You Have a Life
Matthew 16:24-25 
A Sermon by Dave Redick
Hwy 20 Church of Christ, Sweet Home, Oregon
[Author's Note: This message was preached at a banquet held to honor and encourage leaders of various ministries in a local congregation.]

You sit tonight in the midst of some of the best relationships a person could ever have. These people around you, your fellow workers in Christ, help make up the life Jesus has given you that is uniquely yours. It may just be that you don't realize how important these people are in making up what you call your life. It isn't this building or this night or this dinner that makes it special. It's these people - your comrades in service to Christ - who make up your life.

[The following story appeared in Moody Monthly magazine back in 1993. It describes one man's remarkable discovery at a place called Smokey Mountain near the Philippine capital of Manila^.(1)]

"A gigantic man-made mound, perhaps 100 feet high, ran on before us for a mile of more. Wisps of smoke rose from fissures all over the sides and top of this municipal dump and landfill.

"'Five thousand people live on that mountain,' the guide said, 'and off it, too.' He meant they made their livelihood from scavenging useful garbage. As we walked up the side, acrid smoke stung our eyes; the stench of rotting garbage was overwhelming. Shacks made of plywood or tin lined the main street, with smaller shacks squatting farther away on the sides of the mountain. The trucks dumped fresh garbage at the top of the mound. My eyes followed the cascade of refuse down the side of the mountain to where the bulldozers were working below. Scores of women, men, and children scattered ahead of the bulldozers, then swirled back in the wake, working rapidly with homemade stick-rakes to find some salable treasure in the refuse."

The guide then took his charges to a larger shack that had a cross on it and asked if the pastor was in. They were met by a pleasant Filipino man who greeted them with fluent, articulate English. They learned that this man was a graduate of one of the most prestigious seminaries in Asia. The article continues:

"I thought, 'This man could be the pastor of any major Baptist church in Manila. I wonder why he's here.' So I asked him and heard a remarkable love story.

"Antonio, as a young seminary graduate, had volunteered for missionary work at Smokey Mountain. But the day came when his denomination discontinued work at the site. Antonio had a choice--take the pulpit of some established church or throw in his lot with his adopted people, live by faith, and love them to Jesus. So he moved on the mountain with his lovely wife and together they cared for a growing flock and raised their four daughters."

Regardless of what we might think or not think of this man's denominational connections, he was clearly a man who made a great personal sacrifice for his faith. Few people today would be willing to do what Antonio did.

Why would such a gifted man choose to spend the prime of his life among the garbage dump dwellers of the largest city in the Philippines? Was he crazy? Was he some kind of unbalanced religious kook? A lot of people would probably think so.

While most of us here tonight might not sense God's calling to work in a garbage dump, I have a hunch that we understand Antonio's motivation. We understand it because we too have committed our lives to serving the cause of Jesus Christ in ways that people who don't know Him don't understand and probably never will.

Most of those who serve Christ today do so in a voluntary capacity and even those who get paid for full time service usually do a lot more than their paychecks reflect. The fact is, the majority of things that get done for the cause of Christ in the world today are done by people who volunteer their time and are willing to spend and be spent for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

The world doesn't understand that, but we do. In your presence I can say with full confidence in being understood that a man like Antonio isn't crazy at all. In fact, he's really quite smart.

Our young people, when they disapprove of the way someone uses his or her time often use the familiar phrase "Get a life!" It is usually intended as an insult meaning "Your life is meaningless. You're a zero. Do something worthwhile. Get a life!"

Interestingly, Jesus spoke quite directly about getting a life. No, He didn't mean it as an insult. It wasn't a put down but rather a very serious statement of truth that people like you here tonight have taken to heart. He said in Matthew 16:24-25, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it."

Deny your own desires, take up your cross, follow Jesus, lose your life in His service, and you get a life. That's what He meant.

