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The sermon teaches that worldly prosperity is incapable of saving or satisfying the human soul. Because the soul bears God’s image, possesses immortality, and is of greater value than the whole world, its loss is catastrophic and involves eternal punishment. Spurgeon confronts hearers with the danger of sacrificing eternal interests for small temporal benefits. He concludes with an explicitly gospel-centered invitation to believe in Jesus Christ, who came to save sinners, including the chief of sinners.
Theological center: The soul has eternal worth, and salvation from its dreadful loss is found in Jesus Christ rather than in worldly wealth, power, or pleasure.
Applications: Count Your Spiritual Accounts · Do Not Sell Your Soul · Believe in Christ · Receive Gospel Consolation
Primary texts: Mark 8:36 · Ecclesiastes 1:2
“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36 MANY men have been made bankrupts through inattention to their books. No man ever loses anything by counting the cost, knowing his own expenditures, and keeping his debts and credits pretty closely up. But many men have been ruined by attempts which have been suggested by a spirit of speculation, and fostered by a negligence of their own concerns, combined with absolute ignorance of their real financial position. Spiritually, man is a great trader—he is trading for his own welfare. He is trading for time and for eternity. He keeps two shops—one shop is kept by an apprentice of his, a rough unseemly hand of clayey mold, called the body. The other business, which is an infinitely more vast concern, is kept by one that is called “the soul,” a spiritual being, who does not traffic upon little things, but who deals with hell or heaven, and trades with the mighty realities of eternity. Now, a merchant would be very unwise who should pay all attention to some small off-hand shop of his, and take no account whatever of a large establishment. And he would, indeed, but be negligent, who should very carefully jot down every trifle of the expenditure of his own household, but should never think of reckoning the expenses of some vast concern that may be hanging on his hands. But the most of men are just as foolish—they estimate the profits (as they conceive them to be) which are gained in that small corner shop called the body, but they too seldom reckon up the awful loss which is brought about by a negligence of the soul’s concerns in the great matters of eternity. Let me beseech you, my brethren, while you are not careless of the body, as indeed, you ought not to be, seeing that it is, in the case of believers, the temple of the Holy Ghost, to take more especial care of your souls. Decorate the tenement, but suffer not the inhabitant to die of starvation. Paint not the ship while you are letting the crew perish for want of stores on board. Look to your soul, as well as to your body—to the life, as well as to that by which you live. Oh, that men would take account of the soul’s vast concerns and know their own standing before God. Oh, that you would examine yourselves. If men would do so, if all of you would now search within, how many of you would be bankrupts? You are making a pretty little fortune with regard to the body. You are doing tolerably well and comfortable. You are providing for yourselves things as you desire them. Your mortal body, perhaps, is even pamper…