“He will reward each person according to what he has done” (Mt 16:27)

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Pastor Foley

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:27)

The Last Judgement by the Armenian manuscript illuminator Toros Roslin, 1262

In the scripture just before this one, Jesus and the disciples withdrew to Caesarea Philippi after many in Galilee rejected the gospel they had proclaimed. There, Jesus asked who the people said he was, and then who the disciples said he was. When Peter answered that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus told him that this knowledge could only be revealed by God. This is the confession that saves.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

However, Jesus says that simply calling him “Lord” does not save us.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

These scriptures show three factors that must agree for us to be saved.

The first is the public outward confession that Jesus is Lord (or Christ or Messiah).

According to Jesus, this confession comes from God. It cannot remain only in our hearts. If someone knows in their heart that Jesus is Lord but refuses to confess him to avoid rejection by family or community, that is not a saving confession.

The second is a correct understanding of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord.

This understanding comes through the gospel, which comes from Christ himself. If we confess that Jesus is Lord but do not know what that means, our confession is not a saving confession.

At Caesarea, Peter got the first factor right but the second wrong.

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:21-23)

Peter rightly confessed that Jesus is the Christ, but his understanding of what that meant came from human thinking and was ultimately twisted by Satan.

By explaining that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and be raised on the third day, Jesus was preaching the gospel. When Peter said, “Never, Lord!” he was rejecting that gospel.

Jesus does not suffer and die in spite of being the Christ. He must suffer and die because he is the Christ. To be saved, we must understand what it truly means for him to be the Christ.

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25–27)

Like Peter, many people say, “Jesus died for my sins,” without understanding what that means. For the confession “Jesus is Lord” to be saving, our understanding of it must be according to Scripture.

Jesus teaches the gospel clearly in Matthew 16:21–27. In verse 21, he speaks of his death and resurrection; in verse 27, he speaks of his return.

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:27)

The third is our deeds. Christ teaches this in Matthew 16:27, and every New Testament writer is clear that Christ will judge us by our deeds.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10)

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. (Revelation 20:12–13)

Many pastors dismiss this by quoting John 6:28–29, saying that God judges only the beliefs in our hearts, not our deeds.

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28–29)

But this is not a tricky riddle requiring additional theological explanation. It means our confession, beliefs, and actions must align for salvation. God judges our confession, our heart, and our actions. But when people base their understanding of God’s judgment on human thinking rather than Christ’s teaching, they misunderstand his judgment.

This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (Romans 2:16)

Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven. (Matthew 10:32–33)

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Matthew 16:24–26)

At the judgment, Christ will ask: “Were your deeds in agreement with what you confessed about me and understood in your heart about me?” These deeds are a life of denying ourselves rather than denying him. Just as we confess or deny Christ with our mouths, we also confess or deny him with our deeds. Salvation cannot be separated from following Jesus. For Jesus, to be saved, we must deny ourselves.

This does not mean Christ is calling us to an ascetic lifestyle. He is calling us to stop serving ourselves and the things we think will satisfy us, and instead to serve Christ, who meets all our needs. He says this whenever he speaks about salvation: whoever seeks to save their life will lose it.

Anyone who comes to Jesus for their own benefit will lose their life, and their deeds will be judged as evil. Coming to Jesus to save yourself is like Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ while denying what it means for Jesus to be the Christ.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Living for God does not mean accomplishing things for God. It means depending completely on Christ for all things. Your actions are no longer focused on your own interests but on serving Christ. It means saying no to your own goals, values, and plans—and to the goals, values, and plans the world has for you. It means binding yourself to Christ alone. This is not advanced Christianity; it is basic Christianity, and it is the meaning of baptism.

Christians depend on Christ for all things. The deeds that save are not things we do for God but complete reliance on God in all things. He does not judge us by how well or perfectly we do them, how eloquently we confess him in public, or how impressive and deep our theology is. Christ knows the intentions of our hearts and is sympathetic to our weaknesses.

When our actions deny him, he convicts us through the Holy Spirit. When we confess our sins, he forgives and restores us. In the kingdom, confession and repentance are received as deeds of righteousness. This is why we affirm that salvation is by grace, not works.

The deeds Jesus is looking for are deeds of complete reliance on him as we serve him alone. He is looking for our trust that he is who he says he is, and for actions that show we know he will shepherd, teach, and provide for us just as he promised.

These are the three witnesses that must agree: we confess with our mouths, believe in our hearts, and reveal through our actions that Jesus is the all-powerful Lord on whom we depend for everything. Scripture is clear that when Jesus returns, he will judge us by the agreement of these witnesses. Those who sought to save their own lives will be punished, and those who lost their lives for Christ will receive the reward of eternal life—God’s own life—as their inheritance.

