Romans Chapter 14:8-12

Do you understand that most Christians will never ever witness to anybody? Most Christians will never see one person led to the Lord. Most Christians will never be active in any form of ministry in any church.

Now that makes me sad. Imagine what it does to God. Week in, week out in children's ministries, there's kids getting led to the Lord. And you know the lives that are being changed are not just the kids.

It's the adults. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. As we walk with Christ, our lives should influence others, and therefore we need to live accordingly. Find out how to do this today as Pastor David continues in Romans 14 with his teaching, Make Your Life Count.

Here's Pastor David. Romans chapter 14. Let's look at verse eight. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. This is a verse that I use in funerals. Whether we live, whether we die, we're God's.

Why? Because see, when we come to Jesus and we say, Jesus, forgive me of my sins, we're saying, give me your life. I refer to it as the divine transaction. In other words, Jesus died for our sins. When we come to him and say, Jesus, forgive me of my sins, that's a divine transaction. We are given Jesus our life, and Jesus has given us his life. Now, Jesus knows us and loves us, still willing to go into the divine transaction.

I guarantee you who got the short end of the stick on that one with me, but now I'm bought with a price. My life is not my home. I belong to God. Friend, if you've asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, then you belong to God. And there's something that happens in our heart and in our lives when that happens.

And sometimes it happens instantly, sometimes over time, but things begin to change. I know many of you have shared that you never in your whole life wanted to go to church. And you come here and you've gotten saved. You've gotten born again.

You asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins. And now you're excited about coming to church. So no longer is it, do I have to come to church?

It's I get to come to church. So when we approach a life with the Lord, it's not, well, God, do I have to do that? God will say, no, you don't have to do it.

I want you to do it. God, do I have to tell people the good news? No, you get to tell people the good news. A lot of things in the church, we go, well, do I gotta, do I gotta give, do I gotta serve, do I gotta do this, do I gotta, no, you get to do those things. We don't belong to ourselves anymore. For if we live, we live to the Lord. If we die, we die to the Lord. Verse nine, for to this end, Christ died and rose and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Let me dispel something.

Because a lot of people, the approach of Christianity is like a get out of hell free card. And here's what I mean by that. It's like, okay, you know, I'm going to pray this little prayer just so I can get in heaven and, you know, and so I'll come back to church and, you know, when I'm at my funeral.

You can live like that. And according to God's grace, he may honor your prayer for forgiveness. But you will miss out something on that's a treasure. And what's that? To live a life with God. See, I used to believe the lie will, you know, the life of the world or following the enemy is really exciting. And I pursued that life as hard as I could go, man. You know what?

I found a lot of broken, hurting people, including myself. And I believe the lie will follow in God. You know, that's really dull, boring. And then, but you know what? That is a lie. I can tell you, I can assure you as somebody that's gone as hard as they can in both directions, following God is an incredible adventure.

It's not boring at all. He wants to be the Lord of the living, not just your little get out of hell free card. Because if you approach Christianity like that, and you're going to, you're going to weather a lot of storms by yourself that are going to be really hard because there's storms are going to come. I want to read the next, let's go to the next three verses, verse 10, but why do you judge your brother or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written as I live says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us shall give an account of himself to God. I'm going to go back to verse 10.

I don't know if I'm going to get to 11 and 12 today, but we'll see. Let's go back to verse 10 says for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. All, you know what all means in the Greek means all that means some of us, all of us. Now some of you are going, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You see, when I asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins, see that's done. I'm done.

No judgment, no, no, no, time out. That's not scriptural. A lot of Christians don't realize this. Now it means when you accept Jesus as your savior, it guarantees your entrance into heaven.

Okay. Nothing to do with rewards once you get there and we will be judged. There's, there's two judgments in the Bible.

There's really three, but mainly two. The judgment that is talking about here, it's called the bema, which is Greek for the seat, the judgment bema seat of Christ. And that's for believers. And then we have in revelation, there's another judgment that's called the great white throne judgment. Those are the two main judgments, the judgment seat of Christ for believers and the great white throne judgment. And that's for those who reject Jesus as their savior. The book of revelation talks about that the book of life is going to be opened.

Their names are not going to be in it. They're going to be eternally separated from God. It's a sad fact. That's what the Bible says. If any pastor won't preach that I have serious issue with that. It's not a happy fact.

It's not something we say with a smile on our face. If you can talk about hell without a tear in your eye or sorrow in your heart, friend, there's something wrong with you. And I've got real problems with people that gleefully announced so many are going to be separated from God at that point. But the first one, the beam of seat of Christ, the beam of seat was a place where they judge people in Greece.

And also during athletic events, they would judge who won. And you say, well, if I'm forgiven, what am I going to be judged for? Glad you asked me go through a few things. And if you're a note taker, you want to jot these down.

Maybe if you're not a note taker, you want to jot these down. First John 2 28. It's kind of a scary verse to be honest. It says, and now dear children continue to live in fellowship with Christ so that when he returns, you will be full of courage and not shrink back from him in shame.

Shrink back from him in shame. Is that right? Is it, is it written to people who don't know Jesus? No, that epistles written to people who know, matter of fact, a good part of that pistol kind of determines who's in and who's out speaking about love and forgiveness.

Well, how could somebody be shrinking back from him in shame? There's some common themes in the Bible. Every Sunday, you'll hear about the saving grace of God and how he is offering to us a relationship with him.

And he's offering us forgiveness. You're going to hear about that every Sunday. It'll weave its way in the teaching. Trust me, it will every time. There's other themes, loving each other, going to be a common theme. We talked about that in the last chapter. Giving, we're going to occasionally hit that one. We hadn't hit that really in a couple of months on Sunday morning. Serving, we're going to hit that.

We haven't talked about it in a couple of months, but we are going to talk about it today. And here's why. Now, can you be in another church and not hear about servant? Oh yeah.

Yeah, you can. As a matter of fact, to be honest, when you do hear about it, it's going to be, I don't know. And I've been around for years and attended churches. I've heard all the different appeals, you know, and it always tickled me when they got the children's ministry leader or pastor into the main service to appeal to people, because it usually was like, you know, he's missing a shoe. His hair's all messed up.

His shirt's messed up. And he's like, oh, we need help. We're dying in there. Please sign up. You know? And we could do that, but I don't want to motivate you out of need. I want to motivate you out of a biblical understanding that God has placed a reward system in effect as far as us being a believer. Now, friend, if you've got a problem with this, you've got a problem with this, you've got a problem with the Bible, because this is what the Bible says. And so are we going to shrink back in shame or we're going to say, oh God, you know, I did my best.

I did this. I'm sure on that day, some people go, you know, I was getting ready to start serving in that sparkle tea. But the moment will be gone. 1 Corinthians 3a, now he who plants and he who waters are one and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. I encourage you, if you want some side reading to do, go to 1 Corinthians. We're not going to go there now, but if you're jotting down or you want some side reading to deal with this in depth, 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse five through 17, speak about this. We're not talking about salvation.

I mean, I'll say that several times. We're not talking about salvation. Your salvation is not based upon works. It's based upon grace, grace alone, mean unmerited favor. Can't earn it. God will give it to you if you come to him.

We're talking about rewards once you get there. 2 Corinthians, we'll take a couple of verses out here at five, 10 through 11 says, for we must all appear for the judgment seat, that be my seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body. I want you to know that. What's it talking about in the body? What body? Now, one translation says your body. That's not a good translation because in the Greek, it refers back to what? Christ, in the body of Christ. According to what he has done, whether good or bad, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are well known to God and also trust their well-known inner consciousness. The New Living Translation takes that other approach. It says, for we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in our bodies.

It's not strong Greek evidence for that little twist of the pronoun there. It is because we know the solemn fear of the Lord that we work so hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere and I hope you know this too. So I encourage people to serve, to get involved with the church. You've been listening to Cross the Bridge. We'll return to David's study in Romans in just a moment. But first I would like to let you know about a new product that we're excited about here at Cross the Bridge. Each year David McGee spends countless hours combing through the Bible in preparation to teach God's Word. This is clearly seen every week as he proclaims the amazing truths found in the Bible to his home church and through the radio ministry. That's why this month we want you to be blessed by some of our favorite teachings from this year with the Cross the Bridge Best of 2013.

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The whole book for the whole world. Now let's return to David McGee's verse by verse teaching in the book of Romans. Now if you're sitting in here and talking about serving, so now we're polarized if you will for the moment. There's people in here that serve in this church and there's people that don't. The people that do serve, let me encourage you congratulate you. Thank you so much for serving. I don't want you to sit in here and feel guilty while I'm talking about serving. You're already serving and be careful that as you begin to serve you don't begin to think that your salvation is based upon your service. That's legalism. You'll live an extremely frustrated Christian life if you go for that one and if you ever feel yourself coming under that guilt, man, man, make sure you're doing it in the love of God, serving for the love of God.

The other group, if you're not serving, and I'm talking about serving, getting involved with Sparkle, getting involved here in the church, got lots of things going on. What you're feeling at this point is not guilt. It's called conviction. Now guilt drives you away from God. Conviction draws you to God and when you hear about this and God set the whole thing up, why? Because he knows we're rewards-based people.

That's the reality of it. If your boss came up to you on Monday and said, hey, you know, we're doing this little new thing here. We're going to do away with that reward system and so you're not going to get a paycheck Friday. Are you going to be there the next day?

I'm thinking not. Why? Because that reward system is kind of important. God knows God created us like that and there's people exploit that the, you know, I find myself, you know, you drive halfway across town to go to one certain grocery store because you get points when you buy things there and then you get over there and you discover you don't have that little card with you. You know, I don't know if you ever go through that.

Why do they do that? We are rewards-based people. God created us like that and when we hear about rewards in heaven and when we hear about that, well done, now good and faithful servant, it's like, yeah, yeah, I want to hear that. It's good, but what's our motivation?

Because see, if it hasn't gotten complicated enough, what we do for the Lord, He's going to judge our motives. Man, so if we ever do things just for ourselves, not really going to count. It's what we do for Him that's going to last. What I do here for Him is going to last.

If I do any of it for myself, it's not going to matter. Here's a life lesson. We should serve God because He loves us, we love Him, and also because He promises rewards. We should serve God because He loves us, we love Him, and also because He promises us rewards.

You may see that and go, I got a problem with that little He promises us rewards. This is what the Bible says. If God wanted to keep that veil from our eyes, He wouldn't have put it in there, but He wanted to say to us, let me encourage you to follow me and to serve me so that you'll do this because everybody, friend, is going to be judged. And this notion that if we are born again, we'll never be judged for anything.

Time out. There's a motivation for service. There's a motivation for holy living. There's a motivation for worship. Why?

Because we will give an account. I understand that's a scary thing. It's meant to be. I understand that's a motivating thing. It's meant to be. Matthew 12 36, scary verse.

But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give an account of it in the day of judgment. I'm thankful for that mercy and grace, man. My goodness. I remember years ago driving down the road, car cuts me off. I got the kids in the car.

It's not going where you think it's going. I got the kids in the car, you know, and this guy cuts me off. I'm like, man, from the back seat of here, idiot. And I knew where they had got it. And I said, Nora. That's my wife.

They didn't get it from her. I thought, man, I need to be careful here. I can give account. Philippians 3 12. Not that I've already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brother, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind me and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Man, I love that passage. You know why? Because I want to forget what's behind me.

Some people seem to major on the minors and minor on the majors. If you think you're going to discover a lot of answers and delving through your past, be careful, friend. You're going to find a lot of pain. You're going to find some sin. You're going to find some selfishness. Forget that.

We're going forward. Now, again, let's remember in regards to our sins, when we come to Jesus and we're forgiven, it's gone. Hebrews 10, 17 says, then he adds their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more.

And yet there's still this accountability that happens. And I take that serious. You better believe when I walk out on this platform to share God's word, I've prayed. I've asked God, what do you want me to share? What do you not want me to share?

