Colossians chapter three, and
we'll read from 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 ye do, do it heartily,
as to the Lord, and not unto men. knowing that of the Lord
ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve
the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall
receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respect
of persons. Masters, give unto your servants
that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master
in heaven. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes
into a man's life, that life changes. And when the Spirit
of God indwells a woman, She is a new creation. When a boy or when a girl, a
teenager or a young adult finds grace in God, their lives are
affected by their discovery. And a person who knows Christ
acts accordingly. There is a consequence There
is an effect when the peace of God rules and reigns in an individual's
heart. We use the phrase conversion
to speak about this experience in the life of an individual.
And we use that word conversion with good reason. because there
is a transformational change occurs when the Lord Jesus Christ
comes and introduces himself and gathers to himself through
the power of the Holy Spirit, through the application of the
gospel of grace, those people for whom he has died and given
his life. Now let us remember what we have
been thinking about in the previous two sermons that we have had
from chapter three of Colossians. We've been thinking about the
fact that the Lord directs us through his apostle, through
his messenger, Paul, to mortify the flesh and also to put on
the new man. And we have been thinking in
these previous sermons about the fact that God never requires
of his people what he does not first supply. Our God never asks
of us what we cannot give. With every duty, comes the ability
to serve our Master wholly, fully and completely. With the obligation as we've
been reading here in these verses before us this evening, the obligation
that falls upon wives and husbands, the obligations that fall upon
fathers and children, the obligations that come to servants and masters. With the obligation, because
our God is always ready to supply all our needs, God also provides
the desire for us to serve our God and our King. With the obligation
that God gives to us as his redeemed people, he also provides the
wherewithal and the enabling to serve him according to his
will and purpose. God gives his people grace, and
then he calls that grace forth from us again in a willing, eager,
and able service. And these things that we are
called to look at this evening in verse 18 following, These
are marks of spiritual birth, marks of an evidence of faith
in the life of individuals. We could call them proof of life. They are proof of spiritual life
in those individuals to whom the Holy Spirit has brought an
awakening power, a work of regeneration, a quickening, and brought the
experience of Christ into our lives and brought into existence
that new creation and that new man. The injunctions that we
have here before us from the Apostle Paul are not duties that
are laid upon reluctant slaves. That is the situation with respect
to the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses is indeed duty
that is laid upon reluctant slaves. but that's not what happens in
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather, these are privileges. I was thinking about the distinction
between the law of Moses and the law of Christ or the gospel
of Christ. I was thinking about the way
the one comes upon us as a heavy burden and the other comes upon
us as a yoke that is light to bear. That one is the condemning
law of an iron rod, and the other is the sweet communion that comes
from an enabling Christ. And as I thought about those
things, my mind went to the little verse, I think it's a man called
John Berridge who wrote it, and he says this in one of the verses
of his hymns. Run, run and work, the law commands. Yet finds me neither feet nor
hands, But sweeter news the gospel brings, It bids me fly and lends
me wings. So here, when we are thinking
about the difference between the instructions that we are
given here in this passage with respect to the obligations which
come upon us as husbands and wives, or wives and husbands,
fathers and children, servants and masters, we see that these
instructions that we're given They are not the heavy-weighted
duties of a legal dispensation, but rather they are the instructions
and expressions of gospel truth in the lives of believers. They
are the expressions of a light that has entered into our soul,
entered into our hearts and our minds, a divine light, a light
from heaven itself, which reflects in our spirits and emanates back
again into this world. When we see these instructions
given to us, we do not see them as duties, but we see them as
privileges. We do not see them as burdens,
but we see them as the graces of God granted to willing servants. Honours, as it were, bestowed
upon sons and daughters. and all the instructions of the
New Testament epistles to the children of God are opportunities
for us to express thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ for the things
that he has done for us. All the instructions that the
apostle gives as he comes often into these application parts
of his letters are not to be seen as weighty demands upon
our shoulders, but as practical opportunities for us to serve
our God in grateful worship, occasions for us to offer back
to Him that thanksgiving and gratitude to God the Father and
to the Lord Jesus Christ for the grace and favour that He
has bestowed upon us. These applications, these instructions
that the apostle gives at the end of his epistles, having moved
perhaps out of the more doctrinal parts of his letter into these
more applicatory parts, into these more personal applications
of the work of God in the life of believers, they're hugely
important. but they're hugely important
to the end that they allow us as the people of God to return
thanks to our Saviour. Pause for a moment and think
with me if you will. What can we give to God? What can we, how are we able
to repay His grace and His mercy to us. What does God need from us? What
is there that God lacks in any way that He is going to be benefited
by us providing for Him? Our God is the Alpha and the
Omega. He is the beginning and the end.
He knows the end from the beginning. and there is nothing that he
requires from us. And yet the Apostle Paul is pleased
by the direction of the Holy Spirit to set before us throughout
his epistles these obligations, not as duties to be obeyed, but
as privileges to be exercised to the glory of our God. And there is such a distinction
here and I want it to be stressed in our minds this evening. In
an equivalent part of another epistle, the apostle wrote in
Romans chapter 12, verse 1, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And
here again we see that the Apostle is directing us to our service
before God. Not only way of works that are
required from us in order to please God, but as works that
it is our reasonable service to offer to God in thanksgiving
for what he has done for us. Indeed, This is the basic and
the practical outworkings of the examples that the Apostle
has given at the start of this chapter. And that's the point,
that he has set forth for us the theology, he set forth for
us the doctrine, he set forth for us the gospel and the contents
of the gospel insofar as he has shown us the transformation that
has occurred by the work of God and the sacrifice of Christ,
the coming of the Holy Spirit into the life of individual sinners. And having shown us about these
mortifications, the mortifying of the old man, which he speaks
about there in verse five, mortify therefore your members which
are upon the earth. Having drawn our attention to
this change, this alteration, this conversion that has taken
place, the mortification of the old man, and shown us that it
is accomplished by faith, by looking to the Lord Jesus Christ
as the whole of our spiritual insight, understanding, and wisdom,
the whole of our righteousness before God, the whole of our
sanctification and peace with God, our reconciliation with
God. The Lord Jesus Christ and all
he is and all he has done and all he has accomplished is the
ground of our standing, not in any way our own works or accomplishments
or any duties that come upon us. And so the apostle has shown
us that the mortification of the old man is in itself a spiritual
work. We do not accomplish that by
regulating our conduct with law duties. or worse, disguising
our old fleshy passions under a shroud of hypocritical abstinence,
not doing this and not doing that, when our desires would
be to engage in those things. Trying to do so simply leads
to a self-righteousness and a deceitfulness. We deceive ourselves and our
heart. We're deceived by our own heart
and we build up guilt and we build up judgment. The Apostle
has listed a variety of the sins there in these early verses and
he speaks of anger and wrath and malice and blasphemy and
filthy talk and lying. These might be suppressed by
law. These might be suppressed by
commandments. These might be suppressed by
Moses being applied in a heavy-handed, legalistic preaching. But it
never slays the old man. And that old man under that law
will simply rise again with all of his accusations, with all
of his condemnation, with all of his judgmentalism. And he will bring us into that
state of depression and that state of feeling unworthy and
that state of lack of assurance if we give these aspects any
light or any room in our thought. Rather, we must look away, we
must look to the Lord, we must look to the cross, we must look
to the blood, we must look to the cleansing that has been effected. Let the old man rise, and he
will do so with a subtlety and a sophistication that is stronger
and more powerful than he was in the first place, before we
brought the weight of law against him. And similarly, putting on the
new man is just as much a work of faith. There, the qualities
of the new man, the kindness and the mercy and the humility
and the meekness and the long-suffering and the forbearing and the forgiving,
these spiritual qualities, They flow not from our natural inclinations,
but from that transformation that has been effected by the
Spirit of God in our hearts and in our souls. They flow to us
upon God's goodness. They come to us by grace. They are bestowed upon us. They
are stirred up in us by the grace of God. It's a spiritual fruit
and it comes to us through the Spirit's indwelling of us. It is a work of grace, a mark
of grace. It's a change that is effected
when the Lord Jesus Christ resides in a man's heart and by which
we are renewed in knowledge and wisdom after the image of Christ. Now, having established these
principles at the start of this chapter three, the apostle then
goes on to give some practical, even domestic weight and application
to these commonplace examples. And he shows us how these family
relationships reveal the true heart of a man or a woman and
show us our real nature. Show us what kind of people we
are. You know, you can hide a lot
from your pastor and you can hide a lot from your employer
and you can hide a lot from your friends and from the outside
world. but it is very hard to keep on
a false face at home. It's very difficult to mask the
real person in our domestic circumstances and in our domestic and family
relationships. And the reality of that is that
your wife knows what you really are like and your husband and
your children, they see and know the true you. And so when we
look at these examples, and if perhaps the Lord enables, I think
we might be able to glean some gospel insight and see these
injunctions, these instructions in their proper light and context
as a powerful and as a blessed insight into the true nature
of grace in an individual. Look, for example, with me at
verse 18, and let's just spend a little bit of time thinking
about what the Apostle is requiring of us as born-again believers
in these verses. He writes in verse 18, Wives,
submit yourselves unto your own husbands. Now let me just point
out one little thing here as we begin our thoughts. The Apostle
has done us a courtesy and a blessing by drawing our attention here
to the word own. Wives are not to submit themselves
to anyone else's husband or any other man. They are to be in
submission to their own husbands, and I like the emphasis that
the Apostle puts on this matter. So our submission as wives is
to our own husbands, but Here is an interesting word employed
by the apostle. Submission. Submission. So wives
are to be in submission to their husbands. Submission isn't a
popular word these days in many situations or environments, circumstances. Submission doesn't really cut
it with our modern way of thinking. And it may be hard for us as
individuals to think about our own responsibilities to be in
submission one to another. It might be very hard for us
to do this. As a wife, you may find it very
difficult to be in submission to your husband, especially if
that husband is a difficult, awkward, petty-minded know-it-all
who delights in belittling and demeaning and highlighting your
failures. How do you submit to that? Your reaction, rather, is to
endeavor to the best of your ability to assert yourself, to
the best of your ability to give as good as you're getting. We asked the question earlier,
What can I give to God? How can I repay grace and mercy? How can I repay God's goodness? What can I do for God? Well, wives. They can do something
for God. They can do something for the
Lord Jesus Christ, as the Apostle Paul is directing us here by
submitting to their husbands. By submitting to your husband,
you are saying not anything about your husband, but rather thank
you to the Lord Jesus Christ for his grace and his mercy and
his goodness and his salvation to you. So we must look away
from the object of submission rather to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to note three things
with respect to this submission. And the first thing is this,
that the more difficult the man is to submit to, the more awkward
your husband is, the more aggravating, the more annoying and upsetting,
the more bothersome he is in his actions and his attitudes
and his approach to you, the more difficult it is to submit
to him, the greater is your expression of gratitude to the Lord in your
obedience to him on this point. And the higher is your privilege
in that marriage relationship. If your man is so difficult and
awkward as to test you to the limits of your ability, It is
a testimony to the goodness of God that he has enlarged your
opportunity to give him thanks and return your gratitude to
him for all that he has done. And maybe you say to me, well,
why submission? Can't I say thank you to God
for his goodness, for his kindness, for his salvation by being kind
to my neighbours? or by campaigning for some moral
cause in the world, or by being a good servant in the church
and doing something that is useful to the body of believers. Can't
I do that to show my gratitude to the Lord? And the answer's no. No, you
can't. Because the apostle tells us
this is fit. in the Lord. This is fitting. This is what you are called to
do as a wife. It's fitting because this is
the gospel picture of Christ's headship over his church and
our submission to him as his bride. and our submission to
him as our Lord, as our master, as our husband. And so this picture,
this marriage relationship where the wife exhibits a submissiveness
to her husband is a picture of what the Lord's relationship
is with us. and to that end it is appropriate,
it is fitting, it behoves us to be submissive to our husbands
as a means of saying to our God Thank you for all that you have
done for me. Thank you for coming into this
world. Thank you for your words and
your works and your witness. Thank you for the suffering that
you undertook in Gethsemane. Thank you for that humiliation
that you entered into and went through. Thank you for that suffering
that you undertook on the cross. Thank you for opening your hands
to those nails. Thank you for bearing your soul
to the wrath of God. Thank you for that salvation.
