Oh Be Careful Little Feet

Someone's abandoned you.

Someone left you for another. God will give you a reward for following Him still. He will make it right.

Someone's stolen your possessions, maybe your good name. God will make it right. Someone applauded your failure. Someone rejoiced when you suffered. God will make it right. Someone failed to love you or care for you. Someone failed to take up your cause. God will make it right.

Someone's convinced you'd never amount to anything. God will have something to say about that then. God will make it right. A day is coming when God will right every wrong. But you know what? Many things that divide us and cause us to hurt one another are not disagreements over clear doctrine.

Have you noticed that? Often our disagreements are related to personal convictions that aren't supported with clear scripture. In Romans 14, the Apostle Paul gives you a warning about judging your fellow believers. That warning is our theme today here on Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey is your Bible teacher, and he brings you a lesson today called, Oh, Be Careful Little Feet.

One of the men in our church sent me this. I thought it was an interesting, enlightening story. An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.

Well, the farmer said it was good. They did something different, though. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns. Praise choruses, asked the wife.

What are those? Oh, they're okay. They're sort of like hymns, only different, the farmer said. Well, what's the difference? The farmer explained. Well, it's like this. If I were to say to you, Martha, the cows are in the corn. Well, that would be what we're used to. But if on the other hand, I were to say to you, Martha, Martha, oh, Martha, oh, oh, Martha, Martha, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the white cows, the cows, the cows, the cows, cows, cows, cows, cows, or in the corn, corn, corn. They're in the corn.

And then I repeated it three times. That would be a praise chorus. Well, wouldn't you know it, that farmer's little church had a visitor from the big city that same Sunday.

It seems that they just switched. He went home to his wife and she asked him how it went. He said, oh, it was OK, except they didn't sing praise choruses. They sang hymns. And she asked, what's a hymn? He said, well, it's like a chorus, only only different. She said, what do you mean different? He explained. Well, if I said to you, Martha, the cows are in the corn.

I'd be sort of like what we're used to. But if I said, oh, dear Martha, hear the words of my mouth. Turn down my whole wondrous ear to this glorious truth for the way the animals who can explain there in their heads is no shadow of sense. Harking as they and God's son or as rain, unless from the mild corn they are fenced. Yea, those clouds and glad rebellious delight of loose their shackles, their warm pens askew.

Yea, goaded by minions of darkness and night. They all my sweet corn are now destined to chew. Martha, look to that bright day when Earth is reborn and I shall not see those cows in my corn.

That would be a hymn. I don't know which applause is bigger for what here. We're probably evenly divided. Well, it's good you're laughing. Further proof that a good music program both educates and irritates both sides of the argument.

The truth is, gray matters are rarely laughing matters, are they? If you go all the way back to the seventeen hundreds to the days of Jonathan Edwards, that great church leader, pastor who led the Great Awakening. There was great controversy over a couple of things regarding music. One, a controversy surrounding whether or not everyone should sing together or not. We today have a song leader who keeps us together and the instruments keep us on the same pitch and in the same key. But in those days, everyone just sort of started with the lyrics and their psaltery whenever they wanted to. And they sang in whatever pitch they wanted and they all sort of ended about the same time. The other controversy was whether or not women could sing at the same time as the men. Would that be violating the place of submission to sing alongside of their husbands?

Think about it. Ever since the Pharisees were challenged by the Lord for teaching their traditions as doctrine, Mark Chapter 7. We have been dividing and arguing and splitting and bickering over methods and mannerisms and mechanisms and minutia.

While at the same time missing that which really mattered. The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Rome deeply divided over issues of liberty and lifestyle. And he will both educate and irritate the entire church. In Romans 14, we discovered in our last study that Paul has developed with this church, delivering to them a rather shocking guideline for determining what to do in gray areas. Where the Bible is silent or inconclusive. Not matters of doctrine, but matters of lifestyle.

This is not a debate over belief, this is a debate over behavior. And the scriptures are for the most part silent. But he wrote in verse 5, if you look back at Chapter 14, Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind, he who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats does so for the Lord. Now mind you, Paul is talking about the incredibly controversial subjects of the Sabbath. And eating meat, he writes to the Corinthians along the same line, offered to idols. These were actually, if you can imagine it, more important than the debates we have over courses and hymns over the same pitch or your own pitch at the same time or all together.

