me if you would to Colossians chapter 3. We're going to begin our study where we left off last week. We're continuing one final week on this theme of the rewards for the believers on the Day of Judgment. We've been studying for some weeks now about what is to come at the end of all of history for all people. We've seen that the Lord is going to return, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return to this world, and He is going to have what the Bible describes as a Day of Judgment in which He will, from His throne of glory and authority, He will evaluate the lives of every single person that's ever lived. And he will separate them into two distinct categories. The categories are what are called sheep and goats. And the sheep are those that belong to him, those that he identifies as worthy of reward. They are the believers. And we've been studying for just the last few weeks what that day is going to be experienced like, what it's going to be like for the sheep. the judgment of the believers. And we've seen that the Lord is going to judge all of us as believers for two main purposes, and that is ultimately for Him to be glorified in our lives in the greatest and most ultimate sense on that day. And then beyond that, He is also going to evaluate us for the purpose of actually rewarding us, giving something to us as a recompense and a return for our faithfulness and our service to Him. But we've also identified it's not just that any service is worthy of being rewarded by the Lord on that day, only the service that the Lord says is valuable to Him. It's not a matter of our own evaluation, it's what the Lord says is worthy of being rewarded. And He is going to inspect all of our lives, He's going to inspect in particular those things that we've done since the day that we were saved, and He is going to determine where those activities belong. We've been talking in terms of these two piles of activities as the Lord looks out over the whole course of our Christian life. And we've seen that some of those things the Lord is going to look at and identify as being valuable to Him. He's calling them gold, silver, and precious stone type of activity. Activity that has lasting value, that has significance to Him. And He's going to reward us for that. Other activity, He calls more wood, hay, and straw kind of activity. It's going to be burned up in the evaluation process. And really, it's only going to matter what all of the activity, all the work that we do, it's only going to matter what lasts or survives His inspection. It wasn't long ago that Sammy and I had the blessing of getting a new roof put on our house. And we've, you know, we've needed a new roof, and so we were saving up for that purpose, and we're finally able to get a roof on the house. And once we got, I mean, it's a beautiful job. The work, to my eye, looks awesome. And it certainly is functioning. We've had several rains since then. We had leaks before, no leaks anymore. And so I'm totally and completely happy. And you know what? All that matters about my new roof is what I think about it, right? Wrong. Because there's this little detail in the city government known as the roof inspector. And the roof inspector has to come out and he has to evaluate the work himself. And of course, he's going to be looking at the roof in a different perspective than I am. And he's going to examine that roof. And if he finds that it passes his standards, meets his his standard that he has to work according to, then the roof gets his stamp of approval and it really becomes a good roof. What happens if the roof inspector though happens to come to my house and looks at the roof that I think is just great and he says, I'm sorry, this isn't going to do. You're going to have to start all over again. Will I look at him and say, ha ha ha, this is a wonderful roof. No, of course not. What I'm going to say is, oh, you're kidding me. I've got to tear the roof off and start all over again? He says, well, either that or, you know, you just have to pay the penalties. You know, in other words, the whole idea is the standard of judgment is not based upon how I feel, how I think. The standard of judgment is outside myself. And that's going to certainly be the case on this day of judgment where the Lord is going to look at all of our labors. And what we've identified and what is most significant about this concept is that What the Lord is looking for is how faithful we were to fulfill our assignments that were received from Him. And the whole concept here is that the Lord has given assignment to each one of us, life assignments, and that those are what He's going to be evaluating on that day. So I might fill my life with all kinds of even Christian activity, But if I haven't fulfilled my life assignment, I'm going to find a surprise on that day when he sits down and asks me, what have you done with what I gave you to do? And how did you go about carrying that out? So we've looked at that in some detail, but I want to shift focus in this final week as we look at rewards. And I've been promising to spend a week just on this one question, and that is, You know, what are our rewards? But before we go there, I want to read this passage from Colossians 3 because we've been on this theme now for a number of weeks. I look back in my outline, in terms of this last days, last things study focus, we've actually been studying this, and this hasn't been all consecutive weeks because we've had some other weeks in between on other themes, but we've been studying this, just this theme for 29 weeks now. So that's actually over half of a year's time. And have you ever heard the saying before, a person can be so heavenly minded they're no earthly good? Yeah. Is that a true statement? No, it's not. That's as wrong of a statement as you can ever believe in your entire life. All right. Read with me in Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3, verse 1. This is Paul's practical exhortation. shifting of gears in the book of Colossians. What Paul does, and you're mostly familiar with this, I think, in all of his letters, he starts out his letters with high-level doctrinal instruction. And then somewhere in each one of his letters, he shifts gears toward the end of the letter, and he starts talking about how this affects the way you actually really live out your lives. Very practical, very hands-on, rubber-meets-the-road kind of stuff. Colossians chapter three is that shifting of gears. First two chapters, he's been dealing with only high level doctrinal stuff. Now he's going to talk about how this should affect our lives. But before he does, this is how he transitions. Verse one. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ and the implication is for all believers, we all have been raised up with Christ. Keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above. Not on the things that are on earth. So heavenly minded, you're no earthly good, right? Set your mind on the things above. This is not a word of encouragement. Sometimes the Lord will inspire one of the apostles to speak in a very encouraging way. This is not a word of encouragement. This is a word beyond even of exhortation. This is a word of command. And the verb tense that Paul uses in the original here is communicating a commandment of the Lord. This is what the Lord wants from his people. He wants us as his people to do this with our focus, our mental focus. Set your mind on the things above. And that'd be fine if he just stopped there and put a period after the word above, because what we would do with that concept is, okay, we've got to think about all these things here on earth, but what we also need to do is add to that setting our minds on things above. But he doesn't stop at above, he continues on and says, not on the things that are on the earth. Now what does that mean? He's saying, now let me flip the traditional saying, he's saying, you can be so earthly minded that you're no heavenly good. As a believer, as a Christian, you can be so focused on the things on this earth that you miss out the bigger picture perspective of what God is planning to accomplish in your life now, but for the sake of eternity. See, I think the whole goal here, the concept here is that the Lord is gearing all of our lives for eternity. Everything that we're doing, every moment of our lives is geared in the Lord's perspective for the sake of eternity. And ultimately, when we get there, only eternity is going to matter. Our lives now are just the preparation for that moment, which will last forever. So, why have I spent 29... This is an apologetic for why, and you understand the difference between an apology and an apologetic. An apology is, I'm sorry that I've spent 29 weeks doing this. I'm not sorry I spent 29 weeks doing this. This is an apologetic, which means to make a defense. I'm making a defense of why I've spent so much time on heavenly things. on things that are in the future, things that apparently, at first glance, don't have a whole lot to do with how we're living out our lives today. What I'm wanting us to see is that by setting our minds on the things above, not on the things on the earth, what we're doing is we're actually equipping ourselves practically to live out the rest of our lives in a way that we would not otherwise. So with that, turn with me, if you would, from there to the book of Revelation, chapter 22, last chapter in the Bible. And I said, what we would focus on in this last study on our reward is what actually are our rewards. What are the rewards that will be given on that day? We've talked all around the concept. We've identified that... that there is a day of judgment. We've identified that on that day, the Lord is going to evaluate us for the purpose of a potential reward and potential loss of reward. And the reality is that we are going to be rewarded on that day. That's a fact. But what our actual reward is, is not as clear in Scripture. Now, I think there's what I would consider to be enough healthy and holy hints in scripture about that future reward, that we can study it and we can look at it together. But it's not as clear as some of the material we've covered up till now. But in Revelation 22, let's just start with this description by the Lord Jesus himself. And we're going to read a single verse, verse 12, quoting the Lord Jesus speaking. He says, Behold, I am coming quickly. And my reward is with me, to render to every man according to what he has done. Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to what he has done." Okay, so we're anticipating the coming of the Lord. We're anticipating that when He comes, He's bringing something with Him. And what He's bringing with Him is what He calls, my reward. My reward is with me. So the question I'm asking this morning is, what is it He's bringing? What is it we're going to be given? What is our reward? And before we look at our own perspectives and before we look at what the Bible actually has to say about this, what little there is said about it, I want to talk for just a moment about why I think this is worthy of our consideration. and why I'm a little bit hesitant, actually, in this study today, more than I normally am in Bible study. I'm going to be speculating a little bit this morning with you in Scripture. And I usually don't like to speculate about what the Bible teaches in particular areas. I'm more comfortable to say, this much is clear, and the rest is open, and it's possible, and go and take a look at this yourself. But I don't want to focus a lot of my attention on possibilities, on speculations. But in this one area, I think we're forced to do that because this is an area when we're considering our reward that none of us... What we're talking about is an undiscovered country. None of us have ever been there before. None of us have ever experienced it. And not just none of us, even the saints who have passed on and are in the presence of the Lord themselves, Paul who wrote these things, John who wrote these things, they themselves have not experienced this yet. because that day of judgment has not occurred. None of them have received the reward that was promised yet. They're patiently waiting, just like we are, for that day. And what little we have to understand about this is strictly what the Lord reveals, because He's the only one, of course, that knows what He's going to give on that day. But I do think it's worthwhile to talk about what is revealed so that we can avoid the kind of errors that human beings throughout all of history have fallen into. And this certainly extends beyond the Christian faith and beyond Christian perspective. I'll use one. It's a fairly easy target, but it's familiar to all of us, and it's something that we've heard in the news in recent months, of course. And that is, you know, Muslims, faithful Muslims, godly Muslims, and I say godly in their perspective, of course, Faithful and committed Muslims. They live out their lives for the sake of eternity. They live out their lives with a concept, like the Christian religion, that there's going to be a day of judgment. They believe that. And they believe that on that day of judgment, their lives are going to be evaluated and either given reward or have reward withheld from them. To that degree, that's a very biblical concept that they hold in their own religion. And as you know, all false religions are more or less a mixture of truth and error. And there is some truth even in the Muslim religion. That much that I've described is true. The problem is, of course, what they anticipate is going to be their reward on that final day when they have their lives evaluated. Why do you think these young, like I saw a news program recently where they were interviewing a Palestinian family and there was a young teenage boy who was thrilled because his older brother had given to him a vest, a special vest that was lined with explosives. And he was going to be, he hadn't done it yet by the time of the interview, but his plan was to take this vest, to put it on and to go find a target somewhere in Israel and to blow himself up. And this was a young man of probably 16 years old. And as they were interviewing him, he was actually with great anticipation looking forward to this future event that he had planned out. He was happy, he was joyous as he was describing it. And why do you suppose a young 16-year-old man would do something like that with his life? Because yeah, he was weighing the rest of his few years here on earth against something that in his mind was far greater and for all of eternity. And what he was anticipating was this. He was anticipating, and he's been taught this by the teachers of the Muslim religion, Islam. He was anticipating that he was going to from the day after he exploded himself for all of eternity, experienced a feast in a garden-like setting in which he was going to be served all of the most delicious foods he could ever want to eat for as long as he wanted to eat them, and he was going to be attended by servants that would be there to serve his needs, and specifically attended by 72 young females that were there strictly for his pleasure. And because he really believes that, he is going to be willing to blow himself up in hope and anticipation of acquiring that very thing. Now, of course, I don't think I have to go into detail as to why this concept that he's willing to sacrifice his life for is wrong, and why it's not a biblical concept. But I want you to understand this. There's something about what he's doing that's not far off from what many believers do. And that is he's considering the concept of reward from what perspective? a fleshly, natural, human perspective. In fact, let me read to you a... this is a comment made by a Islamic teacher about this concept. As this has come out more and more in the news, there have been people that have been saying, you know, that's kind of ridiculous that this is what these people are living for. And this is how he explains why this is a true concept for Islam. He says, It is the reasonableness of the Islamic law that a glance which accidentally falls on something which is not permissible to see is forgiven. And he's talking about here a man looking at a woman in a particularly unhealthy way. I really do not understand how can a person with even a cursory knowledge and exposure of human nature criticize this aspect of reward mentioned in the Quran in lieu of an exemplary pious conduct in this present life. The Quran has simply stated that in the life hereafter, man shall be granted all these things that he strongly desired to possess in the life of this world, but he refrained from doing so to God's consciousness and due to which many a time he is driven away from the path of the Lord's liking. On the contrary, the Noble Qur'an has simply assured man there is no harm in this attraction if one's behavior is controlled within the boundaries of Islamic law. It has assured man that if, in the life of this world, man would control himself within the boundaries, his Lord in His infinite mercy shall grant him on that day all that he desired to get but from which he refrained himself. In other words, the whole point of this Islamic teacher is this is the idea of our eternal reward. There are things you want right now really, really badly, but that you know it's not right for me to have that. God has not allowed me to have that. I shouldn't have that. And yet he's saying the reward is God is going to give you all of that then. You don't get it now, but when you get there, God will give you all of those things that you so craved now. And that's going to be the nature of your eternal reward, the fulfillment of all of your natural cravings in abundance to satisfaction for all of eternity. Now, that's a problem because As I said, even believers can indulge in that kind of thing. Years ago I told this story, I don't know if any of you remember this, but I had a good friend as a brand new believer. This was actually the first believer that I had any kind of Christian relationship with after I came to know the Lord. A friend of mine by the name of Ken. He and I used to discuss eternity and heaven and what it was going to be like. And I'll never forget the day he told me of his concept of heaven. And Ken was a true believer. He knew the Lord. He loved the Lord with all of his heart. He lived his entire life in the service of the Lord. And this is what he was looking forward to as his personal reward. He believed that God in heaven has created compartments for each one of us, kind of like where the scripture says, I'll go to prepare a home for you. And he took that