A young Christian asked his uncle, "Why was I born?"
His uncle answered, "If you will be obedient to God, God will let you know."
Sometime after that, the young Christian was walking down the street
and walked by a burning theater.
Braving the flames, he brought out one person after another until he had saved 13 people.
He was knocked unconsciously by piece of falling timber, and was taken to the hospital.
He opened his eyes for a brief moment, and just before he died, he whispered to his uncle,
"Now I know why I was born. It was to save those 13 people."
A few months later, as his uncle was walking down the street,
he passed by a stammering man who kept saying,
"I saved myself -- I saved myself -- I was in this burning building,
and all I saved was myself."
A friend came and led him away still muttering:
"This man was in a theater that burned some months ago.
He left his friends and saved himself, and the thought of it drove him mad."
In Matthew: 10: 39 Jesus said: "He that findeth his life shall lose it,
and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
Jesus uttered this principle because of the coming persecution in which judges
would try to persuade the believers to renounce their faith.
"Save your life; don't throw it away."
Jesus was warning them that if they renounce their faith they might save their physical life,
but would lose their eternal life.
But if they were faithful to Jesus, even though they might lose their physical life,
they would gain eternal life.
If our main purpose in life is to selflessly have popularity, possessions, and position,
we will miss the higher values of life, and we will suffer dissatisfaction.
But if we set our affection on Jesus Christ and things above, we will discover the abundant life.
We lose by finding.
We live by dying.
Charles R. Weede in his poem, "The Conquerors," contrasts two men
who died at the age of 33.
One conquered the known world.
The other was a seeming failure.
Alexander the Great died at Babylon after leading vast armies, and shedding much blood
of his enemies, and enslaving millions of people, all for himself.
Jesus died at Calvary on a cross.
He had no armies, and He shed His own blood.
Alexander is dead, but Jesus rose from the dead, and He is King of kings,
and to day His followers number in the millions and millions.
To find your life is to lose it!
Trying to find life through selfish pursuits will never fully satisfy.
We may buy many things that we thought we needed, but they will leave us with an emptiness.
Our finest possessions -- jewelry, furniture, etc. -- all will tarnish, wear out, or fade,
and are often carried away by a garbage truck or an antique dealer.
The persons seeking pearls who drowns at the moment clutching his gem is a supreme loser.
Pleasure does not permanently satisfy.
Despite a search to find commitment in amusements,
America has the highest per capita boredom of any nation on earth.
Power and fame are fleeting.
Napoleon was exiled to an island and died a lonely death.
Hannibal took poison.
Caesar was assassinated.
Mussolini was executed.
Hitler blew himself up in an underground bunker.
Possessions will not give complete satisfaction.
Tolstoy tells of a man who started out at dawn with the promise that he could have
all the land that he could encircle from sunrise to sunset.
As the day wore on, the thought of the rich land stirred him to walk at a faster pace.
As the sun was setting in the West, he slipped off his shirt and his shoes,
and with his heart beating like a trip-hammer, he forced himself to where he was almost running.
Just as the sun fell beyond the horizon, he flung himself forward, fingertips touching the goal,
and he down dead.
Then people took a shovel, and gave him his land it was a hole in the ground
where he would be buried.
An fame does not give complete satisfaction.
The men of Babel wanted to make a name for themselves,
so they built a tower that would reach up to heaven.
No one could name one of those builders.
Their names perished with the tower.
The learned how very fast fame can vanish.
Then, there was Lot.
There was a time when the countryside became too small for the increasing flocks
of Abraham and Lot, so they decided to separate.
Abraham graciously gave Lot his choice of fields.
Lot selflessly chose the well-watered plains of Jordan where he could expand his livestock
and grow rich.
Also, the nearby city would give him opportunity for business advancements,
political appointments, and social elevation.
And maybe his daughters could marry well and avoid being married to any
of the smelly, farm hands of Abraham.
So, he pitched his tent toward Sodom.
Sodom was a city of iniquity from which the sin of sodomy derives its name.
Lot thought that his choice would bring him "wealth and fame and the good life."
But he discovered that his choice would come back and cause him loss and shame.
First, Lot was captured by warring kings, and might have died as a slave,
but uncle Abraham rescued him.
Then he moved closer to the city of Sodom, and then he moved into the city.
Then he became an official, and his associates were now the wicked people of Sodom,
and had less to do with Abraham who honored God.
As his spiritual life became dull, his income was increasing.
Some pastor suggested that Lot could have some business signs around the city,
which said: "Lots for sale!"
Or maybe: "You get a lot when you buy a lot from Lot."
With very few righteous people in the city,
the Lord "delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked."
(2 Peter 2:7)
His family life had suffered.
His sons-in-law had laughed at his warning to flee from the city before God destroyed it.
His wife became a pillar of salt.
Remember the significance of Luke 17:32, which says, "Remember Lot's wife," is followed
the words in verse 33: "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."
Lot lost a lifetime of satisfying service.
His home was broken, his possessions were cremated, and he was saved as by fire.
All his works proved to be wood, hay, and stubble were destroyed.
Our last glimpse of Lot finds him in a cave in a mountain, tricked into a drunken stupor
by his daughters, who had taken the morals of Sodom committed incest with their father,
and produced two nations, Moab and Ammon, both of which continually harassed Israel.
Lot sought life and lost it.
But Abraham, dying to his own selfish choice, heard the Lord say after Lot separated, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward and southward,
and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seeest, to thee will I give it,
and to thy seed forever.
And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth."
(Genesis 13:14-16, also note chapters 18 and 19)
Self-centeredness leads to loneliness.
In his book, The Man Who Love Islands, English writer D. H. Lawrence tells of a man
who enjoyed being by himself and sought solitude.
So he took his savings and bought himself an island.
But finding no happiness there, he sold the island and brought another,
then another and another.
He spent years moving from island to island until finally he became insane.
If we get wrapped up in ourselves and our own interests only, and withdraw
from the communion and friendships of others, we will find ourselves hopelessly alone.
A missionary translator in a conference in 1984 said:
"The worst thing that could ever happen to a person is to live life through
never having a cause worth dying for."
When you lose your life, you will find it.
If our purpose in life is to get all we can on earth and nothing else,
we will get little or nothing.
If our goal is to get to heaven, we also get earth thrown in too,
and we have an abundant life here.
Jesus warned us not to love "the world, neither the things that are in the world."
The reason is that "the world passeth away, and the lust thereof;
but he that doeth will of God abideth forever." (1 John 2:15-17)
Those who turn from self centeredness to do the will of God are real winners.
Losers are losers.
A Scottish pastor asserted that he knew of sanitariums in both England and Scotland
that had to close because of lack of patents soon after World War II broke out.
Opportunities to help others, such as in the air raids had cured them.
He wrote about a woman in the basement of a church which served
as an air raid shelter and a Red Cross depot.
He mentioned to someone to "Notice that woman wearing the uniform of a volunteer nurse.
Two years ago, she was an invalid, and a problem to herself and to everyone else.
You ought to see her now when the siren sounds.
Instantly, she is on the job, often working all night long caring for the injured and dying.
Everyone loves her."
She immersed herself in a worthy cause, and found life.
She was no longer a victim of worry and fear.
Waldo Emerson once said, "No man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
Jesus spoke of losing one's life "For My sake."
It is when we lose ourselves in the service for our Saviour, and in the work of the kingdom of God,
that we find real life. (Matthew 10:39)
Losing our live for higher purposes will result in the abundant life.
A missionary and two strangers were walking over the mountains of Tibet,
and came upon a beggar dying from the cold weather, and pleading for help.
The strangers argued that if they stopped to help the beggar, they would freeze to death,
so they went on their way.
But the missionary lifted the beggar and carried him.
The warmth of the beggar's body kept the missionary warm.
A little later he came across the frozen corpses of the two strangers.
Losing his life, the missionary found it.
Sir Francis of Assisi wrote:
"Lord, grant I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand than to be understood;
to love than to be loved;
for it is by forgetting self that one finds,
it is by forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life."
The question we must ask ourselves: "Why on earth are we here?"
A wise answer would certainly be to serve God and others.
When we lay our life on the altar of God and lose whatever we cherish most
whether it be reputation, position, power, or a title on an office door
-- and lose ourselves in service for Jesus, we will find that abundant life.
As children we used to say: "Finders keepers, losers, weepers."
Jesus reversed this: "Finders, weepers; losers for My sake, keepers."
Sermon adapted from several sources by Dr. Harold L. White
