The Greatest Gain Comes by Letting Go (Luke 9:18-24)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now it happened that as Jesus was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he asked them, Who do the crowds say that I am?

And they answered, John the Baptist.

But some say, Elijah, and others, one of the prophets of old has risen.

Then he said to them, But who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered, The Christ of God.

And he strictly charged them and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

And he said to them all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

So whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it.

Let's pray.

Gracious Lord, our soul thirsts for you, our flesh longs after you.

Like a dry and barren land where there is no water, you, Lord, are a spring of living water welling up within us.

So grant by grace that we would taste this living water again and be renewed and be refreshed and find our rest in you.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

There's a paradox at the heart of the Christian life.

It defies our expectations, it confounds our ambitions, it crucifies our self-interest.

And the paradox is this a Christian's greatest gain comes by letting go.

Jesus tells his disciples, whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever would lose his life for my sake will save it.

But this paradox works both ways, kind of like the flip side of a coin.

See, our greatest gain comes by letting go, but our greatest loss comes by hanging on.

That's why Jesus goes on to say in verse 25, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses it or forfeits himself?

See, aim for gain.

Aim for your self-interest, aim for the desire of your heart, even on a global scale, and Jesus says, you won't really secure what really satisfies.

You'll only lose yourself.

C.S.

Lewis writes, aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth, and you'll get neither.

A Christian's greatest gain comes by letting go.

So I'd like us to consider two questions this morning related to verse 24.

What is a Christian's greatest gain?

And then what does it look like to let go?

A Christian's greatest gain comes by letting go.

So let me ask you this.

What above all else is worth possessing?

What's the gain that I aspire to, that I consider ultimate?

All of this will decide the trajectory of my life, don't you think?

If I want to gain wealth, I'm going to pour myself into my work, to my investments, to my career advancement.

If I want to gain a reputation as someone who's kind or well thought of, I'm going to pour myself into acts of love or charity.

What I desire, what I aspire to, what I consider my great gain is going to give shape to my life.

And there are many gains to be had in life, many good things, joys and blessings and triumphs and treasures.

And when I think about their inventory and when I start to think about their outcome, I start to think about the book of Ecclesiastes.

This is the book we've been studying in our men's Bible study on Wednesday mornings, 7.30.

Yes, that is a plug.

Men, you should come and check it out.

This book of the Bible has a reputation of being a bit of a downer, but on the contrary, it wrestles very honestly and courageously with the question, what makes life worth living?

Or to put it another way, what's life's greatest gain?

What makes the difference between the good life and a squandered life?

See, maybe life's greatest gain comes by living wisely, the author of Ecclesiastes suggests.

But increased learning has a way of increasing confusion and sadness in the author, too.

So maybe life's great gain comes by seeking out pleasure wherever it can be found.

But at the end of a fleeting day, it leaves us feeling hollow and unsatisfied.

And the author recognizes that there is a joyful gain in doing the work that God's called us to do.

But even in success, there is no guarantee that what we've built won't be squandered later.

At the end of our life, we can't take our wealth with us, anyways.

Now, of course, we 21st century folks have finally figured out how to wrest satisfaction in wealth, pleasure, and endless work.

That's a joke.

Maybe we can see where the author of Ecclesiastes is coming from.

See, biblical wisdom in this book suggests that when we make one of life's great gains to be our greatest gain, to be our ultimate thing, we really end up losing everything we wanted in the first place.

Ambition and self-interest can only take us so far in life, and it can't deliver what we're really looking for, something of eternal significance.

So Jesus says, whoever would save his life, whoever wants to hang on to his life, will lose it.

Perhaps we could say, whoever clings to a life of self-interest in whatever form it could take, whoever clings to a life of self-interest at its center will find life itself slipping away from them because it was never meant to work that way.

So the question for each of us to consider, perhaps in the quiet of our own hearts, is this.

What do I consider to be my greatest gain?

What's my pearl of great price?

What do I desire or aspire to above all else?

Perhaps we'll know what that is because it's something we spend every day thinking about.

It's the dream that keeps returning to our minds, whether or not we like it.

It's that bullseye we're aiming for.

Perhaps we'll know the greatest gain because we feel fear at the thought of losing this one thing, or having it take away from us, or having it denied us.

