about the value of money, but about the value of your soul. In Matthew 16, here are his words: "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Jesus had an amazing way of asking questions.
Throughout the gospel, he asked hundreds of them. One writer called him the Great Questioner. He asks them to engage the listener and make them think. And here in this passage in Matthew are two questions that ought to cause all of us to pause for just a moment and think. They are not questions to answer quickly and move on.
They are questions to carry with you, questions to think about when you wake up in the morning and when you lie down at night. Questions that shape the way you look at your life and your priorities and your future and your eternity. As we close this series on the battle for the soul, I want to leave you with these two final challenges regarding your soul. The first has to do with how you see your soul. And the second has to do with how you care for your soul, and these two questions grow out of the questions that Jesus asked in Matthew chapter sixteen.
First of all, I hope you will never forget the value of your soul. Jesus asks us with his question to picture the most successful person who has ever lived, who has everything people spend their lives chasing. Unlimited wealth, a successful career, fame and influence, every position money can buy, and every dream fulfilled. And by every standard, he looks like the biggest success in the world. But then Jesus says, "What if he loses his own soul?" Jesus doesn't answer his own question because the answer is obvious.
If a person gains everything but loses his soul, he has gained nothing that will last. Because everything this world offers is temporary. Your house will not last forever. Your career will not last forever. Your bank account, your accomplishments, your reputation, and even your present physical body will one day pass away.
But your soul, as we have learned, will never die. Long after everything this world celebrates has faded away, your soul will still exist, and that is why Jesus says that your soul is worth more than the whole world. The Bible gives us some sobering examples of what it looks like to have your soul be lost. Judas gained thirty pieces of silver. But he forfeited his own soul.
In the book of Luke, in the twelfth chapter, there's a story of a rich fool, filling his barns with wealth, only to hear Jesus say, "This night your soul will be required of you." And in Mark ten, a rich young ruler had great possessions, but he walked away from Jesus. Because he loved them more than eternal life, and the Bible says that when he left Jesus, he was sorrowful. The only person who ever was in the presence of Jesus about whom we read that he was sorrowful was this man. And these are the stories of three different people who all made the same mistake. They valued the temporary more than the eternal.
They treasured the world. But they forgot to treasure their souls. Please note that Jesus did not say that it was wrong to gain the world. He said it was tragic to gain the world at the expense of your soul. And there's nothing sinful about wealth or success or achievement when they are received as gifts from God and held in an open hand.
But if they become more important than Christ, they have become an eternal. Negative. The second question Jesus asks in verse 26 is this: What will a man give in exchange for his soul? Here Jesus pictures a man who has forfeited his soul. At last, he realizes what he has done.
He's lost.
So, what can he possibly give in exchange to get it back? Could success buy it? Could religion earn it? Could morality recover it? Could wealth purchase another chance?
Once again, the answer is obvious. There is nothing a person possesses that is valuable enough to redeem a soul. But this is where the gospel shines so brightly. You don't have to redeem your soul because it's been redeemed, my almighty God, through His Son Jesus Christ. First Peter one eighteen and nineteen says, "You were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ." One way we recognize the worth of something is by the price someone is willing to pay for it.
I mean, if silver or gold could have redeemed us, God would certainly have redeemed us with silver or gold. But no amount of earthly wealth could redeem a human soul. The only thing that could redeem a human soul was the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, how valuable is your soul? It is more valuable than the whole world. It is so valuable that God gave His only Son to redeem it.
So, never forget the worth of your soul. Heaven has already settled that question. And I hope that during these days, when we've taken some moments to think about it, you've given a little more thought to your soul than perhaps before. And I ask you at the beginning if you had the courage to walk up to your Christian friend and say, "How's your soul doing today?" You'll get a blank stare and probably a few interesting questions in response to that. But maybe we should be checking on each other a little bit more than we do on how we're doing with our souls, because your soul is you—the only part of you that will live on beyond this life—and how important it is that you never forget the value of your soul.
But number two, you should never neglect the care of your soul. Once you understand the value of your soul, the next question follows naturally: If your soul is so valuable, are you taking care of it? I mean, most of us spend a great deal of time caring for the temporary things in life. We work hard to provide for our families. We invest in our education.
Our careers, our homes, our retirement—there's nothing wrong with any of these things. They're all good, but they are gifts from God and responsibilities we should take seriously. But what about the soul? If your soul is worth more than the whole world, and it is purchased at the cost of Christ's precious blood, then nothing deserves more of your attention than your soul, and yet it gets very little attention from so many. The good news is that God has not left us wondering how we should care for our souls.
