In 2 Samuel 19:4, the message centers on grief, loss, and the hope of heaven. Explore what Scripture teaches about grief, loss, eternity, and hope, learning how heaven in view changes the way we process sorrow and love people. Rather than treating the passage as abstract theology, the sermon traces what these truths reveal about God, the gospel, and the way followers of Jesus are called to live.
The teaching brings biblical truth into the places where faith becomes deeply personal: fear, uncertainty, suffering, desire, and the questions we carry about what comes next. It invites listeners to let Scripture shape their perspective instead of allowing circumstances, emotions, or cultural assumptions to have the final word. The emphasis is on a durable hope that changes how we think, pray, endure, and respond in the present.
Along the way, the message engages themes including 2 Samuel 19:4, grief, loss, and the hope of heaven. These ideas help place the primary passage within the larger story of Scripture and show how its theology speaks to real spiritual formation. At its heart, the sermon helps answer questions such as: What does 2 Samuel 19:4 teach about grief, loss, and the hope of heaven? It also considers how should grief, loss, and the hope of heaven shape the way Christians live?
For someone studying this passage, exploring the Christian faith, or looking for practical biblical teaching, this sermon offers a clear path from the text to everyday discipleship. The invitation is to hear what Scripture says, receive it with humility, and take the next faithful step in following Jesus.
What does 2 Samuel 19:4 teach about grief, loss, and the hope of heaven? | How should grief, loss, and the hope of heaven shape the way Christians live? | How can believers apply 2 Samuel 19:4 in everyday life?
2 Samuel 19:4, grief, loss, and the hope of heaven, scripture teaches grief, the hope of heaven
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I want to preach from a place that that is really the fire that is in my heart. And as a pastor and and as someone who's grown up in this church for the majority of my life, my heart has always been for lost people, but it's almost always been for lost people that are in the church. Because there are many, and I'm not saying there's any in this room, but I know that many of us encounter them in our day-to-day life, who call themselves Christians, who call themselves followers of Jesus, but their lifestyle does not align with what they speak. And I want to teach on today. Today I want to teach on heaven a little bit, but I really want to talk about the fear of the Lord and specifically address people that think they're going to heaven, but they may not end up there. Because in Matthew 7, if you're taking notes again, the good news is 50% of my my message today is scripture. Okay? So, this better preach. Matthew 7 21. That's the wrong verse. It should be notes three. That's okay. Do y'all trust me today? We'll we'll get we'll get the scripture up here in a second. It says, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. I want to point something out here. The first thing that you'll notice is that the people that are saying Lord to to God, they're saying Lord, Lord. They're they're saying Lord twice. Anytime we see something repeated in scripture, it's to put emphasis on it, but it's but it's also a way to put emotion on it. We can see that in 2 Samuel 19:4 when David cried out with a loud voice. He said, "Oh, my son Abselum, my son, my son." When it's written twice, it's there's emphasis, but there's great emotion. And so, we have we have to see that the people that are saying, "Lord, Lord," to to Jesus, they're saying it with great emotion. And how many, you know, we can get a little emotional in in a charismatic church, right? We can we can cry a little bit in worship and it's and it's powerful. God moves in our emotions. But these people that are saying, 'Lord, Lord, they have great emotion. And it says in verse 22, many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? They believe in the power of the name of Jesus. They have great emotion. They're moving in in ministry. They're doing all these things. They believe in the gospel. They're emotionally invested. They're speaking God's messages and they're at work in the ministry. And we would think in reading this that that we as Christians, we should be doing all these things. We could even say that doing these things would make you a Christian. And yet, they're still going to hear, "Depart from me. I never knew you." Now, I will say I don't think you can be a Christian without moving in this way. You need to believe in the gospel. We need to to work in in ministry and move in ministry. We need to be emotionally invested and we need to speak the truth of God's word. Amen. But there's there's more to it than just that because it says in verse 23, then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. The Greek word there for knew when he says I never knew you is giscoco. Everybody say giscoco. >> It means I never intimately knew you or intimately known. There's other translations that say depart from me you who practice lawlessness. Now the Greek word for lawlessness is the word anomia. which means not being submitted to the authority of God. So we have these two things here. You didn't intimately know me and you're not submitted to me as God. And so we need to understand we're not talking about people and Christians and followers of Jesus who fall into sin and then repent. We can we can see this in Luke 17. 