There are many great gains to be had in life, but Jesus wants us to realize that when we mistake a material gain for the ultimate gain, we're trying to save our life by clinging on to a broken branch.

Our goals and aspirations, our self-determination cannot deliver the eternity that our hearts long for.

Such an attempt to hang on to our idea of a life run on self-will leaves us restless and discontent.

Ultimately, we can't take it with us, anyways.

And it's counted a loss.

See, eternity is a Christian's greatest gain.

Eternity is not subject to death or decay or futility.

But we should press into this idea of eternity further.

What's so interesting is what we notice is how we notice God's word talking about eternity.

When it talks about eternal life, it's not talking about a concept or a theory or an abstraction.

God's word talks about eternal life as bound up with a person.

John chapter 4, Jesus says, Whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again.

John 4 · chapter mention

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Jesus says in John 10, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

Jesus prays in John 17, This is eternal life, that my disciples know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ myself, whom you have sent.

And John writes in his first epistle, whoever has the Son has life.

And likewise Peter writes, God has given us eternal life.

And this life is in his Son.

See, eternal life is bound up with the very person of Jesus.

He is the one who has, once for all, defeated sin and death by his cross and resurrection.

Isn't that what he promises to his disciples in verse 22?

And because Christians are bound up, they're united to Christ by his Holy Spirit, we have eternal life as those who are in Him.

So what's a Christian's greatest gain?

Perhaps we want to say this.

A Christian's greatest gain is nothing short of Jesus Himself.

Paul writes, I count all things to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ.

That word knowing is so important.

Paul is not saying just a cognitive sort of knowing, a sort of I know a couple things about Jesus.

Paul's talking about knowing Jesus, of befriending Jesus, of walking with Jesus, of loving and being loved by Jesus.

To gain Jesus is to gain eternity.

And that's to gain the one thing our hearts long for most, because he is the one our hearts were created to befriend.

The one who gave himself for us because of his great love for us.

O Lord, you have made yourself, made us for yourself, goes Augustine's prayer.

And our hearts are restless until it finds its rest in you.

But we can only grasp our greatest gain if we're willing to let everything else go.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

So what does it mean to let go?

To let go is to lose your life for Jesus' sake.

This is not a carelessness.

It's not a self-neglect or a martyr complex.

Even these can be forms of spiritual pride.

We used to fool ourselves.

Rather, letting go is what it looks like to desire nothing less than a life with Jesus.

Because compared to him, everything else looks like second place.

This is what's meant by the word disciple.

And Jesus gives no illusions about what the life of a disciple looks like.

If anyone would come after me, he says in verse 23, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Letting go means denying oneself.

And that means losing the right to be the center of my own life, forfeiting self-seeking ambition, laying down my best-made plans for myself.

It's saying no to putting myself on the throne of my life, so that I can say yes to enthroning Jesus, my greatest gain instead.

Letting go means taking up my cross daily.

This is meant to be a call to participate in Christ's own suffering as individual Christians, but also as a body of Christ, the church.

If we endeavor to follow a Savior who told his disciples that he must suffer in verse 22, shouldn't we expect that in walking the way of the cross we too will participate in his suffering?

See, our idea of an easy life, my idea of the easy life, full of recognition, full of reward, has to be crucified.

Christians let go of the expectation of an easy life and instead endeavor to show forth the kind of love which we ourselves have received at the cross.

Ultimately letting go means we lose our very selves in following Jesus.

But here's the beautiful paradox of the gospel.

When we lose our lives for the sake of Christ, when we are no longer at the center of ourselves, we end up saving our lives.

When we die to our own ambition, we end up discovering God's purpose for our lives.

When we let go of our self-interest, we discover a Savior who is infinitely more interesting.

And when we let go of, when I let go of my right to my best idea of life, I discover that the life of the cross is raised to a life of new and abundant and eternal life.

Letting go of ourselves ultimately means discovering who we truly were meant to be.

It's like letting go of the idea of a false self, isn't it?

And discovering who I really am in Jesus.

See, a Christian's greatest gain, saving one's life, only comes by letting go.

Whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever would lose his life for my sake will save it.

Missionary Jim Elliott, who gave his life on the mission field, says this.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I'm going to read that again.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Oh, the wonderful cross bids me come and die, and find that I may truly live.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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