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Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (Mt. 14:13-21)

Posted on August 25, 2026 by Pastor Foley

In Matthew 13, Jesus’ first parable is the parable of the four types of soil. After the parables, Matthew shows Jesus encountering these four types of soil in sequence.

The first type Jesus encounters is the “path” soil–those whom the word essentially “bounces off” of. At the end of Matthew 13, the “path” people in Jesus’ hometown do not receive his word and in fact take offense at him. At the beginning of Matthew 14, when John the Baptist opposes Herod’s illegitimate marriage, Herod—the worst soil in the New Testament—likewise refuses the word and instead imprisons John the Baptist, ultimately having him beheaded.

After this, we see the “rocky soil” of the crowds, who receive healing and bread from Jesus. Unlike the people of his hometown, they initially receive Jesus’ word with great joy, like little children. But after that?

It’s worth some discussion.

An early third-century painting of the bread and the fish from the Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eucharistic_bread_and_fish.jpg)

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. It is not told by any of the Gospel writers as a story about Jesus wandering around, finding hungry people, and feeding them. It is told as a story about Jesus directly providing for all who follow him. This difference matters because the Kingdom of God is about God in Christ providing for, teaching, and leading his people directly, without middlemen.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus withdraws from the crowds after feeding them because he knows they will try to make him king. They want to place him at the top of their existing hierarchy and have him run their nation. But Jesus did not come to reform existing hierarchies. He came to bring a new Kingdom. So, when the crowd follows him and finds him again, he rebukes them:

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. (John 6:26-27)

Notice that Jesus does not rebuke the people for coming to him with their material needs. He rebukes them for living lives focused on meeting those needs. He teaches the same truth in the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:25-33)

Jesus delights to provide everything we need. But he does not provide all things so that we can live a good life by the standards of this age. Instead, he provides everything we need so that, with confidence, we can leave everything behind and follow him. The order is: first, serve Jesus; second, do not worry whether he will provide along the way. Jesus did not come to improve our present lives. He came to call us to leave those lives behind.

If the crowds are the rocky soil, does that mean that the disciples are the good soil in this story?

No, they are the thorny soil:

The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)

The disciples hear Jesus’ word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth make them unfruitful in today’s passage:

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. (Matthew 14:15-17)

Notice that the disciples do not look to Jesus to act. Instead, because they are preoccupied with the cares of this world, they tell him what to do.

The deceitfulness of wealth does not only affect the rich. Poor people are deceived by the value of wealth, too. Both rich churches and poor churches often assume that the more money they have, the more ministry they can do, and the less money they have, the less ministry they can do.

But this is not how the Kingdom of God works. In the Kingdom, Jesus provides for people directly. That is why he tells the disciples to bring the food and the crowds to him. As the king, he provides for his people directly:

“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 14:18-21)

If even the disciples are thorny soil, who is the good soil?

That’s the point of one of Jesus’ other parables from Matthew 13: The parable of the wheat and the tares. The point of that parable is: Until the end, the wheat and the tares—or the thorny ground and the good soil—look alike. That’s why the owner of the field says the tares shouldn’t be removed until the harvest: Some of the wheat might be removed by accident.

The same thing is true with the thorny soil: Sometimes, in the end, it proves to be good soil after all. Peter was continually an unfruitful disciple, all the way through Galatians 2! But the one thing he never did was to walk away from Jesus. As he told Jesus in John 6:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)

In the end, the only qualification for good soil is that it ultimately never rejects the seed.

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More Bibles Delivered to North Korea than Ever Before!

Posted on August 12, 2026 by tdillmuth

Before the first Western missionaries set foot in Korea, a network of untrained indigenous Koreans had already spread the gospel widely throughout the country and converted many Koreans to Protestant Christianity. Their successful strategy, unique in Christian history, relied on their covert personal distribution of thousands of copies the first vernacular translation of the Bible into Korean. That translation was created by Korean merchants under the direction of Scottish missionary, John Ross, who was himself an untrained Bible translator.

Missionary John Ross

This was the core of John Ross’s missionary strategy: introduce people to Christ by giving them only the Bible, the word of God, since Christ is fully present in his word. Nothing else was needed.

And this is the core of our ministry today.

Every year, we distribute an average of 40,000 to 50,000 North Korean dialect Bibles to North Koreans, but in 2025 we distributed more Bibles to North Koreans than we have ever done in any single previous year of our history! This is in addition to our daily Bible broadcasts on our 5 shortwave radio stations that broadcast into North Korea.