3-4. Pay attention and always be on your guard, looking out for one another. If your brother sins or misses the mark, solemnly tell him and reprove him. And if he repents and feels sorry for having sinned, you forgive him. Verse four, and even if he sins against you seven times in a day and turns to you seven times and says, "I repent. I am sorry." It says, you must forgive him. Give up resentment and consider the offense as recalled and analled. We're not talking about people that are repentant. We're talking about people who justify their sin and misuse the grace of God. It's the people that say, "Everybody has needs. I'm saved by grace. I can do this. I can live this way. It's okay." But Paul said this in Acts 20 verse 26. Therefore I test I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God. What is the whole council of God? It means the purpose of God. The purposes of God is that we would follow his commandments. that we would move in in power, in grace, and in love, but that we would walk in obedience. The entire council is not just that, oh, grace covers you and grace covers all your sins, but that grace is meant to empower you to run from sin. >> Grace is not a mercy. I've preached this many times before. Grace is not mercy. Grace is power. It's empowerment that that we receive and can walk in. being that for the love of God, we would keep his commandments and follow his ways in obedience, not just pray a prayer and get to go to heaven and just live however we want. That's who he's talking about when Jesus says, "Away from me, I never knew you." You might have prayed a prayer and you might be doing all this work, but you're living a completely different life in secret. We hear it and we see it often in these days when great men and women of God with huge ministries and churches around the world end up justifying their sin in their private life. And I have to wonder, Jesus came and rebuked the Pharisees because they were whitewashed tombs. They looked great on the outside, but on the inside Jesus could see their hearts. I have to wonder how many people only practice the ways of God in public or on Sunday morning like the Pharisees and live a completely different life in private where we make God our grace ticket to live like we want where Jesus is our homeboy and not our Lord and not the savior that he came to be. again where people can live in the world and act no different than the rest of the world and still take comfort in heaven. Are we truly not of this world? Paul said this to Timothy and we're actually going to preach this again in a few weeks because I'm going to do a series in second Timothy. But this is just so important for us today. Chapter 3 verse one. But understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, rec reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. avoid such people. I think verse five is is is really what I want to hit home on is when we have the appearance of godliness but we truly deny the grace of God that gives us the ability to run from sin. So in other words, it's these people who have the appearance of godliness and they make the statements like, "Grace covers me. Grace covers me." Listen, and I've said this already, but I just need to hit it home. Grace not only frees us from the penalty of sin, which is hell, >> but it frees us from the enslavement of sin. You can't have grace unless you believe. And you can't believe what you don't know. And so if people don't know the that grace empowers us to live godly and to live worthy, then how can they live worthy without that grace? Again in 2 Timothy verse 8 it says these men also opposed the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. We're going to hit that word disqualified here in a moment. But they will not get very far for their folly will be plain to all. Other translations say that they have depraved minds and counterfeit faith. Notice they have faith, but it's counterfeit. They are impostors. These are people that expect to enter into heaven, but Jesus will say, "Depart from me. I never knew you." And I and I'm just going to say this lovingly. I don't want anyone in this room to be counted in that number. >> I don't want anyone in this church, whether you're watching online or or here with us today. I don't want anyone to stand before the Lord and hear Jesus say, "Depart from me. I never knew you." It's It's kind of interesting. I was I was talking to Carlos before the service and he was looking at my watch. It's a really dope watch. This watch is $165,000 if it was real. It's not real. I got this on the back streets of Bangkok, y'all. But isn't it like many of us, we can dress the part but have no value? hear me. We can't be that kind of church. Yeah, >> we can't be that kind of people because to be an axio church to truly live worthy of the gospel requires us to walk in the grace and power and not just slap grace on us like a fake watch, >> but begin to to move and and and and follow him and and and I'm skipping I'm skipping ahead here a little bit, but when I first moved here to Franklin almost 25 years ago, I was in the fourth grade. I met my wife on the playground. It was awesome, right? Some of y'all know that story. I made a lot of new friends. I It took a long time for me to get used to the accents, but now I can turn the accent on whenever I want