The Timing and Nature of the Christian’s Reward, Part 1

all right well we are in the middle of a mini series on the theology of reward and if you are just joining us in our group this morning and you haven't been to some of the previous sundays here We've looked at a couple of texts already in this series.

We began by looking at a very important text in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 9 and 10, that described for us in brief the fact that we as believers will stand one day before the judgment seat of Christ.

And we looked at what Paul intended by those words and how that is to impact our lives today.

And then in our last installment in this series, we looked at 1 Corinthians 3, verses 10 through 15, where the Apostle Paul doesn't use the explicit terminology of the judgment seat of Christ, but he refers to the day.

He refers to the day in which Christians will stand and have their works evaluated.

And those who have built with gold, silver, and precious stones will receive a reward, Paul says.

But those who have built with wood, straw, hay, those kinds of instruments or those kinds of means and methods of ministry, that those... materials would result in a loss of the reward.

So if you weren't present for those, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to those.

There's a few more texts that I want to look at in the weeks to come.

I want to look at a text in 1 Corinthians 15 and then a text from Matthew's Gospel where Jesus teaches on the doctrine of reward.

But what I want to do this morning and next Sunday morning is do more of a theological survey.

Because having come through those texts and having treated a topic that is often neglected, there are a lot of questions that arise as to what are these rewards? When will they take place? How are we as Christians to understand them? And what is our right response to this teaching? So for this Sunday and next, it's going to be more of a theological survey.

We're not going to focus on one particular task.

But instead, what I want to do this morning is look at the timing of these rewards.

When will we be given these rewards? When will the assessment for Christians take place? And then next Sunday, we'll look at the nature of these rewards.

What can we glean through an inductive study of the various texts? about the kinds of rewards that will be given.

And you'll find it interesting that there's a lot more biblical information about that than we often assume.

So this Sunday and next will be more of a theological survey, if I could call it that, rather than a textual exposition.