The Judgment of the Moral Man
Romans 2:5-10 · Roger Henderson · Feb 12, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 011
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193014844

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

Just as a beginning point these verses 1 through chapter 1 1 through 4 are pretty straightforward, but you get into verse 5 through 10 especially you get into a section where there's just a wide variety of opinions about what's Who's it addressed to and so on so we're going to try to get through that I'm going to give you what I think it is and I'm draw heavily upon our brother Hal from 2006 Actually, Jim Poole was part of that too, so I'm very thankful I had those notes to come look at.

A lot of people try to apply a lot of the verses just to the... they say they're different things. And we'll get into that, so I'm getting a little bit ahead here. Okay, so the outline. This section, 118 through 320, is the condemnation of man. And that's really condemnation is the idea of judgment, of passing sentence upon. how all men are under God's sentence under God's judgment so he starts with the what he calls the Gentile world and that's going to be basically 118 through 216 which will finish up next week and then we'll start into the Jewish people after that but in this section on the Gentile world there's actually two parts we talked about in verse in chapter 1 one was a the reason for condemnation and part of that was a man is suppressing the truth man doesn't want the truth is there but he doesn't want to succumb to it or obey it or listen to it and all creation is putting out that message and then we saw the results of that condemnation the last several weeks about this list of things a pretty long list of sins and unrighteousness that man is doing And God gave man over to those things, and it became a pretty terrible mess. So now when we get into the chapter 2, the first four verses, which Mike did last week, we bring in the concept of this man who is judging.

He believes he's a little bit higher. I'm on a different plane. I'm an educated man. I'm a moral man. I only do what's good and right, and I'm kind to my neighbor and so on. But what God says, without coming to know Christ as your Savior, you're judging your fellow man who doesn't know Christ you're no better than he is and Mike talked to that and we're going to review that a little bit today and then the next two weeks we're going to talk about the moral man's judgment come in two parts 5 through 10 and then 11 through 16 and then the following week we're going to get into the Jewish world is condemned and in the future the whole world is condemned so Paul's heading toward this kind of summary statement that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God All men are under His condemnation, rightly so, but God in His grace has provided a Savior to save man out from that condemnation, from that judgment.

Okay, so from last week, I'm not going to read everything, but this is the first verse talks about, and one thing that I found helpful, if you look at the original, there's actually a word that's left out, and I don't know why they did that. In the New American Standard, I'm not sure about the King James, This word, O man, is left out.

And I think that's really kind of important. So I'm using the Weiss translation here. So the first part reads, therefore, you without a defense. And that word is actually in there, O man. So I called him the moral man. O man, everyone who judges. So he talks about that moral man judging. And what he says is, in the last part of the verse, he says, for you who judge, practice the same things.

The things we saw back in chapter 1. That should be chapter 1, not verse 1. You practice those awful things. So you're no better because you do the same things. Maybe not exactly the same things, but the spirit of that, you're doing the same thing. You're the same kind of person because you're not saved.

And then he goes on to say, but we know that the judgment of God is according to truth. So what that means is that God's judgment, the only one that's true, You know, Christ said, I am the way, the truth, the singular truth is Jesus Christ, God. He is, that's reality. Truth is reality. So he says that God, the judgment of God is according to truth or reality against those who practice such things, practicing this, judging his brother.

Then in verse 3 it goes on to say and do not reason so he's talking about them this how the moral man reasons Oh, man, you're reasoning this you're thinking this you're thinking that and you think that because I feel I'm higher on the scale I'll escape God's judgment. He'll certainly won't condemn me because I'm I'm on a higher plane Well, no that he will if you don't know Christ.

I And then lastly, in verse four, it says, don't forget about the wealth and the forbearance of God and the long-suffering of God. And don't be ignorant or unmindful of this. And the last part of that says that the goodness of God is leading you to repentance. His goodness is in His patiently waiting for you to come to Christ. And just think about that.

Almost all of us here, if you didn't know Christ from your family, God was patient with you. He's patient with me. Mike and I were saved about the same time age-wise in our 30s. And so God was patient all those years before we came to know Him. He was patient in long-suffering. He was patient with so many people that come to know Christ later in life. So God's patience is to be remembered and be thankful and give Him glory for that.

Okay, that's last week's verses. So today's verses, I'm going to kind of give you an overview first and then we'll dive into them here. So we start with verse 5. Okay, verse 5 says, so he's speaking about this moral man who thinks he's on a higher level.

Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself. And then it's interesting, in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. So I bolded those in blue there. I think that's important. Some people don't really want to go down that path. You kind of recognize, you say, well, okay, God's judgment, God's wrath, I kind of know when that's going to happen. But many people, look at these verses, don't go down that path. Well, I'm going to go down that path.

Okay, then verse six. Who, speaking of God, will render to each person according to his deeds. And here's another part that's kind of a little flag going, a little sign going off. He's judging man according to his deeds. And you think, well, wait a minute. Aren't we under grace? I thought we were under grace. Judging according to deeds? Is this today? Is this for the church?

And it goes on. That makes this comparison. In 7 and 8, it has this structure in the Greek. And it has the idea, on one hand you have this, but on the other hand you have that. So that's what he's doing here. He says in verse 7, Speaking about those, speaking about the moral man again, those on the one hand, who by perseverance in doing good, seeking glory and honor, and immortality and eternal life, but on the other hand, there are those that are selfish ambition, who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, and wrath and indignation. So those two pair together, and the last two pair together too. there will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil to the Jew first and also for the Greek and then the contrast but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good to the Jew first and also to the Greek so boy these verses just to me just go boom look what's going on so here's the questions I came up with It sounds like I'm going to a destination or something like that. When, where, to whom do these events, who do they apply to, who are they for? So question one, there are some, you open up and they say, oh this is hypothetical. This is just a hypothetical passage talking about God's judgment in general and we can draw all these interesting conclusions from that.

But they can't draw them for the church age. If you can draw that for the church age, good luck. That's all I've got to say. Some say, if these are real events, do they occur in the church age? The Tribulation? Maybe the Great White Throne? Well, the church age, I don't think so. We'll see about the Tribulation and the Great White Throne. Okay, are these events for believers, unbelievers, or both? Alright, so lots of good questions. Hopefully I have the answers, right? Alright. When is the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God? When is that? When is that going to occur? If it's a real event, when is it going to occur? When and to whom does God judge according to man's deeds and works?

Boy, that ought to be a little flag that's going off. If this is the age of grace, Judging according to his deeds. Now, of course, I'm studying James, so I've got to be a little bit careful here. So James does talk about that, but it does fit in with Grace, and we're going to show that in James. So please come to the class if you have that question. A little plug for our class.

So a couple of contrasts. And this is 7 and 8 and 9 and 10. So 7 and 8 have this contrast. Those who persevere in doing good versus those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth. So doing good versus obeying the truth. And then 9 and 10 have the contrast. Tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil versus glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good. Okay, so I'm going to try to answer those questions as we go through here. Alright, so let's start off with verse 5.

So it says, but according to your obstinate, that's hardness and stubbornness, and unrepentant or unchanging heart. So Paul says, you moral man, you have this stubbornness, thinking that you're better, and hardness, and your heart is not changing, it's unrepentant. So that ought to be a clue right there. If you're trying to nail down who this is, you say, unrepentant, unchanging heart.

Hmm, sounds interesting here, okay. The key word here is heart, cardia, from cardiac, or cardiac from that word. It stands for man's entire mental and moral activity. And it's used both negative and positively. If you have a chance to go on your computer, the word heart, both Old and New Testament, shows up about 800 times. And you'll notice that it has a lot of wonderful statements about the heart, how the man believes with his heart. But it also has some pretty negative ones. And I think this is a negative situation. And here's one of the ones that I always remember. It's from the King James Version.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So the heart of man, the essence of a man, is desperately wicked. And so Paul's addressing that. He says your unrepentant heart. And so boy, to me, that speaks about an unbeliever. So I think right off the bat in verse 5, the very first part, we're talking about an unbeliever here. So that helps us a lot right here. It's an unbeliever.

Okay? And then verse 4 says this unbeliever, this moral man, was treating with contempt God's kindness. And then Macaulay points out, you know, God's kindness, as I mentioned before, is to give us time to change our minds, to repent. And there's a pretty familiar verse, which I'm going to quote a little bit later on. about God's kindness and how He waits for man. Okay, so now let's go on to the middle part. So this middle part says this is what's going to happen. If you're obstinate and unrepentant, here's what's going to happen to you.

This is pretty scary stuff. It says you're storing up And actually the word is almost like treasure, a form of the word treasure. It's to gather up, to lay up, to heap up, to store up. It's present tense, continuous action, it's reality. So this is what's happening to the man outside of Christ. Pretty scary stuff.

For yourselves, you're personally laying up as an unbeliever, and you're laying up for something pretty bad. And this is what you're laying up for. You're laying up for God's wrath. God's wrath is his righteous attitude towards sin with a view towards judgment and I like what Hal said about this It's God's settled anger out from his righteousness, you know without the without accepting Christ Payment and without accepting what he has done You're at the mercy of God's righteousness and no man can stand before a righteous God. We see that over and over again. I Only in Jesus Christ can we stand before a righteous God. So we see a lot about God's judgment about His righteousness in these verses. Okay, let's go on. So here comes the part that kind of takes you off down a path of, well, let's find out what's happening here.

And it says, but according to your obstinate and unrepentant heart, You're storing up for yourselves wrath in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. So Paul, he's describing an event and it has two aspects. It's called the day of wrath and in that day of wrath it's going to be his righteous judgment is going to be revealed. Two aspects, as I mentioned. So the day of wrath is foretold both in the Old and New Testament. It's a future day. It involves both Jews and Gentiles. It's characterized by a day of God's judgment.

It's on the earth. And it's for unbelievers. And that's from Hal and Jim Poole. OK, let's go on. So here's some verses about the Day of Wrath. And there are actually quite a few. This is four or five of them. I chose the Derby because he used the word Day of Wrath. Other versions did not, so I wanted to keep that focus. The wicked is reserved for the day of calamity. They are led forth to a day of wrath.

Here's one that's really interesting. The picture here is just really neat. This is Ezekiel 7.19.

They, speaking about the unbelievers, will fling their silver into the streets and their gold will become an abhorrent thing. Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord. We were talking about riches in Sunday school. You could be the richest man in the world. He won't buy you anything when God comes to judge you as an unbeliever. He's not going to buy you anything. Pretty sad.

And that theme kind of carries on through other verses here. Then in Zephaniah we have a day of wrath is that day, it's a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction, desolation, a day of darkness, gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Not painting a very good picture here. This isn't Zephaniah again neither get the same kind of picture neither silver nor gold will be able to deliver you from the day of wrath from the Lord's day of wrath and so on and Then here's a very interesting one. This is a This is almost humorous. Hmm.

So this is John the Baptist it says but when he John the Baptist was saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism. His baptism was a baptism of repentance. He said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath that come? I don't think they were really coming to be baptized. They weren't going to change their ways. They just wanted to kind of check him out, I think. He knew that. Kind of interesting.

Okay, so I borrowed, this is a chart that I borrowed from Hal back when I did the, back in 2nd Corinthians or 1st Corinthians on the judgment seat of Christ. So just kind of review God's judgments. So there's, you can look at the fall as a judgment, the flood, certainly the cross as a judgment of sin or the payment of sin. And then we have, coming in, we have the tribulation period is God's judgment.

And then we have the This is actually, as we pointed out when I taught this, the judgment seat of Christ is actually not the right words. It's actually a rewards situation. It's a Bema. It's a raised platform where we receive rewards, not so much a judgment.

Then we have the judgment of the nations, which is going to be important, as we'll see later on. And Satan and the beast and the false prophets. Then we have the great white throne, which we'll mention shortly, later on. Some of these I'm not as familiar with. The purging of the earth. This is Hal's picture of God's judgments. With that in mind, here are some observations. This is from Jim and Hal back in 2006.

It doesn't appear that the Great White Throne judgment is referenced in the Day of Wrath. I couldn't find it in my search either. Either Old or New Testament. But it does appear But the Day of Wrath, it does fit in with the Tribulation period and also with the Judgment of the Nations. Because you're going to see similar kinds of scripture that will talk about the Tribulation period that we saw in our verses, and also certainly about the Judgment of the Nations, the sheep and the goats.

It's very much what we would call judging on works. But faith is still there. You should always remember God always deals with man on the basis of his faith, his trust, and what he's done for him. So saying it's only works is probably not exactly right in Scripture, but it does focus on a man's works, or what he's done, based upon his faith in Christ.

And we'll see that in the Judgment of the Nations. Okay, so here's some verses from the Tribulation period, in Revelation 16-17. for the great day of wrath has come who shall be able to stand and then we see and there's others like that and we see that the church is not subject to the to the tribulation couple verses about that for God is not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ through our Lord Jesus Christ much more than now being justified by his blood we shall be saved from the wrath through him Romans 5 9 So that's why I think if you don't place these verses in the right place, you're saying somehow that wrath is going to come upon you and scripture teaches and Paul teaches in other places that can't be the case. So I compare Paul with Paul and I get a disconnect if I try to make these verses something else other than what they appear to be. Okay, so verse 6. who were rendered to each person according to his deeds. This actually is a quote out of the Old Testament that occurs in this verse here and also in Proverbs.

It says, And lovingkindness is yours, O Lord, for you recompense a man according to his works. And if you think about it, at the core of that, that's actually true. He recompenses us for our works. But the cool thing is, When we come to faith in Christ, we have His life and His works, and those are acceptable to God. So God doesn't make an exception when He, because of His Son's death, His Son's death allows us to be covered under Him and not stand on our own. So the basis of judgment, looking at this verse here, He's going to count each person according to his deeds. So the basis of judgment is according to his deeds or works. So how does God judge in the church age? That's kind of an oxymoron.

So in Romans we see, therefore there is now no condemnation, there's no judgment for those who are in Christ Jesus, because He's taken our judgment. And then a beautiful passage, all of us like sheep have gone astray, we've turned one to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. So God's judgment fell to Christ. And then we see, we're not to work. The Christian life is not us working. It doesn't mean we stay home and do nothing. When we lay around on the couch it says, but the one who does not work, but believes, the Christian life is belief, right?

Belief and trust and faith. but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. You know, man wants to do something to show himself to God. The moral man wants to say, hey, I'm pretty good. I'm able to judge those really rotten sinners. They're really bad. And he wants God to give him points for that, so to speak. But that's not the case. He can't get points for that. Only through Christ. Okay, so now we come to, working into seven, seven and eight here.

So here's this contrast we're going to see. So according to his deeds, to those on one hand, who by perseverance in doing good, seek for glory and honor and immortality and eternal life, or eternal life. By or according to, so perseverance here is one of our favorite words, to abide under. You know what I saw here? I saw in these verses. So here we have these verses kind of point to a time, a future time about, on the one hand, perseverance and doing good. And you think, wow, that sounds like a lot of work.

But actually, you almost can see the picture of what we have today in the church age. Abiding under, patient endurance. And if we have, if they've come to faith, every person that is accepted by God, is an act of faith. It's in His endurance, not our endurance. It's Christ's endurance.

In doing good, it's a seeking. And the seeking here is the idea of being at rest. You have rest about that. And that word seek is a really cool word that we talk about sometimes. I've got to find it here. I wrote it down to tell you. It occurs in Colossians. I'll find it here.

Colossians 3.1.

If you've been raised up with Christ Jesus, and you have, Here's our word, keep seeking the things above. So this idea of they're seeking, they're persevering, abiding under, and doing good, seeking, resting. So they're basically resting in their faith. So that sounds perfectly fine for glory and honor and immortality and eternal life. So that kind of fits really well.

Then the contrast is, but to those, on the other hand, who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness and indignation." So we have a contrast here. The ones that do not obey, and the word obey is this idea of being persuadable. This is a Weiss translation. Do not, or non-persuadable with respect to the truth versus being persuadable with respect to the truth. Those are hard words to get out. Anyway, in the first case, they don't want to be persuaded by the truth. They're unpersuadable there, but these people that are unbelievers, that have not come to know Christ, they're persuadable to unrighteousness, which is pretty sad. So there's that contrast.

Let's look here for a second. Since we've been looking at, trying to pinpoint when this happens, let's look at the passage, a very important passage on the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25. I just picked out certain sections of it here. So let's start off.

So it talks about when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and He comes with His angels, and it says, in 32 it says, all the nations are gathered before Him. And then in 33 it says, He will put the sheep on His right, And I put the goats on his left. And what's characteristic of this judgment is that he announces their penalty before he gives their reason.

It's sort of like... It would be like today's Super Bowl day. It would be like having the reward ceremony at the beginning. You would say, Tennessee Chiefs you're the winners or Eagles you're the winner you get you had the war and then you then you play the game to see how why did it happen?

So the verses do that they show the result and they tell you well, why did it happen? So here we go the king speaking of the Son of Man the Lord Jesus and the king will say to those on his right Come you who are blessed of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world and And then they ask him, the interim here, they ask him, well, what do we do, Lord? How do we get this privilege?

And he explains it in verse 40. The King, the Lord Jesus, will answer and say to them, the ones on the right, truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, speaking of the nation of Israel, I believe, even the least of these, you did it to me.

So he says, what you did to these brothers of mine, You did it to me. That counted and he always showed them the reward. Then the opposite side is, then he will say to those on his left, so they get their judgment first and they get the reason afterwards. Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. And then he gives the reason and he answered them, the ones on the left, Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. So it's all about, and so what I like then, our brother Hal did a summary of this, and actually the last part is the bottom line. Those on his left go away into eternal punishment, but those on his right to eternal life.

Okay, so here's, so I kind of like that. We went through the verses, now let's, this is Hal's summary of that. A bit of a repeat, but I think it's worthwhile here. Okay, so the time of this, we have that timeline, is immediately at the end of the tribulation period.

Christ returns in His glory. And it's on earth. He returns to earth. And all the living nations are gathered. And the key thing is here, whether they accepted or rejected Christ. That's going to be the judgment. And so how that correlates is that believers are the ones who out of faith accepted Christ's messengers, accepted the nation of Israel. And God counted that, Christ counted that to Himself. And the unbelievers, there are no works out from faith rejecting Christ's messengers. So that's the basis. So faith is involved. Faith is always involved. It can't be pure works. has to be faith in doing works. And that's what James teaches.

Okay, the condition I mentioned before, he makes the separation, he gives you the end result, he has the reward ceremony for the Super Bowl first, and then he tells you, and then he gives you, wouldn't that be kind of sad? You say, okay, why do I want to watch it? Anyway, enough of that. Okay, the judge is the son of man, Lord Jesus.

And believers go to the kingdom, to eternal life. Unbelievers to the lake of fire. So I think these verses that we're studying very much connect with this judgment. And they also connect somewhat with the tribulation period, as we saw. OK, so the last two verses. And this speaks to me a lot of the tribulation period.

There will be tribulation and distress upon every soul of man who does evil, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and then to the Greek. So we have the contrast between doing works, doing evil works, and doing works, good works. And that working evil is the idea of working out, there's actually a common Greek word here, but there's different prefixes on it. Working out to a finished evil, sounds kind of hard to do there. produce or perform good, the judgment of the nations, and we see that in what we saw there, has both the working of evil and the working of good.

So I kind of connected it back to the verses we read earlier. So the example would be, you did one of these to these brothers of mine, versus you did not do it to one of these brothers of mine. So Constable, and I always kind of wondered about the Jew first and then to the Greek, and I think this is pretty... I like this, what Constable said about this. So the nation of Israel was very privileged, right? They not only had the natural revelation, right? They had the Old Testament. They had God's Word. So they were more privileged. So in their judgment, God takes it into account, if you will. So both on the negative and the positive side.

So my homework assignment for you guys here, I have to have a homework assignment, right? Help me find, in the book of Revelation, where we have some Jews being, we have both cases here, because it says the Jew first, also the Greek, so there ought to be cases in Revelation.

I couldn't find it easily. I think it's 144,000. Those are all Jewish people, right? But the Lord kind of sealed them. That was kind of special. Are there Jews that we see, or verses that talk about Jews, exercising faith and becoming a believer, quote unquote? And do we have ones that never become believers? That's probably pretty easy, right? They curse God.

