Are You A Jewel Worth Gathering? Series

We all know death comes to everyone at some time. Christians also realize there is a judgement to face.

Hebrews 9:27 27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

Malachi 3:16-18 (KJV) 16 Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. 17 And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. 18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

We find vary little concerning what happens after death. We even can be confused about when the ‘big’ Judgement day is and what it will be like. We are given a little insight in Luke 16 with the story given by our Lord concerning the rich man and Lazarus. I do not want to focus on judgement in that sense today. I want to focus upon our personal relationship with God today such that IF we were to be called to heaven, would we be chosen to enter?

I. Malachi spoke of God making up His Jewels.

a. God observes all the gracious words that proceed out of the mouths of his people;

b. He keeps an account of them: A book of remembrance was written before him.

c. God remembers the services of his people, that, in the review of them, he may say, Well done; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.

d. He promises them a share in his glory hereafter (Mal. 3:17): They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels. When God utterly cuts off the Jewish church and nation for their infidelity, the remnant among them, that believed his word, and, having waited for the consolation of Israel, welcome him when he comes, shall be admitted into the Christian church, and shall become a peculiar people to God; God will take care of them, that they perish not with those that believe not; but that they be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger against that nation. They shall be my segullah—my peculiar treasure (it is the word used, Exod. 19:5), in the day when I make or do what I have said and designed to do; so some read it. These pious ones shall have all the glorious privileges of God’s Israel appropriated to them and centering in them; they shall now be his peculiar treasure, when the rest are rejected; they shall now be the vessels of mercy and honour, when the rest are made vessels of wrath and dishonour, vessels in which is no pleasure. This may be applied to all the faithful people of God, and the distinction he will put between t 26c3 hem and others in the great day. Note, [1.] The saints are God’s jewels; they are highly esteemed by him and are dear to him; they are comely with the comeliness that he puts upon them, and he is pleased to glory in them; they are a royal diadem in his hand, Isa. 62:3. He looks upon them as his own proper goods, his choice goods, his treasure, laid up in his cabinet, and the furniture of his closet, Ps. 135:4. The rest of the world is but lumber, in comparison with them. [2.] There is a day coming when God will make up his jewels. They shall be gathered up out of the dirt into which they are now thrown, and gathered together from all places to which they are now scattered; he shall send forth his angels to gather his elect, who are his jewels, from the four winds of heaven (Matt. 24:31), to gather his jewels into his jewel-house, as the wheat from several fields into the barn. All the saints will then be gathered to Christ, and none but saints, and saints made perfect; then God’s jewels will be made up, as stones into a crown, as stars into a constellation. [3.] Those who now own God for theirs, he will then own for his, will publicly confess them before angels and men: “They shall be mine; their sanctification shall be completed, and so they shall be perfectly and entirely mine, without any remaining interests of the world and the flesh.” Their relation to God shall be acknowledged, and his property in them. He will separate them from those that are not his, and give them their portion with those that are his; for to them it shall be said, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.