God’s judgment operates in two distinct ways: His interventions in present history and His final Judgment at the end of time. While He sometimes brings immediate judgment upon nations and churches in this life, as seen in the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, He also has a formal Judgment moment! At the end of the age. Christians will face the Judgment Seat (Bema) of Christ where their works will be tested by fire and non-Christians similarly face final Judgment in the Lake of Fire of the Book of Revelation. Those who reject God’s free offer of righteousness given through the Gospel face an eternal judgment, precisely because they have left themselves “in their sins”. Christ’s forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice offers complete cleansing from all unrighteousness for those who come by faith to Christ, confessing their sins. The severity of both God’s judgment and His forgiveness are both the outworking of His perfect righteousness and justice.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] That’s something we should be aware of as well. Right through the Scriptures there are records of people who find themselves suddenly caught up in a judgment for how they have not been doing right or God has come to bring judgment in order that he might establish they have been doing right. And so there is such a thing as the judgment God brings, the precedent of that of course is in the garden of Eden, where you have the storyline of Adam and Eve. And they faced a judgment which was that they were pushed out of that paradise and they were pushed away from availability to the tree of life which caused their judgment of doom to be something that they would never avoid. And that idea that God sometimes steps in time to a scene or to a nation or to a person

[00:00:55] in a way that is judgment now. And a part of what I think I felt alerted to in studying on this topic to get ready for this message was that I need to somehow help us to not miss out on and certainly be aware of the facts. That God sometimes brings judgment in this life for certain aspects of how we’ve been going or not going. And that’s a part of what he does. So you want some examples, illustrations? There’s plenty of big ones.

[00:01:26] And I suppose the biggest one is the flood. And 2 Peter, we were looking at this the other Sunday, talks of the fact, 1 and 2 Peter, of the fact that God judged the world with a flood. And at the conclusion of it, as it’s recorded in the first books of the Bible, Book of Genesis, God promised at the end of that flood when the waters went down that he would never do a like flood again. And the rainbow was set in the sky as a sign

[00:01:57] that God’s promise that he would not judge the world again with an all-world, all-round world flood. It was an enormous one, which is why the ark eventually, when the waters were going down, stopped up near the top of a mountain. You think of how much water that meant. But what the scriptures say in Peter’s letters is that just as God decided once to judge the world by a flood, and this is not the final judgment, it was a judgment of a generation,

[00:02:27] but also the fact that God has decided to judge the world with fire, some sort of atomic blaze where all the things of the earth are burned up. And that’s a part of the warning that God gives in those little letters of Peter at the back of the New Testament. There’s other judgments that happen. If I ask you the question, think to yourself, what other example is there of God stepping in and judging?

[00:02:56] In time, this is not the final judgment at the end of the age, but in time, what other do you have example thereof? And of course, the biggest is the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. And that figures in the Old Testament as a bit of a warning as to what God can do. He’ll stand for so much rot and nonsense, but then he steps in and judgements, cities. We need to be aware of that, because as a nation, Australia,

[00:03:25] we have had very good reason to be called the lucky country. Very much had the opportunity of being bequeathed away of having governance, which was a lot better than a lot of other places. I still believe that the method of government we got as a gift from Britain is the best one we could have had our nation founded on. And the evidence of that you see when you travel into other places and see just how the governor system is working

[00:03:54] or not working all sorts of problems in society, and apart of why we don’t have as much or we haven’t had as many of those problems has been that which we were given in a good system of governance. And that’s just a fact of history, whether you believe it or not, or accept it or not, we as a country have been dealt with some pretty good playing cards. Maybe that’s not a good illustration for church, but I like playing cards.

[00:04:25] But the fact that we’ve been given a hand that’s worth playing with as far as our society is concerned. I think we do live in a lucky country for quite a lot of different reasons. One being the simple fact we’re surrounded by water and so there’s not border clashes the same as other nations have. But that won’t necessarily last. And I believe the Scriptures have in them warnings that if we don’t do what God wants us to do in upholding His name, in propagating His gospel and keeping His laws, which have been a part of that original giving to us of a way to have a nation, we once were a nation under God.

[00:05:10] Whether we’re remaining that will reap a judgment of this life. I remember the answer of Billy Graham’s daughter who said to the investigator, the reporter who came and asked why God would allow the things to happen when 9-11, that time when the airplanes ran into the two towers. And there were a lot of people who died. And the answer that she gave was in terms of how we’d been leaving God out of our nation. And if you leave God out of our nation, there can come a time when He will judge that nation. And we in the Western world are facing a time in our politics when if we don’t turn the right way, if we turn against His laws, there’s some moment when, like Sodom and Gomorrah, God doesn’t wait for the general judgment at the end of the world.

[00:06:06] He steps in in what happens in the here and now. My content tonight and I’m glad that you’ve come. Sometimes when we don’t have the meal we don’t have as many people, that’s alright. Sometimes when we have a glorious morning and they have have that higher ground down the back with everybody sharing in the morning, people get a very full day’s worth of fellowship and I notice that since we’ve been doing that so well we don’t have as many, necessarily, in the evening and that’s no worry. Because having that fellowship is something given of God in our church, and I think it’s a wonderful thing in the morning services. And also in the evening.

[00:06:47] Are we having a meal tonight afterwards? No. Oh well, we’re here now, and you’re getting a meal of sorts in what I’m doing now in giving you a talk about the Bible teaching on judgment. Well that’s about those judgments that come, and just for one thing to keep your mind alert when you’re reading the scriptures about moments when God comes and judges. Sometimes the old way of King James Bible and the older versions would call that a visitation. And somebody who noted the habit of God giving a visitation was Jesus, and he spoke to the city of Jerusalem and talked to them as to what was going to happen with the destruction of that city.

[00:07:30] We had that famous prophecy of his in the destruction of Jerusalem which was fulfilled in AD 70. But as Jesus addressed the city, and as he lamented over it, and he said, how often will I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers its chickens, but you would not. And then he went on to say the enemy armies will come and he described what would occur, and in the fulfilment of which was the judgment in 1870, on the whole of the system of the Jewish religion, God does judge in the presence, and he can judge. I’ve seen times where he judges in churches, where churches that were alive and having a great thing given to them to participate in the kingdom of God, and then somewhere they did something wrong. And when you go

[00:08:20] along now and look at those churches, they’re absent, there’s nothing there. There are some, one of the things that happened when I went back to Britain once for a trip, was to notice how many churches there were that were completely empty, or big beautiful cathedral-like buildings, and then there’s a sign on it, please give, the roof needs to be repaired, we don’t have the money. As if the guard who owned those churches was a pauper, and we better help him out with a few little helps of funds. That’s where God has left the church, and in the book of Revelation it talks through those early chapters of the seven letters to the churches, and some of them are doing well and some are not, and some are given a warning that, you know, they could die. And there is such a thing as the

[00:09:13] death of a church, which is a judgment that comes on the people of God for some extreme reason that they haven’t done what He wanted. Well, that’s about the judgment of this life but now what I want to move on to is talking about the judgment which is a part of the final coming of Jesus, because a part of the Gospel is not only that Jesus was born, that He lived, that He went to the cross and there suffered the judgment for our sins on the cross, that’s the judgment away from the final judgment, the judgment on your sins on Christ as he died for you. But as we go through the telling of the gospel message, it finishes with the fact that one day Jesus Christ is going to come back again. And the purpose of his coming back again is not to do similarly as he did the first time. He’s not going to

[00:10:02] teach any lessons in terms of how he lives. He’s going to rather come to bring the judgement for how we have lived and how we have taken to his commands and followed his scriptures. Those judgments, some people say there’s just one big whoopie judgment at the end. Other people’s interpretation is that there are different styles of judgments, one for Christians and another style of one for non-people who aren’t going to be saved. For a first start I wanted us to look and see whether that’s a biblical thought to continue believing that there’s a judgment for Christians which is different from the judgment for the rest of the people who are to be lost, both dead and alive. And so let’s do that now, shall we? And let’s turn to some places in the scriptures.

[00:10:55] And here we have 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10. You’ve got it up there on the screen. So 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. What’s done in the body is while you’re alive and it’s still working. This arm works. I don’t know about this one so well. But what you do in the body, you’re going to give an account to Jesus. And the actual word for the judgment seat is a word that the theological persons have have given the name of this judgment

[00:11:33] from that word in Greek. It’s the word beemer. So the beemer seat of Christ is just a seat of judgment, but it’s mentioned in passages that are only picturing what’s going to happen to the Christians. It’s not a judgment as to who gets into hell and who goes to heaven, but it’s a judgment for those who are definitely other saved. But it’s where God has them an accountability moment for everything they’ve done while I’ve had opportunity

[00:11:58] been alive, physically alive on Earth. The passage we have there is simply that every one of us, and it’s the passage that’s speaking to the Christians, is going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. When exactly that happens is something that people who put together a timetable of events for the future sometimes have slightly different takes on when this will happen, but it’s certainly going to occur that every one of you sitting here who knows the Lord Jesus and mostly in our church we have people who already know the Lord, every one of us has got an appointment. I don’t know whether you’re a person … I used to get into trouble at school and have appointments called detentions and have to report. I remember when one of my favourite teachers… he was the captain of the cricket team of

[00:12:50] which I was a captain and he was the coach, but he also was my French teacher and he caught me out one day signing my mother’s name on my diary. I can remember what it is to have an appointment, to have to explain, there is no explaining. You were caught. And what’s going to happen at the judgment seat of Christ is not only that the things we’ve done wrong we might have to give an accountability about, but also all the things we’ve done right. And so we receive what is due for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil, and there is such a thing as rewards in glory in heaven that will be decided at the judgment seat of Christ.

[00:13:40] They’re not ones for who has been lucky enough to have an opportunity to do famous things necessarily at all. They’re whether or not when the Lord led you, you obeyed and let him work. Whether or not you stayed true to the calling that he gave you, every one of us shall stand in the judgment seat of Christ. I think the word stand is another of my verses here, but let’s get another one. People go to Romans chapter 14 verse 10, and here the apostle is speaking to people who are being rather judgmental with others. It is a factor of human nature, and particularly a factor of human nature where people think they’re doing well in any given system.

[00:14:27] You get critical of the others that you don’t think are scrubbing up as well. We Christians are not known for resisting the temptation to be judgmental of others. And so this passage says, why do you pass judgment on your brothers, your fellow Christian? Or you, why do you despise your brother? That’s even worse. Why are you looking down your nose at someone else? Because it’s amazing actually when you do get to listen to people that they do have varying backgrounds that put them in a position of having responsibility to do for what they’ve had revealed to them, and it’s often very different from person to person. If you’ve had the blessing of a family that are Christians and they’ve led you to be taught

[00:15:13] in the scriptures from the small years, then you are a lot more accountable. You should not look down your nose at your brother. There are many people who come to know the Lord and they find themselves in the church and they know almost nothing at the start. We shouldn’t look down their noses at them or think that they’re just beginners. Well, maybe they are beginners, but it’s not a reason for us to despise our brother. For we will all stand before the Judgement Seat, it’s the same word, Bhima, the Judgement Seat of God. Now, you will notice that Christ is the one who is the chief one who is going to judge, as in Acts 7, I didn’t have it on my list, but it’s where the Apostle Paul is speaking

[00:15:58] of the Athens, and he’s talking about the fact that they had some worship spots where they were shrines, and one was entitled to the God that they don’t know, to the Unknown God that had. And he gave Paul, because he saw when he got a chance to speak to the crowd, he said, now I’m going to tell you about that God that you don’t know, and he told them about the that Jesus Christ one day is going to judge the world and that Jesus is the man who will judge us and that’s a very big piece of Revelation Acts 17 if you want to take chase it down later where Jesus is the one who will be the judge and and we actually get in our British system of of lawyer business we get in our system that there’s a great benefit in someone being judged by a set of his

[00:16:49] her peers and Jesus is our peer in the sense that His human Jesus took on humanity not just God the Father but Jesus is the one to whom it’s been committed to be the judge and one of the reasons for that is that he came into the world and having taken on humanity he had the task he was born under the law the Bible says he had the task of keeping the law and Jesus is the only only one who managed to keep it completely. Jesus is the one who did what the Father asked of him. He didn’t shrink from going to the cross and dying for our sins. Jesus completed his run without there being a reason for criticism, and Jesus is going to be your judge. So know that none of our excuses are going to really hold much water when he tells us that he was available to help us each step along the way. I don’t know whether you have favourite verses. I

[00:17:46] keep quoting my favourite ones. One of the privileges of being a preacher, but there’s a verse about Paul when he got into trouble and the Jews were out to get him. And at night time when he’s in prison, he says, the Lord stood by me. The Lord came and stood by him and he said, don’t worry, Paul, as you witness for me here in Jerusalem, you’ll do the same in Rome. And he knew he was completely safe for the rest of the journey to Rome because Jesus came and stood by him. And the one who will be your judge is the one who’s given you the promise that if you get into difficulty here, if you have a problem, cry out to him and he’ll come running. If ever there’s a person who wants to be there for you, it’s Jesus. And he gave the promise, I will never leave you nor forsake you. We have no out. If we get into difficulty, we’ve got someone to cry out to who will help us. And we shouldn’t despise our brother or look down on someone else who has a

[00:18:56] problem. They also belong to Jesus and he cares for them. And Jesus gave lots of little hints to his disciples to stop being picky about the other people they see because he’s the one who looks after them. Well, that’s the Beamer judgment of Christ. And one verse we’ll get you turned to is 1 Corinthians 3, 11 to 16. We’re still talking about this and he’s talking about not only is the judgment seat of Christ for us to be called into account, as it were, but the judgment seat of Christ is also for there to be awarded rewards. Whether those rewards are what we get to do in glory, whether they are closeness to him or whether we’re given several stars to be in charge of. I don’t know what the rewards actually are. But it says in the verse 12, now if anyone builds on the foundation with God, the first verse is no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He is the foundation of Christianity and we come

[00:20:01] with the work that he did so successful we then continue his work and we’re laying extra things on the building as it were. In verse 13, each one’s work will become clear, manifest, for the day, the day when he comes to judge, will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. There’s going to be a testing of your works. Now this is a bit of a hard one to swallow when you read it and know that God’s going to test you because it calls into account all your motives. The nature of us Christians, and this is a bit of a confession to you, is it’s very hard to get rid of some sneaky little selfish motives. You’re not only doing it for his sake but you’re doing it because someone gave you last time a good clap on the back and said, well done young man. We all pray of having mixed

[00:20:53] motives and it will be revealed by fire. That’s the way they spoke of back then of the testing of the fire to see whether it was a genuine piece of gold which doesn’t burn away or whether it’s just something that will frizzle up and be gone. But what you’ve done is going to be given the test. I don’t know spiritually what this is but they’re going to be tested and if it survives the fire you get the reward. If it doesn’t, then you’re at a loss for your thinking that you’re going to. If anyone’s work is burned up he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved up. saved. It’s not about you going to heaven or hell. You get saved nonetheless, but as only through the fire. And the picture is that there are going to be quite a lot of

