Colossians 3:22 – “Bondservants, obey in all things your masters, according to the flesh... (notice this) ...not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do - do it heartily, as if you were doing it to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you really are serving the Lord Jesus Christ.”
That’s an amazing scripture there, with a lot in it. I'll just drop a few thoughts out there. He says: servants… now obey, or yield, or submit to those who are over you. He's talking about their natural serving. They were forced to serve people - and those people were quite brutal, and quite harsh.
He says: in your serving, don't do your serving with eyeservice. What does that mean? Eyeservice means that you show off, when the boss is around. It means that you act in a certain way, when you know people are watching. Eyeservice means that I look out to see if anyone's watching, and then I up my game.
He says that when you're doing eyeservice, you're not genuine, you're pretending. Basically, you're doing it as a man-pleaser. You're trying to get the approval of men; and he says: in our service, whatever it happens to be, whether it's a big job, a little job, a tedious job, an insignificant job, an unseen job... whatever you do, in all things, don't operate trying to impress people.
Rather, have a sincere heart. Do it from the heart, out of a reverence that God is watching. Whatever you do, whatever task you have, do it full-heartedly, not negatively, not reluctantly, not half-heartedly, not with a bad attitude. Do it as if you're doing it to the Lord Himself, not to people.
The reason you can do that, is because you know God is watching you, and you know that you are in the process of qualifying for the reward of inheritance.
He starts to now talk about the reward being an ‘inheritance’ that you must qualify for. It's a reward. The key thing is, there is a reward. God is watching everything you do; but more than that, He's watching how you do it.
All of us have had an experience of people who are just slack - they're inconsistent. Their heart is not in things, they don't do things well. They have no revelation that all the behaviour is noticed by God, and that its disqualifying them for eternity.
“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men - knowing of the Lord you receive the reward of inheritance” - now that changes the way you look at every task. Whether people acknowledge it, or don't acknowledge it; whether they are happy with me, or unhappy with me; whether they see it, or don't see it - is irrelevant! God sees it all; and I am in my process of qualifying.
As we'll see in another session, our life now is not our main ministry. Our life now is our preparatory ministry. In the millennium, and in the ages to come, we enter our primary ministry. All that you do now is your apprenticeship, it’s preparing you. No one can decide how you will respond to the preparation process.
God's got lots of things in His preparation process, including being ignored, overlooked, treated unjustly, people carrying on like you've done nothing, others getting the reward for things you've done... all that kind of stuff! It's all about the development of your heart - that your longing, and desire, is to please the Lord.
The last one then, on this theme here, on that point is that Jesus motivated His disciples by the promise of eternal reward. In Matthew 19:27, Peter answered and said: we've left everything, and followed You - so what shall we get? That's a good question isn't it? We've sacrificed. We've given up a lot. We're serving You. We're whole-heartedly following You. We've given up our business, we've given up our lives to follow You. What are we going to get?
And I said I assuredly... (In other words, you can guarantee, you can write this on your shorts, you can guarantee it) ...I say to you that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on His throne of glory... (that when Jesus, that's the Son of Man, when He comes in His kingdom, and in His glory) ...you who have followed Me shall sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel.