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Man, this morning I want to preach on the subject of rewards, of the rewards that we receive for following God's commandments, for loving the Lord, and living our lives in a way that would be pleasing to Him. The Bible says in verse number 18, the wicked worketh a deceitful work, but to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward, meaning there's a guaranteed reward for those who sow righteousness. There's no doubt that when we serve God, our labor is never in vain. There's always going to be a reward for that. The Bible tells us in verse 25, the liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. Verse 30, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise. Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner. Flip over to chapter 26 if you would there in Proverbs. The Bible is telling us over and over again that there's a guaranteed reward for serving God. There's a guaranteed reward for winning souls. There's a guaranteed reward for sowing righteousness, and for watering, and for reaping. There is a guarantee that you will be blessed for that. You're never going to regret it and say, you know, oh I wasted my time serving God, I wasted my life. No, there's a sure reward for those that sow, for those that water, and for those that reap, those who win souls. Look at Proverbs 26 verse 10. It says the great God that formed all things both rewardeth the fool and rewardeth transgressors. So the Bible told us in Proverbs chapter 11 verse 31, there's a good reward for those who do good, and then there's an evil reward for those who do evil. Both the wicked and the just are going to be rewarded even in this earth. But if you would flip over to Mark chapter number 10 in the New Testament. One of the things that I want to focus on this morning is the fact that we are rewarded for serving God in two different ways. Number one, we're actually rewarded in this lifetime on this earth. There's a reward that we get right here for serving God even before we die. And then of course secondly, when we go to heaven we're going to be rewarded based on our works. Jesus Christ talks about how when he returns his reward will be with him to give every man according as his work shall be. So there are two different aspects to our reward. There's the rewards that we get in our life right now, and then there are the rewards that we get after we die when we go to heaven and so forth. Look at Mark chapter number 10 verse 28. The Bible reads, Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all and have followed thee. And if you get the context of this from the other gospels, he's basically saying, you know, so what do we get? We've given up everything and followed you. What reward are we going to have for that? It says in verse 29, And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hundredfold. And here's the key that I want you to see the next few words. Now in this time. 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, He shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the world to come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first. 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 with persecutions. 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 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 because where are you going to 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. 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 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 soul in it. You're not going to live the same life, period. You're not just going to be happy and prospering and everything going well. I guarantee you that if you're saved and you get out of church and get out of the will of God, bad things are going to start happening in your life, period. Bad things will happen and you're going to regret it. You're going to look back and say, man, I was an idiot. Look at the last five years of my life. Look how they've gone. Why did I not follow the Lord? Because you could have been so much happier and more blessed doing what's right. So yes, of course, rewards come in heaven. Rewards come, you know, in the future after we die, but we don't want to get the mistaken idea that those are the only rewards because the Bible says right here, plain as the nose on my face, it says here that you will receive a hundredfold in this time. Whenever you give up for Christ, you'll receive it back a hundredfold in this life. Now is that true or not? I mean, that's true. You're going to live a hundred times the life serving God that you would live serving yourself, serving the flesh, serving this world, following the devil. You're going to live a hundred times the life serving God. I believe that. And you know, if you look at the specific examples he gives here, he says, he's talking about people who have given up things that they could have had, you know, the house they could have had or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, you know, the things that they could have achieved if they spent their life just gratifying themselves and seeking after the things that they wanted and the things that would have made them popular or rich or whatever. He says you'll receive a hundredfold. And I mean, he gets specific. He lists the same things. He says houses, brethren, sisters, mothers, children. Now the one thing that's funny is that in verse 29 it says, or wife. But then in verse 30 it doesn't mention, you're not going to get a hundred wives because this is not Islam. This is not the Latter-day Saints. Okay. And so notice that's the one thing he said. He says you'll get a hundredfold houses, hundredfold lands, hundredfold children. But he doesn't say a hundred wives because you're only supposed to have one wife. Okay. So isn't that interesting? Of course the modern versions will ruin this teaching. Yes, they