God's Heavenly Rewards

Gods heavenly rewards-

 Gods favour and blessing is one of the rewards of the righteous. The favour of God in today's popular teaching can mean anything from a parking space which appears to someone, to your airline upgrading you to first class from economy. Bible rewards are very very different.

Gods favour does not mean free parking spaces! it means to be close to God, to gain His favour means He likes to hang out with you more- he manifests His presence more on you and reveals more of his heart to you and strengthens you more than others. It means intimacy. he likes to manifest His presence to those whom He loves. "The secret counsel do God is with those who fear Him" he shares the secret of his heart with us.

Many times this favour does not mean a smooth life, free of trouble, "blessings popping up to make our lives more convenient- but it almost certainly means more trouble- 

"blessed are you when they say false things of you accusing you falsely, maligning you on account of me, rejoice with great gladness because great is your reward in heaven, for they treated the prophets of God likewise"

 he makes an effort to emphasise reward "in heaven" there is something intangible about this reward- it is stored up for the prophet in heaven, I think this means more of Gods presence is waiting for you in The heavenly realms which you will get to enjoy. As if God is saying " if you can set your mind on heavenly things then you will enjoy more of Me, as you go through such trials"

Heavenly joys and rewards 

"Jesus For the joy that was set before Him endured the cross" this joy is the joy of being resurrected by the Father in glory - for performing the ultimate act of self sacrifice and obedience to God. 

For obedience into death Jesus gains the fathers ultimate and highest approval, resurrection from the dead into the highest level of heaven and more intimacy, more power, more authority from God and more approval from God than any man who will ever live. Such was the greatness of His obedience and sacrifice which was even to death.

The Bible inspires and encourages us with like encouragement- if we obey unto the denial of our will and self life but obedience to God unto death, to love Him, like Jesus did, we will also be likewise resurrected with Him in like glory. God takes pains to set our sights not on earthly rewards but eternal, heavenly ones. 

An internal inward strength

"Even if our outer man decays day by day, our inner man is renewed day by day" it is spiritual, this force, this life, this strength this reward is eternal life expressed in the very core of our spirit man.

Rewards and judgement 

Even a cup of cold water will not lose its reward. God takes into account all small deeds of love, and encourages us to look forward to a day they will all be accounted for by Him to receive His generous blessing.

A million innocuous acts

We are sinners by the million innocuous acts of rebellion everyday that go on in our hearts  and minds and by these we torture Him constantly. For He is unable to Hide His eyes from them. Nor Avert the agony brought about from being in intimate contact with these vile things.

 But yet he loves us still and chooses to forgive us all for all of them - giving us everything in Himself, repeatedly acting and consistently choosing to give everything of Him to us - everything in His heart, soul, mind and body. Annihilating Himself for us over and over again. Even today we are sustained by pure and unhindered grace. That is love - to give unto the entire annihilation of the self for the blessing and benefit of another. 

- this is the Gospel and the Love of Christ. 

Did God consider sin before the fall?

IF He knew that we would sin, why did he still create us? did he not consider the design beforehand? But He did consider the design beforehand!

If he created robots it would not be satisfying for His heart of love to hold relationship with an automated being who only did what you programmed him to do. If he created independent beings which can choose like himself what to do, then we are made in the image of God. and we can satisfy the love of God by choosing to love Him back. The most painful thing is to love someone who does not love you, the most lovely thing in life is to love others and have them love you back, imagine a son whom a father loves who will not love the father. What sorrow. Imagine the same son coming back to Him and loving Him. The Father's heart of sorrow is satisfied. That is God.

Joshua 24: 15 But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Deut 30:15

15 Today I am giving you a choice. You can choose life and success or death and disaster. 16-18 I am commanding you to be loyal to the Lord, to live the way he has told you, and to obey his laws and teachings. You are about to cross the Jordan River and take the land that he is giving you. If you obey him, you will live and become successful and powerful.

Love is not what you can get for yourself but what you want to give for the one you love, even if it cost you your life. he did it to show us what is truly beautiful and lovely and true. indeed when we see people like mandela ghandi MLKjr we feel something honourable and lovely and good - people who give their lives unselfishly. love is unselfish, to teach us to be unselfish in our love not to get stuff but truly to give everything. that is the good way to live.

1 John 4

10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

John 15

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command.

we must love others even if it should cost us our very life. because only that is the right way to love.

Do you know that in nuclear fusion cells combine to give out energy and when they combine some of the cells are destroyed producing power? That is God God who loves His Son the Son who loves His father, their over flow of love demands a vessel to contain it. People. humans to have a relationship with. to befriend to laugh and cry with. Relationships are beautiful but no one can hold a relationship with a computer.

Nuclear fission - cells divide, giving engery though their destruction - that is What Christ did at the Cross, destroyed Himself for us. His purity destroyed, His body agonised in pain, His mind oppressed, Himself cursed For mankind that we may be saved from sin, to believe in Christ and to decide to follow Him is to transfer our sins to His body and receive that sacrifice into His our own beings, spirit soul and body = eat my body drink my blood

2 cor 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Holiness of God purity turned into sin itself - the full ugliness of the sin of all mankind throughout all time. all sin committed in all time fell upon the Son of God.

in my opinion the most painful thing he gave up was His father. He was no more the son of God crying our 'My God my God before that point had he called God only Father, but during that point only God'

A stranger in the earth

Ps 119 v19

I am a stranger in the earth do not hide your commandments from me.

Strange choice of words, not a stranger on the earth like most of us would say, but in the earth. It conveys that I am in the midst of the earth, in the middle of life, an earth-bound life. With all my earthly concerns earthly business to attend to with all the important matters of life which is happening to me. The verse in the earth Includes all the emotions in my experience and the events which take place around me as I am in the earth.

Yet, "I am a stranger". The Psalmist is detached from all of his earthly business. He feels that none of it really feeds his heart and relates to him. Life is happening in and around him but his heart is not in it. The heart of the psalmist is not focused on the earth. Its as if he is a detached observer - watching everything happen but His heart lies elsewhere.

His prayer is "do not hide your commands from me".

As the messiness of life happens O God do not let life obscure your voice, your directions your commands, your truths which I meditate on. Make it plain to me O God because life has a way of obscuring your voice and your revelations and your directions. These are the things which anchor the psalmist as he is in the earth. He focuses on God who feeds and nourishes Him. 

His soul is "crushed with longing for Your commandments at all times".

God and His world and His voice, The psalmist finds to be more relevant to Him, indeed more needful for the psalmist in his life in the earth. The heart of Psalm 119 is its second verse, "How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, Who seek Him with all their heart." He lays hold of the invisible God to keep him anchored in a messy world.

The false way & the faithful way

Psalms 119

29 Remove the false way from me, and graciously grant me your law

 

30 I have chosen the faithful way; I have placed Your ordinances before me,

 

31 I cling to your testimonies.

 

O Lord do not put me to shame!

 

To learn by way of contrast, the psalmist talks about two ways, the false way ‘Remove the false way from me’ – in contrast with the faithful way ‘I have chosen the faithful way’. The two opposing points when put together provides a counterpoint. They are opposites deliberately chosen as a poetic device, to teach us a lesson, and yields rich meaning when meditated upon.

 

The false way - what does that mean? We do not use that saying anymore in modern English. ‘To be false to me,” an old expression which means to be untrue, to be deceitful, to be cunning and sly. “To be true to me” would be its natural opposite, which would mean to be faithful, to have a pure, honest, sincere heart in a relationship towards another.

 

‘The false way’ is contrasted with ‘I have chosen the faithful way,’ The faithful way – encompasses being truthful, being honest, sincere, plain. But more than tha,t the psalmist is emphasising faithfulness and loyalty. In other words, the root of sin is unfaithfulness. Sin and being cunning, deceitful, sly, doing works covered by darkness proceeds from a heart which is first disloyal to Jesus Christ. Its cure then, is the faithful way, means being faithful and mindful of the king and being loyal to Him, keeping His interests first in our dealings. If we would relate to Christ first in our heart, and keep our relationship with him intact and connected and centred and be faithful in our heart towards Him, then sins power is stopped.

 

He recognizes that he is disloyal, deceitful to God and untrue,’remove the unfaithful way from me.' He recognizes that there is darkness in his own heart in His dealings with God. He prays – remove from me this disloyal way, this disloyal heart. He urges and pleads for Gods intervention to make him holy.

