Day 3406 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 4:9 NIV

“For what will it profit a man…”

Indeed, what shall it gain if we’re to gain all there is to gain only to lose it all again? For that is the trajectory of life itself, is it not? That all that is had today will one day be held no more? That whatever we find or favor within this life within this world will matter not when we’re no longer within this life within this world? Yes, such is a certainty as the grave demands a loss of everything as even the clothes we wear within it are left to rot and return to the dust from which they’re made.

And thus it’s back to the dust for us, for such is from which we came too.

Yet looking around at how others are choosing to live and then even judging our own hearts and minds and plans and times as lived within the ways of this world we watch daily run itself wicked, burning a soul at both ends just to come away with some trophy that we pretend tells of our triumphs over life’s demand of our meaning, it’s all but obvious that we’ve no concern to care about such an approaching inevitability as an entire world’s finality.

Yes, this world shall cease spinning someday, a day that none know, a fact that should inspire our considering of alternative outcomes that may offer us a hope should there indeed be a day, a week, a life lived after we’re gone from here. But we don’t, because here still holds plenty we can have, at the right price of course. Yep, always a price to be paid for this play of pretend we put on and perform as if everyone else cares how well we spit the rhetoric and repeat the routines of it all.

Indeed, life here is so factored and figured and formally formulated that it’s all but down to a science, this existence we arrogantly boast as a life lived. But what do we know of life? What have we gained in life, of life that’s left us assured that we’ve lived life? Is life truly nothing more than the tangible evidence for which we toil, toward which then we point whenever another might ask of our purpose, our passion, our proof of life?

It would certainly seem so, for we all live, or at least have lived an entire lifetime at some time with that very outlook undermining our understanding of where we’re standing and just how fleeting the feeling.

Yes, I, as I’ve done and will continue to do, I’ve been one to live that way for most of my life. Always looking to my eyes to tell me what I see that’s then assumed as so very best for me that I then descend into the decision to all but live and die to have it, hold it, find it, know it. It’s been this endless chase to hide my face behind all these masks and masquerades as if they’re truly better able to be me than I’ve been. Because I think I’ve always known that they have been.

For we’re none too quick to discount ourselves, our hopes, our homes, our happiness and even our health if such a loss means we gain something we’ve sought to have. Wake up every single day and clock back into a job we’ve never left looking endlessly for something of substance to afford us the affluence that this world has become convinced is able to define us, defend us. Yes, our defenses fit in our pockets or find themselves projected from screens as if our design is to be digitalized down to flashing dollar signs and decimal points.

We’re nothing more than dollar signs and decimal points.

Because, as it turns out, while the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, seems the devil knows too that the way to convince us to sell our souls is through our need for greed to allow us the chance to dance this dance with the disaster we’ve designed alongside an entire mankind who collectively assumes wealth within the most worthless of worldly wants and wicked wishes. Yes, guess everyone does indeed have a price, who knew it to be so low as to gain to the whole world for what we can’t gain back?

That’s the warning conveyed in that verse from Matthew 16 that I opened with today. Goes on to say, or ask instead, “what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” Once sold, how might any regain what they gave away? How can we redeem what we basically rejected, for that is what’s done when something’s sold, is it not? We have to first decide that we’re done with it, whatever the it may be, before we then agree to slap a price upon it and set it up for auction.

Still, never then wise to sell anything to the lowest bidder.

That’s what Christ knew within this time of temptation out within the wastelands of this world. Shown all the kingdoms scattered around this sinking soil and offered the lot if He’d just lose what He knew. Yes, sound familiar? For that’s in fact the same deal upon the table for all who belly up to the belief that our lives are worth so little as to let them go at the rock bottom price of being a prince of the darkness which defines this world.

Makes you wonder why any would want whatever this world claims to offer, you know, considering God’s hatred of darkness and evil. Never really ends all that well, not well at all for any and all who do indeed dwell within the darkened deceptions we’ve designed to dilute and divide our devotions into distractions that leave us all all but devoid of direction. Yes, walls fall down, ground opens up, flames erupt from up above, it just all goes really bad for all who agree to be nothing more than everything this place has chosen to be, decided to stay.

Yes, the decision to stay is the underlying lunacy glossed over by the father of lies who deceives and destroys, the same who offers still this seemingly amazing deal unto all who’re willing to deal their life away in exchange for the chance to have everything everyone else is so eager to let define them. No, he never really mentions that such a decrepit definition does indeed deserve damnation. But hey, who’d make the deal if they knew it’d destroy them?

Well actually, now that I mentioned it, it seems these days there’s a growing number of those so diluted as to do that deal. People all around the world are making deals with the devil, falling for his deceptions, deciding upon their destruction in return for their temporary try at regality and revelry. Yes, we all do indeed love such a rebellion as our assuming and pursing our own brand of personal assumption of royalty. Guess we just don’t know that we always were.

Created in the image of it in fact, as the creation of the Creator, we’re all of us descended from the Maker of Heaven and Earth, leaving the open minded to wonder as why we’d settle for staying in the latter when offered now the salvation from such and what we’ve done to her. Why are we still at times so willing, not even willing but even eager at times, to indeed stay behind when offered what Jesus died to prove is better? Why settle always for the lesser?

Unless it’s never made to seem lesser to those who blindly play the loser in life.

