Nothing In This Earth Can Compare

Text

Word

This study is about the price, not about the willingness. Verse 24 asks whether a man will let go, and verse 26 asks what his soul was worth and who could ever pay for it.

The word to hold is exchange, and in the Greek it is antallagma. It is the price you set down on the counter, the thing you hand over to get the thing you want. The King James gives it as exchange, and that is the word I am holding. And He is speaking it to men who had worked a trade, who knew what it was to set a price down on a counter.

Nothing in This Earth Can Compare

Then He asks what a man could set down that would be worth a soul, and the question has no answer.

Point

My soul is so valuable that there is nothing in this world to barter with.

Proof

Watch the word will sitting in 24 and again in 25. It does not mean later, it means wants to, it is a willing word, and in those two verses the coming and the losing both start with what a man wanted.

So these verses are choices, verse 24 speaks of denying myself, verse 25 is the letting go. And verse 26 reaches out and says, what will it profit you to hold on to all of that and lose it in the end.

And notice that verse 26 begins with the word for, so the verse itself is telling you it did not start there. It sends you back, and going back is not wandering, it is obeying the text.

No Man Ever Had the Price in His Hand

Now here is where the Point is proved. Jesus never says a soul is worth much. He asks what a man would give in exchange for one, and He does not answer it, He leaves it standing there and waits. And I am not going to make His silence the proof, because a question left open is not an argument. The proof is a thousand years older than the question.

And this is not new with Jesus, and David sang it a thousand years before.

Precious, and it ceaseth for ever. No man ever had that price in his hand, and the counter had been closed a long time before Jesus stood on that road and asked the question.

Meaning

The Bookkeeper and the Capital

The bookkeeper opens the ledger, and the bookkeeper here is Jesus, because He is the one asking the questions and He is the one who opens the book.

Now every business begins with capital, money put in before one sale is ever made. Capital is not earned by the business, it is given to the business, and it is sitting there before the doors ever open.

So hear this carefully. Jesus is not saying that surrender is the payment I make to earn his investment.

And what has he already given?

Sit with that before you read another line, because your answer to it will show whether you serve Him as a man still owing, or as a man already paid for (a man still owing has not yet grasped the cross).

Count What He Had Already Put Down

Now let the chapter answer. I am reaching back before my own verses to do it, to 17 and 18 and 21, because what He asks in 24 rests on what He had already put down. Count it.

Flesh and blood hath not revealed it. Peter did not work it out, the Father handed it to him. That is the first thing given.

I will build my church. And here is what I see in that, and the seeing is mine. The building is His, so the standing in it is His too, and it is given and not earned. Then read what He says three verses later.

His own life, announced. Now 16:21 tells me He would be killed, and it does not tell me the killing was a ransom. For that I have to go four chapters on, and I will say plainly that I am going there.

A ransom for many. That is His own word for it, in His own mouth, and it is the word my whole ledger rests on.

The order runs like this. Revelation given, a place given, His life laid down as the ransom, and only then, in verse 24, does He turn around and say if any man will come after me let him deny himself. And in this sequence, in this chapter, nothing is asked of them until all of that has been put down. I am not saying He had never asked anything of them before, because He had. He called them and they left their nets.

The capital is the cross.

The account was already funded. Surrender is me signing my name to an account somebody else put the money in.

Then the exchange is surrendering my life, my want, my desires, my will, and taking my cross and following him.

Two Exchanges, and Only One Goes Through

There are two exchanges in this passage and only one of them goes through. The first is a man carrying the whole world up to the counter to buy his soul back, and look, the counter is not empty, he piled it high, every last thing he ever gained is lying there in front of him.

And it is refused. Not because there is too little of it, but because it is the wrong money. Here in Dubai a man can hold the full price in his hand and the merchant will hand it straight back to him, because the notes are old and torn, and torn money buys nothing no matter how much of it you are holding. That is the whole world at that counter. It is not short currency, it is dead currency, and he walks away holding all of it and owning nothing.

The second is a man handing over his own will and letting Jesus manage the account, and that one goes through, not because what he handed over was worth anything, it never was, but because Somebody else already paid.

When I freely and willingly allow him to manage the account, I believe the profit comes, and not quickly. Verse 27 says He rewards every man according to his works, and it does not hand me the word guaranteed, so I will not hand it to you.

And read verse 27 so you know when the profit is handed over.

Then. So do not judge the account by how this month is going, because the books are not read yet.

Heart

My soul is so valuable that there is nothing in this world to barter with.

Nothing in this earth can compare. Not a house, not a name, not a career, not a crowd, not one thing I could carry up to that counter and set down.

But I was not left standing there alone. Jesus walked up and laid down His own life and paid a price I could never have raised.

So when He asks me to deny myself, He is not asking me to pay Him back, He is asking me to stop trying to run an account I was never able to fund.

And the same counter that would not take one thing I owned calls me over with nothing in my hands at all.

Come and buy, with no money. I was never turned away for being poor, I was turned away for coming as a buyer.

Lord, I hand it over, my life, my want, my desires, my will, all of it into Your hands, and I take up my cross today and I follow.