to. It's great. But I was concerned really early on because we were from the Northeast. We were from like close to Boston area and and everybody was either Catholic or not not going to church. And so I was sharing the gospel like in second and third grade because like it was pretty black and white. But then I moved down here to the south and everybody goes to church. >> Everybody goes to church. >> And so I start sharing the gospel with these these friends of mine. They're like, "Oh yeah, I know all about Jesus. I go to First Baptist, Second Baptist, Third Baptist, whatever it was." But then I'd find those same kids cussing and bullying other kids in school, lying and cheating and stealing from the from the teachers. And I'm like, what is going on here? Again, it didn't make sense. I don't know if I was just like this this dumb Christian kid that just like believed everybody was good, but I believe that if you called yourself a Christian, it had to have meant something. >> And that shifted so much in our day and age. And again, all my friends, they they attended church. They knew about God, but they didn't know God. They didn't know God enough to fear him and be reverent to him. Again, attending church and knowing about God is not the foundation for us to stand on in life. I love this verse in Matthew 7. Everyone then who hears these words of mine, what does it say? and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. In verse 26, and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. We can hear the words of God. We can know about God but not actually do what he says and fall. And this is the key for us today. So again, what is this foundation? What is this rock? Isaiah 33:6, he will be the sure foundation for your times. This is talking about Jesus. This is prophesying of the Messiah. A rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. Look at this. The fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. The foundation that should be our life is a reverential fear of the Lord. >> What am I what am I talking about? It's a holy reverence. It's a holy fear that lead scripture tells us the key to wisdom and knowledge is the fear of the Lord. Which should lead us to a place of obedience. >> It transforms our life from the inside to the outside. Again, the Pharisees and and the the religious people, they tried to fix everything on the outside, but didn't address their heart on the inside. But when we have a holy fear of God, it begins to touch on the heart more and more because look at this. Luke 12 verse two it says the time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed and all that is secret will be made known to all. What is everything that's covered up? Secrets. The intentions, motives of your heart, all of your thoughts will be made known to all. See, God doesn't just see you on Sunday morning. He sees you every day. He sees your heart. He sees your thoughts. He sees what your motives are, your intentions are. He sees all of it. Verse three, it says, "Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light." Does this not put a little bit of fear in us, >> and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear. When we don't when we don't live with this understanding that God not only sees everything but he knows everything. We can start to think that we can hide our sin. We can start to think that we can hide from God. Even like Adam and Eve when they sinned, what did they do? They ran and hid. They tried to cover them their shame up, not fully fearing the Lord and understanding that he is all around us. He's omnipresent. Because I can ask just very candidly, how much do you think that you can hide from God? And we would all probably say, I I don't think I can hide anything from God. Well, then I would question and I question myself, then why are you living and thinking like this? Why are your motives like that? Why are you trying to hurt this person or cheat that person? Why are you speaking to your spouse in this way? Why are you thinking these thoughts about this coworker or this boss? And the answer is usually pretty similar across the board. We can say, "Oh, I know I shouldn't be doing this. Oh, I know it's true, but I need to tell you the whole story. I need you to understand what I'm dealing with." Oh, pastor, you don't you don't get it. Like, you don't know what what I've been going through the last year, like multiple years with with my spouse. Does God not know? Does God not understand and still call us to walk in obedience? He sees all of it. And again, I'm I'm a big believer in therapy and going and seeing a a spiritfilled therapist. And it feels really good to share all of the behind the scenes from your point of view, but what about God's point of view? He sees all of it. He knows the truth even if we've forgotten it or chosen to forget it. >> We have this story that we want to tell and many times we justify the sinful act or words that we've said because we think that God doesn't understand and we can get to a place where we think God doesn't see our motives. Ezekiel 8:12 says, "Then the Lord said to me, son of man, have you seen what the leaders of Israel are doing with their idols in dark rooms? They are saying, "The Lord doesn't see us. He has deserted our land." Has God deserted this land? Has God left us? No. We can literally get to a place where we think we can hide things from God because here's what we do. We reduce God down to our