Let Him not Us Judge
Romans 14:8-12 · Randy Peterman · Aug 5, 2007
Romans (2005-07), No. 94
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492603577740

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I have no food illustration to start off this week. I'm sorry. I couldn't think of anything this week. We're going to be talking about living and dying, which is not much for food. I guess we could talk about butchering animals, but that's really not what we want to go for. So no food illustration.

If you'll go ahead and have your Bibles ready, because we're going to have some cross-references this week. So let me be able to flip quickly. or slowly if that's how fast you flip. We'll be looking at different things. Let's start out in Romans 14. I've actually tacked in verse 7. We didn't cover verse 7 last week, but since it's directly related to 8, I'm gonna bring it in to our passage this morning.

For not one of us lives for himself and not one dies for himself. For if we live, we live for the Lord. Or if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.

Are you getting dripped on? It's that rain. There we go. For those of you listening on the recording, we have new cooling devices that are causing condensation. The dripping is not part of Romans 14, 7 through 12. And I forgot the clicker here. I guess it'd be good if I brought that over here.

Wow. There's ice. No one lives for himself. I've taken seven and eight and I've kind of taken the two parallel concepts and I've brought them together. So in these first couple slides you're going to see that. I'm not trying to rewrite God's word. Please nobody get that impression. No one lives for himself and if we live, we live for the Lord. Alrighty.

I've got it on here. So if I ask the question, how does this tie in with things. This concept relies on the foundation of our identification with Christ. We don't do it alone. Our life is in, through, and by Him. Alright. If we don't live by ourselves or live for ourselves, and we're living for the Lord, what does that mean and look like in your own life? If you are not living by yourself or for yourself, What is that going to look like? It's a trust. It's a trust. Independence. Independence. Excellent. Okay.

When you're driving your car, that's a relatively common occurrence for people. When you're walking through your house, when you're watching television, many of the things that we discussed last week when we talked about Christian liberty, do you spend a lot of time while you're doing those things thinking about, am I living for myself?

Is that part of your moment-by-moment focus? Instead, as a mature believer, hopefully we're living with a lifestyle that relies on this. Now Paul is writing this to a church of believers and he's reminding them of this. Do we need to be reminded of this? Obviously the answer is yes. Paul thinks, at least this church did.

No one lives for himself. The thing that gets me is that our culture around us often wants us to live for ourselves, don't they? Not often, all the time. All the time. Well, any time we interact with it, how about that? It seems like, especially in our affluent American culture, and my wife and I have been purging our house of too much stuff, Because we realized, wait a minute, we don't need to get better organized. We just have too much stuff. We could organize all the stuff and it would still be too much stuff. We've been purging our house of it, and part of it is we go through things and, why do we have this? We've moved this between four or five different locations, and each time we moved we'd still purge stuff, but we'd say, we still need this. Why? I don't know. It's been in a box. We haven't touched it. We haven't looked at it. But our culture says, hey, you need to live for yourself, and you'll live for yourself better if you have this. That doesn't mean that having stuff is evil in and of itself. It's just that our culture is commonly reminding us this is where we're at.

Now, one of the things that I've been learning in discussions with my dad over time is that there are different stages in our lives. And that living for Christ or living for ourselves contrast varies depending on what stage of your life you're in. If you're a young couple like Jessica and I were when we first got married, we were just in the acquisition stage. So living for ourself, if we were being fleshly, in the acquisition stage looked like getting more stuff. Do we have the new flashy thing that makes us feel good for about 30 seconds until we see the new flashy thing that we want? But once you get past the acquisition stage as a believer, usually as an older believer, can you still live for yourself in contrast to living for Christ just because you have more stuff?

You've passed the acquisition stage. The answer is yes. So whatever stage of life you're in, even if you're in the stage of I've got everything I could possibly need and now every year I get pictures of the grandkids or whatever it is because They're like, wow, mom and dad don't need this. They don't need more stuff.

But the pictures bring smiles to our face. Now, even those pictures can be a reminder of living for Christ or living for ourselves. When you see those pictures, does it bring pride into your heart of, I have cuter grandkids than my neighbor? Or does it bring pride into your heart of, You know, these are all my things, or is it... Lord, I want to pray for my grandkids, and we pray that they do well and grow. As we live, as we're living for the Lord, there's lots of places and areas in our lives where this can come out.

Obviously, last week we talked about Christian liberty. We don't want to make laws and rules about what does living our lives for the Lord look like perfectly in some legalistic sense. It's abiding. It's walking out in our conscience the relationship through the Holy Spirit directing us.

Everybody, any questions on living for Him before I jump for dying for Him? Alright. No one dies for himself. If we die, we die for the Lord. Because our life of the believer is in Christ, also our death as a believer is in Christ as well. Our position is in the heavenlies. When we die, we go to be with the Lord.

Our condition and our position are no longer separate. We don't deal with, well, Colossians says, I'm seated in the heavenlies with Christ, but I'm standing up and you're sitting in a room at church. They're not experientially different. They become unified.

When we talk about no one dies for himself, in our modern culture, how do we react to death? In the general pagan sense, not as believers, because we know God's word says that our death means we get to go to heaven, but when the lost person dies, what are they dying for? Oh no, they died And the lost person has no answer. Maybe they're going to go be one with the universe. I hope they're in heaven. There's not an answer there. There's not a solid foundation.

Paul says we die for the Lord. That's something that is rather strong in contrast. You think about what does that mean for us? It's a pretty powerful way to look at things. Philippians 121. Somebody mind quickly flipping over there? I'm sure it's a passage that people are at least moderately familiar with. And if not, hopefully this morning you will get acquainted with it. Alright.

It's a very strong parallel to what we just looked at. If we live, we're going to live as Christ. If we die, it's gain. That's pretty awesome in contrast. Our death is for the Lord and it's a game. It's for the Lord and to the Lord. That's pretty powerful. We can stop worrying about Romans 12 talking about us living our lives as a living sacrifice. Because we're no longer the living sacrifice in an earthly living. It's a heavenly living and we're unified with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Any thoughts about dying for Christ? Oh, one other thing I wanted to ask. How does this fit in with our military and soldiers going out and being out in, for example, Iraq, to pick an easy subject, and dying on the battlefield? If they're believers, are they dying for Christ and our country?

That's something that Fred Phelps. Anybody familiar with Fred Phelps? If I say Fred Phelps, that's that really legalistic, nasty church. I'm sorry, I don't want to say normally nasty, but they have been protesting at the soldiers' funerals saying that God loves dead soldiers. Have any of you seen that in the news? It makes me really sick to just even read about that.

If that soldier is a believer in Christ, that soldier died for the Lord, and our country, but they died for the Lord. Soldiers are an awesome part of what makes our liberty, we talked about Christian liberty last week, as believers with liberty in the US, that's part of why we have it. Their actions and the things that they do representing us.

Any other thoughts on death there? The death of a believer is the death of a believer and it's for the Lord. It doesn't matter if it comes through a car accident, or military things, or whatever else that comes up. It's for the Lord. If they're believers, that's a powerful thing. We can find hope and strength in that. I wanted to take a quick question. Paul is talking about extremes with living or dying. What about the carnal Christian? If you live, you live for Christ. Is the carnal Christian living for Christ?

They're living for themselves. We really just need to be aware that Paul is addressing the carnal Christian in this passage. He's talking, you're not living in liberty in the verses preceding this. So when he gets here, this is the carnal believer that he's talking to. You need to be living that life that is the life of Christ. If you're being judgmental in watching someone else's liberty, That's carnality, and we need to not have that, because that's not living a life for Christ.

So that's an important detail to see in Paul. He's talking about extremes. He's using the polarized opposites of life and death. The carnal believer is also being addressed in here. In this case, the carnal believer could be the strong or the weak believer. In 1-7 we talked about that last week. Hey, if you're the weak believer, don't be judging the strong believer who's eating meat. If you're the strong believer, don't be judging the weak believer, because if you're judging and you're condemning, you're being weak, even if normally you'd be considered the strong believer.

