Riches in Christ
When we face various trials,
we are to remember that our true
and enduring inheritance
is eternal and in heaven.
Here's Gene to explain:
Well we're at the end of the story
when it comes to this Principle to Live By.
And the exciting thing is that
Job successfully passed the test
that proves Satan wrong.
And that's good news.
And as a result, God honored him
right here on this earth.
In fact, He doubled everything
in terms of earthly blessings.
And we read about that in Job 42.
In a few verses that I've selected here:
After Job had prayed for his friends,
the Lord restored his prosperity
and doubled his previous possessions. ...
And what does that look like?
Well, here it is:
. . . So the Lord blessed the last part
of Job's life more than the first.
He owned 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels,
1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. ...
God just doubled everything.
. . . [And] Job lived 140 years after this
and saw his children and their children
to the fourth generation.
Remember, he lost all of his children
through that horrible tragedy.
And yet God blessed him.
And rewarded him with children
to the fourth generation.
Now here is the interesting thing
that we need to really think about
in terms of the whole biblical story.
And that is that God has never ever promised
us in the New Testament earthly restoration.
He may but He's not promised.
In fact, we may never experience
restoration and understand it
until we're in eternity.
Just because God did that for Job,
doesn't mean He's going to do it for us.
But what God does give us is
an incredible eternal perspective
in terms of God's blessings.
Interestingly in 2nd Corinthians 9:8,
we read--and this is a promise:
And God is able to make every grace
overflow to you, so that in every way,
always having everything you need,
you may excel and every good work.
Now the important thing
to understand even in this passage,
is that God is not saying here,
through Paul to the Corinthians,
that He is going to always meet
all of their physical needs.
What He's going to do is to give them
grace to face the situation,
no matter what happens.
That's a tough issue to deal with.
Because I can take you to people in the world
who are Christians today,
and not even their physical needs are being met.
Even though they're faithful.
What do we do with that?
Well, one of the things that I've read
and seen in people's lives:
That God gives them the grace to endure
even though their physical needs
are not being met.
Because they're faithful to Him.
See, that's the promise of the New Testament.
It's not physical blessings per se,
but eternal grace to be able to
handle no matter what comes our way.
And that's a very, very important concept.
Now God, I believe, does honor
and meet needs.
In fact, when Paul wrote from prison--
Philippians 4:19, he says:
And my God will supply all your needs...
And there He's writing now to the
Philippians who gave sacrificially.
to take care of him:
...And my God will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
But again, we have to be careful
that we don't say that's
all of their physical needs.
I believe God did and God does.
But there are times when
that doesn't happen in poverty-stricken
countries of the world with believers.
But God in His grace has
provided strength to endure.
And so we must have
an eternal perspective.
That's what the New Testament gives us.
And we read about that
in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3.
One of my favorite passages:
Praise the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us
in Christ with every spiritual blessing[s]
[Where? Where?] in the heavens.
Not here on earth.
Though He may bless us.
And He may meet our needs.
He may multiply even things according to
His grace and according to His will.
But our great blessings, our inheritance,
is in Jesus in the heavens and eternity.
And Peter referred to that.
When he wrote in chapter 1--
and he wrote this to Christians
who were suffering. Suffering:
Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
According to His great mercy,
He has given us a new birth
into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead,
and into an inheritance
that is imperishable, uncorrupted,
and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Now Job had that hope.
But in this particular situation,
God chose to reward him.
And to double everything that he had
that was removed from him
because of this test--to demonstrate to Satan
that he wouldn't turn against God.
He wouldn't curse God and die.
He passed that test.
But that promise is never repeated
for us in the New Testament.
But there is one thing we have
a promise of, and that is
we have an eternal inheritance.
No matter what happens, we have
an eternal inheritance that can
never ever be taken away.
And that's the hope that we
have in Jesus Christ.
Now the question is for us,
particularly in the western culture:
How can we keep an eternal perspective
and focus when we live in the midst
of a materialistic culture?
And we've been so blessed, haven't we,?
With so many things.
God has poured out His grace on us.
The society in which we live.
The things that we can do.
The way in which we can work.
And the freedoms that we have.
And to be entrepreneurs.
And just the creativity and all the
blessings that we can have
in relationship to our lives materially.
How can we keep this environment
with its blessings, materialistically particularly:
How can we keep an eternal perspective?
That isn't easy, is it?
Let me just make two suggestions.
Number one, be generous.
Be generous with what God has given you,
what God has given me.
And I think that as we are generous,
even being generous, it causes us to
evaluate our eternal perspective.
If we're selfish, if we are not generous,
we've really lost perspective on eternity.
And so I think generosity, in itself, causes us--
perhaps I should say: Being generous,
you know, making that
a part of our lifestyle.
Being generous causes us to think
in terms of our eternal perspective.
That everything is going to disappear
down here except what is eternal.
And what will last is what we do
in building the kingdom of God.
And that leads to the second suggestion,
which comes from Jesus Himself.
And that is to make it a priority
to build God's kingdom.
Matthew 6:33--you can't improve on this one
in terms of an answer
to that question that I just raised. Jesus said:
But seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness,
[and] then all these things will be
provided for you.
That's a priority: To build the kingdom of God.
Just read about a man recently, just recently.
I never knew this man lived or existed
until I read about what he's doing
with his wealth.
And he doesn't parade this
but he was a very, very wealthy man.
And over the last number of years
he's been using his wealth
to build churches.
Not people but build church buildings
for Christians in impoverished
places in the world.
And he's done many of these projects.
And has others helping him to do it.
He's building the kingdom with his wealth.
And it's an incredible motivator.
With a person who's been very, very
successful in this environment
in which we live. And thank God for that.
But he looked at all of that and said:
How can I build the kingdom of God?
What can I do with my wealth--
beyond what I need to live
and to be secure and to take care of
my family and so forth?
That's a godly thing.
And that's such an encouraging
thing to me.
But as I was thinking about this,
I think of a woman that was the
first secretary that served me
in my ministry.
One of the first secretaries at
Fellowship Bible Church North.
Her name was Betty Olson.
And some of you in this room
will remember Betty--she's with Jesus.
I knew what she made.
I knew her salary.
I knew basically what she had.
And there were times when I
went to Betty and I said:
Betty, you can't afford to be
doing this with your money.
And what she was doing was
she was giving in a way that I thought to myself:
How can you do this on what you make?
And yet her response was always:
God will provide.
And she was a greater illustration
and a motivator to me than a guy
that I just talked about
who had millions. Who is able to share.
Here was a godly woman
who was generous.
And she had an eternal focus.
So whether it's the widow's mite
or whether it's a person with a lot,
one of the ways in which we can
practice this Principle is to be generous
and build the kingdom of God.