Who Are You Really?
Isaiah 6:1-7 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
How many of you have ever filled out a job application or an application to go to school? They want to know your name, your address, your education history, your work history, and some times a bunch of other stuff as well. After you give them all this personal information and they have done background checks, and gotten credit reports, if all of it comes back okay, they still want you to come in for an interview. Now why is that?
They know, they can know a lot of facts about you, and still have no idea who you really are? Before they hire you, they want to know, “who are you really?” They know what the paper says, “but who are you really.” When I look at some of you in church, and I look at your picture on facebook, I ask myself, “Who are you really.”
Suppose for a moment I told you, we had a true secret five minute video on a person in Pa. who was one thing in church, but was an entirely different person outside the church, many of us would probably be eager to start the video and find out what this hypocrite was doing. But if I changed the video slightly and I said, the secret video is actually of one of the people here at New Life At Calvary, how many of you are now thinking, “I sure hope it’s not me in the video.”
There is a tendency on our part to compare ourselves to others and think that we are doing pretty good in our walk toward righteousness. We admit to doing a little wrong here and there, but we are nowhere near as bad as those people. In our Old Testament reading, God had called the prophet Isaiah to preach to the people about their wicked behavior. Isaiah was letting them have it for all the wrong they were doing. He even told God in verse 2:3, God they are so bad, you should not forgive them. And then a strange thing happened to Isaiah in chapter 6. He said, in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.
The first thing that he did when he saw the Lord was to cry out “ Woe to me, for I am ruined. I am a man of unclean lips and I live among people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” For the first time in the book, he realized that who he thought he was, he really was not. He was a whole lot worse. There is something about being in the presence of God, that exposes who we truly are. We find we are nowhere as near as holy as we had first imagined.
Who we truly are can be seen by discovering our character. Character can be defined in several ways. One is,“ character is who you are when you think you won’t get caught.” Character is “who you are when the pressure is on you to be something else.” Andy Stanley defined character as “the will to do what’s right, even when it’s hard.” Character is not something that comes automatically to us. Character involves the will to make a tough decision because it’s the right decision to make. To really the answer the question, “who are you really”, we need to know about your character.
The temptation in life is going to be to build a reputation. If I can just build a reputation for being a good person. If I can just build a reputation for being a Christian. If I can just build a reputation for whatever….. The problem with reputations is that, its built on what others think they know about us. It is what we want others to see or to think about us.
Up until a week before he died, Judas had a reputation for being one of the twelve outstanding disciples of Jesus Christ, a man of honesty and integrity, so much that others put him in charge of the money. The other eleven disciples would have gladly defended him from any and all charges. The reality, is that despite his reputation, Judas was a thief stealing money from Jesus and the disciples. His character was quite different from his reputation.
As an 13 year old student on the honor roll, I had a reputation for being a great kid, well behaved in school, and proned to do the right thing. Nobody knew that I also had a problem with stealing. It wasn’t until my character of stealing was exposed in front of most of the students in my school that I stopped stealing.
There was a church in the book of Revelations by the name of Sardis. Jesus says to the church, I know your deeds: You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. The reputation of the church, was far different than its character.
Nothing robs us quicker of our character than sin. Anytime we sin, we give someone else a power over us that the person did not have before. Remember when your parents made you take along your little brother or sister to keep watch on you. If you did something, and the little one saw it, they now had a power over you. You are afraid they might tell what they know and now you have to make a deal with them or threaten them to keep it silent. Sin takes away our freedom and ruins our character. Your character is important, because it gives you moral authority to speak on issues.
All of us have dreams and goals for life. Often times between where you are now and getting what you want is a straight line. The only problem is that shortest route is not necessarily the one that God has approved for you. You can get where you want quicker, by doing some things that, will harm your character and your witness for Christ.
There are going to be temptations in all of our lives. If we are to be a person of character, we have to decide against the temptation before the temptation arises. If I make up my mind on what I will or will not at college before I go to college, I will be much more successful than if I wait to find myself in a particular situation at college. That decision can be as positive as faithfully going to church or as negatively as using drugs. Our character is only going to be as good, as the bar by which we measure it. For believers, the standard for our character should be determined by the future we hope to have in Jesus Christ. A good character begins with the fear of the Lord, for the bible tells us, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
There is this false notion that everybody who believes in Jesus Christ is on their way to heaven and is going to get a reward when they get there. Believing that Jesus Christ exists does not get you brownie points with God. The Bible says even the devil and demons believe and shudder with fear. What good is believing without fearing the consequences of rejecting Jesus?
Even doing good works in the name of Jesus does not get you into heaven. Jesus says, “do you know how many people will tell me all the good things they did in My Name, but I will tell them to depart from Me, for I never knew You because You chose to live a life of disobedience.” So being in church is no guarantee of a genuine faith in Christ that will land you in heaven.
Jesus died for all of us, so that anybody here, no matter what they have done can be saved. Jesus gives an invitation to whoever wants to come and follow Him. The whoever does not mean everyone will be saved. If I had a billion dollars and you didn’t know it, I could say anyone who comes up to me after service can receive $10,000.00 Some of you would say, he doesn’t have any money and you would leave. Some of you would say, he may have it, but he’s not giving it a way and leave.
Some of you would say, I’m not going to be made a fool of in one of his jokes and you will leave. Some of you will start to come, but somebody will talk you out of waiting and you will leave. Some of you would say, I can’t wait for service to be over so that you could get your money. The mere fact that I offered the money is no guarantee that it will be accepted. The rejection does not destroy the offer, nor does it make the offer any more or less true.
A lot of people are thinking that they are going to be able to take their reputation to heaven with them, but their reputation is going to stay in the grave. Each of us will be taking our character with us. For those of us, who miss going to hell because of our faith and trust in Jesus, there is still a judgment waiting for us. It is called the judgment seat of Christ. It’s at the judgment seat of Christ, that our character is going to be on display for everyone to see. Now to understand this judgment, I want you to use your imagination for another scenario.
Suppose you had three teenagers, and you overheard them talking about your upcoming birthday. All of them were saying how sad they were that they did not have any money to get you anything for your birthday, but if they did have some money, oh the gift they would give to you. So that next day, you got 3 envelopes and put $100.00 in each. You enclosed a note saying, don’t tell anyone how much you got, but use this money as you desire. All three teens are happy with money and none of them tell the other what they got in their envelope.
Three days later on your birthday, the first teen brings in a gift and inside is a watch that obviously costs about $90. The second teen brings in a gift and inside is a bracelet that costs about $85. The third teen brings in a gift and inside is McDonald’s gift card for $5.00. How are you feeling about that third gift? Suppose you ask, “is this all there is,” and the third teen says, “I would have given more, but I didn’t have as much as they had and I always thought that it was the thought that counted.” Let me ask you this, how would you feel as the third teen, if your parent responded, “you all had the same amount of money.”
The bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” The intent behind the judgment seat of Christ is to expose all the good that we have done in Christ with our bodies, so that a reward can be bestowed upon us and Jesus is glorified in our lives.
In Ephesians 2:8-10, Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV) 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
God didn’t save us to hide us from the world. God didn’t save us to put us on a shelf. God saved us to do a job that God had in mind before He saved us. That means God’s agenda should have first place in our lives. The judgment seat of Christ is going to answer the question, “Who are you really? And all the saints will be there to find out who each of us really is.
God gave us all the same amount of money in an envelope. It’s called one life. We all only get one life. How much of that life do we give to God? As the percentage goes up, so does the rewards in heaven. The greater the character, the greater the reward. The good news is that our character is measured only against ourselves. Which means the more I allowed Jesus to work in me, the more fully my character became like Christ. It does not have a thing to do with what Jesus was doing in somebody else’s life.
What are you intending to offer God at the judgment seat of Christ? Do you really want to go into eternity knowing that you could have made a difference, but because of your choices all you could give of your life was a $5 McDonald’s gift card. Jesus died a very painful and agonizing death to keep you out of hell. Do you really want to say, I couldn’t afford more than the $5 card. We are encouraged to be diligent to present yourself to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed in 2 Timothy 2:15
The judgment seat of Christ is intended to be a celebration, and it will be for all those who are preparing for it today. All the pain and suffering you ever went through for Christ because He needed to use you in those circumstances. All the sacrifices you ever made for the cause of Christ going without some things so that others could be blessed. All the treasures you laid up in heaven for the cause of Christ will be credited to your account. The picture of the judgment seat of Christ is not a judge in a courtroom, but rather at athletic event, in which crowns and trophies are awarded to those who won.
Although God will have set it all up as a celebration, for some it will be a time of sorrow and regret. Because all of the good works that have been done will be tested by the fires of heaven. Those works which have been produced by a character in touch with the living God are going to come out as gold, silver and precious gems. But those works that have been started but not completed will be burned up.
It’s possible to have your name called only to discover, everything you were doing was in vain, and that there is no reward waiting for you. For 1 Corinthians 3:15 teaches that there will be some who will have nothing to show for the life that Christ gave to them. The person will be saved but only as one escaping through the flames.
If we are allowing the character of Jesus Christ to have its way in our lives, we will have rewards waiting for us. It’s not that we have to get up and go do something great for God. It’s a matter of letting God do something great in us in the way we love the people who are around us.
If we are saying yes to the will of God when our desires are crying out for something else, our character is growing. If we are standing alone for righteousness and truth, when others are choosing pleasures and compromise, our character is growing. If we are choosing to endure obstacles to reach our goals, rather than bending the rules to get their quicker, our character is growing. It we are serving in the kingdom when our bodies would rather be lounging in front of the tv our character is growing.
If we are choosing to willing endure doing the right thing, rather than the easy thing our character is growing.
Only then can we truly and honestly say with the Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 4:6-8 (NIV) 6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
My friend “Who Are You Really/” . Are You ready to be exposed at the Judgment Seat Of Christ. When your name is called, will you be commended or rebuked by Jesus.