And it is a little thing that I return to you in gratitude
to be submissive to the man that you have given me as my husband
in this life and in this world. But the third thing, I mentioned
there were three things that I wanted to point out about this
relationship of submissiveness. First of all, I said that it
was the more difficult the man, then the greater was the expression
of gratitude to the Lord. Then I said, why wasn't it something
else? Well, because this is the appropriate
submission as a picture of the gospel. But thirdly, note this
also, that the Lord will equip you to submit to your husband. for his glory, because as we
have already remarked in the introduction, the Lord never
asks his people to provide anything without first providing the means
and the enabling for us to do what he asks. Let's move on to
verse 19, having spoken about the ladies and the wives, and
let us see what it says here with respect to the husbands.
Husbands, verse 19, love your wives. Love your wives. Now, that may be hard to do,
especially if your wife is a difficult, awkward, petty, know-all kind
of person who delights in belittling, demeaning, and highlighting your
failures. But how else is a believing husband
to express his gratitude to God than in loving the wife that
God has given him in this world? And I want to note three things
for you men also who are married. The first one is this. The more
difficult that woman is to love, then the greater is your expression
of gratitude to the Lord, and the higher is your privilege
in being one of the Lord's people. And maybe you say also, why is
it that I have to love her? Why is it that I have to love
her with that gentleness, with that kindness, with that empathy,
with that sympathy, with that sacrificialness, which is all
bound up in this beautiful and yet profound word, love. Why that? Why? Why can't I just
be kind to my neighbours as an expression of my gratitude to
God? Why can't I just campaign for
some moral cause or be a good servant in the church and look
after the well-being of the fellowship? Why can't it be that? And once again, I say, because
this fits the purpose of the Lord. It is fitting because this
is the gospel picture of our relationship. The husband and
the wife is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ's
union with his church and our marriage to the Lord. and his
sacrificial love for his people. Husbands, love your wives, Paul
says to the Ephesians, as Christ loved the church and gave himself
for it. And once again, I said that there
were three points to note with respect to the love of the husband
for the wife. And the third point is similar
to that for which we said with respect to the wives and their
husbands. The Lord will equip you to love your wife for his
glory because he never asks without providing the means and the enabling
to do so. What about children? Look at
verse 20. Children, obey your parents in
all things. And once again, that's hard to
do. It's hard to be obedient to our
parents because it's a well-known fact that parents are not very
clever and they often say and they often do stupid things. And it's been like that for generations. But how else, as believing children,
are we to express our gratitude to God? And let me note three
things with respect to children. Firstly, the more difficult your
parents are to obey, then the greater is your expression of
gratitude to the Lord. The higher is your privilege
in thanking the Lord for his goodness and his salvation for
your soul. What are you going to give to
the Lord? What are you going to do for the Lord? You do what
he calls you to do. You do that which he lays before
you as your obligations within this family. And why that? Why obedience? Why obedience
to these parents who seem to so little understand me? Can't
I say thank you to God by being kind to my neighbours or campaigning
for some moral cause or being a good servant in the church?
