In other words, whether you're rich or whether you're poor, if your foundation is Jesus, it's the same alright?
Then it says: no matter what you use to build your house, in that day it will be revealed with fire. Hang on a second - are we talking about saved people here? Yes. Are we talking about fire? Yes. Fire and saved people - does that go together? Yes.
It says: that day will reveal it with fire; and what the builder built that can remain in God's kingdom will be celebrated; but what he built that cannot remain in God's kingdom - it will be burned up. The builder himself will be saved, yet only as one escaping through the flames of heaven. Hmm…
So here's my question: if you entered into heaven today, what parts of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up?
I'm talking to people who've given their Saturday to study God's word right? I don't need to lead you to the Lord right? So now that you're like forgiven and "in", my question is: now that you're in, what on your life will last?
The question isn't: are you going to go to heaven; it's obvious the builder's saved, and he's saved to the end. It's not that the builder's not saved. He himself is saved, yet as only one escaping through the... flames of heaven.
Dallas Willard, the great Christian philosopher, calls that passage the Flames of Heaven. One rabbi says it this way: that the flames of heaven is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away.
The invitation of Jesus, and at the epistle writers, is this: whatever's on your life right now, that cannot exist in heaven, I urge you to go ahead and get it off your life now.
It might help you to understand, that in the New Testament, the word translated "judgement". When I say judgement, what images come to your mind immediately? A guy, normally a white guy, in a black robe with a wig, correct? And he's got a gavel, and he's pronouncing people guilty or not guilty. Is that not the image we get, when I say: the judgement is passed?
Any time you're reading a piece of literature, you have to ask yourself three questions: who wrote it; who was it written to; how would they have taken it, at the time?
Was that the image of judgement in the ancient Hebrew culture? The word translated judgement in the New Testament is actually an apple-farming term that means "to prune an apple tree, in order to increase fruitfulness". The word is Colossus.
In December you've got three times as many apples. You've got all these small apples, and you might think: well, if you leave them all there, you've got three times as many apples; but if you do that, there are not enough nutrients in the tree to make proper sized apples; so you would have three times as many apples, but no one would buy them. They'd be small, and they'd be soft; so what you do is you cut the excess apples off, and it drives the nutrients in the tree to the rest of the apples, which gives us proper-sized apples that we eat. That is the word colossus.
So in the ancient world, when the word colossus was used, they didn't think of a black-robe-wearing judge with a white wig and a gavel; they thought of a farmer with pruning shears. What's on you that is hurting you, and I'm going to cut that off. Think about how Jesus talks about judgment. He says: in that day I will sit as a vine dresser, and you're the vine; and whatever branches on you are not bearing good fruit - I'll cut them off. In other words, I'm going to look at your life and whatever's on your life that's hurting you - I'm going to prune it.
So think about the scripture Jesus said. In English it says: judge yourself here, so you won't be judged there. A better way to say it would be: prune yourself here, so you can avoid pruning there.
In other words, whatever's on your life that can't exist in God's good world - go ahead and get it off now - that way you avoid God pruning it off of you anyway.