Charles Spurgeon has a remarkable way of getting to the heart of things. The more modern evangelical books I read, the more I feel the need to go back to Spurgeon and see him cut through the fog and get to the true business of following Jesus.
I think it’s fine and appropriate to quote from Christian speakers and authors we have benefited from. But while gratefully acknowledging I have benefited from these men and women, I do not put them on a pedestal.
In the absence of a strong theology of Heaven and eternal rewards, the western church has been permeated by "prosperity theology," the gospel of health and wealth. We've been seduced to look only to short-term rewards of material gain, physical health and safety, and human approval.
The problem with short-term rewards is not that it's wrong to receive them, but that it's wrong for them to be our primary motivation for doing the work. If we take Matthew 6 seriously, when we offer people their name on a brick for giving to a building offering we're saying "Hope you enjoy this brick, because if this is why you're giving, the brick's all the reward you're going to get." What we're offering people is temptation—another wrong motive for doing something that God wants us to do for other reasons, for the applause of God, not the applause of men. (Winning a Gold Medallion may be a fine byproduct of serving God, but it is a terrible goal.)
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