No. No. Because He says in verse
20, this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. It is this that is
well-pleasing because it is this that shows the gospel picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ's obedience to his Father. The Lord Jesus
Christ's obedience unto death, coming into the world to do the
will of the Father. His love to his Father and his
submission to the will of God and his obedience unto death
is all in the picture of the will of God for the person of
Christ. for the enabling and achievement
of our salvation. This is a picture of the gospel,
and we give our thanks to God for so great salvation by following
that which pleases him well, doing that which is fit and fitting,
doing that which testifies in picture form to the great things
that Jesus Christ has done for us. And once again, there are
three points here. The Lord will equip you to obey
your parents, for this is to his glory and because he never
asks his people to do anything without first providing the means
and the enabling to do so. In verse 21, The Apostle says,
fathers, provoke not your children to anger. Be patient. Now, I know that today that's
not easy. Fathers, dads, I know it's not
easy because children today are so lazy and thoughtless and untidy
and cheeky to their mothers. But again, what has changed? But how else is a converted father
to express his gratitude to God? Note these three things. The
more difficult your children are to raise, The greater is
your expression of gratitude to the Lord and the higher your
privilege in being given these children by God in order to bring
them under the sound of the gospel and to cause them not to be provoked
by the way in which you deal with them. This is your expression
of gratitude to God. This is your privilege under
God as a believer and it is the expression of thanks to him. Why? Why patience? Why is it
that I've got to be patient with these children? Can't I say thanks
to God by being kind to my neighbours, or campaigning for some moral
cause, or serving the church in some capacity? No. No, you can't. Because it is
this calling that answers the gospel picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He exercises goodness towards
us. gentleness towards his children,
long-suffering upon his wayward offspring, meekness towards us
when his natural, if we might use that word, fatherly, paternal,
would be to discipline us rigorously because of our waywardness. And
that is not to say that there is not a place for chastisement.
We know that there is, we know that there is a place for discipline,
but it is to be handled gently as the Lord deals with us. As the Lord looks upon us in
our waywardness and his long-suffering, so we are not to provoke our
children. The picture honours the reality
and we are not to discourage our children as the Lord is gentle
and gracious and good not to discourage us. We should not
break our children as the Lord is careful not to break us. And the third point here is just
the same as all the others. The Lord will equip us to be
patient for his glory because he never asks his people to do
something without providing the means and the enabling to do
it. Now I am going to assume that
there are no servants or masters listening to the service this
evening. And I'm going to pass over the
responsibilities that are set before them by the Apostle Paul. But we might have wished to take
these as employees and employers, and that might just have been
as appropriate. But the point is that for Servants
and masters, as for wives and husbands, as for children and
fathers, the point is exactly the same in every example. That
our service to each other isn't really a service to each other
at all, but rather a service to the Lord. This is not law
obedience. These are not rules that the
apostle is setting down. These are not legal duties by
which we are required to be obedient in order to please God. But these
are Christian privileges, spiritual opportunities to say to the Lord,
thank you for all that you have done for me. by our expression
of the qualities of grace that he has given to us, being exhibited
and exercised upon one another around about us. The direction
to servants also applies to us all. Let our gratitude to the
Lord Jesus Christ be sincere, genuine, and true. Brothers and sisters, let us
never be insincere in our gratitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we come into His presence with prayer, let us be thoughtful
about what we are praying. If we come into His presence
with hymns of praise and glory and thanksgiving, let us be genuine. in our hymns and psalms and spiritual
songs. Let us be real. How on earth are we ever going
to imagine that we can stand before God with any degree of
insincerity in our hearts? But our thanksgiving is not simply
standing with an open hymn book, singing our little hearts out. It's not engaging in prayer. Our thanksgiving is submitting
sincerely and genuinely to our husbands. Our thanksgiving is
by loving sincerely and genuinely our wives. It is by obeying sincerely
and genuinely our parents. And it is by sincerely and genuinely
and patiently caring for our children. not with any pretense,
not with any eye service, not with any superficiality, but
genuinely. Faith in singleness of heart,
fearing God, reverencing and respecting that call of mercy
in our own lives and enabling thereby the exercise of gratitude
to our God by evidencing it in our relationships one to another. That's why the apostle says in
verse 23 here, and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the
Lord. Wives, submit to your husbands
heartily as unto the Lord. Husbands, love your wives heartily
as unto the Lord. Children, obey your parents heartily
as unto the Lord. Fathers, don't provoke your children,
but be patient and long-suffering towards them heartily as unto
the Lord and not unto men. I truly believe that this is
the most powerful motivation that an individual can have in
this world. Think about that. What about if we did everything
as unto the Lord? That's what the apostle is saying
in verse 23. Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord.
