May 1

May 1 - Today from Proverbs 1 we look at verse 19
"Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it."

In the end, ill-gotten gain is no gain at all. In fact, it is loss. Jesus says it this way, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:25, 26).

We have said it many times before in our study of Proverbs; "Wisdom looks to the end." I believe the older we get, the more profound this truth becomes. I once read some cute "You know you are getting older when . . ." quips. One of them was "-You have more regrets than you do dreams." The trick to living a full and rewarding life is to minimize regrets. The trouble with that is; one does not realize regrets when they are in the seed stage. In the seed stage they look and feel exactly like self-gratifying pleasures. It is only after the fruit of such pleasure is spent that one realizes it was not 'fruit that lasts'. The closer one gets to the end of life, the more one realizes that life is not all about self-gratifying pleasures after all.
When one thinks about it, all of the things this world strives after are self-gratifying. 1 John 2:16 & 17 states it like this; "For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." There is nothing inherently wrong with high achievement. Quite the contrary, God desires us to reach high. But those who seek high achievement as the goal of life often go about achieving in the wrong manner for the wrong purpose. The wrong purpose is to believe that the essence of life lies in the best of this world. The wrong manner is fueled by 'the end justifies the means' attitude:

-Partner with whomever you must to advance.
-Cut loose and step on whoever you must to advance.
-Take whatever short cuts you can to get higher faster.
-Negotiate any moral boundaries that may impede your goals.
-Reward yourself - you earned it.
-Don't waste time with people or things that lie outside of the paths to your goals.

I suppose there are many more thoughts one could add to this list, but I think you get the idea. All of these means are self-serving attitudes toward a goal or goals which will, in the end, be void of anything of eternal value. Imagine standing before the Redeemer, looking back at what is now the incredibly short span of earthly life, and then looking forward to eternity. The Lord of all is about to give rewards as to how well He was served in that life. Once the reward is given, it will last forever. "How did you do?" He asks.
We are not speaking of salvation, or of earning salvation. That comes only and solely through the atoning work of Jesus' shed blood. We are talking about service to the Lord; loving our fellow man by acting justly and showing mercy; living a rewarding life according to God's definition. Everything is going to be different on that day. Those who believed they had lived a full life will find that it was all an apparition, and they had no life at all. By doggedly pursuing after ill-gotten gain, they lost every opportunity for a real life. Then there are those who appeared to never have gotten a life because they chose not to compromise their morals and because they spent so much time adding to the lives of others. On that day it will be discovered that they were the ones who really had a life after all. They already knew it, but the world didn't. In discovering what a truly fulfilling life is, and being rewarded for that life, comes the Kingdom principle "the first will be last, and the last will be first." It is but one more paradox of the Kingdom of God.