[00:21:46] Christians who will get into glory, but by the skin of their teeth, or as another metaphor might be, with all their clothes burned up, so they won’t be feeling very comfortable. Do you not know that God’s temple, you are God’s temple and the God’s Spirit, dwells in you? And he has a concern that you should belong to Christ. We all have our failings and we have times where we don’t live up to our best ambitions for the Lord, but there’s going to be a judgment day for us as Christians. And that’s something to keep in mind and to be a person who doesn’t let it make you someone who’s fearful of Christ, but someone who’s aware to do your best for him. Well, that’s the one side of the judgment being called the Beamer Seat of Christ. The other one is in the book of Revelation. At the end of the book of Revelation, you know, I think it’s chapter 21 and 22. In that spot, it talks

[00:22:52] about the lake of fire. And the other Sunday I was talking on the lake of fire as a metaphor for hell, and how the thing about the lake of fire is it never stops burning. And the descriptors that are given of this judgment of God and this judgment in hell is that it is eternal. And just to remind us of one of the pieces of evidence of that is that the very word eternal is used for the life that we get when we come to Christ. The wages of of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord and that eternal life is a life that will never end. But the book of Revelation has eternal damnation and has eternal life. And the same adjective that means eternal is used. Don’t let people talk you into the idea that there’s going to be just a quick annihilation of the wicked people and then we can forget about them. No they won’t be forgetting about it because

[00:23:56] their annihilation is an eternal one. And the other Sunday I was struggling to try and get across the fact that the Bible does tell us why it is eternal. It tells us why we get blessed and forgiven, why there is forgiveness. And the reason is because of God loving faithfulness and justice and God loving righteousness. Let me see if I can find the right verse about this. Let’s go to Psalm. This I’m jumping ahead a bit to Psalm 11 verses 6 and 7. You’re doing very quickly, thank you. Psalm 11, 6 and 7. And it’s talking about God’s purpose, God’s practice, God’s bent to rain coals on the wicked. If you get the old versions of the Bible like the King James, they’ll say something like coals of fire. Fire and sulphur and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. The wicked, by portion of the cup means they’re getting what they deserve. The portion of their cup, you understand the picture. You’re getting the

[00:25:24] drink that you deserve, the portion of their cup, scorching wind, fire and sulphur. But why is that going to be the case? For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds, the upright shall behold his face. And what’s interesting, right through the Old Testament the same theme can be heard echoing down through all the different books of the Old Testament, well for mostly all the books of the Old Testament, that God is a righteous God and the ones that he looks after are as those who seek to be like him. And though it recognises that we’re all sinners and there is any way that you can try and teach the Old Testament people were thinking that they were perfect, they weren’t, they knew they failed. And even the ones like David has his famous Psalm 53 asking God to have mercy upon him because he’s failed. But David was very big on the fact that God wanted him to be righteous and he was aware of the times that he didn’t which is why he got that prayer and is it

[00:26:31] Psalm 51? Have mercy upon me O God, praise David. Because the God of heaven loves righteousness and David had failed. For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds, the upright shall behold his face. One of the features that God promises that if you seek to live uprightly and you’ll have your failings but be like David and bring them to him for forgiveness then you’re a person that he likes to lift up and help and he will want to let you see his face. It’s talking about the fact they get to a sense of closeness with God. And one of the features of the Old Testament is that there are people there that you can read in their writings, you can hear it in what they say, you can see in the example of them that’s described is they’ve had this attempt to be righteous and the Lord loves righteousness,

[00:27:29] and the reason why they are going to be wicked people who have the fire and the sulfur and the scorching wind as their portion of their cup is because they’re not righteous, And there’s something about the fierceness of the righteousness of God that demands a hell that isn’t just a little snap across the wrists. It is forever and the other Sunday my description of it got me frightened. The one that I’d never actually seen before but I saw it and brought it out is it talks about us, a person being thrown into hell as never stopping sinking. There’s sinking and sinking and sinking. You don’t hit the bottom and say, oh, at least I’ll have a rest here.

