The Final Judgement(S) Series

INTRODUCTION

Welcome back this morning as we start our 13th week of our foundations for faith series. Today we're going to talk about the final judgment or rather their final judgments.

Judgment is not a popular subject today. So often we hear others yelling back that Christians shouldn't judge others. There is a clinical approach in psychotherapy That became popular under the work of Carl Rogers in his humanistic theory of counseling called unconditional positive regard in other words taking a nod judgmental approach to the person that is before you.

Humans don't want to be judged and yet there will be a time when every single person living and dead will sit in the judgment seat to be judged by the almighty. Throughout history the pendulum has swung in preaching away from preaching Hellfire and brimstone to a more sentimental reading of scripture and while I don't feel that we need to be focusing on the fear of God there should still be a healthy fear or respect for the almighty.

John’s 1 letter to the early church emphasized that God is Love, listen to what he writes in 1 John 4:18

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.

Nevertheless it was the same John that talked about the final judgments of God that all mankind would face. I believe what he is saying in the previous verse is that when we know God and know love it expels all fear and we no longer have fear of punishment period coming to God should be out of a place of love not out of a place of punishment; however, there will still be a time when everybody is judged.

There are many differences between God's judgment meetings and our own. We have laws and abundance in America, for example: a man can break those laws and still come out innocent. An innocent person can be found guilty by a jury of their peers and that happened just a few years ago with the Fairbanks four. Injustice and perversion of a legal systems happens all the time that's why trials here can take so long period but it is not that way and the heavenly courts. That place, God is judge, jury, and author of the law. Our laws in America are constantly being reinterpreted by judges, especially the supreme courts as they look at the constitution and laws and to look at the legality of the system. But God wrote the law. He knows exactly what is right and what is wrong and who did what and when they did it and what was their motive. He doesn't need to drag out this scene. Unless his sin has been covered up by the blood of Jesus mankind is guilty and our God will make that eternally and painfully clear in a very public way.

BODY

At the end of this life all of us die. This is one of the basics of life period from the moment that we take our first breath our bodies start to decay and we inevitably creep towards death and some get there before others. And so one of the most important questions people ask themselves is what happens after death.

Some believe that they will come back in another form or another life and get to try again at this one. Some believe that there is nothing and that man simply ceases to exist. Still others believe in various forms of heaven.

But what does happen at death. Death is the separation of the spirit and the body:

John 11:11-13

Then he said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but now I will go and wake him up.” 12 The disciples said, “Lord, if he is sleeping, he will soon get better!”13 They thought Jesus meant Lazarus was simply sleeping, but Jesus meant Lazarus had died.

In other words Jesus was saying our friend lazareth has had a separation of his spirit and body but I'm going to go and put them back together again in this life.

Read 2 Cor 5:1-9

Death is the consequence of sin. Romans 623 calls it the wages of sin. God told Adam and Eve in genesis not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would surely die. Death then is the ultimate manifestation or consequence of our sin a consequence that we will be ultimately delivered from through Jesus.

1Corinthians 15:24-26

24 After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power.25 For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet.26 And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.