I'll tell you one of the reasons why. James 3, 1. Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church for we who teach will be judged by God with greater strictness. If you ever have cause to look at my life and say, gee, I'd like to do that. Careful. If you ever have occasion to look at my life and go, I do this differently. I do that.

Time out. Do you understand? I'm going to stand before God, give an account for everything I do and say, as a teacher of a large church, to give an account in another place for your souls. Now you look around this room and you think, if you would like to give an account for all the people on a Sunday morning, I can use your prayers. Galatians 6, 7.

Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever man sows that he will also reap. Ephesians, I'm going to go through a few verses pretty quick. Ephesians 6, 8. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Colossians 3, 24. Knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ.

One of my favorites. Hebrews 6, 10. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, what you have shown towards his name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. Hebrews 9, 27. As it is appointed from end to die, for the Lord is appointed from end to die once, but after this, the judgment. Let me take you back to that first verse in this passage. First John 2, 28. And now, dear children, continue to live in fellowship with Christ, that he will return, shall be full of courage, and not shrink back from him in shame. Beam a seat. Better place, much better than the great white throne judgment. Still a judgment. So I teach this.

Why? Because it's in there. Some of you have never heard this. We're standing before the judgment seat of Christ. What's going to be judged? Our works, our behaviors, the things we've done for the Lord. Do you understand that most Christians will never, ever witness to anybody? Most Christians will never see one person led to the Lord. Most Christians will never be active in any form of ministry in any church.

Now, that makes me sad. Imagine what it does to God. Week in, week out in children's ministries, there's kids getting led to the Lord. And you know, the lives that are being changed are not just the kids.

It's the adults. Because I tell you what, you lead a wee one to the Lord, life will never again be the same. So we can wait until that final moment and then figure out and do a reckoning of what we could have done for the Lord. Or you can allow me today to encourage you to step out in faith, step out in the ministry and begin serving the Lord. And He will be faithful to reward you. Because friend, you can decide if you are going to hear, well done, thou good and faithful servant by serving Him.

The judgment seat of Christ. Final life lesson here. Make your life count.

Make your life count. If you knew you were going to die in a year, what would you change about your life? And then if you knew you had seven days, what would be different? And if you knew you only had 24 hours, what would change?

What would get the focus? Imagine if we all knew the exact date and time. Well, it'd go one of two ways, wouldn't it? Some of us would go, okay, well, I'm going to serve God because I've got a finite amount of time.

Others would be, well, I'm just going to party like crazy until like two days before. Now I'm going to go to a monastery or something. And, you know, we don't know. We do know this, that day's coming. Every one of us that's in here, sitting in our seats, breathing, a heart beating, you're not in control of your heart. God is. And at some point, friend, your heart stops beating.

I don't know when that is. And I'm not a doom and gloom kind of guy. What I'm trying to lead you to is one of two things. If you're here today and you're not absolutely sure you've been forgiven of your sins, friend, make sure before you walk out of here.

Forget all this service part and loving and giving and all this other. God wants you to come to him. For those of you that already know him as your savior, God's speaking to you. This is the passage of scripture we're in.

Nobody's in here by accident or coincidence. God is spelling this out. So maybe it's time for you to say, God, you know what? It's, it's not my life anymore.

It's yours. I'm tired of holding back. I want to step over the line. I want to follow you. I want to live a life of adventure and following Jesus. Because as I look around this world, man, there's nobody else I'd rather follow. There's nobody else worth imitating to the degree that Jesus is. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now, God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him.

And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend. You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If this was your first time praying that prayer with Pastor David, we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Also, if you contact us this month, we will send you the Cross the Bridge Best of 2013 for your gift of any amount. If you've ever wondered how we can walk in the full power of God's Spirit, then this new product is just for you and we'll send it to you as a way of saying thanks for your donation. You can give any time by calling us toll free at 877-458-5508.

That's 877-458-5508. Or go online to crossthebridge.com. While there, make sure to sign up for the free email devotional. That's just one more way we can bless you in your walk with Christ. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com. Thank you for listening, and I pray you'll join us next time as we cross the bridge.