This I Believe: Second Coming & Judgement - Steve Surine

Welcome to Day 3 of our sermon series, "The Creed!" Join us as we get back to the basics of our faith and walk through the Apostle's Creed.

"I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The question is, how can I make sure in this life that when I get to that point of judgment, that I'm gonna rise to life as Jesus said and not be condemned.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hey everyone, welcome to the Brick by Brick podcast from Renovation Church, where faith gets built one truth at a time. In this sermon episode, you'll listen to our most recent Sunday morning message. So whether you're new to faith or have been walking with Jesus for years, there's something here for you. So kickback, hit play, and let's build this thing together.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Alright, so let me let me pray for us, and then we're gonna continue the series, The Creed. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you are good, that you love us. Um God, we thank you that you reveal yourself to us so we can know you through your word, through um just the way that you make yourself real to us. And this morning, God, as we just turn our focus to your word and to um what you have for us today, God, I just pray that you would just prepare our hearts. God, just help us to have eyes to see, ears to hear what you would have for us this morning. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Alright, so we're continuing this series on the creed. Um, and let's just take a look for a second at the creed that we're looking at, the Apostles' Creed. Um it says, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Alright, so that is the Apostles' Creed. Maybe some of you grew up maybe reciting that in church. Maybe some of you, that's totally new to you. This is just an ancient statement of belief from the early church. Um and I think it's there because churches have a way of arguing about a lot of things. Um, when I was a kid, uh, my church, uh, just in South Portage uh built a new sanctuary. It actually ended up looking a lot like this one. Um I remember going to the church, you know, when it was a construction site and helping, you know, in little ways, like my dad was like up on the roof or like doing different work, and like I'd you know, go run and grab these nails or go, you know, grab a tape measure or whatever busy work they could probably hand me to do because they didn't trust me to do the real jobs as they still wouldn't today. Um But I remember helping out on that project, and as that project neared completion, I remember that the church had a vote. Um I don't remember all the details of it, but I remember there being like a display in the lobby of like different carpet and paint samples, and the church got to vote on what color the sanctuary was gonna be. And I don't remember what all the options were. I do remember it ended being blue, so go blue. Um I do remember also, though, that the pastor kind of made this joke that we had to be careful with this vote because churches have split over things like the color of the carpet. And I remember everybody kind of laughing about that. But that was like the first of many times that I heard a pastor or a Christian reference this idea that churches have split over things like what color of carpet we should have in our sanctuary. Has anybody ever heard that before? Yeah, and so I was kind of curious this week like, is that something that's actually happened? Like I was trying to Google um, have has there been a documented case of a church splitting over carpet? And I sound I found a lot of examples, people mentioning it, but like never found like a news article, like, you know, first reformed church of Podunk USA splits over color of carpet. Like I didn't find a verified example. Um, not to say it's not out there, I didn't look that hard. But I think the reason that stories like that are so prolific is because we know as Christians, as church-going people, that we have that capacity to split easily over things, don't we? And maybe we can't identify an actual church. I mean, maybe you know of one that split over carpet. Maybe we can't identify that though, but I bet we can identify churches that split over equally ridiculous things, right? Um, and just case in point, if if you try to search how many Christian denominations are there in the world, the answer is something like 45,000. Thousands of Christian denominations. Like thousands and thousands of times that churches have said, you know what, we cannot continue anymore together. We're gonna go our separate ways, and we're gonna have our own different churches where we can talk about our own beliefs or our own ideas. And some of those are theological differences, you know, pretty weighty theological differences. But sometimes those splits are over really minor things, you know, really like petty sorts of things that we we tend to split over. You know, things like the songs that we sing or the way that we dress, or just different um pop culture or hot button issues of the day, right? That are that maybe they feel like they matter a lot right now, but in 10 years and a hundred years, is it really gonna make that much of a difference? And yet, as Christians, often we are so willing to just part ways over those petty sorts of things. There was a joke that I heard one time. Uh, there's a comedian named Emo Phillips. I don't know if anybody's heard of him. This is like the only joke of his that I've ever heard, so I don't know how famous he is. Uh but he told this joke. He said, There was this one day I was out walking and I came to this bridge, and there was a man standing on the bridge, and he was gonna jump. And I shouted to him, Don't do it! And the man said, But nobody loves me. And he said, That's not true. God loves you. Do you believe in God? And he said, Yes, I do, and he said, I do too. Uh are you a Christian or a Jew? And he said, I'm Christian. He said, I am too. What denomination are you? And he said, Well, I'm a Baptist. He said, I am too. He said, Are you Northern Baptists or Southern Baptists? He goes, Well, I'm Northern Baptist. He said, Me too. He said, Are you conservative Northern Baptists or are you liberal Northern Baptists? He goes, I'm conservative Northern Baptist. He says, Me too. He says, Are you Conservative Northern Baptist Council of 1879 or Conservative Northern Baptist Council of 1912? And he says, Oh, conservative Northern Baptist 1912. And he goes, heretic, and I pushed him off the bridge. I don't think that's a true story, but I think Christians do act that way sometimes, like we get all bent out of shape over these little petty disagreements. And I think that's why the creed is so important. Because the Apostles' Creed in particular, it's a statement of belief, right? And as we just saw a moment ago, it's a fairly short one. It's 19 lines, and one of those lines is amen. So it's it's 18 different statements about what Christians believe. And basically every one of those 45,000 Christian denominations can go back to that statement and say, we agree with this. So in this culture where we are so willing and ready to separate over petty things, this is something that we can all look back on and say, that's something that I agree with. And now maybe some of you are thinking, like, well, I didn't grow up in a church that said that, or like, you know, maybe you even grew up in a church that said, like, we don't have any creeds, you know, we just have the Bible. Your church probably still has a statement of faith on their website, right? Like every church has things that we say we believe, and that's basically what this is. It's a statement of faith that just happens to go all the way back to somewhere between like one and two hundred AD. Like, if you Google when was the Apostles' Creed was written, I think it'll say like 750 or something, but the roots of that creed go all the way back to like 100, 150, something like that. Like within a couple of decades of the completion of the New Testament, within just a few decades of the death of the apostles, that's how far back this goes. And it's just the early Christians coming together and saying, this is what's important. This is what we believe in. And so each one of those 18 lines plus amen is significant because it's a simple statement of what the early church said they believe. And so we've been taking a walk through this creed, and this morning we're coming to the line, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. Now, of all of those 18 lines plus amen, this is probably the one we want to overlook the most, right? Because nobody likes being judged, do we? Now, maybe to clarify, I think all of us like judging from time to time. But being judged, that's something different. We we don't mind it when we are pointing out flaws or things in other people quite often. We're ready to do that. But when the finger gets pointed at us, that's when we suddenly have a problem with judgment, isn't it? That's when the quote will come out. You know, the Bible says, do not judge. And maybe we'll come back to that in a minute. Maybe that's taken out of context sometimes. But the point is that we we don't like judgment when it's pointed our direction, and yet, of all of the things that they could have talked about in this creed, of all of the different things that we might disagree with or things that we fight about or squabble over, a lot of those things are not mentioned in that creed, but judgment is. And so it must be important if they included it. And so this morning we just want to walk through that statement because I think ultimately what it's showing us is that the way that we live matters. In fact, the way that we live has eternal significance. The choices that we make, the way that we live, particularly the way that we orient ourselves toward Jesus, it has eternal significance. So let's take a walk through this line of the creed. It starts by saying, Jesus is coming back. He will come. The first thing we learn from this is Jesus is gonna return. Now, if we look at John chapter 14, turn in your Bibles there if you could this morning. We're gonna turn to a bunch of different places. So the words are up on the screen if you get tired of flipping in your Bible, but if you want to follow along, and I always encourage you, at least write those verses down and read them later. Read them in context, because we don't have time to explore all of the context of every passage this morning, but I want to encourage you to look at these passages for yourself. Um, but John chapter 14, this is a section of the Bible where Jesus, the night before he's crucified, he brings his disciples together, and he has a last meal with them, and then he shares this teaching with them, and it lasts several chapters in the book of John. Um, and this is one of the things that he says to them Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I'm going. So before he even died on the cross, which is going to happen like the next day after he makes the statement, he's preparing them for the fact that he was going to go and die, he was going to be leaving them, eventually ascending back into heaven, but he also made this promise that he would come back. So this is something that Christians have been clinging to since before Jesus even died on the cross, that he not only was going to die and ultimately ascend into heaven, but that he would come back. Let's turn to Acts chapter 1. We just finished a series in Acts. We spent quite a few weeks going through the book of Acts together. And so this might be familiar to you from when we began that series, but in Acts chapter 1, right after Jesus ascends into heaven, his disciples are watching where he had ascended. And so we come to verse 11. Um, actually, look, go back to verse 10. It says, They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. So two angels appear. And they say, Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way that you have seen him go into heaven. This is why the creed says he will come again. Because Jesus promised it. As soon as he ascended into heaven, angels came and they reiterated this promise that we have a Savior that is coming back. Now, we might ask the question, well, why did he have to go in the first place? Why didn't he just stay if he's coming back? In fact, if you go back to verse 6, the disciples, it says, then they gathered around him and asked him, this is before that ascension, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Now, a few weeks ago we had Palm Sunday. Oh, I'm still on. Thank you. Um a few weeks ago was Palm Sunday, and we talked about how Jesus came into Jerusalem and people were shouting Hosanna, and they were basically ready to crown him king. And in but instead of going to a throne, Jesus was marching toward the cross. He knew that he had to die on the cross. But the people had this expectation that he was coming to be the king. And the thing is, is that that wasn't an entirely wrong expectation. Because the Old Testament talking about the Messiah does talk about him coming as the king. He's going to establish a kingdom that would never end. The thing is, is that there was there was time that still needed to take place before that part of it. Right? A lot of times theologians refer to this as the already and not yet aspect of the kingdom. In one sense, the kingdom is already here. Jesus has come, and we have an opportunity to know him, to follow him, to grow in our sanctification, become more like him. We can experience the blessings of that kingdom. We have the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We can experience all of these kingdom things right here and now. So in a sense, it's already here, but also it's not yet. Because there's also things about the world that we know are not the way they're supposed to be. Right? We have evil in this world. We see it every day. There's heartache. There is brokenness. There is death, there is sin, all of these things that are not the way that it's supposed to be, but yet we live in a world where we have to deal with that still. And so those things have not yet been dealt with. And so in that sense, the kingdom is not yet fully here because Jesus hasn't come to fully establish that kingdom, but in another sense, it is already here. And so when the disciples are looking at Jesus and they're saying, okay, you rose from the dead, you defeated sin and death, is it time now to establish that kingdom? He tells them, no, it's not time yet. And then he ascends into heaven. And again, why not just do it now? Like he's he's done all the things that he needs to do. Let's turn one more place. 2 Peter chapter 3. It's Peter, one of the people who was standing there staring at the sky, wondering why doesn't Jesus just stick around. He has this to tell us in 2 Peter chapter 3. Um, and he's talking about how some people are going to mock Christians. Now keep in mind, this is just a generation after Jesus has ascended into heaven. And people are already mocking Christians at that time, saying, hey, Jesus said he was coming back. You worship this God that you say is returning, and hey, it's been a couple of years, where is he? Well, now it's been 2,000 years. He still isn't back yet. And so people might still have the same critique. Hey, Christians have been saying this forever. Is it gonna happen? But here's what Peter has to say in response to that in verse 8. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends. With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. So, in one sense, time is kind of insignificant to God, right? The two thousand years is kind of a blink of the eye to him. But then he goes on to say, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Why hasn't Jesus come back yet? Because he wants everyone to have an opportunity to come to him. He wants all of us to repent, to turn our lives to him, to find him, to follow him, to be like him. He wants us all to have that opportunity. And the longer he waits to come back, the more opportunity we have to respond to him. The more opportunities we have to grow in our faith if we already know him, the more opportunity we have to evangelize, to share our faith with others, to give more people the opportunity to come to Jesus. And so the longer that he is waiting, the more chance that we have. And so we need to be taking advantage of that opportunity and not only growing in faith in Jesus ourselves, but sharing that faith with as many people as we can, because we don't know when he's coming back. So the first thing is he's coming back, but then when he comes, he will come to judge. He will come to judge, is the next part of the statement. And again, that's the part I think we're uncomfortable with. Right? We we will often use that quote: the Bible says, don't judge. Well, it actually says, Don't judge, because the way that you judge is the way that you're going to be judged. And Jesus goes on to talk about if you have a log in your eye, you need to remove it so that you can see clearly to get the speck out of your brother's eye. You know, we don't go after the speck in somebody else's eye until we have dealt with a log in our own eye. And so really what he's saying is don't judge hypocritically. But there's actually a lot of places where the Bible talks about judgment. And I want to just take a moment just to ask that question. What do we mean when we say judge? Because I think we get a lot of ideas in our heads over this word. And the Greek word for judge is the word krinno. Can you say that? Kryno. There you go. You can all speak Greek this morning. Um so the Greek word is krino, and again, we translate it judge, but it gets translated other ways too, and it has a pretty wide range of meaning. Just like if you really think about it, the word judge in English has a fairly wide range of meaning. So, what are some of the ways, or what are some of the meanings of this word? Well, first of all, it can mean simply to judge the value of something or to judge a preference. So Romans 14, 5 tells us one person considers, and that word consider is krino, that's the word judge. One person judges one day more sacred than another, another judges every day alike. Each one of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. So what is he saying? He's talking about like holidays or religious days. You know, and back then the there was some confusion. There were all these Jewish holidays. Do we need to keep celebrating those? Or the Sabbath, do we need to keep honoring the Sabbath the way that we had it under the Jewish laws? And some Christians were saying, yes, we should honor those holidays, and other Christians were saying, no, we don't need to. And we still see that today, right? There's some Christians that say holidays aren't a big deal. There's other Christians that say we we're free to celebrate those. There's disagreement about that. And what he's saying is you need to judge or you need to create that preference for yourself. You need to be convinced in your own mind which way you feel led on this, and that's that's up to you. So he's saying there's not a hard, fast answer on that one. Like you can honor the Sabbath or or we can uh look at that in some different ways, or we can celebrate all those Jewish holidays, or we can make new holidays or have no holidays. He's saying you have to have that preference for yourself. So it can it can be basically a matter of opinion. Um next is it can mean we come to a conclusion about something. Alright, so 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 2 says, For I resolved, and again, that's the word judge, I judged to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. So in this section, Paul is talking about uh what he decided was important for him to preach when he came to the people in Corinth. And he said he came to this conclusion, he judged, that all he should focus on is preaching Jesus Christ crucified. So he didn't want to get into the weeds on all these other things, he wanted to just focus on that. And that was a judgment call that he was making. So another use of the word judge. Another option is simply to hold an opinion about something. So Acts chapter 15, this is where a lot of the church leaders had come together because there was confusion about, again, about some of the Jewish laws and what ones the Christians, you know, the Gentile Christians needed to follow. Um Peter speaks and he says, It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. So he's saying, look, this is my opinion on this matter. We we should make it as easy as possible for people to come to faith in Jesus. So that's another form of judgment. Uh, fourth option, it can be evaluating between right and wrong. All right, so now we're getting a little more intense, um, a little more serious about what judgment means. Acts 4.19. It says, but Peter and John replied, so they're they're standing in front of a, basically they're being judged themselves. They're in front of the Sanhedrin. Um we learned about this a few weeks ago. It says, Peter and John replied, which is right in God's eyes? To listen to you or to him, you be the judges. So he's saying, what's right? Is it right that we listen to God and do what he says, or is it right that we listen to people and do what they say? And he's saying we need to make that judgment, what's right and what's wrong. The next one, to decide between guilt or innocence. So now we're not just deciding what's right and what's wrong, we're looking at somebody's actions and we're saying, you have committed something wrong, or has this person, is this person guilty of a crime? So another example, John 18, 31. This is when Jesus was on trial, about to be crucified. Pilate said, take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. Notice here, Pilate doesn't want to do any judging, does he? He is recognizing that the judgment he makes is going to determine whether or not Jesus is crucified, and he's saying, I don't want that on my hands. In fact, he goes on to say, I wash my hands of this. Right? Because he recognizes even this governor of Rome, this high-ranking official, is recognizing that this kind of judgment has severe consequences, and you want to be careful about making that kind of judgment. So when we're we're determining if somebody is guilty or innocent, that's that's pretty serious. And then finally, judgment can mean to condemn someone to punishment. Or I guess the flip side, it could mean that you find them not guilty and they go on to not experience punishment or to receive a reward. And an example of this we find is in James 5 12 Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple yes or no. Otherwise, you will be condemned. And again, that word is the word judge. You will be judged. So this is not just it it's been decided that you were right or wrong, but now there is going to be a punishment that's going to come about because of that judgment. So as we look through those uses of the word judge, some of those things are a little bit more casual, if you will, right? I mean, to form an opinion, it's not such a big deal. You know, when people say, hey, don't judge me, they're not usually saying don't make an opinion or don't have a preference. That's not what they're talking about. But as we go further down that list, we start to get more serious. The consequences or the weight of that judgment starts to become more severe. And I think as we go further down that list, we start to get further and further into what's God's territory versus what's ours, don't we? We recognize that even though there might be places where God calls us to acknowledge if something is right or wrong, or God might call us to even call out somebody else that they're guilty or innocent, when it comes to that final form, condemnation, that's God's territory, isn't it? And so the question then becomes when we talk about Jesus will come to judge, which one of these aspects of judgment is Jesus doing? Is Jesus coming back to weigh in on his opinion? Is he coming back to say what he has decided? Is he coming back to say what's right and wrong? Jesus actually tells us himself the kind of judgment he's talking about in John chapter 5. So let's turn there. We're gonna spend just a couple minutes here in John 5. And just for some context, in the beginning of this chapter, Jesus goes to this place called the Pool of Bethesda. And it was a place where sick people or people that had various kinds of infirmities would gather because they expected healing to happen in this place. And so I encourage you to read that chapter, you know, read the first half of chapter five, and you can get into exactly what was going on there. But ultimately, Jesus talks with this man who was unable to walk, and he tells him to get up, take up his mat, and walk. And the man does. He heals this man who had been unable to walk for most of his life. The problem was that he did this on the Sabbath day. And so no work is supposed to be done, and so according to the Jewish laws, Jesus had broken the law. And so when we come to verse 16, it says, So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense, Jesus said to them, My father is always at his work to this very day, and so I too am working. For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus is actually the one being judged in the beginning of this story. The Jewish leaders are judging that he has broken their laws, and they are ready to condemn him. So we go on, verse 19. Jesus gave them this answer very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his father doing. Because whatever the father does, the son also does. For the father loves the son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the father judges no one, but he has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. So here Jesus brings in this idea of judgment, and he's saying that the Father has actually entrusted judgment to him. But again, which one of those uses of judgment are we talking about? He hasn't quite clarified that for us just yet. But I want to pause on that line that he said, though, is that for the reason why he has this judgment, and it says that all may honor the Son. Ultimately, however God judges us, it's about honoring Jesus. And Jesus says, as the Son is honored, the Father is honored. So judgment is ultimately about bringing honor to God. All right, because we we have broken God's laws, God's commands, we have uh often lived in ways that dishonor God. And so judgment is about bringing everything back in order. It's about making the world honor God the way that it's supposed to. And so at the end of the day, that's what this is all about is about bringing honor to Jesus. So now, again, what use of judgment are we talking about? Verse 24, he says, Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but is crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and is now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and he has given him authority to judge, because he is the Son of Man. So he still hasn't quite clarified what the kind of judgment we're talking about, but notice he talks about how he will judge those who have died. We're going to come back to that in a moment. That's where this comes from in the Creed. And so finally, starting verse 28, he says, Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing, I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. So now he's finally revealed the kind of judgment he's talking about, and it's that sixth kind, it's the most severe kind. He's talking about condemnation. This is what Jesus is coming to do, to judge, and again, he's judging the living and the dead, but he is coming to determine whether or not we rise to life, as he puts it, or whether or not we are condemned. Again, the way that we live matters and has eternal significance. Because, again, last point in the creed is no one can escape that judgment. He will come to judge who? The living and the dead. That, those two categories, that's gonna cover everybody. We're either alive or we've died. That's it. And so at the point when Jesus returns, he will judge those who are alive still at that point, and he will judge those who have died. So if we are still alive when Jesus returns, we're part of the judgment. And if we have already died when Jesus returns, we're part of the judgment. There's no escape from the judgment. Everybody ultimately is judged, as we just read in that passage. Jesus says that the the dead will hear and be judged. Any fans of roller coasters in the room? A few? Okay. I I enjoy roller coasters. Uh my wife and I went to actually went to Cedar Point one day on our honeymoon. Um, she's more of a thrill seeker than I am. Um I like them, but I get really anxious, even to this day. Like when I'm in line for them, I'm really anxious. And the point when I am most anxious, maybe some of you can relate to this, is when you actually sit down in the ride and you buckle the seatbelt. Or you pull the lap bar and it clicks, or you pull the harness on and there's the click and you can't get out. And that's the part where I'm the most nervous because up until then, you could jump out of line if you wanted to. Like people are probably gonna mock you, but you could step into the car and then just keep going and not go on the ride. And I've thought about that before. My wife wouldn't let me do it, but I've thought about it. But once the harness clicks in, once the lat bar is engaged, you're going on that ride. And it doesn't matter if you're anxious, it doesn't matter if you're ready for it, you're gonna go on, you're gonna go up the hill, you're gonna go down, you're gonna do all the things. I think that's a lot like death, not because I think I'm gonna die in a roller coaster, but all throughout our lives, we have this opportunity. Am I going to trust in Jesus? Am I going to to follow him? Am I gonna do good? Or am I going to do evil? I have these choices all throughout my life that are going to affect that judgment. But the moment that I die, it's like the moment that harness clicks in. My choice is locked. I'm facing that judgment, and the the outcome of that judgment, it's set. Right? I have my entire life to make a difference, but once that happens, my fate is sealed. Just like when I sit in that roller coaster and the harness clicks in, I can't back out at that point. My fate is set. The question is, how can I make sure in this life that when I get to that point of judgment, that I'm gonna rise to life, as Jesus said, and not be condemned. And he made that statement: those who do what is good will rise to life, and those who do what is evil will be condemned. So there it is, easy, right? Just do good. Don't do anything evil. We're set. But the problem with that, Romans 3.23 tells us all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, in other words, category one's out the window already. I can't do enough good. I've already done evil. I'm not saying this is how it works, but I remember learning about ancient Egypt years ago, and they talked about how the Egyptians believed that we would face a judgment when we died. And they believed that we would stand in front of these scales, and on one side of the scale was our good deeds, and on the other side of the scale was our bad deeds, our evil. The catch was that our bad deeds were measured in bricks, and our good deeds would be measured in feathers. How many feathers do you need to equal a brick? It's a lot of feathers, right? Not saying that's how it works, but I'm saying I think they understood this idea that we can't just do a few good things to cancel out the bad things, can we? We've all sinned, as Romans 3.23 says. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. But that verse doesn't end there, or that the idea doesn't end there. Romans 3.24. Oops, move my bookmark. I'll read off the screen. Romans 3.24 says, and all are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, he has left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. Praise God, right? Because we've all sinned, but we all have the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins through faith in Jesus. If we go back to John 5, maybe you caught this. I kind of breezed over it a little bit. But before Jesus said that those who do good will rise to life, and those who do evil will be condemned, back in verse 24, he said, Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged. He's saying there's another path. Right? You can face that judgment confident in your own works. You can go there saying, I think I've done enough good. I don't think I've done that much bad, and so I'm just gonna go in on my own, hoping that my good works cancel out my bad works. But he's already told us that's not gonna work. And so he's saying there is another option. He's saying if we believe in him, we can have life now. We can escape the judgment, we can rise to life starting now, because he says you have life now. The life can begin here and now, and we don't have to face that judgment that leads to condemnation. And so, again, the way that we live does matter. But the most significant thing that we can do is to place our faith in Jesus, to recognize that He alone can forgive our sins and can invite us into this new life. Because I know what a lot of people think about this is they're like, well, in that case, I've got a lot of time, right? I've got my entire life to sort of get right with God and ask him to forgive me, and so I can sort of do whatever I want, and then as I get near the end, you know, then I can worry about all that. But then we're missing out. Because when he says that you will have eternal life, that that phrase literally means life of the age. Remember, we talked about that already not yet aspect of our faith, of the kingdom. That already sense of the kingdom is that we can experience life of the age or life that is the kind of life we will have when that kingdom is fully here. And so those fruits of the spirit that we can experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, those things we can experience them here and now. We don't have to wait until after the judgment and until the eternal life begins. We can have that now. You know, we sang about that a few minutes ago about how when we are struggling and we're we're broken and everything around us is crumbling and shaken, we can still put our faith in Jesus and He can get us through those difficulties. He can get us through those times of brokenness because we can have that fruit of the Spirit right now, no matter what else we're going through. So there is a blessing to putting our faith in Jesus that we experience here and now. When I say blessing, I'm not talking about like money or all these, you know, the earthly kind of blessings. I'm talking about the blessings of the spirit, the life of the age, the best kind of life that we can live, because it's a life that is full of God's Spirit at work in us so that we can overcome all of those obstacles and so that we can endure all of those trials and yet still feel joy and still be at peace and still have love for our neighbors and still be able to handle our situations with gentleness and with self-control. We can have all of that right now, and that's what we're missing out on if we say I'm gonna put this off until later. Because the reason that that condemnation exists is not just because God is vindictive or God is angry with us, it's because those those evil behaviors that he talks about, it's just destructive. And I'm sure we've all experienced that, that we live a certain way and and we we live for those momentary sort of benefits or or the instant gratification, but we all know that those things just leave us feeling empty and those things break us down, and that's just not the way to live. But he's saying we can have that eternal life right now. We can have the life of the age here and now if we put our trust in him now. And then the added benefit is then in that day of judgment, we're already found to have life. We already have escaped. And so this morning, what I want to encourage you to do is just spend some time with God, reflecting. I want you to spend some time in prayer. And you know our our our altar is up at the front, it's always open. You can always come up here and pray because sometimes it's helpful to kind of get out of your element or out of your comfort zone or go move around, go somewhere else where you can pray on your own. And so you can do that, but you can also pray right where you are. And we also have our prayer team that would love to pray with you, or I would love to pray with you, or I'm sure you can turn to a neighbor if there's somebody that you want to talk to this morning. But first of all, have you accepted that life that Jesus has to offer you? Are you trying to reach that point of judgment on your own merits, on your own good works or bad? Or have you recognized the fact that you need Jesus to get through that day of judgment? And that it's not just about getting through that day, but it's about experiencing life now. And so I would encourage you to spend time with Jesus and just make sure you have asked him to forgive you of sin and that you have trusted him with your life. Or maybe you're thinking, hey, I've done that, but all those things you talked about, the fruit of the Spirit, those blessings of the life of the age, I haven't experienced that. I'm feeling stuck right now. There's still sins that I'm dealing with, there's there's still issues that I'm facing, or I am feeling broken in the trials that I'm going through. And so I'd encourage you this morning to, again, spend time with Jesus and ask him, what do I need to do to take that next step? What are you asking me to do to get unstuck? What are you asking me to do so that I can overcome that sin that's in my life? Or what are you asking me to do to persevere through this trial that I'm experiencing? And spend time asking him, but spend time listening as well. And then finally, maybe this morning you're here and you're thinking, that's great for me, but what about what about my child that turned their back on Jesus? What about my neighbor that I I want to share Jesus with? What about my friend? What about my spouse? What about this person that I love that I want to have that blessing of the life of the age right now too? I want them to endure in that day of judgment also. What about them? I want to encourage you this morning to just be praying for that person too. Maybe you've already talked to them. Maybe they already know exactly how you feel. Maybe you've already attempted to share your faith with them. I want you to just spend some time this morning just asking God to work in that person's life. And then ask him, is there anything you want me to do? Is there anything you want me to share with that person? Is there anything that I'm supposed to say? Is there anything that I can do to just put the fruit of the Spirit on display in their life so that they recognize that the life of the age is the best possible way we could live? So that they would want that. And just ask God to put you in a position so that when that person is ready, you're there to talk to them. Let's pray together.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

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