 

He then makes a deliberate choice – I have chosen the faithful way. I want to walk true to the King. Yet he recognizes that there is no power in him to walk in a godly manner. The source of Godliness is ‘I cling to your testimonies’ v28 says 'strengthen me according to your word.’ He recognizes he himself is void of power to walk in a Godly way except that which the grace of God provides. He takes a leap of faith, ‘I cling to your testimonies’ to hold on to what God has done in the lives of the saints, to make them Holy, and urges God to perform again in him this work of Holiness, this faithful and loyal heart.

 

‘Do not put me to shame.’ He has made this definite choice to throw himself upon the grace of God for Holiness. Which he recognizes is a way that is starkly different from the ways of the world, yes even his previous way of life which he once lived in. But now having made that choice, he is afraid that people will mock his choice, his way of living. He pleads for God to strengthen and vindicate him, not for him to be put to shame, to be discouraged, to be weakened on this path of Godliness which guarantees opposition from the world. ‘Do not put me to shame.’ But He prays for more grace, that God would not make Him ashamed at all but make him bolder and stronger. The section ends with ‘I shall run the way of your commandments, for You will enlarge my heart.’ He looks forward to Gods strength to further empower him.

What Elijah needed to hear. Combating loneliness in our journey with God.

The walk of faith can be a lonely walk. It  is lonelier still when God hides his face. We do not understand why he does that only that it is like trying to steer through a great dark storm while it seems like all grace is stripped from the our circumstances. The lashing winds and waves and turbulent sea pound relentlessly on our lives. It feels like God is invisible. Yet, His hand is there on our lives- for we have not perished. That sometimes is the only remaining sign of his grace. The psalms tell the story of those whose lives were preserved, who were close to death but were preserved from a death at the hands of the wicked. 

There are times we are alone because we stand for God the conviction which he has gave us. It might be a cause which has been forgotten by people and there is no one to stand with us because no one else around us has been given the same vision. Elijah was there, challenging the king for his idolatry, it was his God given mandate to do so. 

Loneliness. It is an incredibly powerful trial that attempts to wears the soul out. One can only take so much solitude before becoming undone. I think sadhu sundar Singh and his solitary barefoot walks in  sub-zero Tibet, how he related the story of encountering a fellow stranger who joined him on his mission and talked with him as they walked for miles about the things of God, such that his heart burned and his tears flowed after an acute prolonged time of loneliness. Only to realise in shock thant his new friend had suddenly disappeared into thin air along the mountain range.

But how encouraging to hear the words "you are not alone in this fight, there are others who worship me also. You fight this Baal and it seems everyone around you worships him that's all you can see but you know not that there are hundreds more who worship the God you worship too. 

 It is a blessing to know that there are others who are pressing against the flow of the river, making the same stand fighting the same fight. Our soul is refreshed for another day of battle when we know there is just one other person standing like us. 

When David was being hunted down the only people alive who knew his heart he sought out - Samuel who later passed on and then Jonathan. 

How loney was Job who said 'more than this trial is the emotional and psychological burden of having to contend with those with hardened hearts who accused him night and day.' There was no kindness, No empathy or compassion in their hard words in his trial. His last rebuke to them was 'the least you could do is to be my friend!'

 How patient he was to try to humbly persuade and fight his own case against three of his so-called friends who accused him night and day and offered no warmth no welcome from the heart. 

Paul said may his mission partners sins of not coming to his aid when he stood alone, not be charged to them. Paul obviously thought this lack of love and courage on the part of his allies was a serious thing.

It is always easier to stand and have courage when some one else does it first. Being the Proto pioneer is always extraordinarily challenging, for you will be the first to challenge status quo. 

I think Of rosa parks, in Selma that lady on that bus and the great saints full of strength and endurance. Elijah and Abraham the first of their generation. the great ones. 

Somehow to connect with others fills us with mysterious courage to find fellowship and God borne friendship in God is better than loneliness but loneliness is still better than the company of the ungodly. 

Look to the lord like Elijah. And God our Father who provided his voice to comfort his servant Elijah when in desperate need will send His own comfort to us also.