LET'S TALK ABOUT JUDGMENT pt2

We challenge the fear-based picture of judgment and walk through scripture that reframes it as a verdict rendered at the cross against sin, death, accusation, and the lie of separation. We show how Hebrews 9:27–28, John 12:31, and 2 Corinthians 5:19 point to a reconciled identity and a life free from dread.

• judgment as clarity rather than rejection
• the courtroom image versus New Testament timing and location
• Hebrews 9:27 read with verse 28, not in isolation
• the cross as the judgment event; resurrection as verdict
• the garden narrative and the birth of the separation lie
• accusation disarmed; death defeated; identity restored
• reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5:19 and “no condemnation”
• living from a settled verdict as a new creation

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Judgment And Assumptions
• 5:45 Fear, Deathbeds, And The Courtroom Image
• 11:40 Let Scripture Interpret Scripture
• 16:20 Hebrews 9:27 In Context
• 22:40 The Cross As The Judgment Event
• 28:10 Garden Lies And Separation
• 34:20 Accusation, Death, And Divine Intent
• 39:20 Resurrection And New Creation
• 44:00 Now Is The Judgment Of The World
• 49:00 Reconciliation, Not Imputation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

But we were talking Wednesday night, and uh a couple of things come up and it just kind of stayed on my heart during the week. And and I there was a couple more areas that I said, man, I really want to I want to hit on a couple more areas about that because I believe that when we're talking about judgment, that it's uh goes back to perception again. How do we see it? Some people see I see judgment a lot different than some people do, and I'm okay with that. You don't have to agree with me. I just look when I think about judgment, I don't think the same way about judgment that I did 10 years ago, even five years ago, even one year ago. I look at things a little bit different, and it's not because I'm just smarter, it's because I've dug deeper into the word and let the scripture interpret itself rather than taking everybody that I ever listened to and taking their opinion and pulling it in. Why? Because they were taught from somebody else and then they were taught from somebody else, and it was just a passed-down theology that on assumptions. I want to know what the word says. I don't want to know about your assumptions. So that's what we're trying to get into. So today is really let's talk about judgment part two. We're just gonna hit on a couple of things maybe we touched on last week, and then we're gonna just dive into a little bit deeper to it, into a different area. Uh, so last week uh we said something that may have unsettled some of us a little bit. Uh, we said that judgment is not God's threat of rejection. You may say, well, I've never thought about it like that, but that's the way we teach it every single day in every single church in South Georgia. That it is a threat of possible rejection because I'm gonna go up and I'm gonna stand before him one day, and he's gonna have, he's gonna pull out the book, and he's gonna, he's gonna talk about everything that I've ever done wrong in my life, and then he's gonna look at me and say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. He's gonna hand me a ticket into heaven, or he's gonna say, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity, for I never knew you, and he's gonna kick me into hell. That's pretty much what I've been taught my entire life. And I know I'm saying it jokingly, and some people may say, Well, I've never heard that. Yes, you have. Because your preacher's preaching it every Sunday. I was preaching it every Sunday. That's the way it is taught. That's when we talk about judgment, there's the possibility that I'm gonna stand before him. He's gonna judge me, he's gonna judge my life, and it's either gonna be good or it's gonna be bad. I'm going to one location or I'm going to another. That is the great, that is the great judgment that we keep looking at. That so many Christians are fearful about. Even though they've been a Christian their entire life, they're still fearful because what if I made a mistake that I didn't repent of? I've heard people laying on their deathbed scared to death because what if? What if there was something out there I did that I just I forgot about and I forgot to repent? That's fear. There's no other word for that. That is absolute fear of standing before the Father. So we're kind of looking at it a little bit different. It's not God's threat of possible possibly rejecting us. It's actually God's gift of clarity. He's going to open our minds up, open our eyes up to something. Judgment is what happens when truth shows up, and the lies that we've been believing all alone can no longer stand. They can't stay there anymore because truth has showed up. And truth and lies can't be in the same room. Just the same as light and darkness cannot be in the same room at the same time. Cut these lights out, and somebody turn your phone on, and all of a sudden that light's gonna start spreading. Give it just a couple of minutes, and it's gonna start spreading in here. Why? Because light and darkness cannot stay in the same room. Same way right here. Truth and lies cannot stay. One of them's gonna have to bow down to the other. So that raises a very real question that I think we gotta ask. And we asked it last week, but we asked it a little bit different. If God judges, if that's just my theology, if I just hell being, I'm gonna believe that. I don't care what you say, I don't care what you show me in scripture, that is what I believe. Okay, good. You got a quick couple questions to ask now. What exactly is he judging? And let's go more personal with it. Who is he judging? Those are questions we got to ask. If we believe he is a God who is judging us or judging something, then we've got to say, what is he judging? Who is he judging, and what does it really mean to be judged? I think one of the problems with judgment is that it's always been misunderstood. And I'm saying misunderstood, I'm not saying that I believe it one way and because you believe it different, you're wrong. I'm saying misunderstood from the trans from the position of what the Bible actually says. That's when I'm when I use the words and I say that something has to be imported in to make a verse make sense. Listen, what's imported in ain't scripture. If I have to bring something into scripture and connect it to it to make it fit my narrative, that ain't scripture. That ain't gospel. The scripture does not need anything added to it to make it truth. So everything that I'm bringing in out here that's not nowhere in the Bible, but I'm bringing it in, I'm attaching it to it and saying, now this is gospel. No, it's not. It's half gospel. Because you brought some assumptions in there that was passed along. All we're doing is saying, let's strip the assumptions away. If you want to go back and believe it later on, great. But for what we're gonna do, we're gonna strip it away, say what's the word saying itself without the assumptions added on. That's when we let scripture interpret scripture. So I think that's been a problem. We've misunderstood this word. When most of us hear the word judgment, we immediately picture, and I maybe not everybody, but this is the way I come up looking at it. So that's kind of what I use here. I immediately would always think of a courtroom, a future courtroom. I'm going up there, I pass away, I'm going up to heaven, and it's gonna be like a courtroom scene. And you got God sitting up there on the throne, like a judge, and you know, and you got all these people standing in line, waiting. This was judged. Wait, and the line's just moving up, and you're waiting there to be judged by the one sitting on the throne. That's kind of the way I've always pictured it. And humanity's just standing in line, all the people who's there standing in line, just moving up but waiting to be judged, waiting to be judged. Can you imagine how fearful they are? You're seeing God on the throne up there, and you're standing in line, waiting to get up there, and all of a sudden your name's called. Can you imagine? That's that's fear. And all of a sudden, the verdict's gonna be handed out. When you can finally get up there, and he says, Robert Bryan Taylor, and I step up before the Father, the great throne room of judgment, and I'm standing there, and he opens that book up and he starts reading everything that I'm saying. I wouldn't say that, but that's the assumption that we've imported into it. Every negative thing's gonna be read out that I've done in my life. I can tell you from scripture why that ain't even true. We're not gonna preach on that today, but I can tell you that's not even scriptural. But we say that. Why? Because it scares people. Listen, I ain't always been a pastor, I ain't always been saved. I got some stuff written in that book too. You do too. And you don't want to stand before God and he'll start calling some of that junk out. The good thing is, what I know and what you know is Jesus died on the cross and it's done with now. So he ain't calling it out. But we are teaching people every day in the church that you're gonna stand before him and he's just gonna read this stuff out. And they live a life of fear. And then all of a sudden we step up there before him, and a verdict's fixing to be handed down. It's either this way and you're going up or this way, and the elevator's going down. I mean, that's the only two choices you have. That's the theology we teach, the heaven-hell doctrine, the heaven-hell theology. That's what we're telling people. It's either here or it's there. There's no middle ground here. You either made it or you didn't. And we always use the term he just barely scraped in. Okay, that's better not getting in, I guess. It's crazy when we think about it. When you really just stop and think about some of the things we teach and just use common sense, it it is it is crazy how stup how fearful we make the church people. We scare them to death. But then, here's the problem with that theory that we just talked about, the judge, the courtroom idea. The New Testament, you open it up, and it shifts the location and the timing of judgment. We think it's one day when we go, when we die, in the future, whether it's tomorrow or whether it's 25, 30, 50 years from now, one day I'm gonna stand in judgment. Where? Before the throne room of heaven. Right? So it tells me the location and it tells me when. Future. When I die. But when you open the New Testament, it shoots that whole theory down because it tells me that there's a different location and there's a different timing. So I'm gonna take the scripture over what somebody tells me. Now, I'm not saying that person's wrong, but I'm gonna say I'm gonna take what you're saying and I'm gonna compare it to what scripture's saying, and we're gonna figure out who's telling the truth. Okay. Let's keep in mind we're, and I said this last week, but I want to make sure people understand this. We're in no way denying judgment. We're not saying judgment does not exist or judgment is not real. We're not saying that. We're simply saying we're gonna bring judgment into context based on scripture alone. That's it. We're gonna base it on scripture. Scripture doesn't say judgment will one day fall on humanity sometime in the future. It says judgment has already fallen. We talked about that verse, we're gonna go into it a little bit more. But it says judgment has already fallen. Judgment has come on sin itself. So let me go, let me go ahead before we even get going. I wasn't gonna do this, but I want to. I want to go ahead and hit on one of the most famous verses in the Bible when it comes to judgment. This is the verse that if anybody from a traditional teaching background hears me teach this, they're gonna go straight to Hebrews 9 and 27. So I'm running to pull that up. I want you to look at this verse with me just a minute. Hebrews 9 and 27. And it is appointed for men to die once, and then the judgment. Their whole theology is based on this verse. The whole theology, the whole understanding of judgment is based on one verse. Here's the problem with this verse, though. We take it and we use it as a standalone verse. We isolate it out. We don't pay attention that after the word judgment is what? Not a period, but a comma. See that? That means this thing goes on. So now we got to go to verse 28. And I didn't even give run into this verse. I hope you can go to the next one. But if not, we can still look at what it says. This verse cannot be looked at in isolation. It you must keep reading after the comma. So it says, after the comma, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time. I just showed you two verses right here that builds the philosophy or the theology on judgment and builds the theology on the second coming. Right here in one verse. And I'm also gonna break it down with these same verses. Because when he says that first one in 27, it is appointed once for man to die, and after that, the judgment. Well, let's stop with the first part. It was appointed once for man to die. We take that verse and say, everybody in this room is only gonna die one, you're gonna die physically one time. That's the meaning and the understanding that we take out of this. And after that, you stand in the great throne room to be judged. But there's a comma there. He didn't just tell you this and say, figure it out. He said, I'm gonna tell you this, and then I'm gonna turn around in the very next verse and give you the answer. So he says, now Christ. He gives you exactly the answer. So Christ was offered once. Why? Because it said man had to die once. So Christ is gonna die once. He gives it to you in the very next verse. To bear the sins of many, to bear the sins of humanity. To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear. He will appear a second time. He's already come the first time he was born. He showed up. That's one time. And guess what? He's gonna come back a second time. And when he comes back the second time, it's gonna be apart from sin. Why? Because he just left the cross and he took care of sin on the cross. So when he came back and he appeared back to him, he was apart from sin. For what? Salvation. What was salvation? Salvation means he's saving us, he is rescuing us, he is restoring us back to who we are. Everything he did on the cross, it talks about right here in this verse. We just take it and turn it and put assumptions onto it. The writer here that in Hebrews is not warning us about something that's still coming one day. He's celebrating. You go back and you study this out in more detail. He's actually celebrating something here that no longer needs to happen again. Christ died. The man died once. He no longer has to die again. He doesn't have to keep doing this every time you mess up. He doesn't have to keep crawling on the cross every time you make a mistake. He done it once for what? For sin. And it's done. That's what he's saying right here. He's celebrating that fact. Just as humans in the flesh don't die over and over and over and over again, Christ does not deal with sin over and over and over again. Judgment is not postponed to the future. It's actually concluded. He dealt with it one time. One time for all. The more you start reading these through the lens of Christ, the more they make sense, and you're like, wow, why was I how did I miss this before? How did this misunderstanding happen? The cross was the judgment event. I know some of us are still waiting on judgment, and that's fine. I mean, I'm not probably there's some people I'm not gonna change their mind on that, and I'm okay with that. That don't mean that they're not gonna be with the Father and they're not saved and they're not a good person. I'm just saying it's not what we're saying there's not scriptural. But if we want to live, be scriptural, and we want to live a life now, we want to realize that I can live a good life and live a loving life, and I can live a blessed life, and I don't have to worry in fear and anticipation of a one-day judgment, then this does make sense to me. Because I don't have to live like that anymore. I don't have to worry, go through life worried about that anymore. So the cross was a judgment event. When we hear that word judgment, most of us assume that it's uh it means God judging us. Each one of you. God judging you on a personal level. Every bad thing you've ever done in your life, even the ones nobody else knows about, the things you've done in secret. He's judging you because God knows all. That's what we say. Yes, that's true. But that's the mindset that we take is he's judging every tiny little thing that we've always done. Our behaviors, our failures, our stupidity, our sin, everything that we've ever done wrong. But at Calvary, at the cross, just gonna change your perspective just a minute. At the cross, God was not putting humanity on trial. He was not taking all of humanity, all of man, and putting them on trial at this point. When we're talking about the cross, he put the entire system that kept humanity bound on trial. What did he say? Sin was on trial. What is sin? Sin is that that belief, that that that false narrative, that false idea that I'm not who God says I am. All of that lie, that separation, that all that stuff that we're gonna go into in a minute, all of that was put on trial. Everything that was making man think that he was not who God said he was was being put on trial. All the underneath stuff, okay, the root of it was put on trial. From the very beginning, the core problem was never behavior. Go back to the Garden of Eden. What Adam and Eve was doing was not the problem. The problem was what they started thinking. It was the lie that they were separated from God. And I don't want to go back into this, but I want you to understand this. This is where it started at. They were walking with God in the cool of the day. I'm just assuming every day, I don't know. He was coming down and he would walk with them in the garden and talk with them and spend time with them. And I'm sure they enjoyed this walk. And then all of a sudden, he comes in one day because they ate the apple. And all of a sudden the serpent came to Eve and said, That can't be true what he told you. The truth is, if you eat of that fruit, then you will be just like him. Now, what could have really prevented everything if Eve would have looked at the serpent and said, I'm already like him. He created me in the image and the likeness of himself. But she didn't. It planted a seed in her head and she started saying, wait a minute. If I gotta eat this to be like him, that means he's up here and I'm right here and I'm separated from him. I'm different than him. He's better than me. We're different. So it automatically put a lie in there that you are different, that you're separated. The lie of separation started right there in the garden. And then when God comes back the next day to walk with him like he's done every other day, he walks up there and says, Hey, where y'all at? Adam, where are you? You always here, you always meet me at the entrance of the garden. And now I can't find you. He said, I'm I'm hiding.

SPEAKER_01: 21:45

Why?

SPEAKER_00: 21:47

Why one day he decided to hide from me? That's a whole nother week go into that later. But one day, because of set because of a mindset that set in, all of a sudden he seen the nakedness as a problem. He said, I'm hiding, I'm naked. Well, you've been naked the whole time, Adam. You didn't realize that? No, because the mindset shifted. Now he sees the nakedness. Now he sees the problems. Now he sees what he perceives as separation. He never seen that before. But now, because of the lie that was told, he begins, his eyes are opened to what he thinks is separation. That started everything. And as Christians today, we're still walking and falling into that same trap every day. So once humanity believed that God is distant, that he's against me, I'm on my own, then fear always follows. Shame follows, guilt follows, blame follows. I start blaming everybody. And eventually death follows. So at the cross, God doesn't show up with a scorecard and say, Let me see where they have fallen out on here. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they heaven-worthy? Are they hellbound? He don't show up with a scorecard like that.

SPEAKER_01: 23:15

He shows up with a verdict.

SPEAKER_00: 23:21

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 that God was in Christ reconciling. Listen to that. That's so powerful. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Not counting their trespasses against them. See, we have to realize that if God is not counting our sins against us, and I believe that, you know why? Because the Bible just said it. I'm going to choose to believe the Bible over you. I hope you choose to believe the Bible over anything I say, because I I can get up here and make a mistake. I can misinterpret something. I hope that you choose to read the Bible and take scripture for what it says, and then come back and say, Pastor Brown, you may want to look at this a little bit more. And I will. It says that he was reconciling, that he was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting trespasses, sins against them. So we've got to realize that if he's not counting the sins against us, then our behavior's not on trial. According to what we teach. Why? Because the sins that we teach is the behaviors that we do. Every sin you've ever done has been something you've done wrong. But if he's not holding your sins against you, then that's not what on that's not on trial right here.

SPEAKER_01: 24:53

So what's on trial?

SPEAKER_00: 24:57

Separation is separation is is think about it like this the cross is God judging the lie that you are distant from him and declaring it false. Well, how do you know that? Because he says that he would come and he would make his home on the inside of me. He would live on the inside of me. That when Jesus did what he did on the cross and he left and he went to heaven, he said, I will send back a comforter. He said, and that comforter is going to live on the inside of you. So there can't be no distance between me and God when he is on the inside of me and we're one. And then everybody will say, well, there was distance between God and Jesus. And, you know, so you can't really say that. I've heard that. I've heard that so many times. Well, how can you say there's no distance between you and God when God put distance between him and Jesus, when Jesus was on the cross because he couldn't look upon sin? It said he was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, bringing people back into relationship. He wasn't separated from Jesus. He was actually in him according to scripture. Now, if you don't want to believe scripture, then you can come up with any theory you want to come up with there. But it's not going to change what scripture says. I'm going to choose to believe scripture. And I may have some ideas out there that don't align with that. You know what I have to do now? I have to say, here's my ideas, here's scripture. I'm not going to let my ideas supersede scripture. I've got to now let Scripture begin to supersede my ideas. We've reversed that. We let our ideas and our thought process supersede scripture. That's what I mean by assumptions are brought in. If I have to bring my assumption in to make a verse clear, it might be clear, but it ain't biblical. I've got to let the Bible take charge and take precedence over any idea that I've been taught. It's got to come from the scripture. It's got to come from the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will do that. The Holy Spirit will show you and guide you and lead you into all truth. So we look at the separation, and that's the that's the cross is God judging the lie that you are distant from Him and declaring it to be absolutely false. He said, You're never distant from me. You were never separated from me. And then there's accusation. And you're going to see in a minute why I'm using these words. Separation, accusation. That's the voice in you that says you've failed too many times. You're not good enough. You've made too many mistakes. You should know better by now. That's that accusing spirit that's always there. You'll never get in. You'll never be good enough. You'll never be what God wants. But Jesus, here's the cool thing: Jesus never joins the side of the prosecution and starts pointing fingers at you. He stays on the side of the accused. Always. He absorbs the accusation into himself and exposes it for what it is. The voice that God never agreed with. God never agreed with that stuff. People will say that about you. But God never agreed with that. So you got separation, accusation, and then you got then there's death. God did not use death to forgive the world. That's the way we look at it, that he killed his son. I like to say it like that because that's basically what we teach. He killed his son to save all of us. It was a transaction. That's a mindset, that's a way of looking at it. That's the way a lot of people look at it. But if you look at it like that, there's a lot of things you got, there's a lot of questions that come up. I don't look at it like that. God entered death, he entered into death to destroy death. How do you know that? Death was not God's tool to save humanity. He didn't put his son on the cross and say, I have to kill you to save all of humanity and use it as a tool. He didn't do that. Death was God's enemy. Why would he work with the enemy? And there's plenty of scriptures we go to. We don't have time to go to. But death was the enemy of God. He Jesus chose to go to the cross, take all of this on to himself.

SPEAKER_01: 30:05

It was a choice the last one I just want to hit on. Resurrection.

SPEAKER_00: 30:14

Because this all of this, the the separation, the accusation, the death, brings us all the way back to the resurrection of Christ. Here's where the shift has to make has to happen. We have to make a shift right here in our thinking. Resurrection is not God. Listen to this. Gotta listen to it good because you're gonna disagree with me when I say it. Resurrection is not God forgiving sinners. Let that sit there for just a minute. Resurrection is not God forgiving sinners. The sin was taken care of before the resurrection. The sin was taken care of on the cross, according to Scripture. Right? The resurrection was him coming back and saying, Now you are a new creation. Paul doesn't say if anyone is in Christ, they are forgiven. He says, if you anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. Behold, all things have passed away. All things have become new. You are a new creation. The resurrection, what happened on the cross took care of sin. What happened on the cross took care of accusation. What happened on the cross took care of separation. What happened on the cross took care of death. When he rose and was resurrected, all of that was already in the past tense because it had already happened. He rose up to say it's all finished, and now you're a new creation in Christ. This is a new life. The resurrection was nothing to do with forgiving sins. It was to say they have already been forgiven and now walk in this. I want you to see what I've done, and now you have the opportunity for new life. Now you have the opportunity to walk this out. Two verses I just want to show you. Go ahead and pull up John 12 and 31, right? So resurrection here is the verdict. Think about it like that. Sin, here's the reasons I use those words there. Sin, separation, accusation, death, resurrection. Sin as the ruling power over humanity. And it started in the garden, it began to rule Adam and Eve. Sin, a distorted way of thinking, ruled Adam and Eve. So now what he's saying is sin as a ruling power is condemned on the cross. I have condemned sin. Separation is exposed as a lie. You're not separated from me. Accusation.

SPEAKER_01: 33:13

The accuser loses his authority, and death is defeated.

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

I'm using those words because I want you to see something. The words sin, separation, accusation, death, all of those words are the things that make judgment so scary. Those are the things that make the judgment theory so scary for people. And all I'm trying to show right here is all of those things are done with. The things that causes it to be scary are already finished on the cross. John 12 and 31, now is the judgment of the world. We covered this verse last week, but I had to pull it back up because he was saying back then, not 2026, he was saying back then on the cross. He said, now, now is the judgment of the world. Not the judgment of planet Earth, but the judgment of the system of lies, separation, sin, that system that's got you believing all this stuff. Now I'm gonna judge that system. I'm going to the cross and I'm gonna judge that whole system that has kept you thinking that you're separated from me, thinking that I don't love you, thinking that I'm angry at you. I'm gonna judge that whole system. And not only that, semicolon. And then he goes on. Period means end of sentence. But comma and semicolon means we're we're carrying on. Not only am I going to do that, but now the ruler of this world, the one that has, there's that world again, the ruler of this system, the ruler of the lies, the ruler of the accusations, the ruler of the separation, the ruler that has put this into your head and made you believe it, I'm gonna go ahead and cast him out.

SPEAKER_01: 35:24

He's gonna be cast out. Which means he's not gonna have any more power. Colossians 2, 15.

SPEAKER_00: 35:39

Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them in it. He did away with it. Which now means when you look at this, sin is condemned, has no more power, separation is exposed as a lie, you're not separated anymore. Accusation loses its authority. He just destroyed that, he disarmed him, and death is defeated. The things that cause, the things that lift judgment up. Take those things away, you don't have judgment anymore. Those are the things that judgment is rooted in, and we've just cut every single one of them up with scripture. Not my opinion. We've used scripture to cut the root out from under judgment. I may preach this again next week. Man. His death, burial, and resurrection didn't just improve humanity. He didn't go to the cross and say, I hope I'm gonna make everybody better. I hope they recognize what I'm doing. I hope, I hope, I hope. No, it didn't just make humanity better, it actually made humanity a recreation. He recreated humanity. Judgment did not fall on you. Judgment fell on everything that told you you were not already God's. You were not already his. So we don't live our life now trying to avoid judgment. We live from a verdict that's already been rendered. The verdict was rendered on the cross. We're not waiting to get there one day for him to bring the hammer down and say good or bad, heaven or hell. The verdict has already been rendered on the cross. Now we live as a new creation, reconciled, alive. When we say the verdict wasn't against you, we gotta really stop a minute and just think, what does that mean? How is that beneficial to me? The verdict was not against you individually. This is where judgment gets, this is where judgment gets good news attached to it. What's the gospel? Good news. That's what the gospel means. So this is where we take the word judgment that we've turned into a bad thing, and we fixing the flip it and turn it into a good thing. We're gonna attach some good news to the judgment. That's why I say I'm not doing away with judgment. We're just gonna look at it for what it really is. Judgment at the cross was not aimed at humanity. He was not looking at the world, the people. It was aimed at the lie that humanity was separated from God. We've got to see that. It's the underlying cause. We have taken it and say it's aimed at behavior. You're gonna be judged because you did this, and because you did this, and because you that's behaviors. What's the underlying cause? The underlying thinking that causes you to do those behaviors. You know, a lot of people drink or use drugs because there's a mindset in there that says I'm not good enough. When you change the mindset and you build the self-esteem, there's no longer the need for the alcohol or drug. Sometimes we, like I said, we work it backwards and we say, stop drinking, stop drugging, stop doing this, stop doing that. And we do it backwards instead of saying what's driving that and fixing what's driving it. That's what he did here. God said, I'm gonna fix the thought process that's actually driving the behavior. Forget the behavior right now. Let's go to the root cause of it. So it was aimed at the lie that humanity was separated from God. Jesus did not absorb God's. Anger toward us. That's the way we teach it sometimes that he took the wrath of God onto himself. God wasn't angry. Nowhere in there, in your scriptures, did tell you God was angry at humanity. That's a lie. He was not mad. He was not upset. He absorbed the full weight of sin onto himself. The lie, the accusations, all the things the enemy was saying. He took all of that onto himself, climbed on the cross, and said, I absorb all of this for humanity. So judgment didn't say you are rejected. Judgment said the system, listen, the system no longer has authority over you.

