Judgement continued

(John 3:18-19,36, Rom. 1:18, II Cor. 2:15-16, 3:10-11)

God is faithful and just to forgive those who acknowledge their sin and walk in His light.   Some will not receive the love of the truth.  Loving the truth and walking in it go hand in hand.  Walk means to progress.  We have a destination in mind.  God has an intention for each one of us.  If we ask Him to lead us, He will do it.  We all together have a common destination.  He Himself is the destination.  No one escapes this.  He will hold each one of us accountable for what we have done.  Along the way, we can meet Him whenever we hear Him and we turn aside to see and listen.  Are we listening, or are we so distracted with this earthly existence.  We find that once we have begun the journey with and toward Him, we become hungry for more and more of the truth.

Jesus said the wrath of God remains on those who do not believe on Him. This statement taken alone, apart from the love of God displayed through Jesus Christ seems harsh, severe, and downright mean.  It is important to always remember the free gift of grace revealed at the cross.  God has shown us His love.  Refusal of it is a cause for fear.  We have seen that the Lord is gracious and gives opportunity and time for repentance.  But a limit exists.  The span of our life is limited but we ought not focus on that.  Rather, realize that we have a lifetime of opportunities to respond to His love.

At the end of time, the end of this age, we will give account for what we have done with our lives. The religious mind, which is self-centered, has misrepresented this accounting.  Jesus said plainly we would receive rewards, or recompense, based on what we have done.  He did not say what we believe, what we think, what we say, but what we have done.  This is said regarding reward, for those who gain an audience with Him in that eternal moment.  If we have not known His presence in this life, we will not have that audience.  There is a judgement before a great, white throne but we are not addressing that here except to say we will be held accountable.

Now what we think, and what we say also matter very much for out of the heart we speak. Our words originate from within based on what we think, what we ponder, what we meditate on.  If we meditate on a problem, it will be magnified and we will talk about that problem, often missing the solution which the Spirit would give us.  Our personal, internal belief system is the foundation of our lives and from that inner person will issue our words, and then ultimately our actions.  When we quiet all the negative thoughts words and actions and allow the Holy Spirit to speak faith into us we can recover.  Faith comes by hearing, by listening to the Spirit of truth.  No empty despair should rule us.  It is very simple, if we sin in thought, word, or action, go to the throne of grace and find help, restoration, healing for our souls.  As we practice these things we come to an abiding presence.  We never have to leave that place.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  He ever lives to make intercession for us.

In Revelation 21, before Jesus words about reward are recorded for us, He also said of the heavenly city that the fearful, or cowardly, and unbelieving are outside the city. Not only are they outside but they are assigned to the lake of fire.  Nothing impure or shameful will enter the city.  We might despair at this.  Which one of us has never done anything impure or shameful?  Yes, some may have avoided such as they have known Jesus from a very young age.  But who has never known a moment of fear or of unbelief.  Those are the first two sins that Jesus mentions here.  Consider that these are the first two.  It brings us back to the importance of our thoughts, our beliefs, and our doubts.  We progress in this way of learning to bring every thought, every failure to Him and let it go.

God is a righteous judge. This way of salvation, of becoming all that He intends for us to be, includes His judgements.  We need to accept and agree with Him.  This is our confession of sin, of anything that we see is short of His glory.  This is an intensely personal matter.  Intense because our God searches out every part of us.  Nothing escapes His view.  It is not for us to shift responsibility for our own actions.  To be sure, the actions of others have an effect on us, but we learn to lose offenses and stay focused on the One who can help us, and also help the offender.  In this way, we can bless our enemy.  We learn that when we see another offending the Holy Spirit, and us with Him, we can pray for them and not look to retaliate.

We live at an awesome, wonderful, and yet fearful time in history. The cosmos, the world, is approaching a critical mass.  We are more than 2000 years from the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  He sits in an eternal dimension on a throne of authority.  This throne is a throne of grace and mercy.  He sits as the Lamb of God freshly slain.  We can live in this place.  We may have written before, the Lord said to Abraham, “Walk before me and be blameless.”  Jesus did this perfectly.  Now He says to us to do the same.  No, we don’t despair at this.  We say with God all things are possible, only believe.  The blood of the Lamb is enough.  We are all, each of us, a work in progress.  Stay in the light.  Grow in the love of the truth.  We may falter, and even fall but He is ever faithful to lift us back on our feet and say, “Don’t stop now, keep going.”

Judgement

(1 John 1)

The picture we have in John’s first epistle depicts a courtroom atmosphere. This is written by the one who in his Revelation of Christ saw and declared what he heard.  And he wrote that the accuser of the brethren is cast down.  He was thrown out of the courtroom.  In this passage he, the accuser, is not to be found in the courtroom of heaven.  We see instead of any accusations leveled against us, that God is faithful and just to forgive sins.  His justice is absolute, steadfast, and will never change.  It is based on the blood of the eternal covenant.  John continues and declares that we have an advocate, our high priest Jesus, who ensures our entrance to the Father’s presence, to the throne of grace.

We might now say that no judgement exists. God has taken care of it all.  Absolutely true because of the blood of Jesus Christ.  However, we cannot avoid the fact that man has fallen and needs someone to pick him up.  God wants restoration and reconciliation with man.  He sent Jesus to be that for us.  He, all by Himself, is the mediator, a true priest, between God and man.  All the writings of the New Testament point to this fact.  It has been and always will be about coming to Jesus.  As we wrote at the start of this series of messages, we come to Him where He is now, on His throne, a place of authority.  It remains a mercy seat, a place where God’s meeting with man always begins and ends with mercy.

God is the judge who forgives. He sees and judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  Do we come to Him to see what we can get?  Actually, if we come to Him honestly and ask Him about things we wish to do, He will show us His perspective. We may be surprised sometimes if we have a condemning heart that He will show us He is greater. No condemnation exists in His presence.  Other times we have to deal with consequences like the uncomfortable feelings of guilt, of remorse, and regret.  Today we use all sorts of means to make the bad feelings go away.  Sadly we can do this in our heads and pronounce away our bad feelings and choose to declare ourselves OK.  We mess with our conscience.  That is the part of our spirit where God makes that separation of soul and spirit and our true intent is exposed.  It is often called conviction, which is another word to express feelings of guilt, remorse, or regret.

After years of God’s working in my life, I hear John moving me, and us, to stay in the light. In this atmosphere, we recognize every idolatry, impurity, and whatever retards our true maturity, and agree with God that the Lamb, as freshly slain, takes that stain away.  John had this revelation when he saw the Lamb on the throne.  The blood was there, it remains there, and shall ever be there.  This is the blood of the eternal covenant.  Consider that word eternal.  It represents something ever and always present.  John’s message in this first chapter is to bring the believer to the point of eternal innocence.  No allowance for sin is here.  So he writes that we may not sin, but if we do, acknowledge it and move on, for our high priest, Jesus, intervenes for us.

A process exists in our earthly existence to get to this point. This is often not the automatic state, or experience, of the believer.  I ask us all this question.  Is the sacrifice for sin finished?  Are we required to “own” our sins?  We must acknowledge our specific sins.  Some sins have consequences for our families, for others in the church.  Some are so extreme that a brother or sister must be put outside.  Such an act of church discipline, as we call it, should not be seen as an end in itself.  We should be moved to prayer.

Lot chose to live in Sodom but he is accounted as a righteous man. Abraham prayed for him.  This was after Abraham had fought kings to deliver him and his family.  Is this our attitude when a brother makes bad choices?  Paul judged a man living with his father’s wife by turning him over to Satan for the destruction of his body that his spirit might be saved.  Consider this for an understanding of what is at stake in our lives and the life of our fellowships.  Yet, many understand, and I tend to agree, that the man who repents, and is to be received back into fellowship in the second letter to the Corinthians is this very same man.  While he was released into a place of torment, he changed his lifestyle, and was restored.  Mercy triumphs over judgement.