Works Tried By Fire Series

Fire Series Part 5 by Pastor Rob Ketterling

We are continuing our Fire series, and I want to let you know that this week is a continuation of last week. And if you missed last week, you're still fine; this sermon will entirely make sense. But I would encourage you to go back and listen to last week's sermon in the Fire series. Because last week we talked about the great white throne judgment and the fact that everyone will have to stand before God and will be judged did we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, did we repent of our sins or not? And the Bible says in that moment, those that accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, those that have done that, the Bible says your name is recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life. We talked about this last week.

And the key thing is to get your name in that book. You want your name in there, because if your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life, the Bible says you're spending eternity with God in heaven, paradise. It's yours. If your name is not in the Book of Life, the Bible is very clear that you will spend your eternity in the lake of fire separated from God in this eternal punishment. And we don't want anyone to go there. Wasn't even created for man. It was created for the devil and his angels, fallen angels. But yet, when you don't repent of your sins, the Bible is very clear there is punishment for that.

But the amazing thing is you can get into the Book of Life by simply asking Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, forgive you of your sins, and accepting the price he paid on the cross. If you do that, you get in the Book of Life.

And last week in the sermon I said this doesn't motivate us to go out and tell people like, "Turn or burn!" You know, that is not an effective evangelism strategy. How many know that? That doesn't work. Okay. But it should motivate us that we know the truth, and we should do like Jude 1:23 talks about, snatching people out of the fire. We should be out snatching people out of the fire, rescuing them from the lake of fire and saying, "We know that God loves you and you need to get in on this. It is our responsibility to share that message with you."

Now, I want to let you know that as we continue this, we have the great white throne judgment, but then we have a new judgment that is going to take place for those that are believers in Jesus Christ. Those of us that know Jesus as our Lord and Savior will have an additional judgment. And although the great white throne judgment is a pass/fail you're either in the book or not in the book, you are either in heaven or in the lake of fire; it's a pass/fail this judgment that we're going to face that we're going to talk about today where our works will be tried by fire and check to see how pure they are, this judgment is not a pass/fail. This is one that will be graded according to the quality of what we do.

Okay, so I'm going to be very clear. It is not A's, B's, C's and F's, like that. It is more like the quality of a diamond or the quality of gold. Like, what value is it? It's going to be quality. Is it worth something or is it worthless? And so every one of us is going to face this judgment. And I want to let you know, as your pastor, I want to make sure that this day is good for you. I want to make sure that when you stand before God and he judges everything you did on this earth after you knew him as Lord and Savior, that that is a good day for you. That he can judge what you did and say, "You did a lot and it was with good motives, and you have a reward for this." So I want you to understand this. There is a day that we are going to face judgment as followers of Jesus Christ, so we should pay attention to this and make sure that we make that a good day.

So I'm going to read in I Corinthians chapter 3, and then I'm going to read from

II Corinthians chapter 5. And the Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth. That's why we call it I Corinthians, II Corinthians. He's writing these letters to them and helping the church to grow, helping them to correct error, and he's writing to the church at Corinth. So we are going to read what he says, because he gives us insight into this judgment that's going to take place. And the first passage is going to be spot on. It is going to make total sense. The second passage is going to have a little bit that will make sense, but I need to read it because I will come around to it at the end of the service.