Gooding, David: 2 - Rewards for Service

So shall we commence our final session by reading in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and chapter nine. And we begin there at verse seventeen. For, if I do this of mine own will, I have a reward. But if not of mine own will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. What then is my reward? That when I preach the gospel, I might make the gospel without charge, so as not to use to the full my right in the gospel. For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I may gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews. To them that are under the law as under the law, not being myself under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without the law, as without the law, not being without law to God, but under law to Christ, that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I am become all things to all men that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the gospel's sake that I may be its joint partner. Know you not that they which run in a race all run, but one only receives the prize? Even so, run that you may attain. And every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run as not uncertainly, so fight I as not beating the air, but I buffet my body and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified. Tonight, the task laid on me by the organizers of the conference is that I should, with you, remember the rewards that are set out before us by our blessed master. I have their permission, however, before I do that, to take a few moments talking of certain practical things. This afternoon, I made it as a suggestion that one way an assembly could encourage people to be interested in the service of the Lord was to put before them some imaginative ideas of how people of various abilities could in fact be partaking actually in the work of the Lord, not only in this country but also abroad. I would like to make a few observations on that score, but as I do so, I pray that you will remember what you surely have never forgotten, that I'm not a real missionary. My good brethren here are the real missionaries. I'm more like a wanderer, the sun gone down, as the hymn has it, you'll see. But I do, by God's grace and generosity to me, visit missionaries and see the Lord's work in many countries, and I testify that I am the one that profits from it more than the missionaries themselves. What an ennobling, what a enriching experience it is to witness at first hand the work and the labor and the sacrifice of our brothers and sisters on the mission field. But some ideas have occurred to me now and again as I have been wandering the earth, and I relay them to you not as general rules to be followed generally by everybody, but as ideas that might possibly stick in a head or two or a heart or two. First of all, my appeal goes for the retired people to take up missionary work. I don't see why the young people should always be the object and the butt of our exhortations, do you? What about, uh, exhorting some of the retired to become active in missionary work? I was in Chabi in Zaire in February time and had the great pleasure of seeing the work, the noble work that has been there done by the good Christian lady Pearl Winterburn, a missionary from Canada. When she went there, the place was accessible only in the dry season down a narrow track. In the winter time, you wouldn't get in unless you flew in. An African evangelist had been there, and folks were converted. There was the beginnings of an assembly, and that was that. Today, when, uh, nowadays, when you fly in, the first thing that strikes you is the, uh, for African standards, beautiful runway for the plane to come in. And then look like, uh, then what looks like a, a, a, a tard, you'll see, uh, with the name Chubby on the side, you might for a moment think it was nearly Heathrow. And then you will be, uh, impressed by the buildings, an assembly hall much larger than this one here, and some nurses' homes where the nurses find practical training on the field, and two places for the schools, and the brick making sheds, and the solar pla- panels that get the sunshine and convert it into electricity for the pump that pumps the water up from the stream below. A remarkable work by any standards, and supervised and led on by this great woman missionary on the field. She knows all about brick making, and what else she doesn't know is not worth mentioning. But I found one of the seekers in a merry-faced retired couple, likewise from Canada. The good man was an expert in many trades, and what he didn't know, that he learned. His wife, of course, a very capable housewife indeed. This couple seek from time to time a six-month visa to go to Zaire to Chubby, and so that Pearl Winterburn may get upon the work of supervising that largish mission station. The good man gives himself to the technical details that need to be done. It was he that installed the solar heating, he that put in the plant, the mechanism for the pumps, he that does the electricity round the place, and goodness knows what else he does. And while he's busy at that, his wife looks after the household, seeing after visiting missionaries and, uh, wanderers like myself, and a thousand and one other things. And truth to tell, I never saw a happier couple in their retirement in all my life. What a contribution it is. And I fell to thinking of how many people there must be in Northern Ireland with all kinds of trades, uh, that would like an a- an interesting job to do in their retirement, uh, perhaps even if they retired early for the purpose, and could support themselves by their pensions and not be a burden to the missionaries and make a lasting and solid contribution to the work of the Lord. What a delightful way of spending your retirement. Talking about that, I come to to to notice, one can't help noticing it's in some countries, in Spain, in Japan, in China. what openings there are for younger people that are prepared to make a career in teaching English as a foreign language. Of course, that is no new thing to say, and young people present who have those qualifications will have thought of it before I did. But God has been using it very in, uh, very wi- in very widely in many countries. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of young Christian people in China before the recent crackdown that were very carefully and wisely teaching English in Sunday schools, colleges, and universities, but doing it so that they might witness for the law. When China opens again, as surely you believe it will under God's goodness, there will be gigantic opportunities for young people that have prepared themselves for teaching English as a foreign language in the institutions of that country. As I talk with that, I think of a good man who runs a language school in Valladolid in Spain. First introduction to Spain was when he went with OM in the very difficult days while Franco still ruled. And with tremendous courage, he and other men in OM dared to take to the streets, wrote tracks in Spanish, got preaching to the people, and spent more than one night in police stations over the head of it. He came to the conclusion that he would like to live in Spain, but not, so to speak, as a full-time missionary, because as such he couldn't get into large sections of Spanish society. He decided to set up a school. There are many schools in Spain for the teaching of English, and many of them are sheer money-making devices that do a very poor job and charge large fees. He decided to get a team of young Christian people round him. They have a delightful school in that city. Efficient, so much so that some of the university lecturers come to the school. The wives of the managers of business and professional people come to the school. One of their secrets is the good value they give for money, the tip-top standards academically. And they do it so that they may infiltrate that level of society in that country. And at the same time, the good man who leads the school has become an elder in the Spanish assembly in that city, became one at a time when that assembly was going through very, very difficult waters, and by God's grace has been one of the major helps in that church to get that church back onto an even keel and beginning to grow for the glory of God. Why not? Klaus has reminded us, uh, if Mrs. Thatcher didn't, that there's going to be a united Europe someday, with all barriers down. Seemingly no careers. Why shouldn't we harness our careers to the spreading of the gospel? I don't know that there is a lot to be said for the overwhelming necessity of being an accountant in Oka or Kloka or Five Mile Town. If you could be an accountant in Sofia, Bucharest, or Novosibirsk, do you? Why shouldn't we be abroad in our careers? You say, but that we can't do that, it would mean learning a language. What do you suppose our brethren here have had to do? We have the famous example, don't we, of the woman Lydia in the Acts of the Apostles, in the import business, importing high fashion material, purple, if you please, very expensive gown shop material it was. And when she got converted, the mark of her conversion was this, she put her disposal at the Lord's feet for the furtherance of the gospel. When Paul, he tells us, first came to Corinth, he was alone and had to work all week to make his ends meet and preached on the Sabbath. When the brethren came down from Macedonia, he was able to give himself full time to the work of the Lord. Why? Because the Macedonians, and I suspect Lydia to a great extent, had sent a hefty gift from her fashion gown Gown shop. shop. Why not? Talking of careers leads me to have a word in the ears of my younger brothers and sisters and some of their parents. To some it is given to be academics of some kind or the other. And much thought goes into the decision, doesn't it? How should we advise our young people what careers to take up? Sometimes I have to confess to you, I'm eaten up with envy, which isn't a good Christian thing to be. As I see so many of our tip-top brains going into medicine, you'll say, that shows you're not a missionary. But look what a noble work the medical missionaries have done. God bless them, they have. And who can but admire the sacrifice they make when you think of the money they could have made if they'd been at home, and what in fact they actually get, and the problems that arise for the education of their children. But that said, you know, there are great needs even in academic circles, and not only in this country, but in others. For experts in other fields. Why not a little physics? I know it's horribly difficult, but then it's vastly interesting, isn't it? You say, but what, what kind of a job could I get if I were a physicist? Well, actually, my brother, I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of the Lord's work, what you could do in the Lord's work if you were a physicist. What you could do, what a voice you could have on the continent at this moment and in places like Russia. If you were a biologist and a believer. Our good friend, that, uh, famous son of Armagh, John Lennox, was recently in Russia reading research papers in mathematics in the highest academies of the country, and got as many opportunities to talk to the men about Christianity as he did about mathematics. I was hearing just the other afternoon from another servant of the Lord, how one of their team had been openly invited by the university authorities in one place in Russia to come and tell them, and what did they want to know? Well, not first how they can get their sins forgiven by the blood of Christ. They haven't