NOT CONCERNED: Why is there so little fear of God’s judgment today?
- Ezekiel 21:7.
- It’s without question that today there is little fear of God’s judgment. There’s little belief in Final Judgment but only a vague hope of a heavenly reunion. The idea that we are somehow accountable for the sin we’ve done is beyond the imagination of most people.
- We can go through a laundry list of reasons that there is so little fear of God’s judgment today.
a. We’ve lost the idea of moral absolutes.
b. We think everyone gets to decide what is right for them and no one is allowed to question someone else’s beliefs.
c. There is a loss among some in belief in God at all.
d. Many envision a grandfather God who is only interested in everyone enjoying themselves.
e. Prosperous Americans don’t think much about an afterlife at all because the here and now is pretty good.
f. Hell is rejected as unjust.
g. We lower the standard of what is “really bad” and therefore worthy of judgment.
h. “Really bad” is what someone else might do, but not me.
i. There is a misunderstanding of God’s grace as being a free pass for everyone.
- Ezekiel 21:7 provides a powerful picture of God’s judgment.
- This particular judgment is one happening in the here and now. It’s a stark picture of that judgment falling and everyone being overwhelmed by the terror of it.
- For our purposes this evening, I’m going to take that principle and apply it to the greatest of all judgments: Final Judgment.
- There is not fear of God’s judgment today. As I noted a moment ago, there are a multitude of reasons for that. But they all add up to a flippant dismissal of the reality of Final Judgment.
- Yet that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.
- There is one larger underlying reason for people not taking it seriously. The things I’ve listed above are among the reasons that contribute but I think there’s one that’s the biggest.
- And that’s the next point in the outline.
WHY IS THIS TRUTH SO REJECTED? People don’t reject it because it’s illogical but because it’s unpleasant.
- Let’s start with the illogic part.
- People don’t have intellectual objections to the idea of Final Judgment (or, at least, very few do).
- If you take away Final Judgment, a number of problems are created:
a. There is no ultimate accountability for wrong.
b. Many of the most evil people in history got away with their evil.
c. It’s difficult to make a case for “doing the right thing” instead of “doing what you can get away with” if there is no ultimate accountability.
-One way to put it is this:
- You can argue there is no God and therefore there is no Final Judgment. But you then have to concede the fact that nothing is ultimately wrong or right. There is only what is. All the “oughts” and “shoulds” vanish away. There is still power and selfishness but if you can get away with it then it no longer is wrong but rather is actually a logical course of action.
- Another way is that people do want there to be some ultimate accountability for the great evils in the world that they see.
- To pick an obvious example, if you have a billionaire who abuses people and gets his money from morally questionable business dealings but ends up living to 90 years old and dies peacefully with his name and fortune intact, we would question the justice of the universe. He got away with it - that’s not right!
- So it’s not that Final Judgment is illogical. There is something in all of us that wants the wrongs to be righted in the end.
- No, that’s not the main objection. The main objection is that we find it unpleasant.
- The idea that we would be called to account for the way we’ve lived our lives is one we dislike. The idea that I would be punished for my questionable actions is one we hate. We have reasons to justify what we did! We have good explanations for what happened.
- But God is the judge, not us. And the thought that, like v. 7, we would stand before Him and find our situation to be one where our knees go weak is a possibility we do not want to ponder.
- How could God even act like that, many would argue?
a. Our sin is far greater than we generally comprehend.
b. Our excuses for our sin are convincing to us but not to God.
c. Sin cannot just be excused or winked at.
d. There are bad things that happen in the world because of our sin. (This is true both at an individual and collective level.)
e. Offramps have been offered and ignored.
- His judgment is deserved.
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE?
1. WE CAN'T GET LULLED INTO COMPLACENCY BY THOSE WHO DISMISS THE POSSIBILITY OF JUDGMENT.
- Tell the story of Mt. Vesuvius, particularly that it wasn’t a completely unexpected tragedy but the mountain had been rumbling and smoking for a while.
- They were lulled into complacency.
- They ignored the warning signs.
- This is something that can happen to us pretty easily. We claim to believe in Final Judgment but then you look around and everyone is living like today is all there is and it’s hard to not get impacted by that.
- We have to stay focused and make sure we are living our lives in light of ultimate accountability.
2. WE CAN'T JUST PREACH THE HAPPY PARTS OF FAITH.
- The idea of Final Judgment is not one that is horrible for the rest of the world but one that we rejoice in. No, it brings concern for us as well. Certainly, we are judged for rewards and not salvation but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for us to be concerned about. We want to live in such a way as to deserve praise and not castigation.
- Therefore there can be a tendency within us as well to want to ignore these ideas of Final Judgment and the accountability that comes with it.
- We’d rather just focus on the happy parts of faith.
- There is a place called heaven! (But don’t think about hell.)
- God’s grace has saved us! (But there are still many who are lost.)
- We are God’s children! (But He expects us to obey His teaching.)
- But we can’t just stay focused on the happy parts of faith. The whole faith is our faith.
- One way to put this hurts: part of the problem on this issue is our fault.
- We have often chosen a skewed faith ourselves, leaning toward the easy parts of faith. We need to preach and live out the whole faith.
3. WE ENED TO HAVE MORE URGENCY IN OUR PRAYER AND EVANGELISM.
- The main application of these truths is found in this point.
- The other points, including preaching the whole gospel, are certainly true. But this is what we need to be focused the most on.
- There is a Final Judgment and there are eternal consequences to that. Let’s pause for a moment and ponder the weight of that statement. It’s heavy . . . and it should be. This is big stuff we’re talking about.
- How much urgency is there in our prayer life, especially toward those who are lost? How much passion is there in our evangelism?
- I know we can’t force anyone to get saved. There are certainly limits to what we can accomplish by mere force.
- But we aren’t living our lives in a way that reflects people who really believe in Final Judgment.
- So maybe the first step is that we need to change. There needs to be an urgency and an energy that we don’t currently possess.