concept to mean that God has specially designed a place for each one of us, a place that's going to be the satisfaction of our greatest longings, of our greatest enjoyments in this present life. And Ken was a man who, you know, worked very hard. In fact, he worked unbelievably hard. He worked like 20 hours a day on average and worked to exhaustion. And so for him, heaven was all about not having to work like that any longer and do the very thing that he really wished he could do here in this present life. And what he really longed to be able to have more time to do, everybody has their own thing that they like to do in their free time. What Ken liked to do was surf. He was a surfer, grew up as a surfer before he became a working man. And so his whole idea of eternity was that after meeting the Lord, after having his life evaluated, that the Lord was going to present him, kind of introduced him to his own private beach in heaven. And you're laughing, but this was really what he believed. And his private beach was going to be the perfect beach. I mean, you see those brochures, some of you may have even been to one, but nothing like the beach that was waiting for him. The perfect sand, the perfect sun, the perfect weather, and most importantly, the perfect wave. Always. Every wave, the perfect wave. And he would be surfing and riding the curl perfectly for eternity. And he was looking forward to that. I mean, he was his heart was focused in that direction. Now, I think you understand there's something wrong with that, right? I mean, is it that God doesn't want us to be satisfied for eternity? You know, is it that, you know, he wants to withhold from us what we really, really want for all of eternity, just like right now, we know he withholds things from us that in our heart we really want. No, it's nothing to do with that. It's that that approach to considering eternity is far too low. It's too fleshly. It's too... it shortcuts. in the wrong kind of way. It undercuts the glory of what is actually waiting for us. And so what I want to ask you as we look at these things this morning is this. I think it's healthy to do a little heart perspective check. I'm going to briefly describe what I believe is actually waiting for us. And before I do, I want you to just ask yourself the question, stop and ask, You're going to be rewarded on the final day. What is it that you really want to receive? I mean, I'm going to tell you what I think you're going to receive. But before I do, consider what is it you really want from the Lord as your eternal reward. What's valuable enough to you that would give meaning and significance to your eternity? I hope it's something better than a perfect beach and a perfect wave. I hope you desire something far greater than that from Him. All right, now, with all of that, this is where we move into speculation here. And I'm doing that unapologetically, but I'm warning you and letting you know that I cannot say that these things I'm going to describe to you are absolutely guaranteed to be what is going to be our reward. This is what I see in Scripture, and this is what I believe is waiting for us. So, turn with me if you would to 2 Peter chapter 1, and I'm going to recommend to you that our reward is going to be a threefold reward. And I think that's appropriate, not just because I made that up, but I think that that's how God tends to work in these things. He tends to work in groups of three. Of course, as an expression of His triune nature, I think that's appropriate. 2 Peter 1. Remember, I've identified already that there's going to be, and we talked about this last week in some detail, there's going to be degrees of reward in heaven, meaning some of us are going to receive more reward than others of us. And so in each one of these things, I want you to think in terms of degrees. I'm going to identify the three things I think are the actual substance of a reward, but in each one of these, there are greater and lesser degrees of experience of these things. So the first is this. I believe that on the Day of Judgment, what we're going to receive, first and foremost, is a specific degree of God's glory for us to have as part of our being for all of eternity. 2 Peter chapter 1. I'll read from Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. For by these, that is by these, the glory and excellence of the Lord himself, for by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises. So that, meaning the whole goal of all that he's done to give us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust." Now he goes on from verse 4, and he describes a process of what Christian teachers for generations have rightly called sanctification. The process of what we consider to be our growing in the Lord. And when we talk about growing in the Lord, we're not talking about, you know, our physical stature changing. We're talking about our spiritual nature doing something. Our heart, our spirit, our inner person changing. When you grow in the Lord, your inner person gets what? Gets bigger, for lack of a better term. Your inner person gets bigger. Just like when we talk about a person that's in this natural world that we live in, first born, and we say, my, and we come back a few months later, my, how you've grown. What do we mean? They've gotten bigger. They've approached their full stature in a greater way than they had before. Their physical body is growing. When we say someone is growing in the Lord, what we mean is that they're becoming more and more like the Lord Himself. They're increasing in this process, and the whole process is that the Lord The whole goal of the Christian life is for us to be conformed, as Romans chapter 8 describes, conformed to the image of Christ, meaning it's a changing process, an internal transformation process where we become a little bit more and more like Him. Here, Peter describes this goal of becoming what he calls, and this is kind of a mysterious phrase. I wish, I really do wish, that the Lord had inspired Peter to stop and explain this a little bit. You know, add another paragraph of explanation. He doesn't do that. He just kind of lays it out there and allows our brains to simmer with this. And the idea is that you