Bulletin Articles
God Rewards Those Who Seek Him
Hebrews 11:6 “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.”
Among the promises God made to Abraham was the promise that he’d be "the father of many nations", which is in fact what the name Abraham means. The anticipation of having offspring numbering like the sand on the seashore or the stars in the sky would have been tough to deal with for any of us, especially as we turned one hundred years old and only had one kid. But not for Abraham. He believed what God had promised, and in return, God gave him seventy-five more years on earth to roam around living in a tent and some more kids that would hardly amount to even a handful of sand, let alone an entire seashore. It would seem God had failed to meet His side of the covenant, but Abraham’s faith was special, as we can read about in Genesis and Hebrews. He knew God would be faithful to His promises, in his lifetime or afterwards.
Flash forward a few thousand years—Jesus is now telling His listeners a story about a rich man and a very poor man. In the story, both men die. The rich man is taken to a place of torment for his misdeeds and lack of faith, which is separated by a large canyon from the other place where the poor man was taken. We’ve read this story many times in Luke 16, and often focus on what happens to the two men in the afterlife. Perhaps what we gloss over is this beautiful picture of God fulfilling His promise to Abraham.
The apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 3:29, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” Abraham never got to see his family grow exponentially before his eyes. There were no kings or nations that had come from the kids he’d had during his life. Yet, God fulfilled His promise to Abraham through Jesus, creating a countless family of faithful sons and daughters.
God knows how to reward the faithful who seek Him. Perhaps the greatest reward for father Abraham is to welcome, comfort and embrace every one of his spiritual kids thru Christ after we die and enter eternity—just like Lazarus in the story above. God promises to reward us for our faith, too. Let’s work hard to believe and trust in our God, and seek Him at all costs, just like our father Abraham.
