Nebraska City Church Of Christ's Podcast

Labor Day is set aside to celebrate the value and dignity of work. The Bible has some concrete things to teach us about work. Work is not a curse, but part of our created purpose so that we can serve God. The curse is increase hardship, not work. In fact, work is a reflection of the God who has been working from the beginning. By design, work brings various benefits to others and us. This does not mean that rest is bad. Idleness is bad but rest is good, endorsed, and even instructed by God.

Mt 5:6: Hunger can be a blessing, especially when it is a true, powerful hunger for righteousness because this is a hunger that drives us toward God, who is the only one that can truly satisfy, unlike the things of the world which leave us starving all the more even if we can't feel the starvation.

Mt 5:5 - The blessedness of meekness is for those who are meek even in their anger because their disposition is controlled by God, not by self-centeredness. As a result, meekness serves others with gentle humility because it knows that blessedness comes not from what you can aggressively grasp for in this earth, but from the inheritance God has promised to His people.

Mt 5:4: Even though Christians mourn, they have blessedness even in their mourning because they will be comforted through the Lord. Whether mourning is caused through affliction, though the world's estrangement from God, or from one's own sin, God extends blessedness. This challenges the belief that Christians are to always be happy, even God himself mourns.

Mt 5:3: According to the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, one of the characteristics of living under the reign of God is the blessing of poverty in Spirit. This goes beyond mere humility and refers to recognition that one is nothing and depends on God in all things.

Mt 7:21-27; 5:3-16: The Sermon on the Mount instructs us how to actually think and to act, which means it is not just an impossible idealistic goal for us, but instructions on what we are to put into action in our lives. This means that God has set the bar high for Christians and expect great things from them.

Scripture gives several pictures of eternal life for the righteous when we pass from this life. Among them are God's house which has plenty of room prepared by Christ, a banquet or wedding feast in which we are at Abraham's bosom, the seat of honor, the eternal, heavenly kingdom in which God reigns and all enemies are destroyed, the garden of God, or paradise, which is part of the New Jerusalem where all that has come as the result of sin has been undone.

A picture is worth a thousand words. The Bible gives several pictures of Hell which indicates that Hell is endless emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual anguish that comes from being eternally cast away from the presence of the Lord. But God has provided a way of escape at great cost through the Gospel, the death and resurrection of his son for our sins. If we believe and accept him as our crucified and risen Lord and savior, we can be saved.

According to scripture unbridled freedom is not freedom but bondage. The only freedom is found in submission to and dependence on Jesus Christ.