Good morning. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Benson, for the opportunity to speak. I love the opportunity because we get to be together. And so I'm excited about the chance to spend time around God's word for these next several minutes. I always want to say this next hour, but then of course that throws people off, so how about a few minutes. I also want to take a moment to thank you all for your many prayers, cards, offers to help, stopping us on the sidewalk and asking about how we're doing, about Whitney in particular, my wife, and She's really doing very well. The Lord has been gracious to us and she's in the midst of radiation and chemo now, so we ask you to continue to pray and the Lord would get all the glory. Let's turn, if you will please, to the book of Matthew. I want to consider today this idea, Matthew chapter 16, if you will, please. Losing your life for Christ. We don't often wanna think about losing our lives, but Christ himself uses this language in Matthew 16, verses 24 through 26. These are verses that I've been thinking on for several months, and the several events over the last several months have drawn me to these verses. And so I'll read as you follow along, beginning in verse 24. Matthew 16 and verse 24, then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? If I were to give you a brief outline of this passage, I'm sorry, sometimes I just have to laugh at myself. Why do we say, if I were to, and then do it anyway, right? So I'm gonna give you a brief outline of this passage. And it's gonna start actually in verse 26 and work its way back to verse 24. First of all, there is a choice between life and death. Which choice will you make? Secondly, in verse 25, which choice guarantees our soul or life is safe? And then finally, in verse 24, what does it look like to make that choice? What does it look like to live that way? Christ is inviting. the disciples to follow after him. And he says, then it's going to look like this. It's going to involve denying yourself, taking up your cross and following me. It's really, really very simple statements. You're going to have to deny yourself. You're going to have to, you're not going to be able to partake in everything that you'd want to partake. take up the cross, we could think about that for a while, but the symbolism is clear. The cross is a symbol and a place of suffering. And so fit in this equation of following Christ is gonna be times where you don't get what you want and you do have to take up and endure suffering and then finally, finally follow me, that is, take direction and lead from someone who is not you. Back in January, I was able to accompany four of our students to the Naval Academy for a leadership conference. The Naval Academy is a fantastic place to visit if you ever get the chance. Just do it, just go. In fact, we have a couple of students there right now for a conference. It's really an incredible place. And the conference itself, I would highly recommend. It is on leadership. They pick a topic each year to discuss. They bring in decorated officers, admirals, politicians to come in and speak and talk about the topic. And then you divide up amongst all of the students that are there, and students come from all over the country to be there. Students and cadets, some are not in the military and don't plan to be, but a vast majority, I would say, are. And so they're from all over the world. They come from They were there from England, and Australia, and Russia. They were there from colleges across the country. There were people in my group from Penn State, and University of West Virginia, and Bucknell, and Loyola, and Texas A&M. They were from everywhere, and we discussed, the topic was, the question they ask is, what is your why? What is it that makes you get up and get out of bed in the morning? And I thought that was really a great question. And I, despite anything that I might say, I want you to understand that the information they gave at this conference was really fantastic. Many of the things they said about leadership, you could support from scripture. They weren't presenting it that way, but it was truth. And the scriptures are clear about what our why should be. Philippians talks about it. Ephesians chapter one, that you should be to the praise of his glory. Colossians chapter one in verse 15, all things were made by him and for him. are why our existence is for Christ. But it was interesting as I listened to them discuss that question and try to find answers to that question at the leadership conference, it was interesting their final conclusion. Remember now, we're in the midst of a group of people who have already decided that they're gonna give their lives for their country. They're signing up to do a job that they know could mean death. And so one particular speaker, I remember a highly decorated officer was there and someone was asking him a question about choices and how it fit in with life and the course of life and your why. And so he said, first of all, the first thing that you should do is serve your fellow man. I thought, all right, this is great. This is great, this is exactly what Christ taught us. He took a towel, he washed the disciples' feet, he said we should serve others. The next thing he said then was that you should be willing to give your lives for others. He acknowledged that all of these in the military, that was their job, to give themselves for others. And I thought, yes, greater love hath no man than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends. And then finally he said, now when it comes to all these decisions that you have to make and there's so many things, what you really need to do then is do what is best for you. And I thought, how does that work? How do you give your life for someone else and do what is best for you, right? Because if I'm at the cusp of giving my life for someone else, And then I think, oh, wait a minute, I should do what's best for me. I'm out of there. And what you realize then as I was there was without the gospel, we do not have a life that can be successful. It was on that trip that my wife got, Whitney got very sick. I was talking to her while I was on that trip, and actually before I could get home, my son and Mrs. Benson took her to the hospital, and before I could get into Greenville, I already knew that she had a brain tumor. And so the first time that I saw her at the end of that trip was in the hospital. And so thinking about, I've been thinking about these verses and I've been thinking then obviously now about going through this trial in our lives and thinking much about suffering. And one thing that's interesting is when you suffer, you recognize suffering. And you recognize that suffering is everywhere. It's all over. So many people are suffering. And I realized that God can get glory in our suffering. But as we think about losing our life in Christ, as we think about following him, one thing as I was thinking through these verses and thinking about my experience of the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy, and thinking about my experience that we're going through in our family, I realized this, that self, and suffering are obstacles that we have to grapple with every day. And so how do we do this? The question that Christ asked in verse 26, He says this, what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What is the advantage in this life? That word profit, that's an accounting term, right? But you don't have to be an accounting student to understand what he's saying. What he's saying is what's left in the end. If I can get the maximum that the world were to offer. If I get everything that's possible in the end, I'm gonna lose my own soul. I'm gonna lose my own life. What we learned then is that this life is self-destructive. That is that the damage that is done to oneself happens only because of the action taken by oneself. What does that mean? Well, let me give you an easy illustration. When we were working at camp, we liked to play a game at night after dark called Counselor Hunt. Now, if you've ever been to camp, you've probably played Counselor Hunt, not just at the Anchorage camp, but at any camp, you've probably played Counselor Hunt. Now, again, like I said, we liked to play it at night. We have a main building there. where everything happens. And so there's a front yard and side yards and a backyard. And so we play our games just out in the yard, just around the building. And what basically happens is our counselors and staff, well, I don't know why they do this, but it makes little kids laugh. And so they dress up in weird outfits. And then the game is pretty simple. They go out and hide. Campers try to find them. When they find them, they get points for their team. It's as simple as that. It used to be that the game was counselors go and hide with buckets of water, water balloons, flower bombs, and they torture the little children as they try to find them. And so I thought we had gotten through all of that, we had taken care of that, and we had graduated all of those people that all of those counselors have thought that that would be fun. And so I explained the game and I sent the counselors out to hide. and then I sent the campers out to find them and I took up my normal spot on the front porch. Now we did have We have big, strong, beautiful magnolia trees in the front yard that are easy and fun to climb, and you can get way up there. If you're climbing a tree in Council Hunt, and those of you that are working at camp this summer, this is just a little extra help. If you can get high enough where the flashlight doesn't reach you, you're good, okay? That's your goal. So usually we had somebody who climbed up in the magnolia tree. We also had another tree just in the backyard. It was a pear tree. I don't know how familiar you are with pear trees. The one that we have was not particularly tall. It wasn't tall at all. It did have leaves in it, no real big branches. It was certainly not one that you would want to climb or even one that you would want to hide in because little children, you know, fourth graders with no flashlight will find you. And so I'm sitting on the front porch and the game is going on and kids are running around looking for people dressed weirdly. And I had some kids come up to me and say, Mr. Aaron, Mr. Aaron, there is a counselor in the pear tree and he's throwing pears at us. I thought, no, get away kid, that is not true. Go play the game. And so in a couple more minutes, more kids came up and they said, Mr. Aaron, Mr. Aaron, there is a counselor in the pear tree. And he hit me in the head with this pear. I thought, surely not. So this went on and more people came and finally I said, well, I guess I'll have to go back and see what's going on. So this had been going on. By the time I got there, it had been seven or eight minutes since the first kid had come to tell me that he was being bombarded by pears, by the counselor and the tree. And I thought, I mean, if the counselor is dumb enough to climb the tree, maybe he's dumb enough to throw pears out of the tree at the campers. So I better go check on this. And so I got back there and when I got there, the tree was surrounded by campers. and they were chucking pears into the tree at the counselor. There was no counselor in the tree. But the way this started, as far as I can tell, is one little kid stood on one side of the tree and looked up in the tree to see if there was a counselor. And another little kid on the other side looked up in the tree to see if there was a counselor. And when he did that, he stepped on the pears that had fallen off the tree and he decided he saw something and he decided to throw it at the counselor, but there was no counselor. And so what it did was it went through the tree, went out to the other side and hit the other little boy in the head. And so now people all around the tree are upset that they're being hit with pears. And so they're throwing more pears and more little children are being devastated by rotten fruit. It was self destructive. Every time somebody chucked a pear at a counselor that did not exist, one of their teammates got pelted in the face. That's self-destruction. That's what happens in this life when we seek to get everything out of life that the world offers us. And this, you know, this question has already been explored. We've seen it in Scripture. Certainly we know, we've heard about Solomon. If you read there in chapter two, he decided, okay, I'll