.jpg)
The Rock Family Worship Center
Taking The Church Outside The Walls
The Rock Family Worship Center
LET'S TALK ABOUT JUDGMENT
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We question sacred cows around judgment and walk through John 12:31–32 to show why Jesus declared judgment as now, not later. We follow the thread through Colossians 2:15 and Romans 8 to show the verdict landed on sin and the system, not on people, and why that ends condemnation.
• redefining judgment as krisis: decisive verdict and revelation of truth
• linking judgment, the cross and reconciliation as one event
• reading world as system, not planet
• casting out the ruler of this world as loss of authority
• disarming accusation, fear and law-based condemnation
• God condemned sin in the flesh, not people
• sin as distorted identity that drives behavior
• Romans 8:1 and living without condemnation now
• separating truth from lies rather than dividing people
• letting assumptions fall and returning to original context
I got sitting there last night when I was going over this, and I thought, you know, if anybody was to go back online and all of our messages are, you know, online, if anybody was to go back that didn't know us and didn't come here and look at, you know, the last two months or so and go down and look just the title of the messages, not necessarily listening to the message. You know, I was thinking, one of the, you know, what would what would they think? What would they, what was the first thing that would probably come to them? And one of the things that I think people would say, we would say, I don't know about other people, is we are really tearing up some sacred cows in the church. And I don't mean that negative. I mean, you ask yourself, you gotta understand, you know, what is a sacred cow in the church? It's an idea that's protected so strongly that if you ever try to question it, you're gonna look like a heretic. Don't matter what you say, don't matter if you say I got scripture to back it up. You're gonna look like a like you're speaking heresy because that thing is so well protected in the church. We're gonna take it a step further this morning and go into another topic that I think people ask about a lot, and it goes right along with a lot of things we've been talking about. So this morning, let's talk about judgment. That's a topic that's on the minds of so many people because a lot of people think we're so close to the rapture, and we're so close to just vanishing out of here, and you know, they they've taken the verses and they say, well, once we're raptured away, and once the tribulation comes, and once all this stuff happens, that all of us are going to stand before God on the great, you know, day of judgment. And there's just so many theories out there. I call them theories, I didn't call them, I didn't call them scripture. Because a lot of what we believed on that, yes, started with a scripture, got turned all around and twisted, and has become a theology. What I'm gonna start calling now, I'm sure I didn't coin this, but I'm gonna use it. It's an assumption theology. It's a theology that we take a bunch of things that have been assumed over the years, and we have turned it into something that we say is biblical. And a lot of times the fact is it's just not. And that's really what I think the path that God's had us on here, had me on, is going through and finding some of these areas that's really, really important. Talk about salvation, we talk about destruction judgment, we talk about sin, we talk about heaven and hell. We talk about topics that's really important. Now, some of them's just conversation topics, some of them's not foundational stuff. There's some things that's foundational. You gotta stand on that word. You you gotta you've gotta understand this to understand the uh the further depths that you can go into something. So this morning we're gonna talk about judgment. I'm gonna say this, I always say it. You don't have to agree with me initially. I hope you do eventually. I hope you'll go back and look at it. I hope you'll read it and I hope you'll study it. I hope you'll allow the scripture to interpret scripture. Don't believe it because I said it. Uh don't believe it because somebody else said it. Let scripture interpret itself. So when we talk about judgment, we are not gonna approach it as a threat that's hanging over you in the future. Okay? That's the way a lot of people look at judgment. One day I'm gonna go up there and I really don't know right now what's gonna happen. He's either gonna look at me and say, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter in, or he's gonna look at me and say, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. I never knew you. So the decision is pending. How do I know for sure that he's gonna look at me and say, Well done, my good and faithful servant? And if you ask most people that question, they would say, I don't know. That's why I just try to do the right thing. But is that enough? We don't know. Based on that theology, we don't know if that's enough. We're still worried sometimes. Where am I going to? Where am I gonna end up in eternity? You don't believe that? Why does every person that stands up in a tent revival say, do you know that you know that you know that if you died before you walk out of this tent, where are you gonna spend eternity? That's the number one question it's asked. If we truly know, then we wouldn't have to keep asking that question. Okay? So we're just gonna hit one of these things that we talk about so much and that I think worries, truly worries and causes anxiety to people because they are just unsure. So again, we're not gonna look at it as a threat hanging somewhere in the future, but as something that Jesus says has already happened. Now listen to that, I'm gonna say it again. We're gonna look at judgment as something that Jesus himself, not Pastor Brian, but Jesus himself has said has already happened. And I'm gonna take you to the scriptures and show you that so you don't just think it's opinion. Let's start off with John chapter 12, verse 31. That's the foundational scripture right here. You gotta lean on this, you gotta look at it. Everything else kind of comes from this. Look what he says in here. He says, now, wait, when? Now, not 2,050 years from when he spoke this, not 3,000 years from when he spoke this, not even right now, today in 2026, but he said, now, whatever year it was when he spoke this to the people. He said, now is the judgment. Well, he might have been just judging a few people at the time. No, he was pretty clear. Now is the judgment of the world. Now we could stop right there and we could we could fight and fuss about this verse. Just that first part of it. I know everybody's gonna have their own interpretation of it. They're gonna look at it and say, Well, you're just interpreting that wrong. That's fair. Because I say the same thing about them. I think you're interpreting it wrong. The difference is I'm not gonna stop there with, well, maybe I'm right, or maybe you're right. I'm gonna go deeper. I'm gonna find other verses in the Bible that build on to this, that speak to this, that can correlate what's being said here and allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. I'm not asking you to believe something because I say it. God knows I've been wrong on many, many verses over the years where I believed it and I thought I knew what it meant, but then as I got deeper, as I got more revelation, as I got, as God showed me more things, I realized that I really had no idea what it was really saying. I was just teaching what somebody taught me. And that's what most of us do. But he says here, now is the judgment of the world. Now, not later, now the ruler of this world will be cast out. Now, I would invite you to go back and read the before and after on this verse. I just didn't have time to go into the whole thing. I just wanted to show you this verse because it's it's so powerful. It speaks, it speaks a lot to us, and we've got to look at it for what it says. That word in there now, it deserves a little bit more attention than what we give it. It's a small word, but it's a powerful, it's a telling word. It deserves more attention than what we give it from the pulpit. Because many believers live as though judgment is still pending one day. We're still waiting on it to come, uh waiting on it to happen. As though God is still deciding. Is she gonna make it? Is she not? They've done some good things over here, and believe me, those good things are written down in the book. But oh Lord, they have done some things over here that I just am not proud of. So I guess we're just gonna have to kind of put it on the on the what is it, the little balance thing and weigh it out and see chips fall where they fall. That's not the way I want to live. God knows I've done some terrible stuff. I've done some things that God is not proud of. I've done some things I'm not gonna stand up here in a pulpit and brag about. I've also done some really good things over the years. I've done some things that I will stand up here and brag about and give God credit on. And so, which one outweighs the other? I don't want to live my life in the middle trying to figure out which one, which way am I gonna fall? And one day I'm gonna figure it out when I die. No, I want to know now. So I'm digging in the scriptures and I'm saying, Jesus, I don't want to wait until I die one day, and all of a sudden you make a decision on my life. I want to live my life and know what I'm living right now and know the truth of what your word said right now. And when I say that, I guess that's why he took me to this verse, because it's got a sense of humor. And I said, right now, and he says, now. Now is the judgment of the world. Now the ruler of the world will be cast out. And again, that word now, we need to pay attention to it. We live as if the verdict hasn't already been finalized. Again, we're still waiting. Yet Jesus speaks with certainty in these verses. I don't think he's got any question about what he's saying. He speaks with certainty. And he says, judgment has arrived. It's already here. And again, he was not speaking in 2026. He was speaking during that time, 2,000 or something years ago. So this statement is made when he says that judgment has is here now to the world, and then the ruler of the world will be cast out. That statement is made days before he goes to the cross. Got to understand the timeline in it. That's why I say go back and read the before and read the after. Don't just read one verse in the middle and create your theology out of it. Read before and after, read context, read timeline, understand where we're at in this process. So it was made before the cross, and immediately after he said that in verse 31 that we just read. Look what he says in John 12 and 32. Very next verse.
SPEAKER_01:Verse 32.
SPEAKER_00:He says, And when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. Now is the time of judgment. Judgment has come now. The ruler of the world is cast out now, and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
SPEAKER_01:So judgment, the cross, reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just showing you something right here now. Judgment, the cross, and reconciliation are being spoken of as one singular, unified event. It's not about separate timelines in history. I showed you two verses right here back to back, where he is talking about all three of those things as one event. If you read scripture for what it says, and don't try to import some assumption in there. Forget the assumptions, act like you've never heard anybody preach the gospel and just say, God, teach me your word. If we can get to that point, and that's not saying that everything I've ever learned from anybody is null and void. I've learned some great stuff from some great people who's really helped me over the years to help me find revelation. But I've also had some stuff I've had to let go of and say, okay, I'm gonna send this back to you. If you want to preach it, you want to teach it, you do it, but I'm not. Because I've moved beyond that understanding. So judgment, the cross, and reconciliation are spoken of in one event right here. Jesus is not warning the world of a future destruction to come. He is announcing something that is happening when? Now. He said it twice in there, now.
SPEAKER_01:And then he goes on to say, now. So we don't have to question the timeline.
SPEAKER_00:We sit back, and it's amazing sometimes how many times we sit back and we look at these verses, and we say, Well, I'm gonna try to study enough to try to figure out what Jesus is saying and when he was saying it, and we read right over the answer. We don't have to go back and do a do a deep dive study to figure out the time frame of when he was speaking right here. He told us in the very first word. He said, now. I mean, it's either believe it or take your pen and your Bible and X that word now out, because it don't mean anything. I'm being funny, but I'm being serious. If the word don't mean nothing, why is it there? Not only why is it there in the very beginning, but why does he say it again at the end? When he's talking about two different things. He's talking about judgment the first time, and then he's talking about the ruler of the world the second time, and he says, now this ends. Not one day, but now. So judgment is not a war, Jesus is not warning the world of a future judgment that's gonna come one day. He's announcing something that is happening right now. So the question, this next question really becomes one that's that's unavoidable. If you get an understanding of those two verses that we just read in John 12, 31 and 32, I believe it's gonna lead you to another question that is unavoidable. You're gonna have to uh ask it, you're gonna have to wrestle with a question.
SPEAKER_01:What kind of judgment happened?
SPEAKER_00:And what exactly was being judged? If I move my theology mindset to judgment is no longer out there, but I believe what Jesus said right there, and he said judgment is now, when he was talking back then, 2,000 something years ago. He says, I am judging the world now. I am the ruler of this world is being cast out now. If I move and change my understanding of that, and I say, I believe what he's saying. I believe it. Why? Because he said it. I believe it.
SPEAKER_01:But then the next question comes up: what was being judged? What kind of judgment was actually happening?
SPEAKER_00:What does judge really mean? To me, that's the most important question. Because I believe when we have a wrong definition of something, and then we try to apply that word into a verse, but the definition of that word is wrong, my understanding of the verse most likely is what? Going to be wrong. Because I've applied a wrong definition. If the Bible was written in Koya Greek, then we've got to go back and we've got to understand what some of these Greek words mean. We can't just take a 2026 approach and say, well, this is what I think it means. I know what judgment means. That means he's gonna hold a staff over you and think about everything you're doing, and he's gonna say good or bad, heaven or hell, peace or burn. That's pretty much what judgment in our minds means. But can I tell you that is not what the word that he used in this verse, in every other verse in the Bible, where you see judgment, that is not what the verse means in the Greek, when you look up the Greek definition of the word judgment. So what I'm looking at is I'm saying, okay, in the original text, the original manuscripts before the Bible, because y'all do realize when the disciples were walking around, they wasn't walking around with a Bible in their hand. They didn't have the Bible yet. So they was walking around with, you know, they had manuscripts they read, and they had just word of mouth and things like that. And when you use this word judgment to the people back then, they would have understood what that word means because they understood the language. And now it's done come 2,026 years, and we're like, we're giving it a definition that we want it to have. And we're assuming this has got to be what it means, and it's not. I mean, there's just no other way to put that. That that is not the correct way to look at that word, but we've done that because we've done that for so long. Now we have a definition and we have assumed that it means one thing, and from the original Greek, it means something totally opposite.
SPEAKER_01:That's important.
SPEAKER_00:If I'm somebody who is truly seeking the truth, I'm not just playing church. There's a lot of people that play church, they come and they listen and they have a good time and they feel good when they walk out. Great. But if you get to a point where you say, I want to do more than play time, and I really want to know what he's saying, that's going a little bit deeper. That don't mean I'm better than anybody else. It just means I want to go a little bit deeper than just surface level. And when I do that, that little bit deeper leads me into okay, you gotta figure out what this word means. You can't keep applying this word to verses, but you don't even know what the word is. I can, but I keep getting a wrong understanding of the scripture. So I got to go back and say, what does it really mean? The Greek word for judgment is Chris. K-R-I-S-I-S. Chrysus. It's actually what we get our English word crisis. Now I'm telling you this, number one, because you need to understand what the word means, but I'm also showing you how we have brought assumptions in there and we have flipped this word around to mean something that it never meant.
SPEAKER_01:A crisis.
SPEAKER_00:If we look at somebody today and we say, man, they are in a crisis moment. They are in a crisis situation. There's probably not anybody out here that cannot tell you what a crisis moment is. It's a breakdown. It's a bad, deteriorating situation. They are just falling apart. Their life is falling apart. Things are going on and they just can't seem to help themselves. They just further and further. It's a crisis moment. That's the way we've coined that phrase. And that word, crisis, English word, comes from the Greek word, which actually means judgment. Chrysus. And I did look that up because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it. I didn't know if it was Chris or Crisis, but it's actually pronounced Chrysus. And then we get crisis out of it. A crisis in our life today, a crisis going on, is not the creation of chaos. That's our definition of it. When you have a chaotic situation, something unexpected happens, then you're in a crisis. It is not the creation of chaos, it is the moment that clarity arrives and forces a decision. Think about that. The moment that clarity arrives and forces a decision. That's gonna make more sense to you in just a minute. Only later on in the years, much, much later, did the word crisis actually take on the modern sense of an emergency or a catastrophe? It never meant that back then. I didn't look the word crisis up to see when it originated, what year it came along in. You know, if you've never done that, sometimes it's just a good thing to do a word study. When did people start using the word crisis in in America, in the English language? I didn't look that up. It might be something to look at. So the word that we're talking about, chrisis, the Greek word for judgment, chrisis, does not mean punishment. Let me say that again. It does not mean punishment. It means a decisive moment, a verdict, a revealing of truth. A decisive moment, a verdict, or a revealing of truth. Now I could stop right there and say, put burn that into your brain. Burn that definition of judgment into your brain. And now go and read every look up, do a word search in your Bible and look, find every verse in the Bible that uses the word judgment. And begin to read it with the new definition.
SPEAKER_01:It's going to change the way you see things. There's one other Greek word that's used.
SPEAKER_00:There's two words. Chrysus is one, and there's another. I can't think of the name of it right off the top of my head, but there's another Greek word too. But when you do a word study, it'll tell you which one of those Greek words is being used in the original manuscripts. So you don't, there's not conflict, there's not confusion. It'll tell you which one's being used. So Jesus is saying, go back and read 12 and 31 just a minute. Now, remember, he said, now, now is the decisive moment for the world system. Because he says, now I am bringing judgment. Judgment is coming what? To the world. Again, the word world, he's not talking about planet Earth. That's the way our minds have boom. Earth, world. No, he's talking about a system. So when you read that with the understanding of what the true word says, now is the decisive moment. Now is the verdict. Now is the revealing of truth for the world system.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. He's saying, just to make it simpler, the verdict has been issued.
SPEAKER_00:The matter has been resolved. Anybody ever been to court? You ain't got to raise your hand. But we some of us have been to court before. When that judge brings down a verdict, you know what he says after that? Case closed. You're not going to say, whoa, whoa, judge, can I speak to you a minute? And walk up there and change his mind.
SPEAKER_01:When he brings the verdict, case closed. When Jesus brought the verdict, case closed. How come we can see that in the court system? But we can't see that in the Jesus system. Because it doesn't fit our narrative.
SPEAKER_00:It don't fit what we want to say, that there's no way this person can go to heaven too. Because they're not as good as this person, there's no way God can look at them the same way. So we create a new narrative that says good and bad.
SPEAKER_01:Only problem is the Bible don't support that narrative.
SPEAKER_00:I know what the assumption theology, as I said a while ago, that's what I'm gonna start calling. I know what it's taught us about about judgment. But according to Scripture, I want you to hear this.
SPEAKER_01:According to Scripture, judgment is not approaching one day. Judgment has landed.
SPEAKER_00:It's already here, it's already resolved. It does not keep you guessing about future events. Most of us were taught to imagine judgment as something still undecided. It hasn't happened yet. It's delayed until the end of time. After Armageddon and all that stuff. It's after all that, all these world events happen and the world's destroyed and all this stuff. That's when it's going to happen, according to our assumed theology, assumption theology. But that's not what the word Chrysus means. If you go back to the original, and again, there will be people that hear this online, especially pastors, and they'll say, oh, he's creating a theology. No, no, I'm going back to the original. I'm not creating anything. I'm just saying, get your assumptions out and let's go back to the original word. So we're not creating nothing new.
SPEAKER_01:We're going back to the original.
SPEAKER_00:So when a judge in a court renders a verdict, the trial is over. The argument stops. The judge or you don't say anything else, the ruling stands. Now you get the right to appeal it. But as far as what that judge says, that's what it is right now. Okay. So if Jesus says judgment happened at the cross, which he did, I read you the verse. He said it happened now. And he said, as soon as I go to the cross, as soon as I'm lifted up, I will draw all men. There's that word all again. We just can't get around that word. I will draw some men who have done really good. I will draw some people who attend synagogue when they're supposed to every Sunday or Saturday. I will draw those people into me. He said, I'll draw all men. Another sacred cow there that you if you kick it over and people get mad at you. I've never understood why Christian people who say they love Jesus get mad because you're trying to include everybody. Because you want to say Jesus loves everybody. And people will literally get mad at you and call you a heretic. So if Jesus says it happened on the cross, then the cross is not just a setup for a future event or a future trial. The trial's already happened. The verdict come down, the judge has rendered the verdict, case closed. That's exactly what Jesus did on the cross. He rendered a verdict, he brought judgment, which means to bring a verdict to correct, and then he fell over and died.
SPEAKER_01:Case closed. It's hard for us to see that.
SPEAKER_00:It is the moment the verdict was delivered. The cross was the moment the verdict was delivered. So what exactly was judged? Remember, I asked those questions. What exactly was judged? Let's go back and look at verse 31 just a minute. Because it tells you you don't have to guess. You don't have to try to figure this thing out. You don't have to try to bring in your assumption because you're not quite sure. He says, now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. In John's gospel, the word world, as I said a while ago, the Greek word is cosmos. It's not talking about planet Earth. It's talking about a system, a fallen system. It's talking about sin and death structure, the way we've always looked at it. The way humanity relates to God through, think about the way we we used to tell people to relate to God. Through sin, through separation, fear, performance, that whole system of how the relationship that we have with God. Now, this is important to see right here. This is not God judging people when this happened. This is God judging the system that enslaves the people. We're enslaved by fear. We're enslaved by condemnation. We're enslaved by performance mindset. He's not judging the people, he's judging the mindset and the system that's got the people trapped in it. This is this changes everything in the way you look at judgment. And before we move on, let's not forget the second part of verse 31. He says, now the ruler of the world will be cast out.
SPEAKER_01:We just read right over that.
SPEAKER_00:Because we don't want to deal with that right now. Because that makes me have to think about the devil. We'll have to think about all this heaven and hell. So we just we just kind of read right over it.
SPEAKER_01:I had a thought, but I'm not going to get into it because it'll take me somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00:This phrase right here, the ruler of this world will be cast out. This is this is crucial. You've got to see this. Jesus does not say Satan will be punished later. What we believe is going to happen? He's going to be locked away in the end time for a very long time. Which has always been kind of mind-boggling to me because you lock him away, and then there's peace, and there's everything on the earth is like it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01:For so many years. And then Jesus lets him out. That never made sense to me. I'm like, Jesus, dude, why did you let him out? Just one of those things that just make me start thinking.
SPEAKER_00:You locked him up, you had peace, you had tranquility, you had love, you had everything you wanted, and then you go and let him out again. Just don't make sense. So Jesus does not say, Satan, we're gonna punish you later. He doesn't say Satan will be, we'll negotiate with you later and see what's gonna happen. He doesn't reform Satan. He doesn't say that I'm not gonna reform you. He never says anything about that during this time when he's on the cross. Or before he right before he goes to the cross.
SPEAKER_01:He just simply says, I'm gonna cast you out. Now you can read all kinds of other stuff into that.
SPEAKER_00:But I'm tired of reading stuff into it. I want to just read it and say, what's actually coming out of it? What is he actually saying? And he simply said, We're gonna cast you out. You know what I mean? That's a loss of authority. That means the devil no longer has authority. He was the ruler of the world. Now I'm gonna cast you out, which means you no longer have authority.
SPEAKER_01:Your authority is being taken away. How?
SPEAKER_00:Because I'm fixing to expose the lies and all that stuff that gives you authority with people, I'm fixing to expose it. When I expose it, you can't use it anymore. Why? Because in all the lies, I'm fixing to bring truth. And when truth steps in, it shuts lies down. All he did was exposed him. He exposed the system that he was using. Look at Colossians chapter 2, verse 15. Another really good verse here. I love the way he explains it. This is tied together, so this is why I'm going to this verse. He says, having disarmed. You know what disarm means? It means I take away your ability to do anything.
SPEAKER_01:Listen, if a guy comes to my house to try to rob me and I disarm him, he doesn't have the authority anymore.
SPEAKER_00:He doesn't have the power anymore. He said, having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them. Triumph. Triumphing. What's the word triumph mean? It means winning.
SPEAKER_01:Triumphing over them in it.
SPEAKER_00:The enemy's power, who Jesus said was the ruler of the world. Now I know there's all kinds of theologies. People would argue with me when I say that he was the ruler of the world. People would say, no, no, you're reading that wrong. Well, I am reading it wrong when I look at it and say he was the ruler of the planet Earth. Because that's not what we're talking about. He was the ruler of the world, the ruler of the system that was in place. How did he rule? How did he gain his power? Through accusations. And we can go into the verses that shows you this accusations through guilt, through fear, and through law-based condemnation. That was the way the enemy brought people in and ruled over people.
SPEAKER_01:So once the sin is dealt with, and when is it dealt with? Once the sin is dealt with, accusation has no legal ground. So once the sin is dealt with, he loses his power. Once the sin is dealt with, the ruler of the world is disarmed.
SPEAKER_00:These verses actually go together. They're not separate verses just because we moved over from John to Colossians. They still are telling the same story. This is judgment on the cross was judgment for the world, not on the world. He was bringing a verdict. He was bringing correction for everybody, not to everybody. This aligns perfectly with John 3 and 17. I'm showing you a bunch of different verses in different places, but hopefully you'll start seeing little puzzle pieces coming together and fitting together. John 3 and 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.
SPEAKER_01:But that the world through him might be saved. What does this do? It just supports what I just said. This is scripture not supporting Pastor Brian.
SPEAKER_00:This is scripture supporting scripture. You can't argue this. You can argue with me. And you can say I'm misinterpreting and I don't know what I'm saying, and I'm making stuff up, but you cannot argue against Scripture. You can, but you're never going to be right on it.
SPEAKER_01:You've got to let Scripture support Scripture.
SPEAKER_00:Now I understand we can have different interpretations of it. But that's where we got to go back in the word. We got to dig, and we've got to say, what does this really mean? Paul says in Romans 8 and 3, you got to pull it up, God condemned sin in the flesh. Listen to that now. God condemned sin in the flesh. That is so powerful. Number one, when I read that, when I hear that, two words stand out to me: sin and condemned. What does the word condemned mean? If he just condemns sin, I need to know what this word means. And if he just condemns something, I need to know what sin is. Because if he just condemns sin, he just did away with something. And it might be pretty important for me to figure out what it is. Because it might just impact my life and my relationship with him. So I dig a little bit, I go a little bit deeper. Sin, this is this is again, this is important. You gotta see it. God did not send Jesus, we just read it, he did not send Jesus to condemn the world.
SPEAKER_01:Instead, at the cross, he condemned the very thing that was condemning the world.
SPEAKER_00:He condemned what? The one who was ruling the world with lies and all that junk. So he didn't condemn the people. He condemned the one who was condemning the people. Does that make sense? I kind of look at it like I tell people in counseling all the time with addiction. You can't just pick the fruit off the tree, the fruit of marijuana, the fruit of cocaine, the fruit of alcohol, and think it's gonna go away. You got to get down to the root of what's actually feeding the fruit. What makes me keep going to that every time a problem comes up? This is the same thing. He didn't just say, I'm gonna condemn the people. I'm gonna find the root cause of it. I'm gonna figure out what's making these people think like they're thinking, and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna cut that thing away and I'm gonna disarm it.
SPEAKER_01:And that's exactly what he did.
SPEAKER_00:According to his scripture. Now, if you don't want to believe a scripture, that's totally up to you. But I'm just the only thing I have to go on is what he says. So that's what I'm doing. I'm going on what he says. I'm not putting my own assumptions into it. I've done that for years, and it's got me in trouble. So I just said I'm gonna strip away all the assumptions, and I'm just gonna go back to his word, back to the original.
SPEAKER_01:I don't understand why that so makes people so mad. Because they're yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_00:Because their whole theology is built on assumptions. The people are coming gathering a lot of times to certain people because of the way they teach certain assumptions. Strip that away, go back to the original, and it's not as good.
SPEAKER_01:I'm saying in the flesh it's not as good. It don't sound as good. I just want to I want to know what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00:I don't care what brother so-and-so is saying anymore. And you shouldn't care what brother so-and-so is saying, you shouldn't care even what I'm saying. Is he teaching the word?
SPEAKER_01:Is he stripping everything away that don't belong and going back to the original word? God condemned sin in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00:He didn't touch the people, he touched the thing that was touching the people and said, I'll take care of that thing right there. And if I take care and disarm the thing that's hurting the people, then now my people are free. They're free now. They're free from manipulation, they're free from lies, they're free from assumptions, they're free from condemnation, they're free from guilt, they're free from fear. Why? Because I took out the one who was giving them all that. I took him out. I disarmed him, I cast him out. The verdict was not issued against humanity, it was issued against sin. And I said, well, a go, you got to understand, we gotta ask ourselves, what is sin? It is that the way that we see ourselves, that is not who God created. Sin is not behaviors, has nothing to do with behaviors, it's linked to it, but it's not the primary definition of it. Sin is a distorted image that I have of myself. Now, when I have a distorted image of myself, then I'm gonna walk out certain behaviors. Why? Because when I think I'm an alcoholic, I'm gonna act like an alcoholic. When I think I'm an addict, I'm gonna think like an addict, act like an addict, talk like an addict. But when I change my mind to say I'm no longer an addict, I used to be, that used to hold me, that used to have been a bondage in my life, but no longer, I'm no longer an addict. I am a child of God. I have been forgiven. I am no longer condemned, I am who he says I am. Addiction has lost its power.
SPEAKER_01:Sin has lost its power. That's all it's saying.
SPEAKER_00:So sin is a distorted image, distorted thinking. So it says God condemned sin in the flesh. Now we hear the word flesh and automatically think drinking, smoking, sleeping around, doing all this kind of stuff. That's not what it's talking about. Now, being in sin and having a distorted mind will lead you down that road. But the sin itself is not the behaviors, it's the distorted thinking. Just like the prodigal son had when he left the daddy's house and went and wasted all his money on prostitutes and everything else that he did. And then he found himself in a pig pen and he woke up one day and said, This is not me. Why? Because his image shifted back to who he really was. He said, I belong in daddy's house. That's what the cross done. It condemned sin. It condemned a distorted way of thinking about ourselves. The verdict was not against humanity. He didn't look and say, condemned, condemned, condemned, condemned. He didn't condemn you. He condemned the thought process that you think I'm this way and you're really not. He condemned the thoughts behind it. The image. Why did he condemn the image? Because he said in the very beginning, I created you after my likeness, after my image. And if you see yourself any other way than how what I created you is sin. It's a distorted image. Why? How do I know that? Because I created you after me.
SPEAKER_01:That's the Bible. It's an issue.
SPEAKER_00:The issue is against sin, against the distortion, against the lie, against the power that fractured a human identity in the first place. Judgment fell exactly where the problem was. We didn't just put a band-aid on it. God didn't just put a band-aid on it. He said, I'm going to go to the root and I'm going to cut it up.
SPEAKER_01:And he did. He cast him out.
SPEAKER_00:We got to see sin as a, if I don't see sin as a distorted image, if I keep looking at sin as behaviors, what I just said makes no sense. You will not understand it, you will not believe it. You will think I'm just being a heretic and preaching another gospel. But if you understand sin for what it really is, what I just said will make absolutely perfect sense to you.
SPEAKER_01:These words matter. If sin is merely behavior, then judgment would focus on actions. It didn't. It focused on image. Scripture treats sin as something deeper.
SPEAKER_00:Again, the corruption of identity, a distortion of how humanity understands God, self and belonging. Sin is the false story humanity learned to live from. Catch that word false. What does that mean? We start looking at separation instead of union with the Father. Fear instead of trust. Striving instead of rest.
SPEAKER_01:Earning instead of belonging. Now think about that. Union. God talks about that all through the Bible.
SPEAKER_00:Trust, rest, belonging. All of those words are about inclusivity. Means we're included. But I've literally heard people stand up and say inclusion is a doctrine from hell. It is not biblical. How can union with the Father and trust and rest and belonging not be of the Father?
SPEAKER_01:What Father are you looking at if you believe that? Separation, fear, striving, earning, that's not the Father. Behavior flows from the story that you believe about yourself. What are you believing? If you believe you've gotten to earn it, you'll always perform.
SPEAKER_00:I grew up with a performance mindset. So I truly, truly under. Maybe that's what helps me understand this. And it makes sense to me because I grew up with that mindset that I had to perform. If I perform better, people love me. I had to perform for love. I had to perform for appreciation. I always needed that little hand clap. Why? Because I come up like that on the ball field and I come up thinking everything is about performance. The better I am, the more I'm loved.
SPEAKER_01:And then I learned later on that it wasn't about performance. I was loved anyway from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00:That was a mindset that I had in me. And I fought with it for a long, I mean, a long time.
SPEAKER_01:I still fight with it. I still do.
SPEAKER_00:So God renders a verdict. Let me get ready to close here. God renders a verdict on the distortion itself, on the sin. Judgment. When you look at judgment, it does, it separates. Judgment separates. Listen to this. What does it separate? Judgment separates what's true from what is false.
SPEAKER_01:When a judge brings a verdict, he's either saying guilty or innocent. That's pretty much it. There's not many times where he'll say, guilty, but we're gonna let you slide this time. No. It's guilty or innocent. Judgment is the moment clarity comes.
SPEAKER_00:But I guess because we're talking about judgment, but you know, you know when a lot of clarity comes to people that their life is is that their life is taking a new direction when that judge says guilty in the courtroom, and then he comes back and says, brings down the whatever the you're going to jail or you're getting probation or you're getting whatever. I've heard people say it. I've talked to enough, I've worked in enough prisons and rehabs and everything, and people say, man, when that judge said, when broke that hammer down, a reality comes to them.
SPEAKER_01:That my life is about to change. And vice versa. Sometimes it could be innocent. And they realize I just got a break.
SPEAKER_00:I got a second chance now. Reality sits in. So judgment is the moment clarity comes, it draws a line that exposes what's true and what is not true. When the truth is revealed, the lie simply has no place to remain. Judgment is like a light coming on. I always say it's bringing correction. That's the definition I use a lot. Judgment means to bring correction. That's what he did on the cross. He brought correction. So my goal in teaching about judgment is to disrupt some of the inherited assumptions that we have. That's all. I'm not trying to tear somebody's theology apart just for the sake of doing it. I'm truly trying to take some of those assumptions that we believe and we have been taught over the years and say, just use common sense and look at what you're saying and see if it lines up with the word.
SPEAKER_01:And we don't do this by arguing with people. That don't work.
SPEAKER_00:I've tried that too. It don't go very far. So we don't argue with them, but we we but we reframe their thinking. We reframe what we think judgment has always meant. When I change my definition, what am I changing? I'm changing the lens that I'm looking through. When you look at something through one lens, you see one thing. And then you change the lens, you see something different. Anyone ever take pictures? You got different lenses. There's a reason you got a different lens.
SPEAKER_01:Anything you look through, how am I seeing it? Sometimes I need to change my lens.
SPEAKER_00:I need to look with some new eyes. Most of us were taught to hear the word judgment and think of a courtroom. Honestly, that's what taught me more about judgment than anything. That's why I guess that's why I use that example so much, because that's the way I underst begin to understand it. God as the prosecutor, humanity as a defendant, and the verdict always hanging in the future. But Jesus spoke of judgment very, very differently. When he said, Now is the judgment of the world in John 12 and 31, he didn't mean later.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't mean after you die one day. He meant what he said. Now which means judgment is not God deciding what to do with people. It's God revealing what is already true from the very beginning. There was a reason Jesus went to the cross. That was part of the plan.
SPEAKER_00:And he accomplished everything that he was supposed to accomplish. That's why we say it was a finished work and it was totally sufficient. That's why we say that.
SPEAKER_01:That's why we believe that. So judgment is not deciding anything to do with people.
SPEAKER_00:It's God revealing what's already true based on what his son did on the cross. Judgment doesn't divide people into categories good, bad.
SPEAKER_01:Heaven, hell. Born again, hellbound. It don't divide us. It separates truth from lies.
SPEAKER_00:That's all. It exposes false assumptions that we've been taught about God being distant, off in the future somewhere, about love being conditional, about grace needing to be earned. Those are all lies. God is not far away. He said he's made his home inside me. He is one with me. He lives on the inside of me. How can he be far off and distant and separated? How can you live in somebody and be separated from them? Listen, if I go home today and Cindy's got my stuff packed on the porch and I leave, I'm no longer with her at that house. I can't say I'm with her, but I'm living over here too. No, I'm not. I'm either with her or I'm not. God is either in us or he's not. We can't say he's in me, but he's separated from me. He's in me, but every time I slipped up and said a cuss word, oh, he walked away from me a little bit because he can't be around that sin.
SPEAKER_01:Think about how some of the crazy stuff we say. He can't look on that. So he's got to turn and walk away.
SPEAKER_00:Really? Wait a minute. Word says he never leave me nor forsake me. So you're saying every time I fall, every time I make a mistake, every time I do something stupid, that the God who says I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you, lies and walks away.
SPEAKER_01:Don't make sense.
SPEAKER_00:And at some point we've got to say that don't make sense, and I'm not just gonna sweep it under the rug and go on. I'm gonna challenge it. If it don't make sense, I'm gonna make it make sense. We're gonna dig. We're gonna break it down. I don't care how many assumptions it tears apart.
SPEAKER_01:We're gonna break it down and we're gonna find truth in it.
SPEAKER_00:When lies are exposed, they don't need to be threatened or destroyed. They simply collapse under the weight of truth. When we bring truth, I'm telling you, I'm seeing this, and I hope you are too. The more we dig and find truth, the more these assumptions start to fall. And they make more sense. You start, you may not admit it yet, but you start saying, you know, that's how can how can he walk away from us if he's innocent? He says, I'll never leave you. He can't.
SPEAKER_01:But we've always believed that. We are taught that from a pulpit.
SPEAKER_00:We're taught that everywhere, that if you do this, he's gonna separate himself from you because he can't look upon sin. But guess what? That's a good thing to know because sin died at the cross. And if I realized that, then I'd quit looking at myself as sinful. That's why I say it all the time. I'm not an old sinner slave by grace. I'm a child of God. I'm a new creation. Old things have passed away because old things have become new. I'm not a sinner walking around trying to get saved. I'm a man that is saved because of what Jesus Christ did. And sometimes my mind may go to a place that is not me. And I have to say, Brian, get back where you belong. Quit thinking about that. You have those thoughts too.
SPEAKER_01:Don't look innocent. We all do. We all, our mind goes there sometimes. I don't care how sanctified you are. Some people's just too sanctified to admit it. And that's why they still struggle with it because it's still hid.
SPEAKER_00:We got to be honest about the word. That's why this is exactly what I'm saying right here, is exactly why Paul in Romans 8 and 1 can say, there is now, there's that word again, now, now because of what? Now, because of the cross, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That's why he can say that with confidence. Because this may be revelation to you. Paul believed Jesus. He believed what Jesus said. He totally understood what was taking place. That's why I love reading about Paul, because Paul's saying, I knew, I know what this dude was doing. And now he did it, and I'm here to tell you how to walk this thing out now.
SPEAKER_01:Condemnation and judgment are not the same.
SPEAKER_00:Condemnation pretty much says you are the problem. If I'm condemning you, I'm pointing fingers at you and I'm saying it's you. Condemnation says you are the problem. Judgment says there was never that was never who you were to begin with. There is now no condemnation. What am I saying to you? You're not the problem. Your bad thinking may sometimes be the problem. And that's why it's good that you got somebody that can say, let's reel you back in, get you turned back around. Get up, get out of that pig fin. You don't belong there, get back in daddy's house. Yeah, but I did, I know I don't care what you did. Yeah, but you don't know, I don't care.
SPEAKER_01:Get back to where you belong and understand who you are. That's all we're talking about with the finished word. I don't think that's a bad thing to tell people. So here's the question. Let me end with a question since I started one. When we think about judgment, I think this is where judgment leaves us. This is the question that it leaves us with.
SPEAKER_00:For most people.
SPEAKER_01:Am I in or am I out? That's what judgment. That you can put it in a nutshell for most people. Heaven, hell. Good, bad. Hurley gates, flames. I mean, that's what it comes down to. But what do I believe? What do I believe in my life? What assumptions do I have that simply cannot survive the truth?
SPEAKER_00:Think about that. What assumptions and we all got them. We've all got these assumptions that's been passed down, and we think it's biblical now. It's sacred cows, like I said, we're protecting them.
SPEAKER_01:It's okay. When they come up against the truth, are you gonna let it fall? Are you willing to let some of those things fall?
SPEAKER_00:Because truth will cause them to fall. But you can fight against it too. And you say, No, no, no, I like this sacred cow. I want to hang on to it.
SPEAKER_01:I don't want this baby going nowhere.
SPEAKER_00:And when truth is revealed, the lie has no place to remain at. We gotta let the lies go. We gotta let assumptions go. So let me close right here with this. This is like a disclaimer at the end.
SPEAKER_01:I want to be really clear on this.
SPEAKER_00:I am not removing judgment from the gospel. Some people would be threatened by what I've said today and say, he's removing the gospel, he's he's changing the gospel. That's why they say sometimes you're preaching another gospel. No, I'm preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_01:We are not removing judgment, we're just redefining it the way Jesus did. Jesus redefined it. The Pharisees and Sadducees and all the other sees, they had one way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00:And Jesus walked onto the scene and said, I'm feeling to disrupt this because their thinking is off. And why did that's why he said every time he preached, every time he talked, every time he spoke, he said, repent. What does that mean? Change your thinking. He was telling the people, change your thinking. If you keep believing what those folks are telling you, you are not going to understand what I'm fixing to come with. You gotta let some of that stuff go to be able to grab on to the truth.
SPEAKER_01:And he says, I am the truth. So we're not doing away with judgment.
SPEAKER_00:We're just redefining judgment in the way Jesus did. Judgment is not condemnation, but revelation of truth. That's it. So judgment is not being removed. Not at all. It's not being removed. We're simply reading scripture for what it says and removing the fear that we've been taught to attach to it. We're not even dealing with the judgment, we're just saying the fear that's been that we've been taught to attach to judgment, the condemnation that we've attached to judgment, all the things that we've attached to it, we're cutting it away. Why? Because it's really not there to begin with. Why? Because Jesus already done away with it at the cross.
SPEAKER_01:And we've gone over all the verses that says that. Not all of them, but we went over the major ones.
SPEAKER_00:So if somebody says, I heard that past that sermon y'all's pastor preached, and he don't believe in judgment, your answer is gonna be, yeah, he believes in judgment. He just believes in the real definition of it. I believe in judgment, but that's exactly the question that people would say. Well, they would ask. He doesn't believe in judgment. And what they're asking is, he doesn't believe that we're gonna stand before God one day. That's what they're asking in their minds.
SPEAKER_01:That's not what I'm answering. Because that's not what Jesus was talking about.
SPEAKER_00:So we've got to answer the question and for it to make sense, we've at least, I'm not gonna say we've got to get on the right page, we've at least got to get in the right book. We gotta be in the same book. We've got to understand where we're coming from. The reason it's so hard to talk to people about this that's come from traditional mindset, it's simply that, because they're coming from a lens of tradition, and we're coming from a lens of finished work.
SPEAKER_01:And you know what happens when we try to talk? That's all it is. They're not gonna budge, and I'm not gonna budge.
SPEAKER_00:So that's why I've said what I've what I've prayed about is God teach me how to teach it. Teach me how to say it in a way that people will receive it. Because I'm not changing my idea on it, I'm not changing my belief on it. Because I believe it's truth. But I want to learn how to teach it in a way that don't offend people, that just breaks it down, lays it out, and says, you decide. And I think he's doing that. Because the more and more we just lay it out there and say, you decide, and you start using common sense on some things, you gotta say, wait a minute now, that I've heard that my whole life, but that does not make any sense. You just have to be honest. And it's okay to be wrong. Some of us are so prideful we don't want to be wrong. I believe that for 50 years. You can't tell me I'm wrong. You're wrong. I'm wrong on some areas, on a lot of areas. I just got to be open to admit it. It ain't about being wrong, it's about saying, now let me go back and find what the Bible really says. Without the assumptions, without the fear, without the condemnation, without the lies, let me get back to the original text and find truth. Because as soon as I find truth, it would be no problem. The lies don't have anywhere to stand at.