Remember the Appeal of Jesus
The apostle Paul gave a farewell speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. This is his very last word to them in Acts 20:35:
…remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Christians are the kind of people who learn to look past their own needs to the needs of others, and then take action to help those needs. We do so because Jesus is so richly meeting our needs.
But what should be our motivation in the moment? Paul says to remember what Jesus says, which is to look to the reward. Over and over again in his teaching, Jesus talks about reward. He appeals again and again, as C.S. Lewis said, to “unblushing promises of reward.” And Paul says, don’t forget the words of Jesus. Remember them. Remember Jesus’s appeal to your joy. Remember Jesus says it’s more blessed, it’s happier, it’s better to give to others. Why is that? Because when you give to others, your Father in heaven takes care of you.
Your Father in heaven sees every tiny act of love. He sees the cup of cold water given in Jesus’s name. And he will not let you go unrewarded, both now and forever, for any sacrifice of time, or money, or energy, of effort to help meet needs in Jesus’s name.
So, Cities Church, the exhortation this morning to us is: remember the appeal of Jesus. You will be happier if you give to others, rather than try to maneuver to get from them. Your Father in heaven will see it, and make up for it, and he will reward you far, far greater than you deserve.
Father in heaven, how amazing that you are Rewarder. You see every good intention and deed enacted in Jesus’s name, and you leave no one in your debt. You repay every sacrifice, and not only repay but lavish us with your grace. And yet we are so slow to trust your goodness. And we are so quick to calculate how others will repay us for the good we do. Father, it is evil in us when we replace the richness and fullness of your rewards with the poverty and emptiness of earthly repayment from fellow humans. It is a failure of faith. So, search our hearts. Search our motivations. Search us now as we confess to you our sins in the quiet of this moment…
Father, you know our hearts. You know the evil in them, and you know the good in them, our holy desires to please you — because you bring it about through your own Spirit. Father, we thank you that you haven’t turned on us when we have doubted your goodness. Thank you for your Son, and his staggering achievement at the cross, to forgive our sins, and the gift of his Spirit, who trains us, in grace, to remember the words of Jesus, and meet the needs of others, looking to the reward of our Father. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
