Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, February 13. Salvation cannot be earned, but there are rewards waiting for Christians who live a life of godliness. Let's learn more as our series continues. Well, first of all, I want to thank you for being with us today. I want you to turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter six. And in this sixth chapter of Hebrews, he makes a very strong statement that all of us who believe us should remember, especially when we get a little weary serving the Lord. Listen to what he says in verse ten. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.
Look at that. God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, which means toward Him, because His name represents all that He is, toward His name in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And in the series on servanthood, today I want to talk about servanthood, our rewards.
That is, what about our rewards and what are they like and what should we expect and what should we look for? So I want to mention, first of all, according to this passage, this is certainly a wonderful word of assurance that no amount of labor, no amount of service or good conduct that you and I express will ever go unheeded and overlooked by God. Because if you'll notice, He says God is not unjust to forget our labors. So I want you to turn, if you will, to look at some verses here that are real words of assurance concerning our rewards. And I want you to begin with the Sermon on the Mount, the fifth chapter.
And if you recall in this fifth chapter of Matthew when Jesus is talking about being persecuted and so forth and He says in verse eleven, blessed are you when men shall cast insults at you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely on account of Me. Then notice what He says in this next verse, rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. And so which gives us a little idea of the fact that all reward in heaven is not the same. He said your reward in heaven will be great.
Look in Ephesians chapter six, if you will, and here Paul makes a great emphasis on the whole idea of our rewards. He says in this sixth chapter, when we're talking about serving the Lord here, he says in verse seven, with good will render service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord for the slave of free. And then if you'll turn to Colossians, the third chapter, if you will, he says beginning in verse twenty-three, whatever you do, do your work heartedly as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance.
It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. And then the last book of the Bible in the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation, the very last chapter, notice what Jesus says here. He says in the twelfth verse of this twenty-second chapter, behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me to render to every man according to what he has done. Now there are just the several verses, but it's very clear that God is interested and has committed himself to rewarding us for our labor and our service for him so that he says here in Hebrews now, he says, remember this, that God is not unjust. He is not unjust so as to forget your work and your love.
Now here's what I want you to notice. Not only does he make promises, but the very character of God is at stake when it comes to this matter of rewarding us. That is, you could say, well, God's integrity is at stake because he makes a promise.
And there are a couple of things here I want you to notice. If God makes us a promise, it says something about his concern and his love and his desire to reward us. But when he says here in this tenth verse, God is not unjust, well, the word just here and the word righteous are the same word, just translated differently. And what it means here is simply this, that God would not violate his own divine law. God is not unjust. For God to be unjust would be to violate his own law.
If God violated a single solitary law of his own, if he violated a single one of them, then you and I would have reason to doubt anything else in the Scripture because we wouldn't really know whether he would or he would not. If he makes a single promise he does not keep, how do I know he won't keep the second promise and the third promise? How do I know he'll keep the promise of eternal life if he doesn't keep the promise of those things that apply to your life and mine here and now?
So first of all, he says here he is not unjust. That is, the righteousness of God is at stake. His very character and attributes are involved in our rewards. Now, that brings me to look at this whole idea of the time of our rewards because somebody says, well, OK, when am I going to be rewarded? Now, if you ask most people that, they would say, well, I'm going to be rewarded when I get to heaven. Now, I don't know about you, but it's a little tough to have to wait that long, especially if you think about people who live 80, 90, 100 years and they think, you mean I'm not going to be rewarded till I get to heaven? And the truth is the Bible doesn't really say that you and I are not going to be rewarded till we get to heaven.
Doesn't say that. So when he says here that God has not forgotten, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be forgotten here and now. Amen? There's some things I'd like to enjoy in this life as a result of the blessings and the rewards of God.
And of course, as you and I walk obediently before Him, we know that we are blessed in this life. So you can't say that all rewards are limited to the future. Now, let's put rewards in two categories. There are rewards that come now and there are rewards that do certainly come in the future. But in the category of those rewards that come now, you can place those in two different categories. And I want you to turn to Matthew chapter six for a moment, because there are those rewards that come now. Listen carefully to this category of rewards.