I couldn't find a good example. So that's your homework assignment. OK. Now, I have to finish this with, let's see here. Oh, I do have one more thing here. OK, so the last point about all this, why would Paul do this? Why would he write this section about the moral man? Why would he refer back to these judgments, the coming judgments in the tribulation period and the judgment of the nations? Why would he do that?

So this is how I kind of take it. He tried to say, well, why did Paul do this? I like this part. OK, so Paul expected. Actually, Bonnie asked me about this, and I figured the answer out, Bonnie. She asked me last night, and I couldn't give her the answer last night. Paul expected the imminent return of Jesus Christ at the rapture.

So we see that he uses the word we, he uses the word we six times in that verse, in verses, two passages on the rapture. I have it on here, I didn't print it out. Okay, so six times in that verse, and it starts off, but we do not want you to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep, so that you will be grieved as those who have no hope, and so on. So six times he has we. So Paul, the key point, Paul included himself. In these verses, he included himself when he talked about the rapture coming. So here's a verse I did include. So he says in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 51, Behold, I tell you a mystery.

We will not all sleep. It's right there. That's the question she asked me. So how do we know it's imminent? Paul says we, he didn't think he was going to sleep. Sleep is a term for death. That's what we, we go to be with the Lord right now, we go to sleep. So Paul said, I'm not going to sleep.

Paul expected he's going to go into the tribulation period. He's going to be raptured. We will not all sleep, but we all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumping will sound and the dead in Christ will rise and perish and we will be changed. He expected to be raptured and to go into the tribulation period.

So that's huge. So you begin to see, that's why he wrote People who are unbelievers, don't you realize you're storing up wrath? It's like, if that's going to happen seven years from now or whatever, I would say, hey, don't you realize what you're doing? But it's 2,000 years ago right now.

Anyway, he knew the tribulation period, the day of wrath, would be immediately following the rapture because he wrote about it, right? This is what Paul appears to be saying in that verse 5 of chapter 2 there. So apparently he's describing the judgment of the nations in 6-10 as we read, and also the tribulation period. And then we're going to see he's going to continue in 11-16 next week. We'll talk about that discussion about a law system. He's going to bring an idea of a law system and talk about that.

Okay, so now what you've all been waiting for. I usually have a summary verse or what do I call it? Final thoughts. Okay, here's, I'm going to use a chart. I chopped it up. It was in PDF, here's my problem, it's in PDF. I wanted to put it in PowerPoint. It wasn't an object, you know, there's all kinds of, I couldn't, the bottom line is it came as one blob, one picture. So I had to kind of doctor it up. So here's part one. Okay, well you know how, he just loved to do pictures. Jam everything you can in one picture. So here's his picture.

He wants to show Paul's perspective. What I like about this, he overlays, he says, well Paul says, I'm not going to sleep. So it takes Paul's life. Paul was martyred in 68 AD. So he just backs it up and he says, okay, Paul thought he would live through tribulation, go to the millennial camp, that's what he thought.

So he wrote this book, Romans in 57, down at the very bottom there. Pentecost is 30 AD. He wrote the book in 57. So Paul really thought that was going to happen. So it makes sense he would write this thing about what's going to happen because it was going to happen imminently. So here's Hal's take on how these verses I talked about fit in.

Here's the rest of it. Okay. You notice he says, you are there, you are here. Well, the church is not. We're with the Lord, right? So we're with him at the tribulation. were with him at the Judgment of the Nations. So that's the Day of Wrath. So the Tribulation is synonymous with the Day of Wrath. And then you have God's Righteous Judgment. That occurs certainly at the Judgment of the Nations and certainly at the Great White Throne, right?

He's going to be absolutely just. He's going to open the books and show every unbeliever, I'm sorry, you know, you were given opportunity after opportunity, but you didn't want me. So God's righteous judgment will be in view there. All right. Well, I hope this was helpful. That's my last chart. So let's pray.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your wonderful word. We thank you that you care so much for us, Lord, and you warn us about the wrath to come. You warn us so many different ways through our family and friends. And we pray that if there's ones that don't know you today, that are listening today, they would consider coming to know our Savior. We ask it in His name. Amen.