Finally, then, Vindication. There will be vindication before one's enemies.
Revelations 3:9 - "Indeed I'll make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and they're not but lie, I'll make them come and worship before your feet, and know that I have loved you."
People misunderstand us. People shame us. They accuse us, they criticise, they laugh, they mock, all these kinds of things. Some people actually persecute and oppose Christians and believers.
What He's saying is that there will come a day when God will vindicate, or He will validate, the choices we have made, before those who have made fun of us, or laughed at us, or belittled us, or even persecuted us. That means, it doesn't really matter what people are doing - you can bless them - because there's one day you'll stand in a place of honour; and they'll be in a place of shame, and God will be saying: well, you had your day, and you laughed, but here I want to tell you My opinion, which is an eternal opinion. This enables you then to... if you get the concept of these rewards in your heart, you can walk through all kinds of stuff, because they just run off you - they're not important.
In looking at the rewards, the first three deserve special attention:
* Eternal Intimacy
* Eternal Authority
* Eternal Glory
They require us we have a look at them especially, because they are things particularly related to our original design as sons. When God designed us to be a son or a daughter, when He created man, He created us for these things:
(1) Intimate Relationship - notice then, one of the major rewards is intimacy with Him.
(2) Secondly, He created us to exercise Authority and Dominion on His behalf; and in the coming kingdom one of the rewards is the level of authority and dominion that are appropriate for what we've done on the earth.
(3) The third one is Glory. We're called on the earth to represent the Father, or show His nature, what He is like; and doing that now on the earth, allowing Him to transform us so we represent Him in His nature. In the age to come, there'll be a glory on our life. We'll go into those in more detail.
We have an overview of the seven kind of broad categories of rewards, and now we want to look at the first two rewards, and I want to go into them in a bit more detail. The first one we're going to look at is the issue of Eternal Intimacy.
Eternal means: it goes on, with no time limit on it. It goes on, and it does not cease, it does not stop - it is forever ongoing. Intimacy means a close personal relationship, where you become known by someone, and they become known by you. There's a revealing of hearts to one another at a greater depth.
In all relationships, intimacy or close connection grows and develops. Even when you think you know your wife... you don't really know her. There's more to learn! With God, no matter how much we think we know of Him, there is more to know. Paul describes it as the 'unsearchable riches of Christ', or the 'excellent knowledge of Christ'.
In looking through this area of Eternal Intimacy then, it's clearly related to our preparation now, so I want to go through several descriptions of it. In the Bible they don't just have a heading 'Eternal Intimacy', and then explain it all underneath - no topic is like that! The way God lays out the Bible is, He puts a little bit all over the place, like seeds in a bag - and you've got to hunt for it; and when you hunt for it, and bring it together, you'll find there's a bit on it here.
There's a bit on it there, there's a bit on it there, there's a bit over here, there's a bit - in fact there's been a bit right through the whole Bible, if you just knew what to look for. They use often (because this is a spiritual concept), stories to help you:
If you look in the Old Testament, there's stories like the story of Isaac and his father, who sent out the servant to get a bride for him. There are all these details about the bride, and the finding of the bride, which is a referral to God Himself searching to find people who'll have a love relationship with Him, and there's all sorts of characteristics about the bride.
Then you find there's the story of Ester; and Ester's a story about a bride, about a person who was selected. Why was she selected? There must have been some reason for being selected for the role of greatest intimacy with the King.
You see many stories like that; and there's the natural story, and then, when you look beyond it, you see it's a prophetic picture of something in the future. All through the Bible they've got these stories. One of the stories we've already seen, so I won't go into it too much, is the Parable of the 10 Virgins…