There are those rewards that come now that are neither fulfilling nor lasting in their value, but they are rewards. And here is a good example of that. Look, if you will, in chapter six, and I want you to look beginning in verse five. Jesus is talking about fasting and praying and practicing our righteousness. But if you'll notice, He says in verse five of chapter six.
And when you pray, He says, you're not to be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners in order to be seen by men. Now, He says, truly, I say to you, they have their reward. What's those next two words? In full. Now, listen, if you get it in full here and now, that means you've got all you're going to get.
So there are rewards that come now, but are not lasting, not fulfilling to us. All right, I want you to turn over a page, if you will, in your Bible. Look, if you will, beginning in verse 16. He says, and whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face, as the hypocrites do, and mesh your hair up and so forth.
For they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. Now, go all the way back to the first verse of this sixth chapter and notice what He says here. He says, beware of practicing your righteousness, that is, your good conduct and your good works before men, to be noticed by them. Otherwise, you have no reward, no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when somebody says, are all the rewards, are they limited to the future?
No, there are rewards that happen right now. But here's what I want you to notice, when you and I serve the Lord to do anything in order to be seen of others, in order for our own glory and our own praise and our own promotion and our own gain, He says, you have all the rewards you're going to get right there. And all the rewards you have is the praise of men. Now, I think all of us realize that how long does the praise of people last?
Well, I'll tell you how long it lasts until you upset them or disappoint them the next time, which could be, you know, the next hour, the same hour. If that's the reward that you're looking for, you get it and that's all you get and there'll be no reward in heaven. So all this reward that comes imminent in the present time and rewards that we're looking for now, some of that's not good.
But on the other hand, some of it is good. For example, you think about this kind of reward. Think about the joy that comes to us as a result of walking obediently before God and knowing that you and I are pleasing Him. There is a reward in that, the reward of real joy. There is the joy that comes also as a result of leading someone to Jesus Christ and helping that person to know how to walk in their faith. There's a real joy and a reward in that. There's a real joy in knowing that you and I personally are growing in the Lord. We're growing in our understanding of God.
We're growing in our understanding of His ways and what He's doing in our life. There's certainly a reward in that. There is reward in knowing that as you and I are serving the Lord that nothing can touch us and nothing can harm us apart from His perfect will. What a joy, what a reward that is. There's a reward in serving the Lord with other people.
Just think about the fellowship that we have in serving the Lord with other people and fellowshipping with them and listening to how God is working in their life. And there is truly a reward in knowing that what you and I do is going to have a lasting value. The truth is there is a great deal of reward that comes to us in the here and now when you and I serve the Lord.
Now if it's with the wrong motive, we get it, that's it, and it's a settled issue, that's all the reward we get. But when you and I serve Him or whatever good deeds we may do, when our motive is right and the Bible says it is in love and concern for others and as He says, for His name, which means in His behalf, when you and I are allowing the Lord to work through us no matter what we're doing, we're going to receive a reward. The reward that comes now for the praise of men, that's it. But when we do it because we love the Lord Jesus Christ, there is great reward.
There's a great sense of satisfaction and delight and joy that comes in all those ways. But the Bible also talks about our reward being also in the future. And so when we think about future reward, I want you to look at several verses here.
And let's start with Luke chapter 14. Look, if you will, in the 14th verse. For here Jesus makes it very clear as to when future reward is coming. Present reward comes in lots of different ways. This does not mean that you and I cannot be rewarded by man for work done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, if our motive is right and people choose to reward us for some reason or reward you for some reason, there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean that any reward from mankind is necessarily wrong. The whole issue is motivation. If our service is for God because we love Him, because we're concerned about people, that's one thing.
If it is because we want people's applause and to please them, that's something else. If it is done in the right spirit, we can be rewarded by man here and now. But ultimately our future reward, listen to this 14th verse, the 14th chapter of Luke. He says, And you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Jesus says here is the ultimate final reward, that is ultimately you and I know that this just God who is absolutely righteous and absolutely holy is going to do the absolutely perfect right thing by us in the judgment. That is when you and I stand before Him. And so when you come to look at these verses that have to do with that, I want you to turn to a couple other verses and I want you to hold one of these, if you will. Look, if you will, in Romans chapter 14 for a moment. The 14th chapter of Romans, here Paul also reminds us, he says in this 12th verse of the 14th chapter, he says, So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God. And so there is going to be a time of judgment when we'll give an account of ourselves to Him. Then I want you to look, if you will, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and a very important verse I want us to look at for just a few moments here. In the tenth verse of 2 Corinthians chapter 5, here's what he says. He says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed. That is, we may receive for his deeds in the body according to what he's done, whether good or bad. Now, he says each one of us is going to receive according to what we've done, either good or bad. Now, you say, well, when is this going to take place? Our words are going to take place following the time when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and takes home all the body of Christ, all the church. So someone says, well, you mean if I died today, I wouldn't be rewarded?
No. Well, that doesn't seem very fair. Why doesn't God reward me as soon as I get to heaven?
Here's the reason. Because the impact and the effect and the far reaching consequences of your life didn't stop when you died. And so what I want you to notice here in this particular passage in 2 Corinthians and how he says it, he says that you and I are going to be judged. And I want you to notice the phrase he uses here in this chapter when he says that all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Now, the fact that he uses this term, the judgment seat, is a word that is called a bema seat. That is, it is the bema toss. That is, it is a judicial seat.
That's what that word means in Greek. It's a judicial seat. Here's where the judge sits.
Now, what is he sitting there for? The Bible says in John chapter 5 verse 22 that all judgment has been given to Christ. He is going to be the one who judges us. Now, what's this judgment going to be like? It will have nothing to do with past sin in our life.
It is going to be the place and the time of reward. That does not mean, for example, that we may not be aware of sin at that point, but that's not what we are doing here. That is, Jesus isn't judging us here. He's not looking at all of our sins, but rather this is a place of reward. Now, remember the Bible says in Romans chapter 5 that you and I have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. What that word speaks of is that our position as children of God is that we are in a relationship with God, that we're His children. And we are His forgiven children because when Jesus died, all of our sin was placed upon Him and He took our sin with Him to death. He paid our sin debt in full so that when you and I stand in His judgment, we come into His judgment clothed in His righteousness, not coming to deal with sin but coming to deal with the rewards that our Lord has provided for us as a result of our service and our conduct.
Now, what I want you to notice here is this. When He says good or bad, when He talks about bad here, He's not talking about ethical or moral evil. He's talking about whether it is good for nothing.
That is, it is no account. That's the word He uses here. There are three Greek words here that you're not interested in, but I'll tell you what they are anyway.
One of them is kakos, one of them is panaros, and the other one is pharos. And the word here that indicates good for nothing, that is we're not talking about moral or ethical evil. We're talking about the things that we did that have no value to them, that amount to nothing. And we all will stand before Him, as He says, and give an account for those things.
Now, what I want us to see here is this. In light of all that, how is God going to judge us? We say, well, if He's going to judge us at the time when He takes us all home, and we're not going to be judged for evil at that point because the only reason we're in that judgment is because we are His children. We've been saved by His grace because the lost people are going to be judged at a different time.
We stand before Him, we're judged, not a matter of evil in our life, but a matter of God examining our lives to reward us for the good things, many good things that many people do. And there are many people who will be rewarded for good things. They never even thought about being good works of service or whatever, because it was just natural normal because of their love for people. That's the way they want to live.
That's the way they want to operate. And so there'll be much that you and I are rewarded for that we never even thought about. And I certainly wouldn't want to go through life if I were you trying to figure out, well, how am I going to serve the Lord in such a way that I'll have all these good things to bring before Him? Most people who are concerned about rewards are concerned about enough rewards to get into heaven. And I want to say again, salvation is not a reward for deeds done. Salvation is the gift of God's grace to us. It is God's goodness and love and mercy to us has nothing to do with my acceptance before Him. Your acceptance and my acceptance before God is based on our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ plus nothing. Rewards are the result of our service, of our good conduct and so forth, now that we are saved. Thank you for listening to Our Rewards. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