Throughout His Word, He has shown us how our souls can be strengthened and refreshed, and kept healthy. In a sense, that is what this entire series has been about.
So I want to leave you just with three practical things that God has used in my life to nourish my soul, and I believe He will use them to do the same for you if you put them into practice. First of all, feed your soul with the Scripture. If there is one habit that will do more for the health of your soul than any other, it is spending time in the Word of God. Did you realize that when you read this book? You are hearing God's voice.
God is speaking to you through the Bible, and just as your body grows stronger every time you eat a meal, your soul grows stronger every time you open your Bible. And let me just suggest to you: you can't live on one meal a week every Sunday morning. You would never want to do that physically. I don't suggest you do that spiritually. Every chapter you read, every promise you believe, every truth you obey, strengthens you in your soul, gives you a stronger soul.
David understood that, and one of the greatest passages about the nature and effects of God's word, he wrote a lot of things. Psalm 19. He said, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." Now the word converting means to revive or restore or refresh or bring back to life. Have you ever opened your Bible, discouraged and anxious, weary, only as you read to come across a passage? All of a sudden, that passage from the Bible just makes your heart leap.
You find that you come to an answer that you never thought of before. Your circumstances may not have changed, but you changed because God gave you His perspective on what's going on in your life, and that's only the beginning. David goes on in the same psalm to describe some other things that God's word will do for us. In the second part of verse seven, he says, "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." And in verse eight, he says. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. If you read Psalm 19, and you read down through the psalm, you will see there are many synonyms for the Bible: the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commandment of the Lord. All of those are references to the Bible. And then the psalmist tells you what will happen if you involve yourself in the Bible. What will take place in your life?
God's word revives the soul, gives wisdom to the mind, brings joy to your heart, light for your path. In other words, there's no part of your inner life that it cannot strengthen. One of my favorite passages—you shouldn't be surprised at this—is from the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah fifteen sixteen. Here's what it says: Your words were found.
And I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.
Now, obviously, Jeremiah didn't eat the Bible. He was describing what happens when we receive God's word in a way that becomes a part of our lives. He absorbed the word of God into his life, and the word of God, according to Jeremiah, became the joy and rejoicing of his heart. Where do people go today for joy? I mean, some look for it in entertainment, others in success and possessions, vacations, the next exciting experience they can come up with.
Jeremiah found his joy in the Word of God. He found that as he read God's Word, his heart was overwhelmed with joy. I wonder if sometimes we miss that today. We open our Bibles looking for some assignment or. To check off a box on our little calendar, but what if we came to the Bible expecting something more?
What if we said, "I'm going to read the Bible today until I got joy in my heart"? You know, George Mueller was one of the great entrepreneurs of the Christian faith in years past, and he said it this way: He said, "Above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord." Other things may press upon you. The Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek, above all things, to have your souls happy in God Himself.
So I thought you should give it a try. Read the Bible this week till you get happy. And you won't have to read too far because the Bible is filled with so much truth to encourage you.
So, if you want a happy and healthy soul, make God's Word your daily bread. Open it every day, read it slowly, believe what it says. But most of all, get to know your Savior, who is the Living Word, spoken to us in the written Word. As you do this, you will find that God's Word revives your soul. And fills you with joy.
So feed your soul with Scripture. Number two, fix your eyes on eternity. This is interesting. We live for the wrong world, most of us. Second Corinthians four, Paul wrote, "We do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Now, if anybody had reason to lose heart, it was Paul. I mean, he went through so many issues in his life. There are a couple of passages. In the New Testament, where he lists the challenges of his life, one of them is in Second Corinthians. And when I had cancer some years ago, I was getting get well cards from people all over the world, and it was so interesting to see the kind of cards I got.
And one day I got one that was really strange. On the front of the card were the words. Of Paul's declaration of everything that was awful that he went through, he was beaten, he was shipwrecked, and all of this. And this was my get well card on the front of the chair. And I looked at that, and then I opened it up, and on the inside were these words.
So how you been? Isn't that interesting? When we compare our lives to the lives of others, we see things differently, don't we? Paul endured persecution, imprisonment, beating, shipwrecks, constant danger. Yet, in the middle of all of that, he could say, "We do not lose heart." What was his secret?
He tells us that while his outward man was growing weaker, his inward man was being renewed day by day. How many of you know the outward man is growing weaker, growing old is not. For cowards, growing old is hard, isn't it? Just as soon as you fix one thing, something else breaks. You get one system going in the right direction, and you realize that the medicine you took to fix that has destroyed something else you were working on.
Oh my goodness, we talk about that a lot—the whole battle of the perishing body. But the Bible says that's not true of your spirit, because your soul. Is eternal, and what you build into your soul doesn't waste away because your soul is eternal.
So, when you put your time on your soul and you build your soul, it is an eternal investment that you don't lose. I know some of you have spent a lot of money working on your outward body. If we added it all up, that people have spent to prop up the outward man, it would be astonishing to us all. And I'm not saying that's wrong. I've said before you need to take care of the body that God gave you, but oh, how important it is for us to look past that and to the most important thing about us, and that is the person we really are.
Remember, you are not a body with a soul; you are a soul with a body.
So your soul has to become a priority. When the temporary fills our vision, our souls begin to get weary. But when we lift our eyes to Christ and to His promises and to the home He is preparing for us, something wonderful happens. We used to sing when I was growing up this little chorus with eternity's values in view, Lord. With eternity's values in view, we will do the Lord's work, and it talks about how we are motivated.
By the things we know, God hasn't prepared for us.
So, feed your soul with Scripture. Fix your eyes on eternity. Here's the last one: find your peace in Christ.
Now, folks, this is one we need to test out immediately, right now, today. Because if ever there was a time when we need a little peace in our hearts, it's now. My goodness, look what's going on in our country. I remember when we used to fight communism on the outside of the country.
Now we fight it on the inside of the country.
Now we worry about some of these crazy people taking over the things that we have spent our life's blood cherishing and building. And we look at each other and say, "What shall we do?" I finished a gift book on Israel. I told my publisher, "What I really want to do is stand up on my pulpit and start screaming, because of the anti-Semitism that's growing in our nation, and how awful it is, and how bad it is, and how ungodly it is." But instead, I decided to write a book, and the book is called God's Heart for Israel, and it puts together all of the scriptures. Where God speaks of His love for His people and of the importance of us loving Israel, Israel gave us our Bible, the Jews gave us our Savior. We have the greatest system of law and Jewish prudence because of the Jewish people.
God loves the Jewish people. They don't do everything right. Any more than we do, but for us to hate the Jewish people is to put ourselves in great jeopardy. Because the Bible says, "God will bless those who bless Israel, and He will curse those who curse Israel." And as you can tell, I'm a little stirred up about that. If I let it get to me, I might lose some sleep over it.
But the Bible says we can have a settled peace from God. And still deal with all these things. Paul dealt with the circumstances in his life. He didn't get a pass. Romans tells us that first of all, we have peace with God.
That's what happens when we become Christians. Before we are Christians, we're like this with God. We probably know in our heart what He wants, but we resist it. Finally, we come to God, and this resistance becomes unity and peace. If you're a Christian today, you made peace with God, but did you know there's a different kind of peace?
There's the peace with God, and there's the peace of God. You can have peace with God, and if you're not careful, you can still let the problems of life and the world tear you apart.
So let me just ask you: Do you have the peace of God? The Bible describes the peace of God as something that is so wonderful. That if you try to describe it to somebody else, you can't do it. It's the peace that passes all understanding. The only way you can explain the peace that you get from God is to get the peace from God yourself.
Then you will understand it. Paul wrote about it in Philippians. He said, "Don't worry about anything. Pray about everything." Tell God what you need. Thank Him for all He's done.
Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. We'll have more of this tomorrow as we continue our discussion of the signature verse of this series, Matthew sixteen twenty six. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? I hope that question catches you, makes you stop and think. Where is your soul?
Are you right with God? Is He your Lord and Savior? Are you ready to meet Him someday? We are teaching this series from a book called "The Battle for Your Soul," which we just finished and released from Thomas Nelson. It's now in all the bookstores and available primarily from Turning Point.
For a gift of any size during the next few days of this month, we want to send you this book as our way of saying thank you for your investment in this ministry. There's a book here waiting for you to order it. Just ask for it when you send your gift today. Be sure to join us tomorrow for part two of your most valuable possession, right here on Turning Point. For more information on Dr.
Jeremiah's series, "The Battle for Your Soul," please visit our website, where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly magazine, Turning Points, and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio, or call us at eight hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new book, *The Battle for Your Soul: Thirty-One Biblical Secrets of Spiritual Warfare*. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the New International and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, DavidJeremiah.org/radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we conclude the battle for your soul on Turning Point with Dr.
David Jeremiah.
