The Market Place of Life – Joseph Addai Kusi

Life is not a joke. God did not create man to come wander on the earth without a purpose, to live and to die for nothing. Man is the masterpiece of God’s creativity and the pivot of his eternal intent. We were made to be the masters of creation, to govern and rule the beasts, the trees and the waters. God embedded in man the imprint of the divine creative ability.

From the hand and mind of mortal man have come the great advances in science, engineering and technology. Modern man made the great ocean vessels, the wonder of the modern age, the aeroplane and the earth-quaking steam engine that powers the steel snake of the mountain courses, the train. Thousands of years ago, the great Meso-American civilizations, the Aztecs, the Incas and the Mayans built pyramids and grand imperial cities of epic proportion with trigonometrical exactitude.

Man has succeeded in raising structures so grand and powerful that it daunts the imagination of the beholder. From the ancient architecture of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India to the towering steel and glass shuttle of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, we discover the unfolding of the great quest of the ages, the desire of man to live beyond himself. We seek immortality without knowing it. Deep within the recesses of our being, we know we were made to live forever. We sense there is within us a capacity to contain God and to live by Him and enjoy Him forever. The Westminster Confession of faith declares, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Henry Ford dazzled the world with his ground-breaking Model T automobile. He had a vision of it becoming the novelty that would change the world of automobile design and utility, and he succeeded.

His visionary words are greatly inspiring;

“I will build a motorcar for the multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best of materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest deigns that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

The great nation of The United States of America has sought throughout modern history to be the epitome and very quintessence of man’s liberty and pursuit of greatness and destiny. This generous nation has opened its doors to Arab and Caucasian, Indian and African alike to make the best of life within its borders. The American spirit cries, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” President after president has proclaimed a new vision for a new America to inspire the souls of men both at home and abroad to greater achievement and conquest. Theodore Roosevelt, a tough cowboy president spoke these words as fuel to the fire of the American spirit;

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strive valiantly. Who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions. Who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place will never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and beyond, there has been a call to man to rise and be the champion of his own liberty. The American spirit is the mouthpiece of man’s silent inward pursuit, a craving to colour with the brushstrokes of a lifetime an undying legacy upon the timeless parchments of time and the mammoth canvas of eternity. W.W. Kingsley lends me her skilful pen;

“The more profoundly phenomena have been studied by scientists and scientific philosophers, the more gloriously have shown out the truths to which I have alluded: that God has busied himself through untold ages in preparing man’s advent, that the grand goal of his endeavour, the ultimate Thule of his creative thought on this planet; that all this prolonged preparation could not have been merely to render comfortable a short-lived and low-planned animal existence; that this patient approach could not have been to a consummation so inconsequential and unworthy; but that he for whom the centuries have been so long waiting and wears the crown surely was not born to die.”

Almost three thousand years ago, a famed rich Hebrew sage-king penned these immortal words in his palace in Jerusalem;

He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Eccl 3:11-12)

When man, the crown of God’s earthly regime fell, God stretched his hand to save his investment from loss and salvage the Cullinan Diamond of his work, man. This he did, not at a distance but he came and took upon himself the situation and frailty of man and on the cross, he became man’s Substitute and suffered the just recompense of God’s burning wrath upon the blighted curse of sin. Hereafter, he suffered the torments of the damned in the dark regions of Hades and Tartaros, and was made a prisoner in the nether darkness-cursed dungeons by the hordes and co-horts of hell.

God raised him bodily from the dead and gave him a name that is above every other name. He has been made the head of all Principalities and powers of God’s great universe. Man had no approach to God in relationship before Christ but his passion on the cross, death and resurrection have forever altered the chessboard of God’s eternal dealings with man. No man can ignore the living truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.

From that time, God deals with man insofar as man deals with his Son, Jesus. The price of man is now the price of His Son and God decides what to do with man on account of what man chooses to do with his Son. Whosoever accepts this testimony of the Son is accepted of Him, and he who rejects the Son, God rejects.

What is the price of man?  What is the wealth stock and treasure by which God determines the price of man? It is the life of His Son, his royal-God blood, shed in the dark tree groves of Golgotha two millennia ago. When Israel chose to rebel against God, they sold themselves for nothing, and incurred a sorry loss and depreciation of their priceless holy franchise which once on Passover night broke the gates of Egypt to let go free Jacob’s children from the strange land. They had sold themselves for nothing when they sought after strange gods and strayed from their holy calling to be a kingdom of priests to Jehovah, the Lord God Eternal of Israel.

Ps.44:12: Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by their price.

The nation which once the precious treasure of God was, his gold chest among the heathen was now counted as nothing. Its price had become of no value to God, and that sacred investment chartered dutifully by His contract with Abraham, the heritage God ransomed out of Egypt to yield him a glorious dividend of kings and nations was turned into a stock of vanities. Ephraim (Israel) was sold in the marketplace of life and his worth did not increase the wealth of God. He who with solemn oath laid claim to the cattle on a thousand hills now suffered loss and failed to collect an interest on the joint investment he with Abraham had brokered over three thousand years ago.

In like manner, our walk and way with God is nothing but the marketplace of life. God’s investment in us is of immeasurable expense and we dare not squander such wealth as the blood of the Son of God and the gift of righteousness in vain pursuit of empty earthly purposes to the cost of our eternal glory.

1 Cor.6:20: For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Peter 2:9: But you are a chosen race, a priesthood of kingly lineage, a holy nation, a people belonging specially to God, that you may make known the perfections of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. (Weymouth)

Knowing full well that we are a purchased franchise, we must choose with solemn contemplation the sphere of life in which our merchandise, the price of our life will meet with the fair exchanges of the marketplace. We must elect by the submission of our wills to God the refinery and blasting furnace where our gold wedge shall meet the kindled fires of our fining and perfecting.

Isa.13:12: I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the gold wegde of Ophir.

To the servant who buried his one talent, the master queried, “Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.” He who for a pittance of thirty pieces of silver was sold into wicked hands bought us unto himself not with corruptible things, as silver and gold but with the precious blood of Christ, that we being given to the trades of life in God, would at the end yield him a worthy and handsome eternal competence.

Yes, every bit yes! Life is a market place – veritably a stock exchange house. When the young and naïve Joseph from his father’s house was sold, he little thought that this inhumane and unjust experience was his wares being peddled through the market of God’s preparations and orderings. Thirteen times the earth made its journey about the sun before Joseph was ready to be the regent of a strange land. At last, his stock price had garnered much value and was ready to be used for its highest end. This surely must be the meaning of;

Ps.105:19: Until the time that his word came: the word of the Lord tried him. The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of his people, and let him go free.

Like the patient investor stakes a million in an interest and waits ten years till it is doubled to ten times its initial worth, so did Joseph’s word come. Surely, such a speculator who has hope of that great and awesome future sum to which he lends his money will not pre-empt his ultimate reward with temporary gratifications. He waits for the claim he has staked to yield the full satisfaction of bounteous dividend. We are the merchandise God has staked in the royal stock exchange house of life, and mind you, this marketplace transcends our present life here on earth. God must increase his wealth by our price for we are the eternal levy of beauteous recompense, the glorious revenue by which his Eternal Housing Project, the New Jerusalem is built. We are the royal mart of his primal pleasure and eternal selections. We are a stock of holy preciousnesses.

1Cor.3:12: Now is any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Every man’swork shall be manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire…

Life is not a game of roulette. We cannot gamble away our priced stock at the gaming tables of foolishness and vanity. Even the merchants of this world, who deal in uncertain riches spare no expense to insure the security of their portfolios. Of how much more greater value then is the blood of the Son of God which was shed for our ransom and poured for our purchase? Like Joseph, when your word comes, when your stock is called in for the accounting, what would the valuation of your worth be? How much value would you yield upon maturity after you have been bargained upon and gone through the marketplace of life?  This stock centre is your place in God and in ministry where God’s servants, the brokers add value to your stock till the time that your word will come. They prepare you to fulfil God’s claim on your life and to bring you into the pleasant land of your destiny. Such should be the purpose of our churches and the parishes to which many so devoutly resort.

I seek to plant in your heart a seeking- a quest for that place in God where your stock is received and valued at no less the price incurred for its procurement. This place must assure you the full recompense of dividend for what you have sown. You must put your life into ministry to serve the Lord, and if by grace you find a profitable venture which your price can raise, then give yourself wholly and spend your life for that one great purpose for which God has called you. As Oswald J. Smith rode his mule through the ravines of the Kentucky hills, he cried, “Lord, use me. Don’t let me settle down in an ordinary pastorate and accomplish nothing for you. I have only one life and I want to invest it for thee.”

Your life has a mind to invest itself even if you will not do so by your own will. Your life is too precious to be wasted away from the service and pleasure of the Lord. The life time of man dances to the tune of a weaver’s shuttle and is subject to the clock of Job’s lament;

Job 7:1, 6: Is there not an appointed time to man upon the earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hireling?.. My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.

On his death bed, Napoleon the great general of France at whose presence Europe shook with a feeble tremor lamented, “I die before my time and my body shall be given back to the earth and devoured by worms. What an abysmal gulf between my deep miseries and the eternal Kingdom of Christ. I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself and Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, A Judean peasant- Jesus- should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations.”

He bemoaned the sorry waste of his lifetime. Though before men grandly exalted and idolized as a god, yet upon his death bed, spent in the brutal wars of his quest for European conquest, he sang a song of woe and anguish and with his failing tongue, praised the glory and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. After crushing the armies of Russia and Austria at the Battle of Austerlitz, and the legions of Prussia at the battle of Jena, he lay crushed himself bleeding from the torments of a squandered life.

You and I have opportunity to invest our lives. Let no marketplace of man’s making find our priceless store worthy of its merchandise. When the value of our life seeks a measure, let not the scales of the world’s enterprise find our load possible to weigh, but rather let the judgment seat of Christ be the righteous balance that can weigh our lives by an eternal weight of glory. Where will you be twenty years hence? What would your life have become? Would you then have seen a life of peace and prosperity, fulfilment and success that causes you to rest sweetly in vineyards of contentment and joy or would you be restless in the doomed race of lost men? Would you with a blessed heart give praise to the Lord who made you and has made you?  Invest your life in the storehouse of God that your life will yield a glorious dividend profitable both in this time and in the world to come. Where is your marketplace of life? I pray that the Lord gives you understanding.

An excerpt from my book, KNOWING YOUR PASTOR. Order here