may become partakers of the divine nature. Now, in one sense, as I was talking about earlier at communion today, as soon as we're born again, we partake of the divine nature. To be born of His Spirit and to be recreated as a new creation in Christ is to partake of His divine nature. But the question is, is the experience you have of his divine nature on the day that you're born again, the fullness of all you will ever experience of his divine nature being made part of you for the rest of your Christian life. The answer is no. Progressively, as you grow in him, you partake more and more and more of his divine nature. So if you've done that fully and faithfully throughout your entire Christian life, what is that going to mean for eternity? We'll turn from 2 Peter to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We'll read about what Paul describes about the day of resurrection. And he uses some imagery that I think is helpful to describe what I'm trying to describe here. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I'll read from verses 40 to 43. It's in the middle. We're picking up right in the middle of a long conversation about the resurrection and the nature of the resurrection. And Paul is right now answering some specific questions about the resurrection body. We did a study on this together a few weeks ago, but I'm going to pick up with that and just focus on one particular element here. Verse 40, there are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory." Now right up to this point, all he's talking about is the physical universe around us. He's talking about astronomy. And any of you who have ever bothered to look up in the sky when it was visible, you know, the stars were visible, and have observed the sun during the day and the moon during the night, and have observed the various stars as that can be seen from the perspective of this earth, you'll notice that there are different degrees of glory among those bodies in the heavens. And what do we mean different degrees of glory? What he's talking about very practically here is there's different degrees of light that can be seen from each one of these heavenly bodies. Out of these three categories, sun, moon, and stars, which sheds the most light on the earth? Sun. Which sheds the second most? Moon. Why? Only because the Moon's closer to the Earth, of course, and it reflects the Sun's light. And even among the stars, there are different degrees of light that are shed on the earth, depending upon how close the star is to the earth, and also, depending upon the star itself, how big that star is, where it's located, and how much light it's shining forth. And his point is, as he concludes this, looking at the end of verse 41, for star differs from star in what? In glory. That means that God made the stars in the heavens the way that he did on purpose. Any of you who have gone into any degree of study of astronomy have come to the realization that not all the stars are identical in the heavens. There are what scientists call, astronomers call, red giants, and blue dwarfs, and yellow suns, and there are just all kinds of different categories. But they're all different. No two stars are alike. And this is, of course, the fingerprint of God's handiwork. Just like no two snowflakes are identical, God distinctly and uniquely created each star with its own appropriate degree of glory. But they're all more or less bright than the others. Now, what does this have to do with our eternity? Paul takes all of this practical perspective and he focuses on this one point, starting in verse 42. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body, it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. The Lord says through Paul that when we're raised from the dead, we're given brand new physical bodies, all of us are going to be gloriously raised from the dead. And there will be, I believe, actual glory of God emanating from each one of our bodies. Resurrected bodies. And that is going to be an awesome and glorious thing. But here's one additional step, and this is the speculative part. I believe some of us will be more glorious in our resurrection bodies than others. In fact, we'll all be on a spectrum of expressing and revealing God's glory through our resurrection bodies. We'll all be in distinctive points along that spectrum. There'll be some that will be fully glorious, more than we can comprehend. Others will just be minimally glorious, if there is such a thing. minimally glorious. How could that be? Well, we talked last week about, you know, being saved as though through fire by the skin of our teeth, someone who has no eternal reward attached to their salvation. I think that person will experience a minimal degree of the expression of God's glory through their resurrected body for all of eternity. Why does that matter? What's so important about that if you have more glory than I do? for eternity. Well, here's the thing. One thing that's going to be understood in a way that we struggle to understand this now is that this thing of bearing God's glory is essential to what it means to be a human being. And we don't give as much weight and significance to this as God himself does. You remember back in the very beginning of the book in Genesis chapter one, when God first set himself in the week of creation to the task of creating humanity, what did he say he was going to do when he created human beings? He said, let us make man in our image to bear our likeness. There's something about bearing the image of God, being like God in expression, that is essential to your existence. And it's going to be significant to you for eternity in a way that is not quite that important to you right now. Being like Him, bearing His image, Having His glory revealed in you and through you is going to be the single most important thing to you for all of eternity. Much more than the perfect wave, or the perfect beach, or any other concept of what that reward is going to be like. Alright, let's go to another one. Mark chapter 10. I said there's a three-fold aspect of our reward. The first aspect is that there will be degrees of glory. What that really boils down to is, for eternity, how much will each one of us be like Him? How much will each one of us be like Him? The second one is what I'm going to call, and it's in Mark chapter 10, we're going to look at this. It's what I'm going to call degrees of proximity. The first aspect of reward was degrees of glory. This is degrees of proximity. Proximity means the nearness of one thing to another thing. And I believe that the next aspect of our reward is this. How close will you and I be to the Lord for all of eternity? And I believe this, that some of us will be closer to the Lord than others. We'll all be at least minimally close, meaning none of us are going to be isolated, disconnected. You know how it is, a person, even someone here might be experiencing this today, be in the middle of a fellowship of believers and yet be feeling completely alone and lonely. There won't be anything like that experience for eternity for us. we will be fully and completely connected to him. And if he lives inside of us now, as I was talking about at communion, how much more will he be living inside of us then? But there's another aspect to our fellowship with the Lord beyond just him living inside of us. And that is the actual ramifications of who he is and how we relate to him in terms of actually coming into his presence, and we'll see this in Mark chapter 10. This one is hard to describe, but I think it's worth considering together. We're going to read from verse 35, where James and John, and these of course are two young and spiritually rambunctious disciples of the Lord, two of the apostles of the Lord. These were the two that were known as the sons of thunder. James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus one day saying, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. Pretty bold, don't you think? Lord, here's what I want today. I want you to do whatever I want you to do. Well, you know, you can take a shot. There's nothing wrong with taking a shot. All he could say is no, right? He said to them in verse 36, well, what do you want me to do for you? He didn't immediately slap them down. He was open to hearing their question, their request. They said to him, this is what we want. Grant that we may sit one on your right and one on your left in your glory. And when they say in your glory, what they're talking about is in eternity. In eternity future, this is what we want. What they're actually asking him here, it's an awesome request. It's an awesome request. It's not like they're asking for riches and fame and, you know, the kind of things that people typically ask for, comfort. They want to be as close as possible to Him in eternity, for eternity. And they see a scenario in their minds, and the scenario is they're thinking of the throne of God in heaven. And they're thinking of proximity to that throne. Think of it this way. Yes, in one sense, we're all going to be connected to the Lord. But in another sense, there really is a throne room in heaven. And there are, as the book of Revelation describes, myriads of individuals on that day that are going to be surrounding that throne. Have you ever been in a large crowd, like maybe at a concert? and you wanted to get closer to the stage, but you had difficulty getting there because of the crowd that was between you and the stage. Now, what I want us to see, and I'm not wanting to lose the reality that yes, the Lord is going to be living inside each one of us in eternity, but there's another aspect in which He is seated on the throne and there are going to be some closer to that throne and some further away on that day and forever. So he goes on, As they asked this question, grant that we may sit, one on your right hand, one on your left, in your glory. And Jesus said to them, you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? In other words, his first response was he wants them to understand that that position has everything to do with how they're living out their service to the Lord right now. It has everything to do with what they're doing with their present lives. And they said to him, we are able. And of course, this is, you know, typical apostolic presumption, you know, to the point of, yeah, it's kind of a spiritual arrogance. It is. I mean, yeah, oh, yeah, we're well able to do that. No problem. We got that covered. And Jesus said to them, the cup that I drink, you shall drink. And that cup, of course, is the cup of suffering and carrying out his life assignment. And you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. And of course, that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So both of those experiences were awaiting them after his ascension back to heaven. They were going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, which they experienced on the day of Pentecost. And then following that, those two were both going to experience the suffering that comes with the life assignment that God gave to them as apostles. But, he says in verse 40, to sit on my right or on my left, And that right there staggers me. It stops me in my tracks because the question was, Lord, this is the picture of what we've got envisioned for eternity. We see you seated on your throne and we see someone on your left and someone on your right. And we want to be those two individuals that are given that privilege. And the Lord doesn't stop them and say, you have got a totally fleshly perspective of what it's going to be like on that day. He basically authorizes their perspective. And he says, you're right, there is going to be someone seated on my left and someone seated on my right. But the problem for them was, this is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. Meaning that God has marked out two individuals, we don't know who, that are going to sit on the left and the right hand of Jesus for all of eternity. Can you imagine? I'm not presuming that's going to be any of us. But can you imagine for a moment what that would be like? Okay, here's your eternal reward. You get to sit on, okay, maybe not the right hand, even the left hand of Jesus for all of eternity. That means you're at the nerve center of all of existence and creation and all of God's purposes. And you get to be there and hear everything He says and everything He does and participate