It says in verse 29,
And here's the key that I want you to see in the next few words.
Now, is this just saying, hey, all the rewards are in heaven, everything's after you die?
Is that what it says?
No, it says,
Now, here's where people would go astray with this doctrine and teach the prosperity gospel,
or the health and wealth gospel, is that they leave out these two little words in verse 30,
That's one of the errors that they make, is that the Bible's not telling us that if we serve God,
we aren't going to have any problems, everything's going to be great, our health is going to be
perfect, we're going to have tons of money and prosperity and wealth. No, because the Bible says,
we will be very generously rewarded in this life, but there are also going to be persecutions along
the way. The Bible says many are the afflictions of the righteous, but out of them all the Lord
delivers him. The Bible tells us that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
So the Bible's not telling you that if you serve God, you're not going to go through anything
difficult or hard, you're not going to have pain and suffering or loss, you're not going to have
persecution, you're going to have all those things, but God is also going to generously reward you.
Another problem with the health and wealth gospel is that they have a perverted view of what it
means to be blessed and what it means to be rewarded because they're so carnal and worldly,
to them their dream is to wear fancy designer clothes and to have the Porsche in the circular
driveway of their gigantic mansion, but here's the thing, actually people who are godly and spiritual
don't even desire those things. You say well you just ruined the whole sermon for me pastor
Anderson because you know I thought the reward was going to be in the garage, you know I thought
the reward was going to be in the wardrobe, I thought that I was going to be living the
rock and roll lifestyle. Well here's the thing, it just shows how carnal you are and how much
understanding you lack and how unspiritual you are if you really think that that equals success.
That's not success. You see the Bible is talking about great rewards for those who love and serve
God and the rewards are real, the rewards are tangible, but they come with struggle,
with persecution, and they're not the kind of foolish rewards that Kenneth Copeland wants and
Joyce Meyer wants where they want to wear a bunch of jewelry like the harlot of revelation or
something you know just completely decked out and all this gold and precious stones and pearls and
and scarlet color and purple and all this stuff you know they want to be decked out like the whore
of revelation 17 or they want to fly around in private jets or drive all these impractical sports
cars that only see two people okay that's not what the Bible you know the Bible says children
are inherited to the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward there goes your sports car
is where you can put the kids right you got to have the back seat you need the four door
or something bigger something more practical the point is that the health and wealth gospel has
taken scriptures like this and abused them twisted them and taught this thing of hey you're going to
be a millionaire and you know if you get sick it's because you didn't have enough faith or whatever
it's garbage you know the Bible teaches about men of God and great women in the Bible who endured
sickness pain struggles affliction in fact it's all of them you know every godly person in the
Bible went through adversity and we're going to go through adversity in hard times too but I think
the problem is when you have a group of people who've twisted a doctrine or abused it then
sometimes we will tend to accidentally kind of go too far the other way we'll kind of react to that
like because we know that the health and wealth preaching is is garbage sometimes we'll go too
far in the other direction and just forget that there's any reward in this life for serving God
that comes right now so we don't want to make the mistake of going too far in the opposite direction
to just kind of react we want to get a balanced view of this from the Bible you know you are going
to be blessed if you serve God I'm not saying that you're going to be rich I'm not saying that
you're going to have all these carnal things that we shouldn't even care about anyway but I'm saying
that God can bless us with joy happiness peace and even materially he can make sure that we
have enough good food to eat and that we have a place to live and that we have good clothes to
wear and that we have what we need in life let me tell you something if you don't serve God if
you're a born-again Christian and you just get out of church and just start living for yourself
and not serving God you know what you're not going to be blessed like if you stayed in church
and read your Bible and went so you're not going to live the same life period