What kind of life? What life would be worth the setting aside of one's own desires? What do you get when you deny yourself in exchange for the life Jesus speaks? You get a lot! In fact, if it is really an exchange, then it is the most lopsided exchange that has ever been offered to man. I certainly don't have time to enumerate it fully but let me suggest a few of the things I believe Jesus had in mind when He spoke of finding a life. First, when you set aside self for what Jesus offers:

I. You Get A Life Full of Meaningful Relationships.

Some of you may think me slow when I say it but I don't know when it finally dawned on me that what I consider "my life" did not consist of the things I've owned or the things I might accomplish or the places I've been. Like numerous others I'm afraid, I was slow to realize that what I call "my life" consists in large part of the relationships that are dear to me. In my defense for being so slow I'll just say that at age 18 I was too concerned with my identity. At age 28 I was too concerned with the needs of a growing family. At age 38 I was trying to stay ahead of a house full of teenagers. Now at age 48, I've had some time to contemplate.

A couple of years ago I took a week alone and returned to the area of Northern California where I grew up. I guess such an attack of nostalgia tells my age quite loudly but that's OK. I felt the need to return to some of the places that hold special significance to me in my memories.

For several days I just drove with my camping gear in the back of the truck, stopping wherever I felt like stopping. I visited places I remembered from my youth living with my parents and grandparents and from the years spent raising my own children. (Surprisingly, not all of the places had been replaced by shopping centers!)

At one point of the trip I hiked down into the Sacramento River canyon where I used to go fishing and picnicking with my parents and grandparents. I stood again on the rock from which I would nearly always catch the first trout of the day. From that spot I could see the area where my grandfather always stood casting. Upstream, just below the riffle, was the spot where my dad always stood. Behind me was the flat spot in the rocks where the blanket was always spread with food. For a little while I could see it all again - my dad, my grandfather there casting. The sounds were the same. The smells were the same. The cool breeze rising from the river, colliding with the heat of the day was the same. But you know, instead of feeling good, I suddenly realized that it was a very lonely spot. Everything was the same except that no one was there but me and without those people I hold dear in my memories, the place was just another lonely spot.

I traveled the next day and intended to camp one night at Lake McCumber, a favorite family spot east of Redding, California, where we used to camp when my own children were small. Since it was early in the season I was able to set up my tent in the same old spot where we used to park our trailer. It was in that same spot, years ago now, where we woke up one morning in July expecting to find another day of 90 degree heat but instead discovered that we were covered with three inches of snow. We had to drive back home for blankets. Just behind me was the creek where Jessica and Richelle caught crawdads when they were 5 and 7 years old. Across the way was the tree where we took that photograph of Jason and his large brown trout that made the sports page of the local newspaper alongside the story of his dad who was president of the fly fishing club that year and got skunked on the same trip. It was all there in my mind's eye. Yet I discovered that it made me feel so alone that I couldn't even spend the rest of the night. I drove back to town and stayed in the spare bedroom of my parents' home. That's where some of my people were.

Everything was the same - but the people were missing. A place that once was alive for me was now dead and lonely.

Jesus was right when He said in Luke 12:15, "a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (NIV) A great part of life is the relationships we have with others.

You sit tonight in the midst of some of the best relationships a person could ever have. These people around you, your fellow workers in Christ, help make up the life Jesus has given you that is uniquely yours. It may just be that you don't realize how important these people are in making up what you call your life. It isn't this building or this night or this dinner that makes it special. It's these people - your comrades in service to Christ - who make up your life. Like you, they have chosen to deny other things in order to serve Christ. Among these people you are getting a life.

What kind of a life do you get when you lose your life in the cause of Christ? You get a life full of meaningful relationships with your comrades in His service. What else? Well, when you deny yourself and follow Christ in service:

II. You Get A Life of Great Purpose.

Many of the people you live and work with every day have given up on finding lasting purpose in life. Some as a result are just living for the moment, as Jerry Seinfield expressed quite characteristically a few years back. Listen to what he said and consider if this isn't typical of many around you:

"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in, and no one can stop it. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up."⁽²⁾

"The ride is the thing," says Jerry Seinfield. Just put up your arms, scream, hang on so it doesn't end prematurely, and have a good time because that's all you're going to get. There's no greater purpose and the sooner you resign yourself to it, the better you'll be."

Spoken like a true "man of the nineties," wouldn't you agree?

But we know better, don't we? How is it that we know better? Because the service of Christ has given us an eternal purpose that is more important than anything we could ever find to do here.

People today dedicate their lives to all kinds of things - finding great ships, saving whales, snakes, and snail-darters, climbing mountains, sailing around the world in balloons and they do find purpose - for a little while. Ultimately though, their victories and their purposes are only temporary - great exercises with much activity but little lasting significance. Have a good time 'cause this is all you get.

A man named Arthur Helps has written these words about missing God's great purpose for us in life:

"Passing by a mountain stream, I once beheld an unfortunate tree log, which, having been cut down and shot down the side of a hill into a stream, thus to be sent on down the stream to find its way to the mill pond, had unfortunately come too near a strong eddy which caught it up and ever whirled it back again.

"Down came the log with apparent vigor and intent each time, and it seemed certain that it would drive onwards in the course designed for it; but each time it swirled round and was sent back again. Ever and anon, it came with greater force, described a wider arc, and surely now, I thought, it will shoot down on its way; but no, it paused for a moment, felt the influence of its fatal eddy, and then returned with the like force it had come down with.

"I waited and waited; groups of holiday-making people passed by me, wondering, I dare say, what I stayed there to see. Unmindful of any of us, the trapped log went on performing its circles. I returned in the evening. The poor log was still there, busy as ever in not going onwards; and I went upon my journey, feeling very melancholy for this tree, and thinking there was very little hope for it."

Caught in an eddy, unable to escape and fulfill its purpose. That's a good description of life without Christ, isn't it?

When we finally come to our senses (if indeed we do) and lose our lives and our "back eddy" purposes in His great cause, we finally find the fulfilling release into the stream of living that God has intended for us. We find a life indeed, just as Paul told Timothy to tell those of his own day who served Christ:

"Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed."

When you lose your life in the service and purpose of Christ you get a life of meaningful relationships, you get a life of lasting purpose, and finally,

III. You Get A Life of Unending Duration.

Many years ago now, Jesus said to the thirsty woman at the well:

"...but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."

Jesus quenches our thirst for real relationships and real meaning and purpose in life here and now. But there is a great gush of water yet to come! Those words "springing up" have the meaning in the original language of a sudden leaping or gushing forth as though a dam that has been letting out a steady flow of water suddenly bursts and releases an avalanche of water that inundates the valley below.

It is great to contemplate the things that service to Christ yields for us in the here and now. But for us the best is truly yet to come! In just a little while, as we stay in His service, God is going to flood us with life in a quantity we cannot even imagine!

There is an old legend of a swan and a crane. The story says that a beautiful swan landed on the bank of a river near where a crane was wading looking for snails. For a few moments the crane viewed the swan in wide-eyed wonder and then asked:

"Where do you come from?"

"I come from heaven!" replied the swan.

"And where is heaven?" asked the crane, skeptically.

"Heaven!" said the swan, "Heaven! Have you never heard of heaven?"

And the beautiful bird went on to describe the grandeur of the Eternal City. She told of streets of gold, and the gates and walls made of precious stones; of the river of life, pure as crystal, upon whose banks is the tree whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. In eloquent terms the swan described the hosts who live in that other world, but without arousing the slightest interest on the part of the crane.

Finally the crane asked with a sigh that betrayed his boredom: "Are there any snails there?"

"Snails!" repeated the swan in exasperation; "No. Of course not!"

"Then," said the crane, as he continued his search along the slimy banks of the pool, "you can have your heaven. I want snails!"

As I look around me tonight I find myself in the midst of people who have decided that you don't want snails. You want heaven. You want eternal life.

You've made the wise choice.

I'm reminded of the prudent words of Jim Elliot:

"He is no fool who forfeits that which he cannot keep in exchange for that which cannot be taken away."

Yes indeed. You've made the wise choice. You have a life!

1. Moody Monthly February 1993, p. 39. [Back]
2. "Seinlanguage," by Jerry Seinfeld, Reader's Digest, March 1994, p. 93. [Back]

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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