“And the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” I want you to get this picture of a time that’s coming in the future for the dead to be judged, verse 18 says, and then listen to this phrase, “A time for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great.”
– Revelation 11:18
Did you hear that? There is a time coming, Christian, servant of God, when your God Almighty, the Holy God of the Universe will reward his servants. He will reward those who fear his name, both small and great. Live for this today. Don’t live for what others think about you today. Don’t live for worldly applause today.
Oh, don’t live for yourself and even your own commendation today. Live for this. Live for coming reward from God. And in view of coming reward from him, fear his name. Serve him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When a lot of people are looking and when nobody is looking, knowing that your audience is in heaven. You live for an audience of one and you are living for his reward alone.
This Verse Leads Us to Focus on Our Heavenly Reward
Oh God, I pray this in my own life. I pray this for every single person praying with me right now that you would help us to live for eternal reward from you. You would help us to set our minds and our hearts today. Not on earthly reward, not on earthly pleasures and treasures, but on heavenly treasures and pleasures, on heavenly reward.
God, we pray that you would help us to fear and revere your name today. Help us to walk in the fear of you. With our eyes, the eyes of our hearts fixed on you. At every moment, God, may our thoughts be pure. May our desires be holy and honoring to you. May our words be holy and honoring to you.
Revelation 11:18 Leads Us to Live for What Matters
Lord, may our decisions, may our actions, may everything we do today, be done in the fear of your name. Help us not to live for what’s going to matter just tomorrow or the next day or the next day or 10 years from now, but for what’s going to matter 10 trillion years from now. We pray that you would help us to live for eternal reward.
And even as we pray this, God, we praise you for your grace and your mercy, that we would have the hope of eternal reward from you, the Holy God of the universe. Oh God, that’s only possible by your grace in our lives, by your mercy. So help us, we pray, to live for your reward today. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, who makes reward possible by his death on the Cross, his Resurrection from the grave, his life in us now. We pray that you would help us to live for your reward in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