North Korean defectors, who are a part of our Underground University missionary training program, hold up the NK Full Study Bible.

Why do we distribute so many Bibles? Because Christ is fully present in his word!

Over 20 years ago, North Korean underground Christians asked us to send Bibles into North Korea and we continue to fulfill that request in the spirit of John Ross. In fact, every year, we use a variety of means to distribute Bibles to North Koreans, wherever they are found.

In order to protect the safety and security of the recipients, we keep the exact number of Bibles as well as most of the distribution methods and technology private. But we always look for opportunities to share stories with you that will not compromise the security of the recipients. Below are three of these stories, about North Koreans who received Bibles in a variety of ways.

Border Guard Allows Bible into North Korea

We met a young North Korean man who was newly arrived in South Korea. He had defected shortly after completing his mandatory ten-year military service and then spent time in China.

When the young man was a border guard along the river, a middle-aged North Korean woman came across the river on a raft made of inflatable inner tubes. She had a box that was labeled DVDs, but when he searched it he found six Bibles concealed on the bottom. When he saw these, he froze as if dead. He said all NK border guards are told, “If you see the Bible, you are dead,” which he as an intelligent young man understood to mean that if an NK soldier ever reported having seen Bibles, he himself would be heavily interrogated and watched. So, in his panic he told the woman, “Never mention this in your life, and I will never mention it in my life,” and he let her in to North Korea with the Bibles.

This is a good reminder that God has his ways of moving hearts and arranging for Bibles to enter into North Korea. Human deception is rarely God’s way. God’s way involves transforming hearts in surprising fashion.

Dr. Foley delivers a Bible to a hospitalized NK sex-trafficked woman.

“If I had a gun, I would shoot my NK supervisors . . .”

“If I had a gun,” the North Korean worker said. “I would shoot all my North Korean supervisors and then shoot myself.”

With gnashed teeth, this North Korean (one of the “lucky” few whose application to work abroad in Russia had been approved by the party) recalled the brash and brutal behavior of his supervisors. Since so many North Koreans were eager to work abroad, the supervisors saw this worker, and all workers, as expendable. Supervisors gave them very little food and even less money.

This North Korean worker hadn’t been working abroad for long, but he had already seen many people die from the poor and dangerous work conditions. In North Korea, he had hoped that travelling abroad would hold all the answers to his fears and struggles. Now, however, all hope had been snatched away from him.

Instead of the food, money, and security he had hoped for, the worker was left with little other than bone-chilling hatred and hopelessness.

When our partner visited him, however, he was shocked to find a smile on worker’s face. “What happened?” He asked. “Now, I received Jesus,” the worker said.

This North Korean worker, in addition to many others, had received an MP3 player with the North Korean Bible on it and had listened eagerly to each and every word. Jesus had come into the darkest, dangerous, and most destitute of factories and rekindled the dwindling embers of this man’s heart.

And it’s not just this worker, through these MP3 players, God’s word is moving the hearts of North Korean workers all over the world.

A North Korean man receives the audio Bible on an MP3 player.

A Head Stuffed Full of Bible

Recently, we connected with another line of underground Christians in North Korea. As usual, they requested Bibles and as usual we distributed Bibles to them.

We are always impressed by the request for Bibles. Living in a place where being found with a Bible means at least imprisonment if not also death, Bibles would be hard for them to come by and not easy to ask for. But what we were more impressed by was that, even before asking us for Bibles, they were quoting scripture word for word!

When asked how they were able to quote scriptures so well, as if they had a Bible, one person responded as follows:

As we (the people in our underground church group) have lived for decades, half of that time has been spent in church. As we study in church, of course our heads have become stuffed full about the Bible. But there are things which we have written down as well. If you send us Bible books, we will be thankful.

The keen eye will notice two things about what the underground Christian said.

First, the underground Christian said that half of their lives have been spent in church. When we hear this, our first thought may be to wonder how they could have spent that much time living in the church since there are no church buildings! But for the NK underground Christian, the church is not a building, it is the term used to refer collectively to the body of believers.

Second, the underground Christian said that their heads have become “stuffed full about the Bible.” But how could their heads have been stuffed full with the Bible if they do not have Bibles? For the underground Christian, “Bible” refers to the word of God itself, not to the container (be it a in a book, an MP3 player, or one’s own head/heart) which houses the word of God. This is why they specifically ask for “Bible books”.

Even after all of these years of doing North Korean ministry, we are amazed by and continue to learn from underground Christians. And we are humbled when they ask us for help when, in fact, we need theirs.

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