Reward of Service
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fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree.” We
behold life’s desert “rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” [
Isaiah 35:1
.]
Christ delights to take apparently hopeless material, those whom
Satan has debased and through whom he has worked, and make them
the subjects of His grace. He rejoices to deliver them from suffering,
and from the wrath that is to fall upon the disobedient. He makes His
children His agents in the accomplishment of this work, and in its
success, even in this life, they find a precious reward.
But what is this compared with the joy that will be theirs in the
great day of final revealing? “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but
then face to face;” now we know in part, but then we shall know even
as also we are known. [See
1 Corinthians 13:12
.]
It is the reward of Christ’s workers to enter into His joy. That joy,
to which Christ Himself looks forward with eager desire, is presented
in His request to His Father, “I will that they also, whom Thou hast
given Me, be with Me where I am.” [
John 17:24
.]
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The angels were waiting to welcome Jesus, as He ascended after
His resurrection. The heavenly host longed to greet again their loved
Commander, returned to them from the prison-house of death. Eagerly
they pressed about Him as He entered the gates of heaven. But He
waved them back. His heart was with the lonely, sorrowing band of
disciples whom He had left upon Olivet. It is still with His struggling
children on earth, who have the battle with the destroyer yet to wage.
“Father,” He says, “I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me,
be with Me where I am.”
Christ’s redeemed ones are His jewels, His precious and peculiar
treasure. “They shall be as the stones of a crown,”—“the riches of
the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” [
Zechariah 9:16
;
Ephesians
1:18
.] In them “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be
satisfied. [
Isaiah 53:11
.]
And will not His workers rejoice when they, too, behold the fruit
of their labors? The apostle Paul, writing to the Thessalonian converts,
says: “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
.] And he exhorts
the Philippian brethren to be “blameless and harmless,” to “shine as
lights in the world; holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in