[00:28:22] You go on sinking, sinking, sinking away from the glory of God. Hell is nothing to make a joke about. It is eternal, there is no relief, there is no rest. The Bible says it again and again, there is no rest for the wicked. Thou like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up, mire and dirt. That happens in this life, in people who turn away from God and they get to be people who try hard not to think about an awful lot of things that they have done. They get to be people who have had all sorts of reasons for malaise. The wicked are like the troubled sea who cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no rest, saith my God, for the wicked.

[00:29:27] And the reason is that his righteousness is so severely the case. The Lord is righteous, and his love of righteous deeds, and of gone the other way, is something that he sees as there is no end to the punishment. But what is interesting is that when you find the equivalent verses of God’s forgiveness, and I’m coming to the end of my message now, but it is that there is a judgment and in the judgment there is a punishment, which is the punishment of that everlasting hell. But there is something to learn, that when we sin, and we recognise we’ve been against the righteousness of God, and we come in repentance, God has said he’s not pleased with the death of anybody, but desires that all should come to repentance. And repentance is when you turn around from the wicked thing and you agree with God and

[00:30:33] his diagnosis of it being bad. And there’s a beautiful verse in 1 John, and if we confess our sins, 1 John, 1 little letter of John, chapter 1 verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and this is where I finished the other Sunday as well, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now how is that possible? It’s possible because in his justice he hasn’t let any of the sins go by unpunished, but he’s meted out that punishment in the death of his son and that terrible three hours of darkness in which Jesus bore our sins, was cut off from the Father, knew because of the infinite nature of who he was as a person the capacity to take our sins that would take

[00:31:43] us an eternity to suffer, he suffered them in those three hours of darkness and eventually said it is finished. And when he finished it, he gave himself back into the hands of the Father, Father into your hands, I commend my spirit. But because of what Jesus did on the cross, all your sins have been atoned. And because of the justice of God, you can be totally forgiven. And it’s a fantastic thing when your memory of your sins is getting to you, to take a long look at Jesus and his death and then look at this verse. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all, not just a little all unrighteousness.

[00:32:39] And the same factor of the forgiveness of Christ because of the love of God for truth and justice and for righteousness is the same thing that calls there to be eternal life and there to be eternal death. And God lays it on us as to which way we’re going to choose. If just by chance someone is here tonight and you’re not certain when you get unfortunately in times when people speak on this topic and it makes you troubled and you investigate yourself to see whether the Bible says examine yourselves, see whether you’re in the faith, it’s not a wrong thing to do. Give yourself a good looking over, am I really a believer? Have I come to Jesus and repented of my sinnerhood?

[00:33:39] You won’t stop yourself in this life from having times you might still sin but you can always bring them to him and confess them, which is why this verse is addressing it. And he will be faithful and one of the things you can do is stand on this verse, Lord don’t you sit if I confess those sins that you will forgive me and you’ll cleanse me from all unrighteousness and you won’t face that sin at the judgment day because it’s forgiven and it’s the same love of righteousness by God that causes him to forgive our sins when we confess them as it will cause him to judge them if we don’t. That’s the finish of the message tonight. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for the teaching of scriptures. Lord, there is that terrible danger of you doing a visitation on us like Jesus said to the Jerusalemites.

[00:34:39] He said you did not know the time of your visitation where you came to inspect. And it was a judgement really. Lord, I’ve often puzzled about some verses where Jesus speaks and says, I haven’t come to judge the world. I’ve come to forgive. But then in other places the Gospel tells us that Jesus says, for judgement, I have come into the world. But it’s the judgement of His person and His presence causing people to come toward him, or people to run away and thereby leave themselves in judgement. Father, if there is someone that needs the the Saviour tonight, would you give them no rest? And when they go home and think about it, and they’re alone and they look in the mirror, would you speak to them about the forgiveness of Jesus and how he on the cross has died for all of their sins? And would you draw them? God is not wanting, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And may that be their story, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.