Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.
So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in the Truth Pulpit. Now we come to chapter 5 verse 10 of 2 Corinthians, which helps us see this in the perspective that Paul brings it to us. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. God is going to give a reward to his children based on how they lived in response to his saving mercy after their conversion. You know, whether that's a short time before the Lord called them home or decades before they called them home, there's going to be a reward bestowed upon us preeminently driven by the attitudes and the motivations of our heart as we did whatever the Lord providentially put into our paths. Now, let me make something really clear here. And hopefully this will put some things to rest in your mind. This is not a judgment where God is going to dredge up all of your sins from your past and put them on display on a movie screen for all of humanity to see and review all of your sins and give an account.
It's not an account like that. Because, beloved, that would be a complete denial of the atonement. It would be a complete contrary purposes to what Christ did. He washed away our sins in a way so that God does not hold them against us anymore. And so God is not going to resurrect your sins and hold you accountable for them and punish you for your sins. Beloved, keeping in mind what we were saying earlier, all of the punishment of all of your sin was placed on all of Christ at all of the cross and punished there, not to be brought up again. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so this is not a time where our sins will be put on display to be punished or to humiliate us.
The humiliation of Christ was more than sufficient to cover all of that. And so it's not a parade of sin that he's going to review. He will do this. He will somehow evaluate our lives.
Watch this. Because now we're talking about what I'm about to say has just unspeakable eternal ramifications for every one of us. What Scripture says about this has eternal ramifications. He will, at this judgment seat of Christ, he will evaluate our lives to determine a reward that he will give us that will echo throughout all of eternity. He will look at our lives, look at the things, you know, and there will be a passing of the time and wasted opportunities.
There will be morning fog and there will be nothing left to show for them. But the things done in his earnest service, the patient endurance of heavy trials, as much a subject of the reward of God as one who preached the gospel to millions. God, having ordered our lives and given us the lives that we have, is going to reward us for how we respond to that.
And Martin Lloyd-Jones helps us understand what that means in the quote that I'm about to give you. He said, this judgment does not determine our eternal destiny. No, we have passed through that in Christ. In other words, and now I'm breaking off the quote in order to just build on what he said there, your eternal destiny, your eternal place in heaven has been reserved for you by the sacrifice of Christ. It's reserved in heaven and no one can take that away. No one can pluck you out of the hand of the Father. No one can pluck you out of the hand of Christ.
Meaning that if you are a true Christian, you will most certainly find your place at the heavenly table in eternity. It's not about that. It's not about choosing, deciding in that moment whether you go to heaven or hell.
That's not the point. That was decided at the cross. This is something different of which we speak now. And Sunday I quoted from John 5 24 at the end, you know, you pass from judgment into life in Christ.
And so let me start over with this quote. This judgment does not determine our eternal destiny. No, we have passed through that in Christ. But it is a judgment which is going to affect our eternal destiny by deciding what happens to us in the realm of glory. The good doctor goes on to say, we are not given any further details about this in Scripture, but that there is a judgment of believers is clearly taught. It will make a difference to me. It is a judgment of my life since I have become a Christian.
End quote. So a couple of things about the doctor's insight here. One is that we're not given a lot of details about this. And so we don't know exactly what it's going to be like. And so we shouldn't pry into or speculate about things that God has not seen fit to reveal to us in Scripture. But what we know in the bigger picture of things is more than enough to give us a clarity that the way that I live as a Christian is going to have a final accountability.
I'm not just going to float up into heaven and be assigned a cloud with a harp and then strum throughout all of eternity. It's going to be individual. It's going to be tailored. It's going to be an evaluation of what we actually did so that my beloved friends, the way that we're living today, the choices, the habits, the character that we develop today is going to provide a basis upon which God rewards us. And so the word somehow is going to affect the measure of our capacity maybe.
Jonathan Edwards talked about it in these terms. Affect the breadth and depth of our capacity to enjoy the eternity, eternal bliss in heaven. It will make a difference to us.
We'll give an account for the way that we've lived. Now, the question then becomes how should that reality of that coming judgment affect us? How should it affect you?