These were explosive issues. And he gives the guidelines, there were two of them. Make Jesus Christ your priority, as you decide what to do in those gray areas.

And make thanksgiving your practice, as you decide what to do in those areas. Now in verse 10, he goads us all into remembering something that really matters. Look there. He says, But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. Paul says, May I remind you who are judgmentally criticizing your brothers and sisters in contempt, you will one day stand before Christ. May I remind you that as you look down on your brother, remember one day you will be looking up at Christ, your judge. I think you ought to circle a very convicting word in this text.

It's right in the middle of this phrase. For we shall, here it is, all, we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. Every one of us who claims to know Christ and truly do will stand before him on that day. For those who do not know Christ, they also have an appointment with God. Everyone has an appointment with God. For it is appointed unto man once to die.

And then what? The judgment. Well, the judgment for the unbeliever is found in Revelation 20, where they will stand before what is called the great white throne. That awful moment is recorded where all unbelievers will be given the guilty verdict and cast into eternal hell.

All mouths will be shut, Romans tells us. All excuses put aside and all will be rendered the due justice of their deeds. Not having an advocate, not having had a redeemer, they will now pay the eternal price of sin against an eternal God in an eternal hell. But for those who know Christ by grace through faith in the work of Christ alone, we also have an awesome moment where we will stand before the Son of God. And we know it is specifically rendered in this as it relates to the Son of God being the judge.

For in John 5.22, Jesus said, the Father has given to him all the rights of judgment. It's interesting that Paul describes this to the Corinthians in his letter, his second letter, chapter 5. He says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. If you look back in your text here in verse 10 of Romans 14, it says, we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. Probably a wonderfully overlooked text that speaks of the fullness of Christ's deity, called the seat of Christos, or Christ in 2 Corinthians 5.10, and Theos, or God, here in Romans 14, verse 10. Nevertheless, we shall all stand at this bema before the second person of the Godhead, the one who embodies the fullness of deity who came to earth as Savior, now before whom we stand as judge of all things. And Paul calls that place the judgment seat, the bema.

What is that place? Well, the Greek word bema primarily means simply a step. You could translate it a pace. It's translated in Acts chapter 7 literally as the footprint that you leave behind, a place for your feet. It's how the word could be woodenly understood or translated. It came to be used for foot rooms. We know that to be what they expressed in that term as a platform, a place where you ascended by virtue of your feet walking up stairs to get onto the platform. And that is the use of the word in the mind of Paul, for during the time of Paul, those raised platforms were where the tribunal sat and delivered the verdicts of the law. It was a place for judges to sit at the bema, that raised platform.

Some of these bemas were in the open, some in palaces behind columned walls. The word bema is used for the seat of Pilate who judged the Lord Jesus in Matthew 27 verse 19, for while Pilate was sitting on the bema, the judgment seat, his wife sent to him saying, have nothing to do with that righteous man. There was the famous bema in Corinth where Galio the governor judged or attempted to judge Paul. That bema still exists, I have seen pictures of it with the name Galio still inscribed in the stone. When Paul said to these believers, you are one day going to stand before the bema of God, they knew immediately what he was talking about.

They captured immediately the picture in his mind. But maybe you're thinking, wait a second, how are we to stand before God the Son as judge, since he is already our Savior? Good question. Let me say it as simply as I can. The bema is a personal one on one encounter with the living Christ, where he will judge you not on your position in him, but on your performance for him. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe the bema will be a place of great weeping. John implies, it'll be a place where we are confronted with what we missed, what might have been had we surrendered, but it will be a place of great joy too. We are there, a place of grace, a place of deepest love.

Why? For there is no deeper love than to offend someone and for that someone to love you still. What's it going to be like then at the bema, this mixture of emotion, both sadness and joy? Well, Paul uses four illustrations or metaphors to describe this awesome encounter with Christ.

The first picture is of a great smelting furnace. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul writes of that day, it's referred to as that day or the day, the judgment day for the believer at the bema. And he writes, Now if any man builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident, for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built upon it remains, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire. The fire mentioned here is used elsewhere in Scripture as an emblem, a symbol of deity and purity. Our God is a what?

Consuming fire. That means our God is a God of complete holiness and purity. By the way, this is not a mild reference to a place of purgatory where we go to have our faults burned away over time and then eventually get to heaven. This is a reference to that moment when we stand before God the Son and have our lives evaluated by the agency of his pure and holy gaze, as it were by the fire of his view. What is it of our lives that will stand the test of faithfulness and purity and holiness? What will stand the purifying gaze of our holy, consuming God? Evidently there will be those who have nothing left, nothing of value.

It is as if they have come through the fire with nothing but their salvation intact. For the Apostle John wrote in 2 John 1-8, See to it that you do not forfeit your full reward. Not your salvation. Eternally secure. See to it that you do not forfeit your full reward.

So build your life. You get to choose, as it were, the material by your surrender to Christ and your spirit and attitude. Valuable things that would honor God or earthly, trivial matters that occupy your attention and your life that have no glory unto God. Even the mundane things can bring glory to God as we surrender them to him. So this then becomes the picture.

It is a great smelting furnace. He uses another image, what we could call in our modern vernacular a supernatural x-ray machine. A chapter later Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, a reference to this day, but wait until the Lord comes who will bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts. Again, it is not the quantity of work that you've performed for God. It is the quality of the work. It isn't the magnificence of the task. It is the motive of the heart and he's going to open it all up.

He's going to disclose it to you and to me. Rewards at the Bema will have nothing to do with our position. I don't get an edge up on you because I've been on this platform and you've been sitting out there in the chair.

I don't have any extra edge over you. It's going to be our attitude and our motive for whatever we did do and that means many dear saints who probably were not well known to the world, perhaps hardly known to fellow believers are going to receive reward after reward after commendation upon commendation from the Lord's hands because their works were purely motivated for his glory. One man put it this way. Don't hold back because you cannot preach in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Be content to talk to one or maybe two. Good way of putting it. You may cook in small pots.

Some may cook in big pots. It's a good way of saying it. He went on to write, little pigeons can carry great messages. It's good.

He also wrote, even a little dog can bark at a thief and wake up the master and save the house. I remember spending the night in a beautiful hotel in India there for travel and meetings, many people clamoring for our attention. I had the privilege of preaching in a wonderful rally. But back in that beautiful hotel which was like an oasis surrounded by such poverty, a hotel I've never had a nice hotel like that one. Everything seemed poured in marble and covered in 14 karat gold.

It was like an entire city unto itself. I remember the maid who cleaned my room. She had such a countenance about her. On the last day there, in fact, I was walking down the hallway pulling my suitcase and I was passing her and I asked her a question that she could have been reprimanded for answering, but I stopped her and I said, Ma'am, your countenance, your smile, you understand what I'm saying? She nodded and I said, I've noticed and I just want to ask you a question.

Do you know Jesus Christ? She immediately beamed, surrounded by a world of Hindu. She said, oh yes, I am a Christian. I'd like to be within a mile of that woman at the Bema.

She may never deliver the gospel to many people, but I'll tell you she cleaned rooms with an obvious motive to glorify her Lord and her Savior. You see, the divine x-ray of the Bema will reveal the motive of our hearts. It won't be in awe of whatever we did.

It will want to know why and in whose strength and for what purpose. Paul also pictures the judgment seat as an award ceremony. You need to understand that on these raised platforms set the judges who handed out awards at the end of athletic contests. It was the place where victorious athletes would stand to receive their Stephanos, Stephanoi, their crowns. It gives us our name, Stephen.

It referred to the oak laurel wreath that would wither away and eventually just sort of rot. But that would be the moment of their lifetime. And there on the Bema they have around their neck a ribbon and a medallion. And you see, can you not, the tears brimming in their eyes and their heart pumping with honorable pride as their anthem is played.

Paul says, I am going to be that athlete. I want to step up to the Bema and I'm going to receive the victors laurel wreath. And that one will not fade away. That one will not wilt and rot.

That one lasts forever. So he writes to his son in the faith with that in mind as it relates it to the judgment seat. He says, I have fought a good fight. I have finished the course.

I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the Stephanos of righteousness, the crown, the laurel wreath of a victorious athlete. Which the Lord, notice this, the righteous judge will award to me on that day. The judgment seat is an award ceremony. One more, it's like a performance review.

You ever had one of those? Paul wrote to the Corinthians, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. That each one may be recompensed, that is paid back for his deeds in the body.

Now notice this is where some confusion slips in. Paul says, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. So you think, well that's talking about sin. I thought sin wasn't the issue.

It isn't. You translate that, whether profitable or unprofitable. 2 Corinthians 5, 10. That which is worthwhile and that which is worth less. For those things which are worth less, he will not reward you. But those things which are worthwhile. And oh, are we going to want to see more and more and more of those worthwhile things, right? You're coming up on tax time.

So you pull all your checks out. Hey, there's one to Colonial, hallelujah. Record that. There's another one.

Glory to God. Are there any more? Please. There's a third.

Great. Four. Five. Woo, six. During the year, well, another one to Colonial.

See how the attitude changes when we give an accounting that has some value to our minds. Imagine standing before God and he reviews those things which we have done that are worthwhile and we'll say, please, let there be one. Let there be two. Could there be three things or four?

Maybe five. Praise God. There were some. This is the context of Romans 14. We shall give an account to him. And as we do, we shall praise him for those rewards. And Paul says the knee will bow.

Could we do anything other than that? And from our lips, he says in verse 11, we will give praise to God. Give praise to God. So the question would be what kind of testimony did you have?

Anything worthwhile? What was your work ethic and for whom did you work? Did you forget you were not working for that company? You are working for the glory of God. Whom did you influence along life's way to seek after and to follow God?

Won't it be great to know that there's someone or maybe two or three that you did indeed influence? That will be the accounting at the Bema. This is a performance review. He will look for results, as it were, as he tallies our deeds. Aren't you glad your performance review will be taken up with none other than Jesus Christ?

His evaluation, though on the one hand is terrifying, it will be perfect. You can't say, Lord, if you'd just known about this little fact that changed the way you view me for having done that, he'd say, Oh, I am omniscient. I know everything. Oh, Lord, if you'd seen the way that person said this or did that to me, you'd know why I responded in that way. And he'd say, Oh, I am omnipresent.

I saw everything. On the one hand, that's terrifying. He is, in fact, the judge of all things. On the other hand, he is both holy and loving. He is both awesome and he is personable. In this one on one encounter, he is terrible.

Yet he is terribly gracious. He will not only rightly account in his rendering of our lives. He will make everything right. I just began to ruminate on what it means for God to make it all right.

And I just sort of came up with my list. Someone's passed you over. God will make it right. Someone's abandoned you.

Someone left you for another. God will give you a reward for following him still. He will make it right.

Someone's stolen your possessions, maybe your good name. God will make it right. Someone applauded your failure.

Someone rejoiced when you suffered. God will make it right. Someone failed to love you or care for you. Someone failed to take up your cause. God will make it right. Someone refused to encourage you.

Someone never cheered you on. Someone hoped you'd even lose in life. God will make it right. Someone's betrayed you.

Someone's physically and emotionally hurt you. God will make it right. Someone's misled you. Someone's mocked you.

Someone's ridiculed your purity and slandered your testimony. My friend, God will make it right. Someone's convinced you'd never amount to anything.

Someone's certain now you aren't worth anything. God will have something to say about that then. God will make it right. You never understood why, did you? Then, God will make it clear. You could never figure it out, could you? But then, God will let you see.

You could never get it all together. But on that day, then, God has made you whole. Amen? So how can we look down our nose at our brother who's struggling, just like you are, just like I am? How do we pick at our brothers and sisters who one day will stand before that judge? No wonder the writer of Hebrews said, Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Provoke one another unto love and good works, and so much the more as you see the day approaching.

We're going to stand before God one day. Are you following him? Great, keep it up.

I don't agree with you on that, but it doesn't matter. Are you living for Jesus Christ? Great, keep it up. The day is coming. On that day, I'm convinced we will not be able to stop the tears until he wipes them away. We will not be able to stop the praise which will continue on forever and ever as we say holy is our Lord, righteous and gracious, magnificent, majestic. And that will be just the beginning. I hope that remembering that day will help you live this day with a humble and gracious attitude toward others.

I'm sure glad you joined us. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Our office is closed today as our staff enjoys a holiday with their family and friends. However, our website is open. You can access all of Stephen's Bible teaching resources online. Visit wisdomonline.org to learn more. Visit there today, then join us next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .