Choose Your Reward by David Jeremiah

Tuesday, June 13

Choose Your Reward 

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven. 
Luke 6:23a 

Recommended Reading Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Children get rewarded for selling the most cookies or wrapping paper for their school. Adults get rewarded for providing authorities with information about a crime. We get rewards for shopping at our favorite grocery store or for using a certain credit card. We are committed to the idea of rewards. We love to be rewarded!

And we aren’t the only ones. Jesus pointed out the activities of religious leaders in His day who performed religious activities in public in order to be rewarded by people with praise (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18). He pointed out to His disciples how rich people made a public show of the money they donated to the temple treasury (Mark 12:41-44). But He also clarified that being rewarded by men is not the same as being rewarded by God. If we choose to seek the rewards of man while on this earth, we won’t be rewarded by God in heaven. But if we serve God for His sake alone, we will be rewarded in heaven. Which reward would be better? Which would endure and be more meaningful?

We have a choice in our spiritual life: Seek the rewards of man or the rewards of God. We can’t receive both (Matthew 6:24).

Those who give to God only the shadow of duty can never expect from Him a real reward. 
John Flavel