at the core, at the root, at the hub of it all for all of eternity. Is that of any value to you? Is that of anything that you would be willing to sacrifice something now for the possibility of getting into one of those slots then? You know, is it? That's the thing. And so, you know, of course, we won't emphasize this, but he goes on because in verse 41, hearing this, the ten began to feel indignant with James and John. Who are the ten? The other of the 12 apostles. Why did they feel indignant? Because, hey, wait a second. Who says you can sit on the left and right hand? You know, yeah. Hey, I'm Peter here. Don't I get a spot? You know, you know, so obviously there's some, you know, fleshly perspective that's been folded into their spiritual perspective here. But the whole idea is, I do believe there is such a thing as proximity to the Lord on that day and forever. Revelation chapter 4, turn there quickly if you would. This is just to confirm that point. So the question really boils down to this. Won't we all be equally close to the Lord forever and ever and ever? The answer is, in one sense, yes, because He's going to live inside of us, but in another sense, no. No. In another sense, there'll be some that are closer to the throne. In the actual economy of the kingdom, meaning the living out of the administration of his kingdom, forever and ever and ever, and his kingdom will be forever and ever and ever, there are going to be closer and further positions from the hub, the center, from the throne of God. Revelation chapter 4, verse 1, this is a vision that the Apostle John has of this heavenly scene. After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice, which I had heard like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things. Immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and one sitting on the throne. And he who was sitting was like a jasper stone, and a sardius in appearance. And there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. And verse 4 is one of the most ignored verses in the book of Revelation in terms of its ramifications for our lives. Around the throne, and rightly so, the throne in the center gets most of the attention. But don't ignore the rest. Around the throne were 24 thrones. And upon the thrones, I saw 24 elders sitting, clothed in white garments and golden crowns on their heads. Golden crowns, of course, crowns is a symbol, just like thrones are, of what? authority and so in the throne room of heaven what we have is we have a single most glorious throne that's in some sense situated in the center of all things and around we don't have the exact arrangement but most likely a circular kind of arrangement around the throne an additional 24 thrones and I've said this phrase before you you may remember me saying you may not there are a It's one of the little known facts of the book of Revelation and of spiritual reality. There is more than a single throne in heaven. There are a total, at least that we know of, of 25 thrones in heaven. How many times have you heard someone say there are 25 thrones in heaven? Come on. You just don't hear that kind of stuff. Why? Because we don't pay attention to the details. But this detail is significant because this is something that describes what our eternal experience is going to be like. Now, here in the Mark passage, we were just focused because that's all they asked about. Their perspective was somewhat limited. They could have gone into more detail in their request. They just asked for the left and the right hand. They had 22 other slots they could have been angling for, right? We don't know who these 24 individuals are other than they're called what? They are called, in verse 4, 24 elders sitting. This is a term that's used to describe human beings in Scripture. These are not angels. These are not angelic authorities. These are human authorities. Who are these 24? There's a lot of speculation out there about who these 24 might be for the people that do pay attention to this passage. I'm not going to speculate on that. That's not my point. I don't even care who these 24 are other than Is there an outside possibility you could be in one of those 24 slots? Now, I could just hear all of us saying an immediate dismissal. No way. But why way? Why? Why not? Why couldn't you be among those 24? Because it's not going to be a matter of favoritism. You know what I'm saying? It's not going to be like the Lord just likes the look of you a little bit better than he likes the look of someone else. How is he determining who's going to be in these 24 slots? It's all about reward on that day. It's all about faithfulness in the present life, not in terms of anything other than, did you carry out the life assignment that I gave you? Now, these 24 are the only that are mentioned, but that doesn't mean that these 24 are the only that are significant. Let's look on into the book of Luke, and we'll end with a couple of passages on the third area, which really overlaps our second area. What we've talked about is our reward is going to be Degrees of glory, being more or less like Him forever and ever. We've talked about our reward being degrees of proximity, which is all about how close will we be to Him forever and ever and ever. And then the final area is degrees of responsibility forever and ever and ever. How much will He assign us for eternity? Because the reward is all about how faithful we were to what He assigned us in our present life. But the nature of the reward will be to then flip that coin and show us that our faithfulness and what He assigned us now will lead us to a greater assignment for all of eternity. We will not be like the one traditional image, a bunch of floating people on clouds strumming harps for eternity. We will be doing stuff. Actively doing stuff for eternity. Really, really, really important stuff for all of eternity. Stuff that's more important in its ultimate significance than anything you've done in this present life. It's going to be big stuff that you're going to be doing. But what you're given to do for eternity has a lot to do with how faithfully you did the assignment that he gave you now. And he will give you a proportionally bigger assignment