How should it affect me? Well, to just kind of stay with the term of the week, this is serious. All of a sudden life is not just a joke.
And opening the Bible and teaching people scripture is not playtime. These are matters of joyful sobriety and a sober joyfulness as we realize as we look ahead. I like to say it this way.
I like to illustrate it with my hands this way. What you and I do in response to this is that we, as it were, we reach forward to that coming time, that coming appointment with God. And we take the reality of that in our hands from the future. We take the future reality of that and we pull it into the present and let it establish the atmosphere by which we live our entire lives. You kind of reverse engineer the way that you live. You look at what the outcome is. You look at what the final destination is.
And then you calculate that in. You come back into the present and you calculate that in into the way of everything that you do and everything that you are. And so how should the reality of that judgment affect us? Well, keep reading in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. He said we're going to, in verse 10, he had said we are going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ and receive what is due for what we've done in the body, whether it's good or evil. Verse 11, therefore, here is the implication of that.
Here's the conclusion that we draw from the reality of the judgment seat of Christ, the serious judgment for believers. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. This creates in us a fear of the Lord. This creates in us a sober reverence in the way that we approach life, realizing that what's happening in life now and the way that I respond to it matters. I don't just become a Christian and then nothing matters after that. The course of life after your conversion is a preparation. It is a test case, for lack of a better way of putting it, for what's going to happen to you when you're with Christ in heaven. And so, beloved, that holy fear does this to you. It causes you to take God's Word seriously, and it causes you to maximize your life opportunities for His glory.
You think about it this way. This great salvation, this love of God revealed to me is found in His Word. His Spirit wrote the Word. His Spirit regenerated me, drew me to Christ. And so the Spirit knits my heart to this revelation that speaks of the great salvation that I enjoy, and therefore I revere His Word and I love it and I defend it with all of my being. Whether you're in ministry or whether you're an engineer, a lawyer, whatever, there's an attitude in your life of love and trust and submission and dedication to the Word of God.
You take it seriously because these eternal realities are revealed there. And then you realize, you look at your life and say, what's the life God's given to me? What do I have right now in front of me?
My job, my family, my spouse, my parents, my education, you know, you name it. And you look at that and say, God has given these things to me to be my unique vessel through which I give glory to Him. I receive His providence with trust, with submission, and with gratitude. Whatever, as you're sitting here right now, as you think about final judgment, standing before Christ in judgment, and you say, oh, this is the life He's given to me, then I want to live in a way that pleases Him and maximizes whatever I can to give glory to Him through what's been given to me. And because I want, you say, to yourself, as Scripture speaks elsewhere, you know, you could talk about it in metaphorical terms with crowns or whatever, but, you know, to me personally, the one thing that I want out of that judgment, the one thing that I want out of that judgment, if I have to live in rags in a forgotten corner of heaven, not that the Lord would treat any of His children that way, but this is the way I feel about it.
If I was banished to the ghetto of heaven to live in rags and to live alone, I would gladly accept that if the one thing, as I looked into the face of Christ, He looked on me and He said those blessed words, Don, well done, you good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master. That's all I care about. By comparison, I don't care about anything else. I'm living for that one moment and whatever the eternal consequences of it may be. Now, that's the governing, that's the primary principle at work in my heart. Do I live that way perfectly? Could you tell as I, in my bouts of laziness or whatever, you know, that I'm maximizing everything every moment in a relentless all-out assault on everything?
It's not like that, and I don't think it's supposed to be like that, but that is the desire of my heart. That is the only thing I care about. If I could have one moment looking undistracted in His face with His countenance expressing approval on my life, saying, Don, well done, that was a good job. There's a lot that, as you'll see, Don, there's a lot that burned up here.
You squandered a lot of opportunity. But in the whole, well done, that's heaven to me. That would be heaven to know that I had pleased my Master. Now, beloved, that's not just me.
That's not unique to me. That's not a pastor's desire. That's a Christian's desire.
Lord, you've given, you gave me salvation, you gave me life, you gave me circumstances, and I just wanted to please you. That's what Paul is saying when he says we make it our ambition to be pleasing to Him there in chapter 5, verse 9. And so that's the idea of the serious judgment that we're going to stand before Christ somehow at some time. There's other times, other places we can talk about this judgment seat of Christ in the eschatological sequence of things.
I'm not concerned to talk about that tonight. Rather to just talk about the surpassing reality that we're going to stand before God and give an account. And that means that every aspect of every part of your life matters. This imbues eternal significance into every life in this room and everything that you do and think and say and the motives of your heart. It's all going to be a matter that we give an account before God for. And so this and this alone gives significance to everything that we do and everything that we are. This is why in the earlier progress of Revelation that Solomon could say, the end of the matter is that we should fear God and keep His commandments for God will bring every deed into judgment. And so after he goes through all of this vanity of vanities, everything's vanity, he finally comes to an edifying conclusion and says if you can just understand this, that your duty is to fear God and to obey Him because one day you're going to stand and give an account to Him, then you've gotten the essence of life. And I think it's pretty cool that small, insignificant, forgotten people like you and me could know the secrets of the universe like this in a way that's withheld from the masses.
This is a great treasure that's been given to us. And so that's the serious judgment of believers. Now secondly, let's just talk briefly about the standard of judgment for believers. The standard of judgment for believers. If we're going to stand before God and give an account, then I'd like to know if He's revealed it, I'd like to know a little bit about what's going to be going through His mind at the time and on the basis upon which He'll exercise this judgment.
Go back to Matthew chapter 7 with me. The standard of judgment for believers, and let me just give you an overview statement here to put this all in perspective hopefully, is that God is going to do this. God is going to tailor, He's going to shape individual judgment to the opportunities and character that He gave to each one. It's going to be a tailored judgment, a specific judgment that He uses a standard that is uniquely fitted for you. And somewhat surprisingly and shockingly, frighteningly, that you have in your hands during your life going forward, it will be in your hands to help determine the standard by which God judges you. Whether it's full of mercy or whether it's strict and unbending and unyielding.
Now that's serious. Look at verses 1 and 2 again. Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
Notice just the passive voice here. The passive voice, you will be judged, it will be measured to you. Judged by whom?
Measured by whom? By God. God is going to use the way that you judge people, the measure by which you judge relationships in your life, God is going to judge you by the standard of judgment that you used while you were living here on earth. Oh, take my breath away.
Take my breath away. Now when Jesus says, judge not so that you will not be judged, He's not saying, obviously, from what we saw on Sunday, what we've seen earlier this evening, He does not mean that you can avoid absolutely all accountability before God. That's not His point. Jesus is talking about judgment in a comparative sense. What He's saying in these two verses is, is the way that you judge others, the way that you respond to others, the way that you assess others during your course of life here on earth, is somehow going to flavor and influence the way that God judges you on your great day of accountability.
The way you measured it out horizontally is somehow going to affect the way God measures it out to you vertically. We can summarize it this way, and I'm going to show you a couple of verses to help you understand it, talking about your character and what you do with your opportunities. The tenor of your life becomes the basis for the tenor of your judgment. So look back at Matthew chapter five, verse seven, for example, where Jesus says, Matthew five, verse seven, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Those who are merciful to, in their sphere of relationships here on earth, future tense, they will receive mercy. When will they receive mercy? They'll receive it in part in this life, but they'll have a more merciful tone and element to their judgment and accountability before God than those who were strict, unbending, and unmerciful, and unsympathetic in their life. The whole point is this, beloved, people of mercy receive mercy. They'll receive something qualitatively different from the hand of God. He'll look on the life of a merciful person and somehow bestow a greater measure of generosity at their day of accountability than someone who was not like that. Think about it in terms of James chapter three, verse one. James three, one, not many of you should become teachers, my brother, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. You see, blessed are the merciful, they'll receive mercy.
Those who teach are going to have a stricter standard applied to them. That's one of my lesser favorite verses in the Bible, though I respect and submit to it, of course. The whole point of it is that our own attitudes and what we do is somehow going to influence our final reward. God will measure out reward according to the measure that you used with the men and women in your life during your earthly life. If you deal generously, God will be generous with you. If you love to criticize the faults of others, be warned, because God will somehow apply that unbending standard to you.
Now all of a sudden, this revolutionizes everything. Now I'm not so concerned about what person X did to me in the past. I'm thinking, oh, I want to respond to that person in the way that I would like God to respond to me. And Jesus actually picks up on that, doesn't he? In verse 12, when he says, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. And there's nothing unjust about this, beloved. Think about it. This is just God being just. This is right. If God applies the standard that we use to others and uses that on us, what ground of complaint could there possibly be?
God, how could you be so strict at this time? Well, what about your life before you got here? Oh, yeah. Oh, now I make the connection.
I wish I had made the connection before I got here. Well, this is why God has you here tonight. Now, let me quote from another writer, Kent Hughes, who was for a long time pastor of a college church in Wheaton, Illinois.
Kent Hughes summarizes it this way. He says, as judgmental believers will still be with God forever, but they will have very little reward because their hypercritical spirit will have vitiated much of the good that they have done. Our Lord means to put a holy fear in us so that we would put away our critical hearts.
The tone of our life is going to become the tone of our judgment, end quote. Now, let me clarify and defend the honor of God at this very point here. God is not going to judge us with the sinful pettiness that you and I sometimes use to judge other people. Those of you that are prone to impulses of road rage, God's not going to just have that lashing out effect on you that you have on a driver that you don't like or the driver that did not like me a couple of weeks ago on 75 heading down toward Lexington.
That little exchange still stands out in my mind. May the Lord bless him and have mercy on him. God is not going to judge us in the petty way that we act. Somehow, somehow he will extract the sin from it and apply the overall tone of that strict unbending spirit to you or that generous, merciful spirit he'll bless you with. This is a great incentive for us to be generous, merciful, forgiving people, doing so to the glory of God with an eye on our future accountability before him.
Now, let me say a word of hopeful encouragement for you because I know that in a room with this many people, there's people that you've been marked by bad attitudes, sinful, selfish, self-centered, grumbling, complaining spirits and taking that out on the people around you. I'm not saying you're not a Christian here. I'm presupposing you are in what I say.
But we fall into those patterns, don't we, and become very critical of a spouse or a child or a parent or of circumstances or of people that we meet on the street and condescending, unpleasant attitudes. And if you're convicted here tonight, well, that's good. I'm glad for that, glad that the Lord would work in your heart through his word. But maybe, you know, maybe you're 70 years old. Say, I don't have long to go and I've got a long life history of this and what's going to happen to me? I became a Christian as a young man. I became a Christian 41 years ago tomorrow, someone might say, which would be me, November 20, 1983. Someone could say, and my life has been, I have made it so difficult for so many people by the harsh and selfish way that I've lived.
What's going to happen to me? I don't have time to undo that. I can't balance it out. There's not time.
Too many years have gone by. Is my reward in heaven going to be restricted? Well, go back to chapter 7 and let me give you a great, just a wonderful, wonderful point of hope and incentive to repentance and to bring forth the fruit of repentance in your future life going forward. Jesus says in verse 1 there, judge not that you be not judged. Now, sometimes there is an advantage to knowing a little bit about the original language here as you study Scripture, and this is one of those times. The form of this command has the idea of stop judging.
It has the idea of coming to you as you're doing something and saying stop. And the following clause says what will happen to you if you do stop judging and living with that censorious, critical, difficult spirit. Jesus says, stop judging like that. Stop living like that so that you might know the blessing of not being judged like that in return. The idea is stop judging so that you will not be judged. That command, my dear, convicted, guilty, believing friend, that command implies great, great grace to you and to me. If you will repent of your judgmental heart, God would be delighted. Even at this late hour in your life, God would be delighted to expand the sphere of His grace in your day of accountability before Him.
Stop judging now so that you won't be judged like that in the final day. What manner of grace is this? I ask you.
Seriously. I ask you that Christ would come to us through His word, come to believers who have just been difficult on everyone around them, and to warn us saying, you know what, you don't want to go that route. And if you'll just stop now and bring forth a life of mercy going forward, we'll forget all about that tone of your prior 40 years of life, and I'll judge you going forward as you respond to my word and adjust your attitudes and interactions to comport with the grace that I have shown to you and that I promise to you. Wow.
Can you imagine? What is this kind of grace? The grace that shows us before the foundation of the world, the grace that hangs on a cross, the innocent one for the guilty so that the guilty can be declared righteous. That's amazing grace. The Spirit coming to a drunk, vile reprobate and drawing Him to Christ and imparting the gift of repentance and faith to Him, that's grace. And then forgiving grace through and overlooking and chastening us for sin along the way that we might be conformed to the image of Christ. And then even in the midst of that, coming to some of the stubborn people even in this room, and I say that with love and mercy in my heart to you, to come to you and just laying all of that out and say, yes, that's what you've been like.
And if you continue on that path, it will be more strict for you, but there's still time. An offer of grace extended for one like that stubborn woman, that stubborn, critical man, that stubborn, critical spouse to say I've had it all wrong. I want to maximize the mercy and therefore I'm going to start being merciful and for God to say the whole past, I won't take that into account based on your response to me now.
This is grace. So here, beloved, is the question that reverberates throughout all of eternity for every one of you. Speaking as to Christians, I spoke to you unbelievers on Sunday, and if you're still an unbeliever after that message, you need to go back and listen to it again. Tonight I'm talking to my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and I say it sympathetically and with a spirit of loving invitation from the Lord himself. My dear friends, how would you like your judgment? How generous would you like God to be with you on that day of accountability that you are inexorably and quickly moving toward?
Consider it all and start planning now because your judgment awaits. Let's pray together. Gracious Father, thank you for the privilege that you give us of hearing from your word, and thank you for the privilege of an indwelling Holy Spirit who illuminates it and gives us understanding so that we can know what is true and Him who is true to know your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We're grateful for that. And Father, I pray for these dear brothers and sisters in Christ in the room and in subsequent media that will hear these things. Father, I pray that your Spirit might convict them of sin, judgment, and righteousness so that, Father, there might be a turn in heart in many toward mercy, toward kindness, toward a forgiving, gracious Spirit, and that, Father, as a result of that act and consequences and fruit of that kind of repentance, Father, that everyone under the sound of my voice would have a far more joyous bliss throughout all of eternity because they responded to these clear words of Jesus.
They're found in your Holy Word. Bless that to each one. And Father, I would be remiss if I didn't just offer you a word of thanks as I remember that evening from 41 years ago, a wretched sinner consciously rebelling against you, and then in the morning you showed grace.
The Spirit came upon my heart, convicted me of sin, judgment, and righteousness, and led me to fall at the feet of Jesus in repentance and in a faith that was new and vibrant because it was a true gift from heaven. Thank you for all the mercy that you've shown me over the decades, Lord, and whether there's only a few days or a few decades, still more to come. Lord, I am grateful, grateful for all that you have done, grateful that you've given me the privilege of knowing the dear people in front of me here this evening, and I pray, Father, that your great blessing would be upon them both now and to the day of eternity. May they grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us for yet another podcast from The Truth Pulpit, and we wanted to let you know that in addition to these audio resources that you are enjoying, that there are also written resources from my ministry. The Lord has given us opportunity to put some of the things that I've taught over the years in print, and I have one book in particular that I would want to call your attention to. It's the most popular book that I've published so far called Trusting God in Trying Times. It's a book born out of deep personal sorrow and is brought into context, you might say, through the Word of God. How to trust God when you are going through the deepest valleys and the most sorrowful things in life. How do you trust God through those times when you can't see your way forward?
I've been there, my friend, and the book Trusting God in Trying Times speaks to that spiritual experience in the life of the believer. You can find all of my books at thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Just click on the link there.
You'll find links to different books, and you will find that they take you to an easy place to purchase them for your reading enjoyment. So thank you once again for joining us on The Truth Pulpit. We'll see you next time as we continue to study God's Word together. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.
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