Now, I understand that in this time of easy offense leaving everyone always all but bruised and never really anywhere close to bleeding from the berating of such belittlement as the suggestion that any might indeed be a loser in life, the fact is my friends, that within our sins we are indeed losing at life. In fact as sinners we are only losing life, for the wages of wickedness are indeed death, and we earn them well. Have for years.

And yet still the cross calls us to count all that loss as loss so that we might gain what we can’t lose. That is what Christ offers, life unending, eternal peace, purpose, joy and enjoyment of life and outlook and hope and happiness all perfected with Him within that place He’s prepared in Heaven. He knew then what we still at times pretend we don’t understand even still. That Heaven is real but that running with the devil only leads us the other way. That’s why He declined this deal, and then sealed the same stance for all who agree to die to this place so that we’re not anymore interested in anything that asks us to stay.

That’s why the share of His grave. It’s because we have to be willing to lose it all before we can find what’s promised within it. And the devil doesn’t want us to know that and so he sells death as the loss of life forever, when in reality it’s just the loss of the lost part of forever. For that is what sin is, it’s just our time spent lost looking for what isn’t there, isn’t here. It’s our focusing on getting everything we want, wanting always only what fits within this world in which our eyes are the ones to lead the way.

Maybe then we should be the ones to lead anymore?

Because so long as we remain those who do the deciding, we’ll stay open to keep inviting the devil back again with a better offer of more of this nothing amongst which we walk. Yes, he paints it up real nice, slaps an impressive price upon it that we can use to pretend our worth to this world, even convinces all those around us of the same worth, the same wealth, all so that we all fall back into the contemplation of competition in which we just can’t help but want to beat everyone else to whatever everyone wants.

Who cares what everyone wants when all their wants are withheld within this world? For what does it matter what we have here when all that’s here is again but dust and delusion? Sure some of the dust is gold and some of the delusions bring an undeniable sense of superiority and success and power and profit. But what does it matter if we’re kings and queens of a kingdom that comes to nothing? What will we have gained that we can keep when this world isn’t there to hold all we’ve sold our souls to assume?

We’ve been talking a bit about the call to refuse the devil a foothold in our lives, our hearts, our minds. But I fear we don’t fully understand just how many lies he’s planted inside that grant him instance entrance into our considerations. For we’ve learned only to place such value in such pettiness as having something in this world that allows us only the temporary vanity of looking like royalty to a world filled with people so broken that they believe we’re supposed to be locked in this lifetime of competition to prove ourselves better than another.

We’re not. That’s the devil using us against ourselves. And that lie has us all living like what we have matters, means something. It’s got us trading our last remaining time for toys and trinkets and trophies that tout our triumph at winning life, winning the world and the whole of all we’ve come to want within it. But friends, this race isn’t to first as found on thrones or founded in throngs of people praising our performance or impressed with our profit. This race is to last place. For the first will be last and the last then made first.

And thus it’s not the first to gain the world that gets the glory but rather the first to shake the dust that gets then to leave the dust and rust behind in exchange for a glory this world can’t give.

For down here people compete for crowns that fade and stories that are forgotten.

In Christ we’re offered a crown of glory that shines for all eternity inside a story that He’s written to prove a love that this world cannot forget.

And that’s a miracle because the devil has done all he could to inspire all he could to do all we’ve done to erase that story of the Gospel so that none would believe beyond this world anymore. The devil inspired the killing of Christ to the price of thirty pieces of silver, and despite current inflation, people are still willing to deny Him for as little as a little fun and enjoyment. Is that what our lives, our hopes, our souls are worth? Some silver coins or a few hours of selfish and sinful pleasure?

Indeed, the devil doesn’t even have to offer up all the kingdoms of the world anymore. People will deny Jesus just for a catchy song and a half hour looking at filth. My how far we’ve fallen indeed!

Perhaps the fall stops today. That is the opportunity we have in Christ as proven within the lesson offered here within His own temptation. For that’s all that temptation really is, it’s just the devil trying to distract us from what we have by offering us what we simply do not need. Jesus didn’t need all the kingdoms of this world, for the world has always been His already. Nor does He need the gold or glory of crowns and thrones, He’s got streets paved with more gold than this world can hold and so much glory that His story is still told even in a world growing colder by the day.

No, the devil has nothing to offer, and Jesus came to help us see just that by offering what the devil can’t: Salvation. See, we can gain all the world, have all the fun, enjoy all the selfish pleasure we can imagine. But none of us can add even an hour to our lives. None of us can redeem our souls from that to which they’ve been sold. None of us can erase our mistakes as we can’t even happen to not remember them some days. No, none of us can find in this world anything close to the love of God as proven in Christ on that cross.

And thus that’s become the line we can now cross that the devil won’t follow us, won’t bother us, won’t be able to offer us anything that we consider worth crossing again into a life that’s passing away.

Again, that’s what Jesus knew all along as He was tempted while tired and hungry in that desert. That it’s not about what we have or don’t have down here, how we feel or the amount of misery or loss in this life, of this life. No, it’s about what comes next. That’s why He gave His life, to remind us that something bigger comes next. Something better in fact. So please stop settling, all of us. We have to stop listening to the devil offering us what we don’t need in exchange for what we can’t afford to lose.

We have been offered salvation my friends, and simply put, as the cross proves, we cannot survive without it. So forget whatever junk the devil offers you in exchange for forgetting about Jesus and what He’s done to free us. I would rather have nothing and be free than to have everything and die anyway.

And I just can’t understand any other outlook anymore. Not anymore.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold