John Bevere - You Have a Purpose
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All right, so we’re on session four already; can you believe it? I’m driven by the attorney. Are you enjoying this? If you enjoyed that, you’ll really enjoy what’s coming because the best three are about to come. This is why we do this: we want to get to these sections. But you know, there’s so much I’m going to skip in the book. I mean, there’s no way— I actually almost had a meltdown the other night, and my good wife Lisa sat me down and said, «John, you can’t preach this whole book in succession.» I said, «You’re right.» So there’s a lot I’m really leaving out, like talking about our glorified bodies, talking about the relocation of Heaven and the timeline, the Thousand-Year Millennial reign of Christ, and all these amazing things that are well covered in the book. That’s why I’m really hoping that you will read this book. But I do want to make a quick mention about Heaven; we’ve got to talk a little bit about Heaven.
Okay, so I want to bring you to my favorite scripture about Heaven that really describes it, and that’s Hebrews 12:22–24. I’ve kind of listed it out; this is almost the verbatim scripture—there are a few things edited out. It says, «You have come to Mount Zion.» Everybody say Zion; you’re going to hear that a lot in the next two sections—and to the city of the Living God, to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Now look what’s there in the city of God: to an innumerable company of angels. I love that; God says «innumerable"—that’s a big number. The general assembly.
Now, who is the general assembly? I personally believe that is the Old Testament saints who came from Abraham’s bosom. Then you have the Church of the firstborn, which are the saints that have gone on to their reward already, right? And then you have God, of course, and then you have the spirits of just men made perfect. Now hold that thought; I’m going to talk about that in a minute. Then you have Jesus, and then you have, of course, the blood sprinkled that speaks better things than that of Abel. Who are the spirits of just men made perfect? I believe that’s you and me. Doesn’t the Bible tell us in Hebrews 4:16 to come boldly to the throne of grace? That’s not talking about us after we pass from this life; it’s talking about us right now. You can visit the throne often; you can go as much as you want. The gates are wide open to you because you are one of His own. Isn’t that amazing? I love that.
Paul made this statement; this was a little bit more than just going to the throne in prayer. Paul said in 2 Corinthians, «I was caught up to the third heaven 14 years ago—whether in my body or out of my body, I don’t know; only God knows.» You’ve got to remember; we will have bodies. We’re not going to be like these spirits floating around on clouds; we’re going to have bodies. We’re going to have arms, we’re going to have hands. We’re going to look just like Jesus did when He was interacting with the disciples after He was raised from the dead. That’s exactly what we’re going to look like because when He appears, we’re going to be just like Him. I love that! Isn’t that good?
You know, one of my dear friends—I’ve known this man for years; he’s a great pastor, and he was on the Los Angeles Police Department. His first night in ministry was October 1979. He came into his home, and there was death everywhere, and there was his wife in the corner of the staircase just weeping and sobbing. Well, it turns out their 10-year-old son was watching Monday Night Football and accidentally pulled the little portable TV into the bathtub. He was dead when my friend found him. He said, «You know, I was LAPD; if I would have found your son that way, I would have pronounced him dead and called the coroner.» But he started praying, and finally, the paramedics got there. For 45 minutes, the EKG line was just a straight line, and Tom wouldn’t give up; he just kept praying. Finally, he just said, «After 45 minutes, God, I don’t have the faith, but there’s another faith, the gift of faith in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. I need that faith.» He said something hit the top of his head, and when it hit, right about here he said, «You will live and not die.» All of a sudden, the heartbeats started going beep, beep, beep, beep. They rushed him down; his flesh had gone from pale to vibrant. Everything changed; they got him to the hospital. He thought, «Wow, what a miracle!»
But the doctors pulled him into a room and said, «Your son, if he survives, will have a .01 IQ because he had a meltdown; there was kidney material in the catheter.» His body had a meltdown. Seven months his son was in a coma. Seven months after playing worship music, he opened his eyes. My friend looked at him and said, «What’s your name?» He said it; he said, «What’s my name? What’s our phone number?» He ended up graduating as the president of his high school class. He ended up graduating with a 4.0 at UCLA and went to a Bible school. But the thing that was so interesting: when he came back, he told his dad, «Dad, when the TV hit the water, I never felt a thing. An angel grabbed my right arm and pulled me right out of my body.»
He said, «We went through this tunnel at the most accelerated rate, and my feet landed literally on a street made of pure gold.» He said, «It wasn’t a golden state, Dad; it was pure gold.» He said, «It was a massive city; it was beautiful.» He said there was construction going on. He said there were all the people from our family that had gone on, our friends that had gone on, who knew the Lord, and they were there to meet me. When my feet landed on the street, there was wrestling, and all of a sudden the crowd parted, and here comes Jesus. He said, «Jesus gave me a tour of heaven.» He said, «Dad, I actually saw some of our mansions, and they weren’t finished.» He said, «I asked Jesus about it,» and He said, «For every act of obedience that your parents are doing toward Me on the earth, they add another section into their mansion.»
And then Jesus opened up a curtain that looked like a curtain and said, «You have to go back; your dad is calling you back.» He said, «But I’ve called you to be a preacher,» and so he came back, and he is now married with a couple of kids. But anyway, Heaven is a real place, just as hell is a real place. It’s a very real place. People that have gone there that I know say there are colors in heaven that we don’t even have on earth. I’m so glad because I am color-challenged; some people call it color blindness—I won’t confess that all the way! But anyway, you know there are flowers—the flowers are gorgeous. They’re flowers like we don’t have on the earth. They say when you walk on the grass, it literally springs back up. Everything is living in heaven. You literally can walk underwater in heaven. There are so many amazing things that I have heard from friends who have gone there and come back or from people who have written about it. I absolutely love the subject.
But anyway, we need to talk about that part about the house being finished. Okay, and that’s what I want to zero in on for the rest of this session. I want to talk about the believer’s Judgment seat of Christ from here on out, and it’s going to be good! I want to go to 2 Corinthians, and in 2 Corinthians 5:8, Paul writes, «Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.» Now the first thing I want to point out is that without a doubt, Paul is talking to only Christians. How do we know that? Because when an unbeliever is away from the body, they are in hell, as we have seen in our last two sessions. Only those who have a genuine saving relationship with Jesus Christ through His blood and His lordship are at home with the Lord. So we know that Paul is talking about believers right now; he’s talking about believers.
If we go to verse 9, he said, «Therefore we make it our aim"—aim simply means «our goal"—"whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him.» Now I love that—not just pleasing but well-pleasing. You know, it reminds me of a story. Way back, our son Addison is turning 30 this year; I’m so proud of him. He’s got these beautiful children; he’s such a great dad—much better than I was. I remember when they were about 17, and I think our youngest was about nine. All four boys were at dinner, and God had put this in my heart to say to them, «Guys, do you know that you can’t do one thing to cause your mother and me to love you any more than we love you?»
I said, «Okay, do you know that you can’t do one thing to cause your mother and me to love you any less than we love you?» They were like, «Oh wow, that’s great!» But then I looked at them and said, «But you are in charge of how pleased we are with you,» and they all just went, «Oh!» You know you can’t do a thing to cause God to love you any more than He loves you, and you can’t do a thing to cause Him to love you any less than He loves you as His child. But we are responsible for how pleased He is with us. That’s why Paul said we make it our aim to be well-pleasing.
Why? Because «we must all"—who’s all here? Only Christians; he’s talking about believers right up here—"before the Judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.» Wow! Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. That’s heavy right there. We, as believers, are going to stand before the Judgment seat of Christ. Now, if you look at the word «judgment seat,» that is a Greek word, bema. What is the definition of that word? It is a raised platform mounted by steps and usually furnished with a seat used by officials in addressing an assembly, often on judicial matters. In other words, the writers of the Bible—remember, they’re trying to relate what God is revealing to them in terms that the people can understand. The Romans were responsible for this. If we go to the next one, it was the judicial bench of a city court in the Roman Empire. It’s where Pilate passed judgment regarding Jesus.
So I want to go back and just review again: judgment—if you remember back in our first session—is simply a decision. Everybody say, «A decision for or against,» resulting from an investigation. So the judgments or decisions rendered to believers at that judgment seat are going to be eternal. Remember, eternal judgments—eternal decisions. Are you with me? So even for the believers, the judgments that are rendered at that seat are going to be eternal. In other words, there are never going to be changes; there are never going to be alterations; there are never going to be revisions. They’re going to stand forever. Now, James makes this statement: «For what is your life? Is it even a vapor?»
Now, if James were alive today, I don’t believe he would have written it this way; he would have written it differently. He would have said, «For what is your life? Isn’t it even zero?» Why? Because we know, through simple mathematics, that James did not know and understand this: any finite number divided by infinity is equal to zero. All right, that’s simple mathematics, right? So if you take 80 and divide it by infinity, you get zero. If you take 120 years—let’s say you live to be 120 years; that’s pretty long—and you divide it by eternity, you get zero. So you know what he’s saying here? He’s saying that what we do in this zero time is going to determine how we’re going to spend eternity, right?
Therefore, you know, here’s the truth that we’ve got to get: what we do with the cross determines where we’re going to spend eternity. We all know that—heaven and hell, right? But the way we live as believers determines how we’re going to spend eternity. Are you with me? Let me help you understand the gravity of this—not the gravity, but the excitement of this. Suppose I looked at you and said, «All right, the way you live for the next 24 hours, one day, will determine how you’re going to spend the next thousand years on this earth.» Let’s say we could live to be a thousand years, right? The car you drive, the neighborhood you live in, your neighbors, the type of house you have, the views from your house, the people you work with, the job you have—for the next thousand years—are going to be determined by how you live the next 24 hours. How would you live the next 24 hours? Would you live it by chance, or would you live it purposefully? You would live it with great purpose, correct? Yet this is nothing compared to what we’re talking about because one day, divided by 365,000 days—the number of days in a thousand years—is still a finite number.
So let me go a little further. Let’s say I looked at you and said, «All right, the way you live for the next 24 hours, one day, will determine how you’re going to spend the next million years.» Now we can’t even relate to a million years. Why? Because Adam was only six thousand years ago; Abraham was four thousand years ago. We don’t even have a reference point. But the job you have, the people you work with, what you’re doing, the neighborhood you live in, the car you drive, the people that live next door to you, the views you have from your house—all this is going to be determined by how you live the next day for the next million years.
How would you live the next day? You would live it with great purpose, right? Yet that’s nothing compared to what I’m talking to you about because one day, divided by 365 million days—the number of days in a million years—is still a finite number. What we do in this zero time determines how we’re going to spend eternity. Are you getting this? Could this be why the Apostle Paul tells us, with urgency, to receive our maximum reward? Look what he says here: «Run to win!» Right? Everybody say, «Run to win!» All athletes are disciplined in their training; they do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. Now this is the word of God that I’m reading here, okay? He said we’re living in a way to receive the maximum eternal prize. Are you seeing that—or the maximum reward?
Look what the Apostle John said in his elder years—he is actually in his 90s when he pens these words—how many of you know when people get to that age, they get that father anointing, right? In other words, you need to listen because they can say a whole lot in a few words, right? Look what John says: «Look to yourselves that we do not lose those things we worked for"—remember Paul likens that to being disqualified—"lest after preaching to others, I myself am disqualified.» «Look to yourselves that we do not lose those things we work for, but that we may receive a full reward.» So here’s Paul talking about the reward as well. But notice he identifies a full reward. Now for him to say full reward means what? It means there’s a partial reward scenario, and there’s a no reward scenario.
Now isn’t it interesting that he doesn’t say, «Hey, live in such a way that you’re going to get a partial reward?» Why doesn’t he do that? Because God—now listen to me—God wants you to receive a full reward. Can I tell you something? As a father, when my boys were younger—right? They’re living at home; actually, I’ve got a few of them still living at home—I kind of like it, right? Italian family—the boys stay! When our boys were younger, I remember this so distinctly. I looked at them and said, «Guys, I really want to reward you, but as a good father, I’m not going to reward you unless you earn it or deserve it.» Why? Because if I reward my son without him earning it or deserving it, I take away incentive. And how many of you know incentive is a good thing?
Well, God, our Father, is the same way. That’s why He’s exhorting us through these men: run with purpose. Live in such a way that you’re going to get the full reward, not the partial reward. Can you say amen to that? Why is that? Because if we go to the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthian Church—oh, this is so magnificent; there’s so much time back from this—Paul said, «You are God’s building.» Everybody say, «We are God’s building.» We’ll go through that in the next session. All right, «You are God’s building. Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder.» Notice Paul is saying he’s a builder. Now others are building; notice others are going to build right on it, and we’re going to talk about this in the next session. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one we have already laid, which is Jesus Christ—He’s the foundation, the Chief Cornerstone, correct?
So Paul goes on to say anyone who builds—so he’s talking about any believer—we’re all builders—anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials: gold, silver, jewels—that’s the eternal—wood, hay, or straw—that’s the temporal. So Paul says you get a choice every moment of your life whether you’re going to build for the eternal or build for the temporal. You understand what I’m talking about? For those of you who know me personally, I’m a guy who likes to take time off. Why? Because I do it purposely; I know what God says about the value of Sabbath. So in other words, when you’re resting, rest well; when you’re playing, play well. We do everything for the glory of God. So you can use a variety of materials. You can build your life purely for the flesh, for the temporal, or you can build your life for the eternal. If you’re a businessman or woman, you can see, «My business is a way to build the kingdom of God.» If you see your business as a way to make a lot of money so you can live comfortably, then every secret’s going to be made known; your motive is going to be made known.
All right, if we keep reading, «But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done.» Now if you put fire under gold, silver, precious stones, what does it do? It makes them pure. If you put fire under wood, hay, or straw, what happens? It’s gone. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value—eternal value. Okay, if the work survives, that builder will receive a reward—everybody say, «A reward!» Hopefully a full reward, right? But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames. Look at what it says in The Message Bible: «You’ll survive, but just barely.» God doesn’t want you just barely surviving. God wants to reward you. He’s like I said to my children: «I want you to get the full reward.» Do you hear His heart in this?
Okay, He’s saying, «Man, you’re my child; I want to reward you,» right? «I don’t want your work to be burned up.» You know, as Americans, we prepare for retirement, and you know, that’s not stupid. The Bible says that a good man lays up an inheritance for his children and children’s children. Yeah? The day you retire, your bank could close its doors on the same day; the stock market could crash on the same day; Social Security, on the same day you retire, could go bankrupt, and they can make no more payments. We can’t imagine this because we’ve got some kind of government program that can bail us out. But yet that is the description God uses through the Apostle Paul to describe how some Christians are going to enter into their eternity. They’re going to be saved, but just barely escaping as through walls of fire. That’s why we want to live with purpose. That’s why John exhorts us; it’s one of the final words he writes: «Live in such a way that you’re going to get the full reward.» Can you say amen?
Amen! Not only will our works and our words be examined, but our thoughts, motives, and intentions. I’m going to show this to you again. Look at the Amplified Bible of 2 Corinthians 5:10: «For we must all appear and be revealed as we are—not the way others think we are—before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive according to what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.» Now look at this: «Considering what his purpose and motive have been and what he has achieved, been busy with, and given himself in his attention to accomplishing.» That’s powerful, isn’t it? Jesus said, «For all that is secret, our motives will eventually—» This is in a different place in Luke that I showed you in the last session—"will eventually be brought to the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to the light and made known to all.»
This is why it is crucial for believers to carefully listen to, heed, and hide in their hearts the word of God. You want to know why it’s so important? Because the word of God—look at this in Hebrews chapter 4—the word of God that speaks is alive and full of power; it exposes and sifts and analyzes and judges the very thoughts and purposes of our heart. This is why I’m telling you I love spending time in the word of God every single day, because it does what? It sifts, it analyzes, it judges, it exposes wrong thoughts so that my motives, when I enter into that day, are good. I would advise making time every single morning for the word of God, so it can do this, so you go through your day with the right motives, the right thoughts, the right intentions. Are you following me? Because why? Because the Bible says if we don’t judge ourselves, we will be judged. Can you say amen to that?
All right, so the judgment of our lives will leave nothing undone; everything will be made visible and clearer. This is why Paul refers to the judgment seat as the solemn fear of the Lord. It will be a thorough investigation of our motives, intentions, thoughts, words, and actions. So this is why Peter says to us, and I love this so much, «So dear brothers and sisters, work hard!» Everybody say, «Work hard!» «To prove that you are really among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away.» Then God will give you a grand entrance! Everybody say, «A grand entrance!» «Into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.» That grand entrance is a «Well done, thou good and faithful servant!»
I had a vision; I’m going to close it with this. In this vision, I saw the armies of Heaven marching down the streets of Heaven. It was literally almost like the Romans when they came back and conquered a territory or a country—they would come back bringing the spoils of that country, and they would march down through the streets of Rome. Up on a pedestal, there would be Caesar, and they would march up and bring him the spoils of that country. What I saw in this vision was the exact same thing: the armies of Heaven marching in.
And see, in Roman times, all the citizens of Rome would be cheering and going, «Yeah!» as the soldiers brought the spoils to Caesar, right? What I saw in this vision is I saw people on the sidewalks of Heaven, and I saw soldiers marching in, bringing Jesus, our King, His spoils. The Lord said this to me: «Do you want to be one of the people on the sidewalks? You’re still in Heaven; you still get to spend eternity with Jesus. Or do you want to be one of the soldiers bringing Me My spoils?» I want to be one of those soldiers. I want that for every single one of you—for every single one of you that are listening. We’ll see you in the next session. It’s going to bring in a little supplemental material here in this conclusion.
Okay, there is a group of priests found in the Book of Ezekiel, and this group is called the Zadok priests. The other ones are called the priests who really didn’t live in obedience to God wholeheartedly; they kind of went along with the crowd. If you look at Ezekiel chapter 43, 44, in that area, you’ll find out the Zadok priests got to be very close to God. God said, «I’m their reward.» The priests that didn’t—they had to take care of the temple furnishings.
I want you to think about it in Heaven. I want you to think about eternity. Do you want to be ruling and reigning with Jesus? Do you want to be one of those who, wherever the Lamb goes, you go? I mean, can you imagine being with Him, in His presence, near Him, next to Him—ruling and reigning with Him forever and ever? Man, that’s motivation. That’s motivation to live with purpose. So here’s your action step: get in the word of God. Find out what God’s word says. Don’t allow others to influence your decisions; allow the word of God to cause you to be driven by eternity.