SPEAKER_01: 40:51

It no longer has any authority over you.

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

One of the most overlooked verses, and we've already talked about it, but I want to hit on it right here just for a second. Because I think it's one of the most overlooked verses in 2 Corinthians 5.19 again. Where it says God was in Christ reconciling the world back to himself, not imputing their trespasses or sins against them. This has been my go-to verse on a lot of this stuff. Because there's so much, there's so much in it. See, this verse here, it means the Father was not watching from a distance. That's the idea that we're taught that God is up there on a throne somewhere on the other side of Pluto, and He's just looking down at what's going on, hoping that Jesus will do enough to save humanity. God was in Christ. He was never separated. He was in him doing what? Reconciling, bringing back into order the world, the system, saying, I'm going to kick this other system of lie, separation, sin, accusation. That's a system of thinking that is a lie. I'm going to do away with it, and I'm going to bring them back into original order. If you look this word up, world in here, it's actually the word cosmos. And it actually means system of order, is what the actual definition of it means. There's several definitions in there. But the one that I look at so much and goes along with what we're teaching, it means system of order. What was God's order? Love, unity, all that being together with him. So he's going to do away with all the other ones, other order that had come into place. He said, I'm going to do away with that, and I'm going to bring them back into proper order. Not imputing their sins, their trespasses against them. And had committed to them the word of reconciliation. What is reconciliation? Bringing back into proper alignment. God was present. We need to see that. Judgment wasn't something God did to Jesus. This is the reason I wanted to revisit this minute. This is not what he was doing to Jesus. Judgment was something God did through Jesus. It wasn't an act he done to him and said, You gotta do this. I've got to kill you. The Father has to kill the Son to save humanity.

SPEAKER_01: 43:45

He said, I'm gonna do this through you. So here's the final question. I'm gonna get ready to end right here. Why does judgment still feel scary? Because judgment exposes lies.

SPEAKER_00: 44:05

And lies don't go quietly. When you believe something for years and you keep telling yourself something over and over, I'm not good enough, I'm not this, I'm not that, and you keep telling yourself that, it's hard to let go of that. I don't care how much self-help counseling, anything else you get, it's hard to let go of a lie that you've been believing for such a long time. That's why some people struggle. Again, talking about addiction and alcoholism, they struggle with it. Even after they start changing their mindset because, you know, or changing the behavior. They might get away from it, but the mindset hadn't shifted yet. And there's still this lie in there saying, I've got to have this. My life cannot function without this. Why? Because they believe that. They truly, that is a belief system in them that every day I can't function unless I have this. It's a lie that's still there that hasn't got out yet. It's the same thing here. Judgment is uncomfortable when we've built our identity on distortions, on a distorted way of thinking. But judgment is not punishment for who you are, it's freedom from what never belonged to you in the first place. All that accusation and all those lies and all that separation that the enemy tried to bring, that was never yours to begin with. That apple was never Eve's. And it ain't got nothing to do with the apple, it's got something to do with the lie that comes with the apple. The lie that you're not good enough, Eve. And if you'll eat this, you'll be good enough. That was a lie. And she and she fell for it. And then I don't know how much she had a lot of control over Adam, too, because he fell for it. And then he got mad and said, It was that crazy woman. She did this. It was both of them.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

Okay? But it was a lie the whole time. So you're not awaiting judgment.

SPEAKER_00: 46:18

Say that again. I'm gonna look right at the camera when I say you're not awaiting judgment. You're not awaiting judgment. Let that sink in for a minute. You're not waiting to see how God feels about you. I already know how he feels about me. You should already know how he feels about you. You are not hoping that mercy some ways some in some way outweighs justice. Like, you know, you're gonna step up there and there's gonna be this balance scale of the good that you've done, the bad that you've done, and you're just sitting here waiting, oh God, I hope the good outweighs the bad. I mean, that's kind of the mindset that we get.

SPEAKER_01: 47:03

The scales of justice.

SPEAKER_00: 47:16

Not by harming humanity. He didn't he didn't do it by harming individual people, but by defeating sin's claim over humanity. The lies, the separation, the sin, the sin, the thoughts that I have this sin nature that's in me, and I just can't escape this. See, that's why, even when people say that, I mean, I argue that today with people. When they say, Well, we're just born with a sin nature. No, you're not. You are not, but you know what it tells me? When you think you're born with a sin nature, that is a lie that is put in there, and now you think you can't ever overcome anything. Because you just automatically have this thing on the inside of you that you can't ever overcome. That's a lie. You are not born with a sin nature. He went to the cross and he rose from the dead, and he said, You are now a new creation. Maybe before that you were born with a sin nature, but nobody born on this side of the resurrection is born with a sin nature. It is a new creation in Christ. You are a new creation in Christ. All right, let me end right here.

SPEAKER_01: 48:26

I'll keep going. Let me find a good stuff and spoke.

SPEAKER_00: 48:33

So when Scripture says this, there is no now no condemnation. There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Listen, that is not just poetic language. That sounds really good, and it's a good verse to quote. It is a good verse to quote. But it's not just a good sounding verse. There is now no condemnation. You know what that is? It's a verdict. Just like you went before the judge and you did something wrong or whatever, and the judge says, guilty or innocent. That's a verdict. There is now no condemnation, is a verdict. Don't condemn yourself. He says there's no reason to condemn yourself. Why? Because I don't even see all that. Why? Because my son took care of it and then he raised from the dead, and all that stuff is gone. You are dead to sin and you are a new creation. I raised you up as a new creation. Where everybody says, well, God just sees everything. I wouldn't even get on that. I don't agree with that, but that's just me. Because I don't think he's a God who lies. I don't see him as that. I think he sees me as exactly what the Bible says. He sees me as a new creation. Now, do I still do stupid stuff and mess up? Absolutely. Does God know I still mess up? Absolutely. But when I do, I think he's there to say, get up, son, get up. Come on, come on. Let's get back to who you are. That ain't you. That ain't you. Come on, come on back. You're a new creation. You're a new creation. You're a new creation. And then I don't beat myself up and I don't condemn myself. You know why? Because the Bible tells me not to. It says because he no longer holds that sin over me. He's not holding our sins against us. He's seeing me for who he created me to be, not for the dumb little mistakes that I make. So what does judgment look like now? Because it's still there. We haven't did away with the word judgment in the Bible. Judgment today looks like the truth being revealed. It looks like clarity replacing confusion. It looks like false identities losing their grip. Judgment is not God moving away from you, it's God moving closer to you until everything that contradicts love can no longer stand. Last week we said judgment wasn't about fear. This week we're saying something even more challenging. Judgment has already happened. And you were not found guilty.

SPEAKER_01: 51:31

Sin and death were. It was judged.

SPEAKER_00: 51:37

The verdict was rendered and it was found guilty. Sin and death and separation and accusation were found guilty. Not you. You are not living under a some looming threat. You're living in the aftermath of a victory that's already occurred. The verdict is already in. And here's the good news. It was declared in your favor. Ain't that awesome? I said the other day, you know, I've been to court too before. People that's been to court, when they rule in your favor, don't it feel good? When they rule against you, it don't feel so good. It has already been rendered, and it's been rendered in your favor. That's something, that's good news. Telling me I'm gonna go and stand before him one day, and there's a good possibility I may be cast into hell for eternity and burned forever with gnashing of teeth, and that's not good news to me. That ain't good news to nobody. But telling me that this happened already and the verdict has been rendered, and God has taken care of that already, and I was never separated, I was never distant. He loves me. He says, You do not have to condemn yourself. I see you now as a new creation. When Jesus rose, you rose with him. That's good news. It don't mean that I can just go out and do anything I want to do. Because something in here changes. And something in here changes. And the goal is that the more that I see the truth, the stuff out here will change too. That's the key to it. We want to change everything else and then say you're good enough to come. Nah, just change it in here. Understand your identity, and then everything else will take care of itself.