depending upon the faithfulness to the present assignment. Luke chapter 19. I'll start from verse 11. We read this last week, but I want to emphasize a different aspect here. While they were listening to these things, Jesus went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately. So he said, a nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then returned. We saw that the nobleman is the Lord Jesus himself, leaving to go back to heaven, leaving, when he does, his servants in areas of responsibility. And he called ten of his slaves, and gave them 10 minas and said to them, do business with this until I come back. That's their life assignment in this present world. But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him saying, we do not want this man to reign over us. When he returned after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves to whom he had given the money be called to him so that he might know what business they had done. The first appeared saying, Master, your mina has made 10 minas more. And he said to him, well done, good and faithful slave, or well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing. You, as your reward, I'm reading in here, you are to be an authority over ten more miners? Ten cities. All right, here's the thing. Before he leaves, he gives this slave ten pieces of coin, a certain value. And he says, here's my assignment. Take care of these ten coins. and do the right thing with them. So the slave goes out and he takes, actually it's a single coin, and he makes ten out of it, and he comes back and delivers that to the Lord for the Lord's evaluation. The Lord's pleased and happy with what he's done with what he had given to him. And he has made ten coins out of the one. And so what is his reward? Does he let him keep the coins? Does he say, here's some more coins on top of that as a reward? He gives him an assignment that's way out of proportion to what he had assigned to him to begin with. Much larger. Okay, it's like the difference between this. If I gave you $10 and said, take care of this. And I'm going to come back later and I'm going to evaluate it. And then I came back and I saw, you know what? You were very faithful with that ten dollars. You turned my ten dollars into a hundred and you gave me a hundred dollars back. OK, here's here's your reward. You are now mayor of the city of Los Angeles for the rest of your life. Now, what are you going to do with that? How are you going to take care of that? I mean, would you look at me kind of funny? Like, wow, I mean, I just I just took $10 and I invested it and I gave you back $100. You may be mayor of the city of Los Angeles. What's that all about? The point is that the Lord has plans for the future, eternal plans. We will in a couple of weeks probably look at the nature of the new heavens and the new earth and what's going to be involved in that. But one of the things that's going to be involved in that is an ever expanding kingdom of God in which there will be greater and greater areas and spheres of responsibility to be managed and to be taken care of. And this indicates by way of hinting that this is part of our reward. Look over in Luke 22 real quick. And of course, I didn't read this detail, but in the parable we just read, the one man who had made 10 minus was given responsibility over 10 cities. The man who made five minus was given responsibility over five cities, which implies that there's going to be degrees of greater and lesser degrees of responsibility for all of eternity. in God's eternal kingdom. Luke 22 verse 24. There arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded as to be greatest. He said to them, the kings of the Gentiles lorded over them and those who have authority over them are called benefactors. But it is not this way among you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like a servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves. You are those who have stood by me in my trials, and just as my Father has granted me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Now what is that? What does that mean? What's the promise that the Lord makes to these apostles? He's saying, you've been with me from the beginning, and just like I was faithful to my Father's assignment that He gave me, and the reward was, the Father gave me ultimate authority. Part of Jesus' reward is He's been given all authority in heaven and on earth and under the earth. That's part of His reward. Therefore, is the Father going to give us something different? something unique? No, he's going to give us a lower measure of the same exact kind of reward that he gave to the Lord Jesus himself. We will bear authority over different aspects of his kingdom in greater or lesser degrees depending upon our faithfulness in this present life. Now, all of this, as I said, is somewhat speculative. You don't have to take the details of what I've just described as gospel, but I do think there's enough information in the passages we've looked at to focus our hearts in a perspective of consideration about what eternity might mean and how our present faithfulness and our present service will have a dramatic effect and impact on how much we will be like Him, how close we are to Him forever and ever and ever. how much He sees fit to entrust to us in our eternal service to Him in the ages to come. Let's pray. Father God, I pray that You would make us a people who are so heavenly-minded that we are of real earthly good, that we would have hearts and minds that are fixed on You, on Your Son who sits enthroned over the heavenlies and over this earth and over everything under this earth, And that Father, as we set our minds on those things above, that you would change and transform us so that we live out our life assignment in faithfulness and that you would shock and surprise us with the glory of what the reward will be on that day. I ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The copyrighted product of Tree of Life Christian Church of Canoga Park, California. You are welcome to pass this message along to others, as long as it is not sold, and it is passed along unaltered in its entirety, with source credit given to Tree of Life Christian Church.