go after pleasure. And so he sought after pleasure first. And then after pleasure, he went for works. So he built a lot of buildings. Then he decided, well, I'll have as many servants as possible. And then maybe wealth would do it. Maybe a lot of gold and silver, I'll pile that up. And in the end, when he had done all of these things, and remember, he was rich, right? He had everything available to him so he could really go out and experience everything and not be held back. And when he did that in the end, he says, all was vanity. There was no profit under the sun. You think of the prodigal son who did the same thing. He took everything that he had, he got the maximum benefit that the world could offer him, and he, in this case, his family could offer him, and he took off and he went out and he tried to find as much fun as possible. Philippians chapter three speaks of this as well. It speaks of these people who are seeking to get the maximum effect out of this life. And it says this, for many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction. whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. The advantage in this life is obvious. There is not one. The end of this life, when you seek to live out in this world and take what this world offers, it is destruction. When you mind earthly things, your end is destruction. So then I want us to consider this then, what's in it for me? It's really the same question, but I softened it a bit because I think as Christians, we still ask this question. I think the world's influence rubs off on us a bit, certainly for the world, self is the false god of the age. Right, our society argues that abortion is acceptable because we can't violate the rights of self. In fact, you have so much say, you can determine your own identity. You can't be constrained by biology or physical manifestations. Your feelings and perceptions actually define reality for you. And I think that that idea, that influence of self, it's everywhere we look. I think it can rub off on us a bit. So when we, I think that we still look for what is best even when we serve. I think we're still looking, when there's opportunities to go out and do ministry, I think we sometimes are still asking, well, what's in it for me? You know, I'm fine to serve. I'm fine to do it as long as it's sort of a grab and go option, right? As long as I can take this and go on doing what I was doing, then I think it'll be fine as long as it fits my schedule, as long as I'm serving with people that I like, as long as it's not uncomfortable for me. I think we have adopted in a certain sense this idea that since God is good and God is working for good, then my service that I do should be good for me as well. We need to be careful. I just Googled a few words, and I got this statement from the world, you deserve to be happy, not tired, not hurt, not stressed, just happy. Now, if you follow this rule, what is it that you could actually do? If you only did the things that kept you from being tired, hurt, or stressed, you can't hold a job, You wouldn't stay in class. You wouldn't play on a sports team. I mean, how do you even have friends? And what's more, you could not go to Bucky's. And if you cannot go to Bucky's, then there's no homemade chips. There is no brisket sandwiches. There are no beaver nuggets, and there are no gigantic restrooms. If you live your life, And you're always looking. I don't wanna be stressed. I don't wanna be tired. I don't wanna be hurt. The world tells us that we are, that's what happiness is. And we pull this along into our lives and we pull it along and we make some alterations, I believe. I think we say this then, we say, well, if I'm supposed to be happy and I'm suffering, well then, because I've suffered, I deserve special treatment. You know, I've really had a hard time at this and I deserve, I deserve a break. Another way that we let this infiltrate our lives is we say, well, you know, I just call everything suffering, right? I call light challenges suffering. And if I can call it suffering, and then I can get special treatment. We need to be careful what we call suffering. A difficult test is not suffering. A tense conversation with an authority figure is not suffering. Dare I say this, taking your meals at the dining common is not suffering. If we want to know what suffering is, we should read the book of Acts. Just because you had an awkward conversation with someone or there was a confrontation or things didn't go your way or your blood pressure got up a little bit and you were tired or hurt or stressed does not mean you suffered. Read the book of Acts and find that people suffered when they went through stonings and shipwrecks and starving and imprisonments. That is suffering. The final thought I want you to take with you then this morning then is whose life is this anyway? Christ says, if you will follow me, if you will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Paul reminds us in first Corinthians, know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God. You're not your own. For you're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. God has purchased you through his son. And so what is living this life all about then? If we are gonna lose our life in Christ, what does it look like? Well, it looks like denying yourself. That means you're not gonna get everything you want. It looks like taking up your cross. It's about burdens. It's about suffering. It's about serving God and others in spite of your suffering. And finally, follow me. Be willing to take the lead from someone else. And if you wanna know if it's worth it, that was the question that was posed to begin with, is what do we get? What is the profit in this life? Then remember the parables that Christ, as he described the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. Or like a pearl of great price. And when a man finds this treasure, he goes and he sold all that he had and bought the field to get the treasure. Living for Christ is worth it all. Giving yourself to him brings him glory. giving yourself to Him, losing your life in Christ will save it. Father, we thank you that you love us. Help us to seek you, to serve you well, to bring glory to you in our lives, in Jesus' name, amen.