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Christ’s Object Lessons
And the means used to bless others will bring returns. Riches
rightly employed will accomplish great good. Souls will be won to
Christ. He who follows Christ’s plan of life will see in the courts of
God those for whom he has labored and sacrificed on earth. Gratefully
will the ransomed ones remember those who have been instrumental
in their salvation. Precious will heaven be to those who have been
faithful in the work of saving souls.
The lesson of this parable is for all. Everyone will be held re-
sponsible for the grace given him through Christ. Life is too solemn
to be absorbed in temporal or earthly matters. The Lord desires that
we shall communicate to others that which the eternal and unseen
communicates to us.
Every year millions upon millions of human souls are passing
into eternity unwarned and unsaved. From hour to hour in our varied
life opportunities to reach and save souls are opened to us. These
opportunities are continually coming and going. God desires us to
make the most of them. Days, weeks, and months are passing; we
have one day, one week, one month less in which to do our work. A
few more years at the longest, and the voice which we cannot refuse
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to answer will be heard saying, “Give an account of thy stewardship.”
Christ calls upon every one to consider. Make an honest reckoning.
Put into one scale Jesus, which means eternal treasure, life, truth,
heaven, and the joy of Christ in souls redeemed; put into the other
every attraction the world can offer. Into one scale put the loss of
your own soul, and the souls of those whom you might have been
instrumental in saving; into the other, for yourself and for them, a life
that measures with the life of God. Weigh for time and for eternity.
While you are thus engaged, Christ speaks: “What shall it profit a man,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Mark 8:36
.
God desires us to choose the heavenly in place of the earthly.
He opens before us the possibilities of a heavenly investment. He
would give encouragement to our loftiest aims, security to our choicest
treasure. He declares, “I will make a man more precious than fine
gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.”
Isaiah 13:12
. When
the riches that moth devours and rust corrupts shall be swept away,
Christ’s followers can rejoice in their heavenly treasure, the riches that
are imperishable.