will, of course. Many of them will delete the wife from verse 29. Okay. But anyway, here's the thing about that. If you study this and look at this, you might be tempted to think to yourself, how am I going to have a hundred fathers? How am I going to have a hundred mothers? How am I going to have a hundred houses? I mean, am I really going to own 100 homes because I gave up a home for Christ's sake and the gospels? But here's the thing. You know, if someone were like unto Peter, James and John who forsook everything and followed Christ, you know, was this fulfilled in their lives? Did they receive a hundred houses? Did they receive a hundred brethren, sisters, mothers, children, lands? I would say yes they did. Because here's the thing. When you serve God, you know what you'll find? Just tons of people's homes are just opened unto you. It's not saying you're going to have the deed to 100 pieces of property, but you know what? I'm just, just being of myself personally and look, I'm not claiming that I have forsaken everything to follow Christ. I'm not putting myself in the same category with the disciples, but have I made some sacrifices for the Lord? Yes, I have. You know, I've made sacrifices. I've served God. I've served Christ right now. I guarantee you that there are easily a hundred homes in the state of Arizona that if I were out in the street, they would take me into their home. If I were out in the street, who would take me into their home? But not only that, not only that, literally, you know, I could go to literally almost any state in the union and there would be people that would be willing to host me at their house in every state. So what, you know, that's like, in a sense, God rewarding me with a hundred homes because I could go to all these different places and people are going to receive me and it's not just me. It's not just me that's like that because I guarantee you that people in our church, when they go, and they're not the pastor, they're just members of our church, I guarantee you that when they go travel and visit some of our sister churches and friends and they go to soul-winning events and soul-winning marathons, you know what they find there? They often find people that are willing to host them at their home and have them over and take care of their needs, give them rides, and not only that, but they find instant brethren. Instant sisters. Instant mothers. Instant fathers. Is that true or not? I mean, when you go to these missions trips and you go visiting other like-minded churches, you have an instant bond with people that you've never even met in your life and ten minutes later, you're fast friends and you just have an instant family right there. You just walk in and it's like, I'm home, we're family, you got houses open to you, you got people inviting you in, they're feeding you a home-cooked dinner, they're giving you a ride in their vehicles, you know, you get to enjoy their lands. You know, I've gone and preached different places and got to go over to people's houses that were wealthy people and they had like these giant houses and they had giant property. You know, I'm thinking of a time in particular that, you know, I got to go with one of my kids and we went to this mansion and we were visiting these church members in a distant state and we got to just enjoy their property, we're hiking around their property, we're shooting guns, we're chasing chickens, ripping their heads off, you know, just doing all kinds of, you know, because we're making dinner, amen? We weren't just ripping them off for fun but, you know, we got to enjoy all this fancy stuff. Now here's the thing, I'm never going to have a house like that. I'm never going to have property like that and to be honest with you, I don't even want a house like that, I don't even want property like that but you know what, it's fun to get to go to other people's houses like that and go to other people's property like that and enjoy and get to see these things. So you know, again, I believe that this is literal, what Christ is saying here. You know what, yeah, you gave up your home but you got a hundred other homes waiting for you. Yeah, you might have given up your sibling but guess what, you got brothers and sisters everywhere you go. Maybe you've given up your mom and dad but you've got mothers and fathers everywhere you go. You got older people in every church that will treat you like a son, treat you like a daughter and so that's what this is teaching. You know, there's a great reward and a blessing to serving God right here on this earth. And you say, well that doesn't really appeal to me Pastor Anderson, you know, I'm not really connecting with this. Well stop and think about this, you know, you're going to come to a point in your life someday and you know, I want to talk to the young people, a lot of my sermons are directed toward the young people and I'll tell you why, because they're at a dangerous stage in their life. Brothers and young adults are at a dangerous stage in their life and so I want them to hear these things so that they don't mess up their life. Let me tell you something, yeah, well you know, what do I need another mom for? What do I need another dad for? I'm just glad to get away from dad right now or whatever. Let me tell you something, you're going to come to a point in your life where you want a mother and where you want a father and where you want brethren and where you want sisters because you might think that you're invincible now and everything's great now but you know what, you are going to get to some dark place in your life at some point where you're going to wish that you had those relationships. You know, I'm very thankful for my mother, very thankful for my father, I'm very thankful for my brothers and sisters, I have one brother, two sisters and you know what, the thing is, hey, those