A plastic bowl will melt if set on a hot stove burner. Polyester usually burns when ironed. Glasses shatter when dropped on the floor, and your computer will never be the same if you drive your car over it. Many “things” look great but become worthless when tested with a test they weren’t designed to withstand.
Some day we all will face a test, a judgment. Those who have not accepted Christ as Savior will be judged for their sin at The Great White Throne Judgment, and the penalty is severe: eternal death. Please read the page, “The First Step,” on this blog if you are dreading that day. Those who have accepted Christ’s payment for sin will not face that awful judgment but will face another one: the judgment seat of Christ. Here we won’t be judged for our sins but for how we have built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. This will be a just judgment, no reason or chance for appeals. We won’t be able to squirm out of it by throwing a tantrum or by hoping for an ignorant jury or a biased judge; we also won’t need to worry that the truth won’t win. The all-seeing, all-knowing Judge will judge fairly.
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 reads, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
You build on your foundation every day. If you’re sloppy and don’t care what you’re building or if your works are shallow or sinful, they’ll burn up. Perhaps your building looks beautiful, but how will it fare in the ultimate test? Just as a creative artist may paint and decorate a wooden bowl so beautifully that it looks like a golden dish, you can do seemingly good things, beautiful bowl-looking types of things. But when fire licks the edges of the pretty wooden bowl or the efforts at self-glorification, they’ll all burn up! What you do, why you do it, and how you do it matter. Build wisely today.