Why Is There So Little Fear Of God’s Judgment Today? Series

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.)