You're just messing with me. Watch him. He's tired. He's going to sleep up. But he goes on. He says, we are the Lords. Alright? This is pretty powerful stuff here. I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 6, 19-20. It's up here on the overhead. The logical conclusion of Romans 12 has been kind of the crux of everything we've been studying as we move forward from 12, 1 through 3. The logical conclusion of what we're looking at this morning in Romans 14 is that we are the Lord's, therefore we live for Christ or we die for Christ. In this passage here, I love that it says, for you have been bought, R.C., and that you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price. Again, I keep contrasting with our culture, but it's a very straightforward contrast.

Our culture tells us that we're our own person. We are our own person. You're your own person. Be your own person. Be unique. Just by buying all of our products, like hopefully a million other people will be. Have you ever heard somebody say, just remember, you're unique just like everybody else? That always makes me chuckle when I hear somebody say that. It seems a little self-contradictory. But the truth of the matter is that while we are unique and we shouldn't be little Christian clones walking around everybody dressed the same, looking the same, and saying the same thing.

That's why the spiritual gifts differentiate us in various other things. But we have been bought with a price, we are not our own. Identifying that in this context, again, we live for the Lord or we die for the Lord. The logical conclusion of Romans 12, 1-3, and I think I said this before, it's by the mercies of God, our life is a living sacrifice, we're proving the will of God, The logical conclusion is that we could be no one else's. Who else's could we be? You can't be your own. You can't be your own. Let's take a look here at...

For this end, or for to this end, Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Okay, why did Christ die? He had to fulfill the demands of God's righteousness. For our propitiation, God's demand for justice required somebody to die. And Christ was the one that died.

But Paul further clarifies and enunciates, so that Christ could be the Lord of the dead and he could be the Lord of the living. Which one are you? You're the living, for now. but we have to stop and take a look at so he could be the Lord of the dead. What does that mean that he would be the Lord of the dead? Paul's not talking about merely those who have died in Christ on this side of the cross. He's referring also back to those who died believing in a Messiah who was to come Does anybody off the top of their head remember the first prophecy of the Messiah in the Bible?

Genesis 3.15? That's right.

Okay, Genesis 3.15. God tells Eve, I'm going to send one who's going to crush the head of the serpent and the serpent's going to bite his heel. Alright, so starting right from the fall in the garden. They get caught. They're hiding because they're a bit embarrassed by their nakedness. and God immediately tells them, hey, a Redeemer is going to come, starting from the get-go. Those people that believed that a Redeemer was going to come, believed in a Redeemer. But did they believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to die on the cross and the gospel message as outlined in the New Testament?

Did they have the gospel message? No. The clear gospel message We go back and we think about, of course we don't know what their conversations were, but if we think Christ appeared to some of those people. Yeah, but the clarified message of the gospel, the same gospel that we believe, is not recorded in scripture. The Holy Spirit did not choose to reveal it prior. And so it would seem, at least based on revelation, that they didn't believe the gospel message of Jesus Christ, but they believed in a Messiah. They had faith in God and they knew a Messiah was coming. The Messiah had to come and die.

And so Paul is outlining this. He could be the Lord of the dead. I've got an illustration here. I'm going to skip that slide. We'll go back to it. Christ is Lord of Eternity. He died for the saints in the past that believed in God and the saints moving forward until the end of time. His death atoned and paid for those things. And Paul's enunciating that. I'm going to go ahead and read this for the sake of the recording, but please read along with me. This is Colossians 1, 17 through 20.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven."

What does it mean to be firstborn from the dead? That's not normally the way that we designate firstborn. firstborn from the dead. With Christ being the firstborn from the dead, that's his resurrection. He took on the eternal nature, the eternal second body, his life as Christ, so that we also could do that when we die or we are raptured away. we're going to have a second body.

And he's the first born of that, of that second sort, or second type. Any other thoughts on being Lord of the Dead, before we jump into Lord of the Dead? It's not necessarily a term or a phrase that we use a lot in the church. It's definitely an interesting doctrine or theological concept, but it's not normally the way that we think. Yes, Gail? yeah and so Revelation is the progressive nature of revelation.

I'm going to make a little grid up here. This is a little impromptu because I don't have a slide for this. comb. This has nothing to do with anybody's hair. Your hair all looks wonderful. Okay, content, object, means, and basis. Throughout the history of the Bible, given the time span God revealed things over time. He didn't reveal everything all at once at the beginning. He revealed things progressively. Salvation, the content of salvation, is the only element that changed over time. Because they only had a limited content over time.

Genesis 3.15, the content of the revelation, at least as recorded in God's Word, was that a Messiah was going to come that would crush the head of the serpent.

The object of their faith was God. Did that ever change throughout history? Did Noah have his faith in anything else? The means of salvation was through faith. That didn't change throughout history. It's always been by faith. And the basis has always been God's redemptive work with Christ on the cross. So content was the only thing that changed throughout the revelation of God's word.

So the simplicity of the message of the gospel in the New Testament was a culmination and a revelation of something new in contrast to a serpent is going to have his head crushed by a redeemer. But the object, the means, and the basis for salvation have been the same historically.

Does that make sense? I'm getting more straight faces than that. Not that I want to have goofy grins. Roy. Sure. enough so that his boys knew what was the proper way to approach God through sacrifice. And in those pictures, in those examples, that redemption is by blood sacrifice, he showed them that this Redeemer was going to have to suffer Sure. He began revealing those things.

Isaiah is probably the clearest one to tell us about. Yeah, 53 is fantastic. And when you think of John the Baptist, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Where do you learn that? The whole thing is based on this content, like you said, being revealed progressively more and more. Yeah, it shows up. And what I think is fascinating is God revealed in Isaiah 53 the suffering Messiah who was going to take away their sins.

And yet when Christ comes, most of the people aren't getting it. At least the leaders who should have been studying it and knowing it the most and being very familiar with it, it's mysterious. They don't get it. Anyways, I just wanted to talk about, and I had the arrows on my presentation to show time.

Content changes, but the object, the means, and the basis are all the same. They're still trusting or having faith in God. Their salvation is always by the means of faith, and the basis for salvation has always been through God's atoning work, which would be fulfilled in Christ, which is why he had to die for the sins of the past and the sins of the future in saints.

Alright, if we look at Psalm 22 verses 13 through 18, and I've got this open here, But if everybody wants to turn there, we'll take a look at this. Oh, is it ready to go? That's alright, because this psalm passage isn't up on an overhead. But that's okay. Psalm 22, 13 through 18.

They open wide their mouth at me as a ravening and a roaring lion. a ravening and roaring line. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws. And you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me. A band of evildoers has encompassed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count on my bones. They look. They stare at me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots."

There's a psalm and hopefully and at least in my own life I became familiar with this as a little kid. I was like, hey, here's an early prophecy of the Messiah. Hopefully you're familiar with this passage. This is a very clear prophecy and revelation of the Messiah to come. that they would believe in a Messiah who is going to come and deliver on this is important. Did they understand it? Do they understand it and believe it like we understand and believe it, looking back historically and going, wow! This is what happened. This is how it got lived out, is a contrast.

With Christ being the Lord of the living, What does Christ's Lordship of us as living look like? What is that going to look like in our lives? What are some examples of characteristics and traits of a living believer who is living the life of the Lord Jesus Christ? We are submitting ourselves and being instruments of Christ's righteousness. We're going to be gracious. We're going to be living out Christian liberty. We're going to have His righteousness.

We're going to be compassionate. Compassion is definitely something that we see on commercials when we see commercials for Compassion International or World Vision. All these are hungry children, send your money and we'll take care of them. And sometimes financially is a way that we can support compassion, but as believers in our own lives, we're going to come in contact with people and we're going to need to be compassionate.

Okay, we're going to be loving. What does the world want us to be instead of loving, really? They want us to just tolerate. Okay, they want us to be selfish and tolerate selfishness. They want us to tolerate love, Unfortunately, in our culture, it's turning more and more into a three-letter word, S-E-X, instead of L-O-V-E. And we just need to tolerate.

Instead, the life of Christ living through us is going to be loving. Genuine loving and caring. Bob taught a couple weeks ago about us needing to be having a debt of love. And that's actually a cool thing. It's the only kind of debt I want to be in until I go to be with the Lord. We're going to live a life of faith. That's going to look different because a lot of people are going to not understand faith and what that looks like living out the life of Christ. Hey, this is going on. I'm really anxious about it. Not me. I'm not anxious about it. I'm able to rest in the Lord and live a life by faith. That's going to look pretty strong as a contrast.

A life of hope. Hey, that's one. We talked about just a little bit earlier about, okay, this person's died, I hope they're in heaven, or I hope they're at one with the universe, or I hope some silly thing that's not revealed in the Word of God. Instead, we have a hope. My hope is in Christ, in His return, His imminent return, or my being joined with Him through death. And I'm okay with either one of those. Whichever one it takes, Lord, so that I can be with You, I can't wait. What else? Are there any other things? I'm sure that's a short list. There's lots of things that are part of the life of the believer.

It's important for us to always remember that the hope that we have is a certainty rather than a, I hope it'll happen as the world might. That's very true. Yeah, our hope is with certainty. Hoping things to come that are certain, that's not ambiguous. Alright.

Paul writes the extremely polarized examples of life and death. Why is he doing that in this passage in context through 1 through 12 here? We talked about Christian liberty. We've talked about now if we live for Christ, if we die for Christ. Why is he using such a polarized example? I don't know why I have a hard time saying that word this morning.

Christian liberty is in the details. He's not trying to give another law. He's giving you the goal posts for Christian liberty and he's not trying to lay down a new law for us. He's giving you the polarized opposite and everything in between you do by abiding in Christ. If you're living, you're over here. If you're dying, you're over here. But everything in between, as you're living, is going to be, by the mercies of God, being a living sacrifice, proving out the will of God. This is Christian liberty. It's based on relationship.

Now Paul, unfortunately, has to go into judgment. We don't like judgment. Does anybody like judgment? Ruth is excited because her job every day is going to involve judgment. She's going to have to grade papers. She's going to have to evaluate the children and see what's going on. Judgment is something that we in our own lives are a little nervous about in our culture, aren't we?

When those sirens, you hear the sirens and you look and the lights are spinning and you're driving along with the flow of traffic. Do you get nervous still? I get nervous. Just immediately it's like, oh no, they've judged me out of the group of cars and somehow I'm doing something wrong. I don't know what it is.

And they pass by, thankfully, every time. But it's one of those things where as soon as we think there's judgment, immediately it's like, oh no. Because we're all righteous people all the time, aren't we? Come on, everybody in here is perfect. I know you're perfect because you're here at Sunday school. That's right. You're getting better on perfect. It's more perfecter. Just like my grammar in English. Sorry about that.

But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? Judging. Here comes a judge and it's not you. Contempt for our brothers and sisters in Christ is inherently short-sighted. Oh boy. Judgment in the body is short-sighted. Why are you judging your brothers and sisters? Is that your job?

No. It's short-sighted. We're so concerned about... It's like the speck in your eye versus the log in your eye thing. If we get really distracted by these judgments, then we've missed the point. It's short-sighted. Now let's ask an important question, because we have to do this when we bring up judgment.

Does that mean as believers we should never try to be discerning and never look at what's going on in our brothers and sisters lives? Certainly not. Hopefully that's really obvious but at the same time I want to make sure that I enunciate that. We need to recognize that sinful lifestyle choices were paid for by Christ. Instead of being judgmental and doing a lot of finger-pointing, what's the biblical reaction to seeing sin in the life of our brother and sister in Christ?

Come alongside. Should we come alongside and give them good advice? Like a lost person might do? Well here, let me just give you good advice and then take off. We're going to show that love that Paul is talking about. With grace. That may actually include advice, but our purpose isn't to come alongside and just give advice. There's more unity and depth that should come along with that.

Again, when you see that sin might possibly be in my life, which there is, I'm sure of it. I'm sure that over time you will find sin in Randy's life. Fortunately, the Lord has died for those sins, and I have been atoned for. But when that comes alongside, and trust me, if you want to talk to my dad, he can tell stories.

He did a good job as I got older. As a young child, he had to apply the rod of knowledge to my seat of wisdom. He came alongside and he would be intimate with me and have relationship with me for correction beyond just a big smack and don't ever do that again. It wasn't just a verbal law. It was coming alongside and maturing me and training me through relationship.

It wasn't merely a verbal correction or a physical discipline. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we're probably not going to be spanking one another. We're not going to be sending one another to our rooms. We're not going to be doing any of those disciplinary things. shouldn't be yelling or fighting, coming alongside is the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. One of the first Tuesday men's Bible studies I ever went to, that was back in 2004, we were sitting around the table and there was a group of us talking and somebody said something that wasn't right theologically.

And I'll never forget it. Hal actually was sitting at the table and he corrected the person. But he did it in the most gracious way I have ever seen anyone corrected. And having come from seminary in Tyndale, in Texas, where sometimes the correction was firm and strong and sharp, Hal's gentle correction was shocking for my young mind. It was just like, I've never seen that happen before. What is this correction? I knew he was being corrected. Maybe one or two other people in the room knew that the person was being corrected.

But it was this gracious, gentle correction. and it's stunning to see. When you're the recipient of that correction, it's going to be something that might even cause tears to well up in your eyes because you know you've been lovingly corrected. That's pretty awesome.

So this judgment that goes on here, no, we're not supposed to turn off our brains when we see the lives of other believers, but Paul's writing here, when you make a judgment, When you make a judgment, you need to not be usurping God's judgment. Don't come in and play God and step in.

This is how it is. Ha ha ha. I know what God's word says and I know what's best for you. Deal. That's not the way he's called us to live. There's nothing in your position in Christ that is not in another believer's position in Christ. When you make that judgment, keep that in mind. This person has a sealed position in Christ. I'm coming alongside, and let's remind you of that position in Christ. Let's remind you of who you are in Christ, not, hey, that's not who you are in Christ! Don't do that! No, no, no. That's not the reaction that we're to have. And Paul goes on to explain why that is.

He quotes an Old Testament passage there, it says, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Every knee shall bow. If you're coming along inside in judgment, why? That person's knee is going to be bowed before the Lord someday. Fortunately, it's not in a judgment of your righteousness to go to heaven or hell, which each non-believer is going to go, oh, looking over your records, I don't see that you have faith. So that was a short thing, and now every knee is going to bow.

Now what's interesting, the New American Standard Translation here says, and every tongue shall give praise to God. The Greek word there, where it says, shall give praise to God, actually has an implication of every tongue is going to agree with God, and I think that's fascinating. God's judgment is going to come down in the life of the believer unto your righteousnesses in Christ, and our works may be through fire, as Paul writes it in other epistles, but you're mine and you're saved. And we're going to agree with his righteous judgment. The lost person is going to come before the Lord. They're going to have to bow the knee. And when God says, I didn't know you. You don't know my son. You didn't believe in me.

They're going to agree with that. And that's pretty stunning and heavy. They may leave in anger, but it will be in agreement. And that's pretty weighty. Now, because they're going to be bowing the knee, and because every tongue is going to agree with God, Paul doesn't leave there.

Verse 12, he says, So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. We need to judge ourselves, if anything. Now, are we judging ourselves in God's stead? No. Clearly not. We need to consider ourselves. Is my conscience wrong? Do I feel I've done something wrong in my conscience? Because the Holy Spirit is interacting with us.

We're going to be able to identify that. There is no delay. You're not going to have server outages, power outages. There's not a computer blue screen of death. There's no traffic jams getting to your conscience. There will be no Elvis impersonators distracting you from your conscience. You can immediately check right now. Am I in fellowship with the Lord? Is my conscience okay? If the answer is no, you can honk your horn. No. If the answer is no, how hard is it to rectify that and get your relationship straightened out with the Lord as believers?

You just put on the reverse and you go back to where you need to be. What wonderful audio cues. You go to the Lord and you say, Lord, you boldly go before the Lord, as we're told in Hebrews, we can do, and say, Lord, forgive me. Okay. Boom. We're restored.

How many minutes or hours of guilt should you have after you sin and restore your relationship with the Lord? Zero. Boy, I wish someone had told me that when I was younger. I used to beat myself up and be like, okay, I'm not feeling guilty anymore. Is that okay? No, it's not been long enough. I need to think about that sin some more, so I can feel guilty longer, and then maybe God will be okay with me. No, we need to do self-evaluation. Am I right with the Lord? Yes. Awesome. Moving on with my relationship with the Lord, that's as far as our judgment should go. It shouldn't be self-flagellation, and I have to really be careful how I say that.

We could look at the last slide, but who wants to do that? We're going to have to give an account. What should our worries be about giving an account? We're going to have to give an account to the Lord. You will have to give an account to the Lord. What should you be worried about, given that you're going to have to give an account to the Lord?

Roger is shaking his head. He thinks I'm teaching heresy. I know. There should be no worries. Worrying should not be part of our lifestyle as we think about the heavenlies. Randy, also what's neat is the wonderful trusting in the God who's absolutely fair and you're his son, how could it be better? Yeah.

And so you're saying, Lord, I know you will judge righteously. I know the works that I trusted you for will be, I will give you word of that. The ones I did not trust you for will be burned up. So, hey, you're the best judge of that. I judge it very poorly. Sure. Yeah, probably not.

Just a simple question that, since I figured this out through one of the Thurston Act Bible studies at the Doyle's house, has really rocked the way that I used to think, which one of your acts as a believer, and which group of acts as a believer, does God not get glorified for? It's a trick question, really.

Which acts, good or evil acts, does God not get glorified for? It's a trick question because both God gets glorified for. And that's pretty crazy to think about, because for a second you go, wait a minute, evil acts God gets glorified for? And the answer is yes. Every time God's grace is shown, and let me tell you, each one of those evil acts has a little bit of grace all over it. It has a lot of grace all over it. God gets glorified for his graciousness. The angels go, wow, God, you're gracious.

We need to glorify you some more. And when we live out the righteous life, she goes, wow, you enabled that person for righteousness. You need to be glorified some more. So I had to stop thinking, oh no, God's not being glorified by my life. And I had to start thinking, why am I focused on whether or not God's glorified? Why don't I instead focus on the Lord?

So we're going to have to give an account But our account is going to be for what God did through us, like Roger said. It's a word of praise, yeah. It's going to be... God's going to be given the glory for our lives whether or not we got in through a bloodbath in Christ or if graciously we got in through a bloodbath for Christ.

It doesn't matter how much sin you had. Christ had to die and pay for all of it. And it was an absolute slaughtering of the Lamb of God. So we shouldn't go in with this, how much judgment am I going to get? You're not going to get any. Christ took the judgment. Instead you're going to go in for judgment for rewards. And I think that's pretty awesome. So when we judge our brothers and sisters in Christ, We're really looking at the wrong thing anyways, because that's not what God's going to be looking at. Any other thoughts on this before we close in prayer?

This was definitely an interesting study to do. Yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm looking forward to it too. That's right. It's going to be a revelation of God in our lives for all the prior things. And we're going to be amazed and astounded. That's going to be pretty cool. Let's go ahead and we'll close in prayer. I think Brian's going to push that bell a second time any second here. And so we'll close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this time together. Thank you for your word. Thank you for all that you are doing in our lives already. We pray that as we live our lives for you, that we would not be distracted by the things of our culture and our world and instead have our hearts and minds set on things above. Thank you for your graciousness, thank you for your mercies, and thank you for all that you do. In Jesus' name, Amen.