people, when you're in trouble, when you're in a time of need, you know, they're there for you unless you burn them, unless you ruin your relationship with them and so you may not think that this is important but guess what, it is important and the reason that you don't think it's important is because you're young and stupid, alright, because when you get older, you're going to realize that these relationships are important and you know what, even better than just having your physical mom and dad which is great and your siblings which are great, you know, when you have the church, you've got a whole network of people that are there for you, that care about you, you know, especially when you've invested a lot in the church and I'm not talking about money, I'm talking about, you know, when you've been there for other people, the Bible says a man that hath friends must show himself friendly and so when you've been a friend to people and when you've invested in relationships and when you've been kind unto others at the church, look, when you're in need, everybody's going to jump to help you because you've been helping other people, you've been there for others. That's the way life is supposed to work, you know, you spend your life investing in other people, caring about other people, ministering to other people and then when you have a need, those people are there for you. You know, there are a lot of people in my life where if I got into trouble or I had a need or if I were just in a bad place, you know, I would call them up demanding favors from them, you know what I mean, because I would just call them up and say, hey, I'm ready to cash in some favors, buddy. But here's the thing, if you just spend your life living for yourself, you don't really have anybody like that to call, you know, and so you want to make sure that you build relationships in your life and the most important relationship you have is with the Lord and if you're serving God and walking with God, even if your mother and father forsake you, the Bible says when my mother and father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. And guess what? God can give you other mothers, quote, unquote, other fathers, brothers, sisters, children, houses, lands, you know, I'm never going to be homeless. You say, oh, never say never. I'm never going to be homeless, okay, because even the, you know, look, I'm going to have someone that's going to take me into their home because I spend my life working for other people, helping other people, trying to minister to other people. Somebody's always going to be there to put a roof over my head and put food in my mouth. You know, I've got 11 children, okay, somebody's going to take care of me, so I'm not going to be high and dry. And you say, well, Pastor Anderson, you know, I don't have any family, I don't have any children, I don't have anybody like that, but here's the thing, God says that he can give you that in this life. He said he can reward you with that. You say, how is he going to reward you with 100 children? Because every person that you win to Christ is your spiritual son or daughter. You know, people that you've won to Christ and people that you've ministered to, those are the people that are your spiritual sons and daughters that will take care of you. You know, we think of our brother who just went to be with the Lord this week, you know. Here's the thing, you know, was he high and dry? Did he have people to take care of him and remember him and honor him and bury him? Yes, he did. He absolutely did and it's because of the fact that he was a faithful member of our church for 12 years that he had a network. He had people there holding his hand and sitting by his bedside when he passed away on Monday night and obviously he had, obviously his physical family was also there and they were also with him at the bedside, but he had a lot of people at his bedside, he had a lot of people caring about him, he had a lot of people at his funeral. Why? You know, because of the fact that he was a part of the church. And so, you know, that's an important lesson to all of us. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. So there's a reward that's on this earth, but then there's also a reward that's after we die. So the rewards are twofold. So even if you say, well I don't care about the rewards after I die, well that's a bad attitude because we should think about heaven and lay up treasures in heaven and that should matter to us. But even if you say, well you know, I just, I'm not looking that far into the future. I'm more worried about the nasty here and now. Well guess what? Like I said, God rewards us even right now with a better, more blessed, happier, joyful, more peaceful life right now. And in the world to come, there's the eternal life and the rewards that come with that. But look what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, this is a verse about our rewards coming in the future. It says in verse 11, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. I mean, if you don't have that foundation, you have nothing, right? Jesus Christ is the only foundation that matters, period. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he had built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so is by fire. So the Bible's showing us here again that salvation is not by works because you can have no works of any lasting value. All your works are wood, hay, and stubble, and all your works are burned up and you receive no reward. But what does it say? Yet he himself shall be saved. This proves right here that you can be saved without any works. You know, you say, well, yeah, but it says you're saved, yet so is by fire. So what? You're still saved. So what if you just barely made it? Okay, but you made it. Did you die though? No, you made it. You're saved. And so obviously this is not the ideal situation. Obviously we don't want to just, you know, uh, get into heaven by the skin of our teeth having done absolutely nothing but only believe on Jesus Christ. But hey, you're still there. You still made it. You're still saved. You're still in heaven because salvation is by grace through faith. But ideally we want to build on that and we want to do the works and we want to serve God because whatever we do that's of eternal value, gold, silver, precious stones, we're going to receive a reward for that. And if we don't do anything for the Lord, we're going to suffer loss of reward. But yet we ourselves shall still be saved. I don't want to lose reward. You know, I would like to get to heaven and receive the full reward, receive a solid reward, receive a good reward. I want Christ to say, well done now, good and faithful servant, and for him to be pleased with me because I love Christ, I want to do something for him and be pleasing to him. And so the Bible does tell us that there is a reward coming when Christ returns. The Bible tells us, of course, in Revelation, behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be. So are the rewards just the same for everybody? Everybody gets a participation trophy? No. The reward is based on your work. Everything as your work shall be, so shall your reward be. Go to Colossians chapter 3, Colossians chapter 3. Now what is it that we get rewarded for? What is it that we do that earns us rewards? Well, one of the things that we saw, of course, is soul winning. You know, we looked at that in Proverbs, how he that winneth souls is wise and we're going to be rewarded for winning souls, and he even used the imagery of sowing and getting a reward, watering and getting reward, winning souls and getting rewards. Obviously those who turn many unto righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever, Daniel chapter 12. And so there's a reward for winning people to Christ, but you know, there are other ways that we can earn rewards as Christians as well. Look what the Bible says in verse 16 of Colossians 3 there. Colossians 3, 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord, and whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. So he's saying whatever you do, whatever aspect of your life, invoke Jesus in that. I'm not saying do this publicly, like, hey everybody, look at me, I'm just involving Christ in my breakfast and my, and my brushing my teeth and you know, I'm going to go take a shower in the Lord or something, you know, I'm not saying to be some Pharisee, hypocritical, doing everything to be seen of men, but you know what, in our own heart, we should have that, you know, bring Christ into doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, just constantly dwelling on and thinking about the Lord and just thinking about how everything that we do is ultimately for him and giving him the glory. You know, when we sit down and eat our food, we should be thanking God for our food every single time and just thinking in our heart and you know, obviously it's great to also pray that out loud, but even just thinking in our heart, even if we're just by ourselves and just, we should just think in our heart, this food is a blessing from God, you know, thank you Lord for giving us our daily bread and, and you know, this meal in particular is really good, thank you so much for blessing me with this, you know, we should be thankful for our house, for our vehicle and you say, well, my vehicle is a piece of junk, but be thankful for it because it's better than no vehicle, okay? And even if you have to walk to work, be thankful that you have the ability to walk. Other people are limping and hobbling and struggling to walk, you know, thanking God for your good health. You know, if you go play sports, you say, well, how do I involve Christ in that? You know, be thankful for your good health and the energy and the fitness and that you're not injured and so forth. The Bible says, you know, everything we do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. You know, just constantly grateful and thankful and just thinking about how everything that we have is a blessing from God and acknowledging him in all of our ways. And then he gives some specific things. He says in verse 18, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children obey your parents in all things for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for you serve the Lord Christ. So here's the thing, a lot of times we might kind of differentiate things in our life as, you know, there's serving God, which is, you know, going to church, going soul winning, reading our Bibles, praying, winning people to Christ, serving God. And then there's just kind of the other stuff we do in our life. You know, we go to work, the mundane things, you know, being a wife, being a husband, being a father, being a child, whatever. But yet the Bible says that we should do all of these things heartily. We should do all of these things as unto the Lord and that if we do, the Bible says, we shall receive the reward of the inheritance. Verse 24, why are we going to receive a reward for, I mean why would I get a reward for these mundane things? Why would I get a reward for doing electrical work? Why would Christ reward me for plumbing? Why would Christ reward me for programming computers? Why would Christ reward me for landscaping? Because the Bible tells us right here that you serve the Lord Christ. So according to the Bible, when you're saved and you love the Lord and you're thinking about Him and meditating upon Him and you're doing things heartily as unto Him, you know, He'll reward you for being a good husband. He'll reward you for being a good wife. He'll reward you for being a good son or daughter. He'll reward you for being a good employee at work. And of course this should not surprise us because the Bible explicitly says in Ephesians chapter 6 that if you serve your masters according to the flesh that we will receive of the Lord for every good thing that we do. God's going to reward us for that. You see when you do your job well in the name of Christ, you're going to receive a reward for that from the Lord. Now if you have this totally separated in your mind and you're not giving God the glory for your job and you're not treating your job as if it's a service to Christ and if you're maybe you're not even saved or you're not even living for God, then no, you're not going to get rewarded just for going to your job every day. But if you're a saved child of God who loves the Lord and thanks God for your job and goes to your job with an attitude that says, you know what, I'm going to do my work today as unto Christ. I'm doing this for you, Christ. He looks down and says, you know what, good job. Here's a reward in this life and here's rewards in the life to come. So the Bible tells us that we will get a reward for doing these things that seem mundane. You know, being a godly wife, there's a reward for that. Being a godly husband, there's a reward for that. Being an obedient child, there's a reward for that. Being a good employee, there's a reward for that. Being a good parent, there's a reward for that. Obviously when it says fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged, you know, there's no mothers here. So obviously fathers here is just referring to parents in general. A lot of times the Bible will use the male pronouns or male forms of words just to refer in general to both. Sorry, you know, those who are worried so much about pronouns today in our bizarre culture. But God isn't worried about offending you. But look what it says in verse 25. It says, but he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done and there's no respect of persons. So the reward cuts both ways. See, we think of the word reward as always being good. But the Bible actually uses the word reward negatively a lot because there's a good reward and there's a bad reward, okay. The reward is just what you get for what you've done. And so you're going to receive a good reward serving Christ and you're going to receive a bad reward if you do wrong. And you know, the Bible says there's no respect of persons. You know what that means? That means that God doesn't look down and say, oh, well, here's a godly Christian. So what if he's a horrible husband? He gets a pass. Oh, here's a, here's a, you know, well, look how involved she is in church. So what if she's a terrible wife? Look at all the stuff she does for church. No, God's going to reward the bad that you did. You know, being a bad wife, bad husband, bad employee, oh man, superstar soul winner, worst worker on the job. Guess what? God's not going to bless that. He's going to, yeah, he'll reward you for the soul winning you did. He'll also reward you for the bad job that you did at work. You might get fired or something and it's like, oh, you know, I'm such a great soul winner. What happened? Well, yeah, but you didn't do right at work. So we need to understand that we, in order to receive rewards, in order to receive a full reward, you know, every area of our life is in play. Our home life is in play. Our job is in play. Our spiritual life is in play at church, soul winning, whatever. But here's the thing. You know, all of our life should be our spiritual life because we should be walking in the Spirit in every area of life in a perfect world. And so it's important to realize that God rewards us for a variety of things. You know, anything that we're doing heartily as unto the Lord, there's going to be reward associated with that. Obviously there are some things that are more directly serving God, but even things where we indirectly serve God, there could be some rewards associated with that according to Colossians chapter 3 and many other scriptures. Go to Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10. So as we can see, there are rewards for serving God both now, things that we can enjoy right now in this life, and then there are other rewards that come at the second coming of Christ. There are other rewards that we enjoy in heaven, but we need to realize that both exist. Both are out there. Look at Hebrews chapter 10 verse 32. The Bible says, But call to remembrance the former days in which after ye were illuminated ye endured a great fight of afflictions, partly whilst ye were made a gazing stock. What's a gazing stock? A gazing stock is that people are looking at you and making fun of you. You've become someone who's an embarrassment. You're made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions. You know, this is like when Jesus is on the cross and they're making fun of him saying that he's a failure and that's why he's on the cross. This is like when Job had served God and then he lost everything and people are making fun of him and even just the children of fools and drunks and derelicts are all making fun of him. Obviously we get that from Job himself telling us how he's being made fun of and mocked by low class people. And so it says you were made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions and partly because partly whilst you became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me and my bonds and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that you have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. So here we see that another way to earn rewards is by enduring persecution. You know, there's soul winning, there's doing a good job in every area of life, acknowledging God and giving him the glory and doing these things as unto Christ. Now your job becomes spiritual. Now your home life becomes spiritual and it becomes eligible for rewards. But also, you know, the Bible tells us that when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, there's a reward for that. Stay there in Hebrews, but it tells us in, for example, Matthew 5-11, blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. That's always the key. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. But notice if somebody lies about you, it's got to be for Christ's sake, you know. So again, this is just like your job. You could go be the most awesome employee in the world and have people lie about you and slander you and you just take it gracefully and you just keep on going and keep on. But if you're not saved, if you're just doing this as an unsaved person or if you're just, even if you're saved but you're just kind of doing this without thinking about Christ, without acknowledging Christ, without thanking him and giving him the glory and invoking him, you know, then there's no reward for it. It's not about Christ. But if you are loving Christ, serving Christ, and people lie about you, revile you, persecute you, now all of a sudden because you did it for his sake, now all of a sudden you have this exceeding great reward. You see how difference, what a difference that little thing makes of acknowledging God, acknowledging Christ. You know, the Bible says in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. What does that mean? In all thy ways acknowledge him, acknowledge. What does that mean? It means that I don't just go through life forgetting that God even exists and just thinking that I'm just controlling my own destiny and everything I do is just my doing and the things that happen to me are just chance things. You know, instead realizing, okay, every good gift is from above and stopping and thanking God for everything and constantly just acknowledging the fact I exist on this earth to serve God. Look, even just going through that little exercise every day and meaning it, just every single day just praying to God and just saying, God, you have given me another day. I exist on this earth because you're allowing me to be here. Thank you for the privilege of serving you. Thank you for everything that I have. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my job. You know, just by acknowledging him, you say, well, what does it matter if I do that or not? It's not going to be, yes, it will make all the difference because if you don't, you're not eligible for the rewards. You know what it's like? And here's a carnal illustration for you, but this might help. Think about how sometimes with your debit card you can earn rewards or your credit card you earn rewards, right? But here's the thing. You could go for years and years swiping that debit card, earning no rewards, no rewards. You could swipe that credit card to earn no rewards because you never actually signed up for the reward program, right? I mean, I think about, you know, restaurants that I just went to over and over and over just for years. You're just going to the restaurant, going to this restaurant, just spending thousands of dollars. And then it's like, do you know about our reward program? And it's just like, what? I should have had like a thousand free burritos by now. I wasn't signed up. Does everybody see what I'm saying? You know, God's reward program, you don't just sign up one time. You know, there's the initial sign up. There's getting saved. That's like where you, you know, you fill out the major paperwork, you get actually signed up. But then after that, it's like every single day you got to go on the website and basically, you know, acknowledge you got to click that box every day in order to stay in the reward program. You got to keep renewing that sucker every single day. And so you're like, oh man, I went to my job and I worked hard. Yeah. But did you sign up for the rewards? How do you sign up for the rewards? It's when you thank God for your job. It's when you acknowledge the Lord in your job. And it's when you went to your job and you prayed to Lord and said, you know what? I'm going to work today like I'm working for you. And then you go work hard, boom. Now you're racking up the rewards. But you could, if you're not in the rewards program, you could buy all the burritos and swipe the card until the, the, the card is just falling apart and earn literally nothing. You've got to be signed up for the rewards program. And God says, that's why acknowledging him, he said, well, what does it matter whether I acknowledge him? Well, apparently it matters to him, apparently it matters to him that you're acknowledging him. I mean, I mean, how would you like it if your family just never acknowledged you? They're just ignoring you, pretending that you don't exist. You walk through the front door, nobody says hi to you. Nobody talks to you. You're just paying all the bills. Maybe as a husband, you're paying all the bills and, and nobody ever acknowledges the fact that you're the breadwinner or that you're even part of the family. They just act like you're just basically an interloper or just act like you're just kind of just some guy, it doesn't really matter, or just ignore you. I mean, how would that, or how about, how about as a woman, how would you like to just cook every meal and just nobody acknowledges you? You're cooking, you're cleaning, you're taking care of the house and just nobody even acknowledges that you exist. Nobody thanks you. Nobody talks to you. Nobody spends a time with you. They just kind of just act like you're not even there. But you know what? God wants us to acknowledge him. He wants us to be thankful. He wants us to invoke his name and it might just seem like a meaningless thing to you to do something in the name of the Lord Jesus, but you know, to him, it's not meaningless. He wants you to do it in his name and when you do things in his name and it's just a matter of thinking about him and just praying to him and acknowledging him and