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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing
The instruction is to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
It is for your own interest to secure heavenly riches. These alone, of
all that you possess, are really yours. The treasure laid up in heaven
is imperishable. No fire or flood can destroy it, no thief despoil it, no
moth or rust corrupt it; for it is in the keeping of God.
This treasure, which Christ esteems as precious above all estimate,
is “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
Ephesians
1:18
. The disciples of Christ are called His jewels, His precious and
peculiar treasure. He says, “They shall be as the stones of a crown.” “I
will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the
golden wedge of Ophir.”
Zechariah 9:16
;
Isaiah 13:12
. Christ looks
upon His people in their purity and perfection as the reward of all His
sufferings, His humiliation, and His love, and the supplement of His
glory—Christ, the great Center, from whom radiates all glory.
And we are permitted to unite with Him in the great work of
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redemption and to be sharers with Him in the riches which His death
and suffering have won. The apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian
Christians: “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not
even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? for ye
are our glory and joy.”
1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20
. This is the treasure
for which Christ bids us labor. Character is the great harvest of life.
And every word or deed that through the grace of Christ shall kindle in
one soul an impulse that reaches heavenward, every effort that tends to
the formation of a Christlike character, is laying up treasure in heaven.
Where the treasure is, there the heart will be. In every effort to
benefit others, we benefit ourselves. He who gives money or time
for spreading the gospel enlists his own interest and prayers for the
work, and for the souls to be reached through it; his affections go out
to others, and he is stimulated to greater devotion to God, that he may
be enabled to do them the greatest good.
And at the final day, when the wealth of earth shall perish, he
who has laid up treasure in heaven will behold that which his life has
gained. If we have given heed to the words of Christ, then, as we
gather around the great white throne, we shall see souls who have been
saved through our agency, and shall know that one has saved others,
and these still others—a large company brought into the haven of rest
as the result of our labors, there to lay their crowns at Jesus’ feet, and
praise Him through the ceaseless ages of eternity. With what joy will