got as far yet as believing that there's a God. But what they wanted was somebody that could come and talk to them about what the Bible has to say on creation. Is it credible, what the Bible has to say, in the light of modern science? And as I look upon our younger brethren and sisters, and they have the opportunities of, uh, training before them, do take it to the Lord, won't you? For there are big battlefields in our own province, let alone in atheist countries. Where it's not always medicine that will be the battlefield. Battling for the minds of men and women. It'll be men and women who are believers and can talk with some authority in fields of biology and paleontology, physics, cosmology. Why shouldn't we gear our missionary strategy to the realities of a big modern world. And thinking of what our dear brother Klaus Brinkmann has said, and reverting to the matter of being able to teach. When I was in Japan last, almost on my last day, I asked the brethren, one a missionary, one a local Japanese Christian worker, what message I ought to take home to this province. I said, surely the time has passed when you want missionaries. And the Japanese was the more insistent, because they are polite, I know. No, they still wanted missionaries. I said to the missionary, perhaps it would be a good thing if you had men who and women who could occupy positions in business and, uh, teach the word in their spare time. They said that would be an excellent thing, and as you know, some of our missionaries are doing that in the universities of Japan to great effect. But they said, you'll see, but they would have to have the language. It's no good going with a stuttering language that can't talk at a level that is a- a- acceptable to that modern sophisticated nation. Must be acceptable. If it's not acceptable, we tend to, to devalue the gospel in their eyes. And they said, you know, it's no good going into business. If you're going to learn the language, you'll need two to three years of every hour you've got of every day to learn it. And how are you going to be maintained? My good brethren, if we were selling jam in Japan, or even Guinness, but then you don't do that. You'd pay for your representatives, wouldn't you? To attend the very best language school under the sun to get the language. Why shouldn't we? For we more than jam to sell. Sure we have? And here it means a cooperation, a team effort, doesn't it, of men that are prepared to notice suitable young people and prepared to sustain them and make an investment for the Lord's sake in the future of his work. And finally, I come to the old, but not altogether doddery. There are some countries... and some places where missionaries will be much helped by a visit from senior, sensible Christians. I don't mean visits who ring up the local missionary because he happens to be near the coast in Spain and expect the missionary to drop everything he's doing and give him a conducted tour of the city or the coast. Nor visitors that are come snooping. But senior wise visitors can sometimes be a fresh voice and break some of the irritations that come when missionaries are on a confined station and see nobody and hear nobody but the few missionaries on the station. And to help in their tiredness, sometimes missionaries are in places where they teach the locals, but it's like a parent being with babies all day long. And the mother that has taught learned philosophy to the two-year-old all day long, ah, isn't she grateful when husband comes home, she can have some adult conversation. What do you suppose it's like for missionaries to be on the field and for seven, eight, ten years, never to have the chance to talk about spiritual things with people that are at their own level in spiritual things, but are always dealing with spiritual babies and children. There is a great ministry for those that are capable of sound, serious biblical teaching, even in countries that otherwise are advanced, where because of the centuries of lack and oppression in times past, there is need for people that can teach the wholesome, straightforward, bread and butter doctrines of the gospel. Sometimes that's better done by visitors than by foreigners living in the place. What then are our rewards? For serving the Lord, rewards present and rewards future. But I can testify to one reward and the truth of our Lord's words. He said, there's nobody that's left home, parents, children, so forth and whatnot, for my sake, but what shall receive a thousand times in this present life and in the life to come, eternal life. I stand before you, a very wealthy man. I have mothers by the thousand, and fathers galore, and brothers and sisters by the ten thousand. Oh, what a lovely thing is the service of God, and the reality of the family of God round this wide, wide world. When people abroad ask me, why do you still live in Ireland if you're only an Englishman? I say, where else would a sensible man live? When I have thousands of friends there that are as near to me as my physical brothers and sisters. Then there is the actual reward of the job, isn't there? Said our Lord to his disciples, when he was seated on the well and the woman had gone away, and they came offering him food to eat. He said, I've already had some. I have a food to eat that you know not of. They said, anybody brought him some rations? No, he explained, my food is to do the will of him that sent me. He was not saying that by preaching the gospel he earned his bread and butter. He said that preaching the gospel and bringing salvation to a woman by a well, that was his food. He lived on it. We shall hardly do the work of the Lord as we should, whatever it is, if it isn't in some real sense our food. We shall scarce do it well if all it is, is our profession. And certainly not well at all, if all it is is simply a hobby that we do if and when we have spare time. Sometimes people will come and ask, what do you think my job for the Lord is? And when they ask like that, I, in my lack of experience, I'm not even an elder in my church, as you know. I constantly reply, what would you enjoy doing? Oh. And it's interesting to watch the surprise that goes over the face, because some people have the idea that if you're in the right job for the Lord, the evidence of that is that you hate doing it, and it's a sacrifice every time the clock ticks a second. Well, of course not. What kind of a taskmaster do you think the Lord is? Yes, there is toil, blood, sweat, and tears in our working for the Lord. How could it be we follow the Savior of Calvary? We are involved in a battle. As Ian has reminded us, in battles people get hurt. And there is much monotony, and there is much working when you have to drive yourself to work, even when you don't feel like it. But don't you enjoy your work for the moment? Oh come, what a slander upon God as the paymaster it would be if you didn't enjoy. Why, I've known men that have enjoyed gardening. How they do it, I don't know, but... And God made the flowers. Of course, they ought to enjoy it, and so should I, but there you are. Shall we not enjoy doing whatever we do? Say, but I like growing flowers. Good for you. I know an elder in the church once who cultivated his back garden to grow flowers so he could take them round some of the old ladies in his neighborhood, and then, as they were expressing their gratitude, tell them about the blessed Lord who made the flowers. Why shouldn't we enjoy our work? What then is my reward? Just doing the work, of course. And if you doubt that, pray do remember that the reward for working in eternity is to have more work to do. Is it not? Some people imagine that the reward for working for the Savior here on earth is getting at last to heaven and sinking down into a heavenly divan and putting your feet up on the heavenly footstool and being attended by angels in white robes. Well, it may come to that, I do it. But according to our Lord's parables, if we may trust their metaphors, working for the Lord here, suppose you use your five talents or one talent or ten talents, and you do it well, the reward will be that instead of having to look after uh one talent, ten talents, they will have to look after here on Earth would be a job that I shouldn't care for. Keep me awake too many nights. The responsibility would be too big. Imagine having ten cities to look after my brother and sister. If you don't want to work when you get to heaven, pray don't work for the Lord now, will you? If you want to get the joy of heaven to the maximum, oh, pray remember that when you get home to glory, you won't want to sit down too long on the old divan. Because nobody there gets tired. And some of the chief joys of heaven will be working for God in all the schemes that his divine ingenuity will then invent. And we're preparing for it now, by the faithfulness which we discharge, with which we discharge our guilt. Some people have said that it wouldn't be good for truly Christian people to work out of motive for getting a reward. No, no, they say, that would be an unworthy motive altogether. We should do like the good Church of England collect reminds us to labor, not to to fight, and not to heed the wounds. Labor and to seek for no reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will. And in a sense, they're right, aren't they? There's just enough truth in it, at any rate, so that you could justify it perhaps by certain lessons from the Bible. For instance, those two good men, John and James, sons of Zebedee and Mrs. Zebedee, came to the Lord, as you remember, and asked that they might sit the one on the right hand and the other on the left in his glory. And our Lord had to tell them, uh, that they didn't really know what they were asking and asked them, could you pay the price for it? Look here, they said, Lord, now we don't care what it costs. Weren't they good men? We don't care what it costs. Sit on your right hand and on your left. We're prepared for anything here to get that position. I have to confess, I admire that ambition. What is, what is your ambition? Oh, you say, I want a drafty little hole just inside the door would do enough for me. There aren't going to be any drafty holes, my good brother. The trouble with John and James was, yes, they were ambitious, and they were doing it for what reward they got out of it. There's no long wrong in looking for reward. They were looking for the wrong reward, weren't they? They thought the reward was of sitting on big thrones and being second and third in the kingdom, and our Lord had to correct them. What does it mean to be first? Being first because he serves the most people. And you know who's going to be first, don't you? That's our Lord. Because he serves most. And he hasn't done with his serving yet, for he says, you know, my faithful servants, if you're faithful to me now, when you get home, I shall sit you down at my table, and I shall gird myself, and I shall come and serve you. Ah, that's the biggest, isn't it? The one who serves most. And you can see it really powerful. Here's a farmer, and here's a side full of pigs, they're big fat walkers. And here comes the farmer with his pail of mash, you'll see, and the bees are screaming and shouting as if they hadn't had a meal all this last week, as though the whole universe exists to feed them. Here comes a patient farmer and slops old pail full of mush in the path, and they get at it like only pigs can get at it. Tell me, who's the bigger, the farmer or the pigs? You say, the farmer, of course. What, and he's, all he's doing is serving pigs. You say, that's a sign of his bigness. I don't know that I would want to be a heavenly pig, even if