What if we were able to do everything as unto the Lord? Every conversation,
imagine you were speaking to the Lord. Every service that
you perform, imagine you're performing it as unto the Lord. Every interaction
you have, as unto the Lord. Every word you speak to your
wife, as unto the Lord. Every time you do something on
behalf of your husband or your children as unto the Lord, what
kind of world would that be? What kind of lives would we have
as wives and husbands and children and fathers and employees and
employers? How might that revolutionize
our domestic circumstances? And why don't we do it? Why don't
we do it? I've spent a long time this evening
emphasising how the Lord asks nothing from us that he does
not first enable in us. And that is true. But the reality of our life in
this world is that it is bound up with the flesh. And it is
the weakness of our flesh that causes us not to be submissive
to our husbands as we should, not to love our wives as we should,
as is fitting, as is heartily before the Lord. It is the weakness
of our flesh that causes us to deal improperly with our children
and for our children to be rebellious and disobedient towards their
parents. It is the weakness of our flesh,
it is the residual sin in our heart. The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak. And the flesh always acts as
a drag against the spirit. It always pulls us back. It always rises in anger. It always hears that word with
the edge of sarcasm. It always sees that little action
that generates bitterness. It never endeavors to overlook
the fault, but rather to enlarge and expand and exploit. It rises in anger and it flies
into a temper. And that's the battle that goes
on between the old and the new man. That's the engagement between
the flesh and the spirit. And it is why faith, always faith,
is the key to our Christian service and key to our relationship both
with God and to one another as Christian men and women. The Lord has a holy people. but we shall never be without
sin while we labour in this flesh, while we serve in this body. That sinlessness is for a time
to come. But as we serve, And as we are
reminded, every time we come to the Scriptures, every time
we hear the Gospel, every time we come under the sound of the
Word of God, every time we hear Jesus Christ preach, every time
He is lifted up before us on the cross, as we serve, let us
serve from those right motives of seeing Him in the Gospel,
as that one who has done all things well, as that one who
has given everything for us, who has expressed the greatest
submissiveness, who has demonstrated the most sublime love. who has shown us the greatest
forbearance and longsuffering, who deals in patience with us
constantly, and let us in gratitude towards him always endeavour
to emulate those characteristics that we see being exercised by
him towards us. Let us do it with sincerity and
with gratitude as unto the Lord. Let us walk in the Spirit and
fulfil those good works that God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them, recognising that in that fight against the
flesh and the devil and against the temptations of this world,
we are upheld and strengthened by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 25 reminds us that God
sees and knows the heart of man, and he will repay. You know,
sometimes we might think, I'm just not going to engage any
more with this. He's not worth it. It's beyond
the pale. He's too much for me. I'm just going to have to stop.
I'm done. Or we say, she's not worth it,
it's too much. I've taken as much as I can bear,
I can bear it no more. Verse 25 reminds us that the
Lord does not look to us to be the judges or the repairs of
judgment upon one another. He simply calls us to exercise
those graces and to pursue those qualities that he has granted
to us. We don't give up. because the
Lord hasn't given up on us. There will be an accountability
in this life. In this life or the next, there
will be a reckoning and God will judge. He will judge righteously. He will judge fairly. He will
be the avenger of wrongs done and evil inflicted upon his people. God shall not be mocked and his
people will be vindicated. That wife who bears a lifetime
of ill treatment from her husband and is submissive to him, will
be honoured by the Lord for her service. That man who has loved
his wife despite her misusing and abusing him in the way in
which she has acted, in the way in which she has spoken, in the
way in which she has treated him, perhaps for many, many years,
the Lord knows and he will supply such grace as is needful. And
those of us who see the waywardness of our children and long for
it to be different, the Lord knows and he will supply all
that we need. And we who are in our own right
perhaps guilty of having mistreated or dealt wrongly with those that
we love and those that are around about us, the Lord knows. he
is no respecter of persons, he will deal with that which needs
to be dealt with. He that doeth wrong shall receive
for the wrong which he hath done and there is no respect of persons. but to all who serve God in Christ,
to all who live by faith, who serve in faith and do so with
thanksgiving to God for all the blessings of his salvation to
us. Colossians 3 verse 24 says, knowing
that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance,
for ye serve the Lord Christ. That's a beautiful little phrase.
It's not a common phrase for the Lord Jesus Christ to be called
the Lord Christ. But here the Apostle employs
it in order to show us that Christ, who is our Saviour, is also our
Lord. And it is to Him that we look
with the eye of faith, and it is from Him that we draw and
derive all the blessings and the help. And here His promise
to us. We shall of the Lord Christ receive
the reward of the inheritance. We'll receive the reward of the
inheritance. I like the way that the Apostle
Paul uses this little phrase in the context of the servants,
because ordinarily servants do not receive an inheritance. It
is sons who receive the inheritance. It is family, the sons and the
daughters to whom the inheritance is bequeathed. But here we learn
that those who serve the Lord Christ shall be heirs together
with the Son and possessors together with Him of all grace and all
glory. The reward of the inheritance
is our promised blessings in glory. And yes, our lives may
be hard in this world. And yes, the demands upon us
may be grievous. And it may be that we sometimes
wonder if we can go on, or if we shouldn't just cut and run,
or get out of a relationship, or do something that is going
to bring to a conclusion or an end, something that is just overwhelming
and too much for us. But the Lord will give grace, and he promises glory. an inheritance
incorruptible and undefiled, just a little while longer, just
a little while. The Lord knows what we can bear
and he knows what we can't bear. And he has both provided for
all that he asks from us and he promises a reward at the end
of our service and our labours. an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled that fades not away, reserved in the heavens. Eternal life, eternal rest, eternal
joy, glory with Christ. Just give me a moment, give me
a moment and think with me. Those brothers and sisters who
have gone before, who endured so much in this life, who were
tried so hard. Maybe it was in abusive relationships. Maybe it was the trials that
they were called to go through. Maybe it was trouble in their
health and sickness in their bodies. Maybe it was pain that
they had to deal with. And now, They've gone on ahead. They've entered into their rest.
They're gone on to be with the Lord. Do you not think for a
moment that they look back upon their lives and say it was all
worth it? that they only wished that they
had been able to endure a little bit more, a little bit more in
order in some way in this world to have expressed to the Lord
thankfulness for all that he had done for them? Do you think
that they were indebted to him or that they were hard done to
by him? I don't believe it for a moment.
This eternal life and rest and joy, this is not a reward for
our works, but it is a reward of grace. It is a reward because
God has given us the wherewithal. He's given us the graces and
the privileges of serving him in this world. And for that reason,
this gift, this grace, it's the same for us all. There are no
degrees of reward in heaven. Believers don't work for reward,
but they receive everything freely granted in Him. Those who teach, do good works
in order to receive greater glory or brighter crowns or seats that
are closer to the throne, they're talking foolishness. It is the
same God who gives grace and glory. And he is no respecter
of persons, but he gives every blessing by grace to his people. He fits us for every trial. He equips us for every challenge. He enhances and enables us to
meet every trial and every foe, and by faith we call upon Him
in the midst of our trouble, in the midst of our need, and
He will supply all our needs according to His riches in glory. This is how we exercise our Christian
faith. This is how we exercise living
according to the Spirit and following after the Lord Jesus Christ despite
the challenges that we have. Let us remember what Christ has
done for us. Let us be thankful for what he
has done. And as we serve the Lord in faith,
let us be directed in these beautiful apostolic epistles that we have
been given and granted to see that all we are and all we have
is by Christ's goodness, and that all that we are called to
engage in in this world is known to Him, that by His grace and
through His mercy, we may be able to say with the Apostle,
I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. Amen. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and encourage us in our hearts and in our understanding. These are beautiful passages,
beautiful verses, and they show us, I trust, what it is to be
equipped in the service of our God.