OUR LORD WHO REWARDS OUR PARTICIPATION BEYOND EXPECTED DUTY IN THE WORK OF HIS KINGDOM

1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 14 says this;

In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

Those who preach the gospel are permitted by the Lord to receive a wage from the church body as they work to broadcast the good news of salvation to those who are to be saved.

However, the Apostle Paul, who preached the gospel over a wide area, relinquished the right to earn a living as a preacher but rather supported himself financially by working a regular job as a tent-maker while working as a preacher of the gospel.

Because the duty assigned to him was preaching, it was his expected sevice before God to preach and so by preaching, he had no reward. He was merely discharging the trust committed to him.

Paul explains further in the chapter that to get a reward for preaching, he preached for free so that his efforts of presenting the gospel to people far and wide at his own expense would be rewarded in heaven.

Let us serve the Lord beyond our expected level of service for it is from this that our reward in heaven is given.

Jesus taught his disciples this principle just after his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John chapter 9 verses 34 - 38. The passage goes like this;

 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 

Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 

I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Here, the Lord calls us to voluntarily join in the work of the harvest and it is a time of gladness because as we participate willingly, we share in the crops for eternal life with our co-labourers. 

Amen.