level. Or many times we elevate ourselves to where God is at. Because how many of us know one of the greatest idols that many of us face is ourselves. >> It's what we want. It's what our flesh desires. And so the fear of God, knowing that he is with us all the time, KNOWING THAT HE SEES EVERYTHING, IT SHOULD KEEP US IN A PLACE WHERE he is elevated and we are here. It's no longer I'm seeing God eye to eye. It's Lord, you see all. You see my heart. You see my mind. You see every single thought that I have. And it's really interesting. I've never seen this before in scripture. And and and it should break our hearts today. Look at look at Isaiah 5. Isaiah is this is this great prophet and he's calling out evil. He's he's rebuking. He says, "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil." Man, this guy's just preaching. Come on. Those people that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. It's It's like a rap he's going off of right here. But here's what's wild. Again, here's this prophet. He He's rebuking. and he's doing all this stuff, but then he has a vision where he stands before God in the next chapter in in Isaiah 6, right? When the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, right? We've read this so many times in church. We read it often. And so, here's what happens. Isaiah is standing before God. And before he said, "Woe unto them." And what did he what does he say here? Woe is me. in the presence of God. Woe is me. >> For I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. church. When we see God, when we are so intimately intertwined with him, it brings us into this place where instead OF SAYING, "WOE TO THIS THIS GENERATION. WOE TO EVERYONE. LOOK AT THIS DARKNESS ALL AROUND ME." We reclude back and go, "Look at the darkness in me as I stand before the God of light. as I stand before the perfect King of all kings and I'm no longer blaming everyone else or everything else or trying to justify my sin. I just come to a place of conviction. They just say, "God, woe is me. I'm done blaming everyone else. I'm done justifying." Isaiah was convicted by the holiness, the perfection, the majesty of our God. And what's amazing is God then gives Isaiah the ability to walk in grace and power and to live worthy. >> Again, this this grace isn't just covering over my outward actions. It begins in the heart. It begins in that place of of holy reverence of God, you are here and I am here. And it's that grace that shifts us supernaturally where I have to have the right motives where I'm checking myself. Do I have the right motives here, Lord? Where we bring our thoughts to him? I have to have the right thoughts, Lord. I have to have the right intentions. And it will in turn produce the right actions. So when we're not spending time with God daily, when we're not reminded of him, reading his word, living in prayer, we lose our fear and our reverence of him. >> Just plain and simple. It's plain and simple. Look at Moses in Exodus 20 verse 20. Moses said to the people, this is awesome. Says, 'Do not fear. For God has come to test you that the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin. This this is like it feels like it's contradicting itself. I can see like a a Muslim debate happening here. Like here's where the word of God contradicts itself. But it says do not fear because God's come to test you. So what's the test? To see if his fear is in you. What Moses is doing is he's differentiating between being scared of God and the fear of God. Because what's the difference? The person who's scared of God has something to hide. The person who's scared of God has something to hide. But the person that fears God, they don't they don't say, "How close can I get to this sin without falling?" The person who fears God has nothing to hide and he's afraid of being away from God. The fear of the Lord, it means that we love to obey. We love to obey. We tremble at his word. We're passionate to obey. We'll obey him even if we don't understand. We'll obey him even if it hurts. We'll obey him even if we don't see a benefit for oursel. That's a big one right there. How does this help me out? God will obey obey him to completion. That is the fear of the Lord. The manifestation of the fear of the Lord. There's wisdom, there's knowledge, and there's obedience to his word. So, I want to shift a little bit and talk to you about heaven and how this really kind of correlates together because there is a judgment seat that all of us are going to have to face as believers. I'm just going to I'm going to skip ahead because I'm I'm low on time here. >> This is really fun. Paul shows us just this interesting take on heaven. And I'm going to skip down to 2 Corinthians 12 where he says, "I was caught up to the third heaven 14 years ago." Somebody say, "Third heaven." >> Y'all are like, "Let's get weird today." Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don't know. Only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. Thank you for the repetition there, Paul. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words. Things no human is allowed to tell. What is Paul talking about? Is this a vision of heaven? Is there a third heaven? It's interesting. There was there's a story that I read in preparation for this message. There was a young boy who got electrocuted. He was 10 years old. Got electrocuted in a bathtub and died and then was brought back to life. Spoiler alert. But he said that the moment that he was electrocuted, an angel pulled him out of his body and he said, "My feet landed on pure gold." He said, "There was a I was in a massive beautiful city and there was construction going on." And then Jesus came out and he gave him a tour of heaven and he said, "I saw some of our mansions and they weren't finished yet." And so he asked Jesus about it and Jesus said, "For every act of obedience that your parents are doing toward me on earth, they add another section to the mansion." It's kind of cool. >> And then Jesus opened up a curtain and said, "Hey, your dad is calling you back. You have to go >> and then he was brought back to life." There's so many stories that are that that kind of correlate with this and it's very cool. I was on the golf course this past week and talking to this random guy and and we were talking about heaven and he's like, "Oh, you know, heaven's not a place. It's a state of mind." I was like, "Sorry, brother. Heaven is a place and I'm going." 2 Corinthians 5'8, Paul says, "Yes, we are fully confident and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies for then we'll be at home with the Lord." Why would he want to be away from these earthly bodies? because he's a Christian. Because he's a believer. How do we know he's he's talking to believers? Because when a non-believer is away from their body, they're in hell. Just like we talked about last week, going on 2 Corinthians 5:9. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. Somebody say please him. >> Pleasing God. is an interesting thing to talk about in church because many times we just want to talk about how much Jesus loves you, right? And let me just tell you, God will never love you less than he loves you right now. But we are responsible for how pleased he is with us. Growing up, I was never really afraid of my parents not loving me when I made a mistake. My dad's not here, so I'm gonna just talk smack for a minute. My dad especially, whenever I did something wrong, if I lied or smacked one of my brothers or did something I shouldn't have, he'd make this statement and and this is going to trigger some of you today. He'd say, "I'm not mad. I'm just >> disappointed. >> There you go. Disappointed. >> Were we all in the same therapy session? Yeah. Okay, cool. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. The opposite of disappointed is pleased. Right? I just wanted my parents to be pleased with me and not disappointed. Again, I've gone through therapy. I'm good. All right. But that's why Paul said that we make it our aim to be pleasing to God. Why do we want to be well pleasing? Well, here's why. In 2 Corinthians 5:10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. All of us. So that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body. Somebody say in the body. >> This is in the church. Receive what is due for what he has done in the church or in the body. whether good or evil. Therefore, this is so good. Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God. And I hope it is known also to your conscience. So, we as believers, we're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive what is due for what we've done within the body of Christ, within the church. Remember when Britney preached a couple weeks ago if you were here? There are eternal judgments and eternal decisions and there are eternal rewards. And I love this in James 4:14. It says, "For what is your life? Is it even a vapor?" Remember, we have such a small moment in time. Because compared to eternity, this life is nothing. When you divide anything by eternity or when you divide any amount of time by infinity, what is the answer? Zero. So what you do in this zero time, this vapor of time is going to determine how you're going to spend eternity. Great movie Gladiator. What we do in life echoes in eternity. But the Christian way to to put it would be what we do with the cross determines where you're going to spend eternity. What you do with the cross determines where we're going to spend eternity. And I would follow it up by saying the way that we live as believers determines how we're going to spend eternity. Because if I said the way you live the next 24 hours, the next day will determine how you're going to spend the next hundred years on this earth. If you live that old, the way you live the next 24 hours will determine your housing, your car, your status, how much money you have, friends, family, all these things. Would you live it by chance or would you live it purposefully? If you only had this small measure of time to determine your future, my prayer would be that you would live it purposefully. So Paul makes this statement many times. He says, "Run to win. Run to win. Run the race." What are we winning exactly? 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?" Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Somebody say, "Amen." >> Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and I make it a slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. >> He's disciplining his body because IT'S ONE THING TO PREACH the truth. It's another thing to live it. >> It's another thing to call your flesh to live and submit under the authority of God. Second John verse 8 says, "Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward." Paul talks about being disqualified for the prize and John is here talking about losing what we worked for. What are they what are they talking about here? They're both talking about a reward in heaven that we will receive. But notice John says a full reward. Now, I'm not going to get into the weeds on all this with you because it's kind of interesting to just do your own research, but there are many scholars and theologians that wrestle with these statements like disqualified and full reward because it raises the question, is there a partial reward in heaven? Again, Paul was talking about being caught up in a third heaven. So, does that mean there's a second and first heaven? I'm not trying to break your brains today, okay? There is. But honestly, for me, I take it as a challenge. Whether there's a first heaven, second heaven, third heaven, seventh heaven, whatever, I want it all. I want the full reward. I want to run and live my life to receive the full reward. If there's a full reward, if there's a highest level of reward in heaven, if if there's a biggest house, a biggest mansion in heaven, that's the one I want, right? I if if there's if there's more for for us to to walk into with the Lord, WE SHOULD WANT EVERYTHING THAT GOD HAS FOR US. I don't want to stand before God and see what my life could have been in heaven if I had been fully obedient. So this exhortation from Paul and John, it's to challenge us to run with purpose, to live our life with purpose, live in such a way that you're going to get the full reward. So what does that look like? What are we working for? What race are we running? And why is Paul concerned about losing or being disqualified? 1 Corinthians 3 3 8-10. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. You will receive wages in heaven according to your labor on earth. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. Somebody say, "God's building." according to the grace of God given to me. Like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. Paul's saying, I'm a builder. And notice he says too that others are going to build as well. That we as a people, as a church, are building. And Christ Jesus, he is the foundation. He is the chief cornerstone. It says in verse 11, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone, talking to believers, builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, let me just stop it right here again. It's saying we're all going to build. We're building the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. And we have a choice. We can build and work for ourselves and be like the people that Jesus said, "Depart from me. I never knew you." Or we can build something eternal with our hearts in line with the way of Jesus. Gold, silver, jewels, that's eternal. Wood, hay, and straw, that's temporal. I'm going to show you how we know this in a moment. Paul says, "You get a choice every moment of your life whether you're going to build for the eternal or build for the temporal. We do everything to the glory of God." Again, you can build your life just purely for the flesh or you can build your life for the eternal. You can you can build your business. You can work your job as a way to build the kingdom of God. But if you see your business as a way to just make a lot of money and live comfortably, scripture tells us everything that's secret is going to be made known. Every thought, every intention of the heart, every motive is going to be made known. If you put fire under gold, silver, and precious stones, it makes them pure. Look at this verse 13. Each one's work will become manifest for the judgment day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what sort of work each one of us has done. When we stand before God, there will be fire and it will test the work that we have done here on this earth. And if you put fire under gold, silver, precious stones, it makes it pure. But if you put fire under wood, hay, and straw, what happens? Burns up. It's gone. The fire of God's judgment will show if a person's work in the kingdom has any eternal value. Now, here's what's interesting. It goes into verse 14. It says if the verse if the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward in heaven. And if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss. But here's what it says. Though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Notice the builder will get saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames. And I just want to tell you today, God doesn't want you to just make it. God wants to reward you because he's a good father and he wants to give good gifts to his children. He wants you to get the full reward. Do do you hear his heart in this? Because as Americans, we should be preparing for retirement. And and that's not a stupid thing to do. I'm I'm I'm dealing with a lot of pastors right now in our network that have not prepared for retirement because they thought Jesus was coming back in their lifetime. And now we have an epidemic of churches with no pastors. But the scripture tells us in Proverbs 13:22, "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. But can you just imagine for a second on the day that you retire, your bank closes doors and you can't get your money or the stock market crashes, social security goes bankrupt and can't make any more payments and you get nothing. It's kind of it's kind of hard to imagine, right? And there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there saying that it that might happen. And it's closer than you think. But really, that's the description that God uses through Paul to desc
