Five Rewards for Generosity

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

What are the rewards if we trust God’s promises, give lavishly, and open our homes to each other and the needy?

The suffering of the saints will be relieved or at least diminished. That is what this verse means when it says, “Contribute to the needs of the saints.” We lift a burden. We relieve stress. We give hope. And that’s a reward!

The glory of God is displayed. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Lavish giving and open homes display the glory and the goodness and the worth of God in your life. The reason God gives us money and homes is so that by the way we use them people can see they are not our God. But God is our God. And our treasure.

More thanksgiving to God is unleashed. “The ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God” (2 Corinthians 9:12). God has given us money and homes not just to make us thankful, but by our generosity and hospitality to make many people thankful to God.

Our love for God and his love in us is confirmed. “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17). In other words, when we give generously and open our homes, the love of God is confirmed in our lives. We are real. We are not phony Christians.

Finally, we lay up treasure in heaven. “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail. . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:33–34).

Lavish giving and open homes are close to the center of life in Christ. The reasons we don’t open our moneybags — our checkbooks — and homes as often as we should are rooted in the bondage of fear and greed. The remedy is the pleasure of Christ’s presence and the certainty of Christ’s promise: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Our reward is the display of God’s glory, the good of others, and the joy of treasuring Christ together forever. Therefore I exhort you, “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”

John Piper 

Feb.29

19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back,

20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. - James 5:19-20

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. - 1 Peter 4:8

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  - Psalm 32:1

You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah  - Psalm 85:2

Should You Clean Up Before Coming to Jesus?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new”... 

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

 DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Some people want to get everything in their life straightened out before they come to Christ. But you'll wake up in hell and still not have it straightened out.

It’s like trees that don’t lose their leaves in the fall. The leaves wither and turn brown but hold on until the spring. But when the new leaf comes, it pushes the old leaf off.

That's exactly what happens to your old habits, your old life, when you find the Lord Jesus. The new life pushes your old life off. It’s not a matter of plucking off this leaf and knocking off that one. You'll never do it that way. Let the new life within you do its work.

ACTION POINT:

Have you come to grips yet with the fact that your “old nature” is dead and you are a new creature in Christ? You can’t “kill” him on your own. You have to “reckon” him as dead and allow the “new nature”—the new creature you are in Christ—to come alive and be fed and nurtured by the Holy Spirit.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Finally and Totally Justified

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. (Romans 8:33)

Paul could have said here, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” and then answered, “No one! We are justified.” That’s true. But that is not what he said. His answer instead is, “God is the one who justifies.”

The emphasis is not on the act but on the Actor.

Why? Because in the world of courts and laws where this language comes from, the acquittal of a judge might be overturned by a higher one.

So what, if a local judge acquits you, when you are guilty, if a governor has the right to bring a charge against you? So what, if a governor acquits you, when you are guilty, if the emperor can bring a charge against you?

Here’s the point: Above God, there are no higher courts. If God is the one who acquits you — declares you righteous in his sight — no one can appeal; no one can claim a technicality; no one can call for a mistrial; no one can look for other counts against you. God’s sentence is final and total.

Hear this, all you who believe on Jesus, and become united to Christ, and show yourself among the elect: God is the one who justifies you. Not a human judge. Not a great prophet. Not an archangel from heaven. But God, the Creator of the world and Owner of all things and Ruler of the universe and every molecule and person in it, God is the one who justifies you.

The point: unshakable security in the face of tremendous suffering. If God is for us, no one can successfully be against us. If God gave his Son for us, he will give us everything that is good for us. If God is the one who justifies us, no charge against us can stand.

John Piper 

Feb.28

8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 

9 Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up. 

10 Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.  - Isaiah 50:8-10

10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!" - Revelation 12:10-12

10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." 

11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 

12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 

13 before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.  - Psalm 96:10-13

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12:25

God Wants Your Burdens

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward”... (Job 5:7)

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

It starts almost the day we’re born. We come in crying, and from there it just goes on. We have burdens. If you don’t have burdens, you’re probably not a thinking person. But I want to tell you today what to do with your burdens.

David wrote, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. He shall never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22).

David was a king. He was wealthy and powerful. What do we learn from this? That burdens come to the high as well as to the low. They come to saints as well as sinners. They come to the old as well as the young. What do we do with our burdens? We have to cast them upon the Lord.

ACTION POINT:

Do you have a broken heart? Has one of your children ripped your heart out? Is there a husband who has forsaken you? A physical malady gnawing away at your body? Is there a problem perplexing you? Cast your burden on the Lord. He will sustain you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Radical Effects of the Resurrection

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19)

Paul concludes from his hourly danger, and his daily dying, and his fighting with wild beasts, that the life he has chosen in following Jesus is foolish and pitiable if he will not be raised from the dead.

If death were the end of the matter, he says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32). This doesn’t mean: Let’s all become gluttons and drunkards if there is no resurrection. Drunkards are pitiable too — with or without the resurrection. He means: If there is no resurrection, what makes sense is middle-class moderation to maximize earthly pleasures.

But that is not what Paul chooses. He chooses suffering, because he chooses obedience. Ananias came to Paul after his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, with the words from the Lord Jesus, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). Paul accepted this suffering as part of his calling.

How could Paul do it? What was the source of this radical and painful obedience? The answer is given in 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” In other words, Christ was raised, and I will be raised with him. Therefore, nothing suffered for Jesus is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

The hope of the resurrection radically changed the way Paul lived. It freed him from materialism and consumerism. It gave him the power to go without comforts and pleasures that many people feel they must have in this life. For example, though he had the right to marry (1 Corinthians 9:5), he renounced that pleasure because he was called to bear so much suffering.

This is the way Jesus said the hope of the resurrection is supposed to change our behavior. For example, he told us to invite to our homes people who cannot pay us back in this life. How are we to be motivated to do this? “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14).

This is a radical call for us to look hard at our present lives to see if they are shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Do we make decisions on the basis of gain in this world, or gain in the next? Do we take risks for love’s sake that can only be explained as wise if there is a resurrection?

May God help us to rededicate ourselves for a lifetime of letting the resurrection have its radical effects.

John Piper