there were going to be any, do you? Wouldn't you want to serve? Of course, there were men in another parable who went to work for their Lord, not out of the reward they got for it, but for the sheer love of working. They were the men in the vineyard, you remember them? The master went out beginning of the day and hired certain men to work all day long. At other intervals, he went and hired others. Came the last hour, and he went out, and there were some men still standing and not working. He said, why aren't you working? They said, nobody employed them. He said, would you like to work? They said, wouldn't we? Standing here, keeping this lamp post up all the week and doing nothing, there's been a really boring, bo- boring job. Oh, if somebody would let us work. He said, you work my vineyard, and at the end of the day, I shall give you what reward is good. They went, they struck the garden, shears denied working, they went and worked. And when it came to the pay yard, the master gave to those that had only worked an hour one whole denarius. Then the other chaps came, particularly those that had worked all day, and they said, now, now, this is lovely, and they got out their fat pocket calculators to work out the amount they were going to get. If these chaps get a denarius for one hour now, let's see. We work 12 hours plus the heat of the day, and they worked it out, and they were rejoicing what they were going to get, and when their turn came, they only got one denarius, and then the trade unions kicked up a fuss. But, says the master, didn't you bargain for it? But I'm perfectly just, I've kept my bargain, there's your denarius. Which teaches us this, doesn't it, that if we go in a bargaining spirit, so much work, for so much reward, well, we should get what we've earned, and nothing more. The Lord will always be just. And if we merely do it out of a sense we're going to get what we earn, then you'll get what you earn. There is a possibility of getting more than you earn, do you know? Like those men did. They'd only worked an hour, they got a full penny. And to the critics, our Lord said, is your eye evil because I'm good? We'll see the Lord reserves the right, when it comes to his judgment seat, to give some more than they strictly earned. Reserves the right not merely to be just, but positively good. Generous. What do you have to do to qualify? My dear brethren and sisters, I confess to you that if when the Lord comes, I get only what I have strictly earned. Oh, how little I shall get. If I want the Lord to have mercy on me, and give me more than I deserve, then perhaps, as the colic has it, I shall have to learn to work, not counting the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, but to work for the sheer love of working for the Savior. You heard what Onesimus did, uh, says Paul, as he writes to Timothy, when he was in Rome. Whereas everybody else who happened to come in Rome didn't bother to come and visit me. This good man sought me out, found me. Dangerous though it was for him, he came and identified himself with me. He went that extra mile. The Lord grant him, says Paul, to find mercy of the Lord in that day. Not mercy in the sense of forgiveness of sins. Every believer has that, and we have it already, don't we? Why shall I need mercy in the coming day? I shall need mercy, my brother, my sister, as I stand before the judgment seat of Christ to have my work assessed. Oh God, give us the hearts of that dear man who did the extra mile and went out of his way, cost what it may, to visit Paul in prison. He shall have mercy when it comes to the distribution of reward. When I was at school, you'll pardon the personal reference. There was a policy amongst many of the chaps that I knew at school in regard to Prize Day that came once a year. Uh, Prize Day, fusty, duddy, old, elderly men, generals and things used to hop onto the platform and give people People have prizes prizes. for diligent work, swatting at chemistry and French and other such lugubrious subjects when they might have been out playing football, rugby or something, or tennis. I got one of these once. It was full of pictures of frogs with bulgy eyes. There were a lot of hers in my school. I said, bother it if some silly chumps like to go in for a prize. Oh, well, let them go in for it. Fancy getting a three and six money book for all those nights of study when you might have been out enjoying yourself. I understood the point. There's not a three and six money book with which the Lord prepares reposes to reward his servants in. It is an incorruptible crown. And when the Lord gives you that crown, it will last eternally. And if the Lord cannot give it to you, you won't have it for all eternity. Therefore, let us determine to fight and to work and to toil until the master come. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, simply we commit this meeting to thee. We thank thee for its organizers who have made it possible. We thank thee for thy servants that thou hast sent to share their rich experience, faithfully to exhort us. And now we pray, Lord, above all, as we thank thee for thy sovereign presence, help us that our minds shall register in particular those things that we need to hear. Help us, Lord, where thy exhortation comes clearly with obvious practical effect. Now to get going and doing what we have heard thee ask us to do. And Lord, where thy directions have been general for our future, we pray thou wilt help us to go on in faith, working for thee in whatever way lies immediately before us, investing our time in thy word, in prayer, and in our secular studies, and in our spiritual activities, confident that whatever we invest for thy sake, thou will give us to see that what we sow, that we reap. Part us thus now with thy blessing, we do beseech thee, for thine own name's sake. Amen.