involving him in your life and now, boom, you're signed up for the rewards and, and look, I'm not just talking about getting to heaven and realizing, oh wow, look at all these rewards. I'm talking about the rewards that are going to come at you in this life. I'm talking about rewards that you're going to enjoy this calendar year, next calendar year and you know, why is one person blessed and another isn't? Could it really be something so simple as just thanking God, acknowledging God, invoking the name of God? Could it be that simple? Yes it is that simple. Loving the Lord and then going out and doing the works. Now you still got to swipe the card. You can sign up for the rewards program all you want. I could sign up and be like, all right, I'm part of the loyalty program now and then you never shop there. You never eat there. You never swipe the card. You know, you still got to do the works, right? So there's two components. Be signed up, then go to work. So that's how you get the rewards. So let's look down at Hebrews there. It says in verse 35, and this is the key cause he just finished talking about how, look, you've gone through some bad things. You've gone through afflictions and you know, you know that you have a better and an enduring substance in heaven at the end of verse 34. You got a reward in heaven, but he says in verse 35, cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward. For you have need of patience that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise for yet a little while and he that shall come will come and will not tarry. One of the things I want you to realize is that the rewards for serving God do not always come immediately. They require faith. Without faith it is impossible to please him for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. You have to believe that he's a rewarder. Now if I just did a good deed today and then just five minutes later the reward came, would that really require faith? If I'm just like, you know, I buy some poor person groceries and then just ten minutes later there's a knock on my door and there's just ten times as many groceries, a hundred times as many groceries, just obviously if it all happened that fast there'd be no faith required. Well guess what? Same thing. If you go out and commit some horrible sin it's not necessarily going to bite you immediately because then there'd be no faith required. It would just be just obviously happening. But God likens this to sowing and reaping and when you sow a seed you don't just get up the next morning and harvest the crops. You got to wait for that thing to grow. You got to wait until the right season comes to harvest that. And it's the same way with our Christian lives. You know when we serve God we know for sure that the reward's coming. The Bible said in the first verse we looked at this morning the sure reward for doing righteousness, for sowing righteousness. If we sow the seeds of righteousness according to Proverbs 11 there's a sure reward for that. But it might come six months from now. I'm not saying you got to wait until you die for everything because I've been preaching this whole time. There's a two-fold aspect. There's the rewards on this earth and there's the rewards to come. But it might be six months from now, it might be a year from now, it might be two years from now or whatever. You know you don't know exactly when it's going to happen but what you'll see is the general pattern. You got a guy or a gal who's serving Christ and it's just like you see the trajectory of their life and you know what it's doing? It's tending toward blessing. They're being blessed, there's joy, there's peace, there's happiness, things are going well in general. It doesn't mean they're not going to go through some dark periods and hard things like Job went through, like everybody goes through. But in general you'd say okay there's a person blessed by God in general. And then you'll look at the people who don't follow Christ and their life even though they might have moments when you look at them and they seem like they're prospering and it seems like things are going pretty well for them. You know what? The trend, the trajectory is down a dark path and you see the people who don't love the Lord and don't serve God and their life just gets worse and worse and it just gets worse and worse and worse. And I'm talking about saved Christians here. You got the saved Christians that are serving God and they're blessed and blessed and more blessed and God gives them the desires of their heart. Of course they don't desire a Porsche, but he gives them the things that they do desire. The more humble things that they desire, the righteous things that they desire, they get what they want out of life. And then you see the people who don't serve the Lord and their fears come upon them, their dread comes upon them, their terrors come upon them. And so this is very real and I'm here to tell you that, you know, the rewards are real. The rewards are real. And we often, when we think about serving God, we often think about this from the opposite approach of saying you better fear God because he's going to punish you. And that's true too. But how about the positive side, the rewards? You know, it's not just, oh, I better not mess up because God's going to punish me. God's going to chastise me. It's also, hey, if I do good, God could really open the windows of heaven and really bless me. And I want to enjoy those blessings. You know, I mean, think about all the great things in life that we could have if we would serve God and God would just open the floodgates of blessing upon us. He said, I'll pour you out a blessing. You won't even have room to receive it. I mean, he says that he'll bless us and give us abundance that will be overfilling, overflowing where we don't even know what to do with it all. We're so blessed with too much. I mean, what did David say in the most famous psalm in the entire Bible? My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Hey, what's that psalm? You know, everybody's got that psalm on the wall in their house, but stop and think about what that psalm is saying. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Want means to lack something, to do without. I'm going to have what I need because the Lord's my shepherd. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. I mean, look, these are the real blessings. Take the health and wealth stuff and throw it in the trash, but understand that the truly blessed life, the truly happy life is found in serving Christ, and you will have what you need, and he will take care of you. The Bible says I've been young, now I'm old, but I've never seen the righteous forsaken, and I've never seen his seed begging bread, right? God will give us our daily bread. God will feed us. He will clothe us. He will take care of us. I guarantee you, I don't guarantee you, you know, wealth and riches and lifestyles of the rich and famous. I guarantee that if you serve God you will always have food to eat and you will always have clothes to wear, 100 percent. That's for sure because the Bible guarantees that. We will be blessed, and guess what, he's going to give you a lot more than that. Your cup's going to run over. He can do exceedingly above all that we ask or think, so these rewards are not some little token reward like, you know, you just, you work your tail off for Christ and you kind of get just this tiny little reward. You know, some of those credit cards are like that. It's like, you spent $40,000, you know, here's enough airline miles to fly to L.A. or something. It's like, whoa. You have 700,000 miles, round trip to Sacramento. It's like, oh wow, cool. Look, it's a big reward. I mean, what kind of an investment is that where you get 100 fold back? Oh, you give up something truly for Christ, I'll give you 100 of them. I'll take that reward program any day. Imagine a Visa card where every time you spend $100 you get 10,000. It'd be absurd, right? Isn't that crazy? Spend a dollar, $100 reward. You'd be like, what in the world? It's absurd, isn't it? But that's literally the reward package that God's giving you. He literally says, I'll give you 100 times as much. That sounds too good to be true. All right, well then more rewards for me and my friends. If you don't want to cash in on this investment, we'll do it. I mean, think about it. Well show me the money. Well, you got to have faith. You got to believe it. But the Bible says that the sufferings of this life are not even worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us because when one thing is 100 times greater than another, you can't really compare them, can you? You know, like a graph doesn't really work very well like that. You know, if you have a bar graph and one thing is 100 times more than the other, it's hard. You know, one of them is just like a little sliver and it's just like, it's hard to have a meaningful graph like that because it's just, they're, they're so different. They're not really measured on the same scale. You know, it'd be like trying to compare, you know, the, the, the, the size of a penny with like the size of a stadium or something. It's like, you know, what unit of measurement are we going to use? Are we going to use inches, feet, yards, a mile? They're not, you can't even compare the two. The orders of magnitude are just too different. And God, God's saying, look, the sufferings that you endure in this life, they're not even worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us because one of them is measured in inches and the other one's measured in miles. You know, I, you know, you have a hard time talking about like, you know, 70,000 inches. It's like, what does that even mean? If I said to you 70,000 inches, you don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that means. You know, that's why you can't compare the suffering that you endure for Christ with the reward that he gives you. The reward is so much greater, it's like, they can't even be compared. And so take this thing of rewards seriously. Take it seriously. The Bible tells us in Psalm 58 verse 11, so that a man shall say, verily there is a reward for the righteous, verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth. There is for sure a reward for the righteous. And so as it says there in Hebrews 10, cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward, for you have need of patience that after you've done the will of God, you might receive the promise. Maybe you are serving God, but you're in one of those dark places right now. And you say, well Pastor Anderson, I'm serving God. Where's my reward? Do not cast away your confidence. Hang in there and be patient and don't lose faith because the reward is coming and it's going to be better than you can imagine. That's what the Bible says. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the rewards that you give us, Lord. We don't even deserve salvation. We don't even deserve going to heaven with zero rewards, Lord, because we're sinners, we deserve hell, but thank you so much for saving us by grace. And Lord, not only have you saved us by grace, which is already more than we deserve, but you're actually giving us rewards just for doing things in your name and just for serving you when really that's just our reasonable service. That's the least we could do to repay you for saving us, but Lord, thank you so much for rewarding us both in this life and in the life to come. And Lord God, I pray that every single person here would acknowledge you every morning, noon, and night, and constantly sign up for those rewards, and then go out and do works that would earn them rewards, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.