Sermon Tone Analysis

I had a page of notes on this passage that as I was thinking about you guys and preparing this message, I realized wouldn’t help you.

I was going to talk about the intricacies of this passage and how there are multiple layers of recapitulation, but as God worked on my heart through this passage, I deleted all my notes.

Because, sure, we need to love God with all of our mind, but what’s equally as important, and has been something that I’ve neglected at times in my preaching is the heart.

So today, I want to focus on some issues of the heart that come from this passage.

Hear now the Living Word of God:

We’re seeing the all-powerful creator of the universe entering into his creation to bring final justice.

And as he sits on his throne, even the earth and the sky recognize their unworthiness in his presence, and they flee, but there’s nowhere to go from Him.

Yes, we are talking about judgment.

The whole point of this passage is that we have two options.

We can stand in judgement based on what is written in books, or based upon what is written in the book.

Here’s how it’s going to go:

Stack of books vs. one book.

Books vs. book of life.

Our deeds vs. Jesus’ deeds.

Explain judgement from books of our deeds because of God’s perfect memory.

And our sins will be read out.

All my pride.

Every evil thought.

Every minute wasted.

All of it will be on full display for everyone to see.

And for every accusation brought against me, Jesus will stand before the judge and say, "paid in full."

And whatever you wrestle with, your anger, your lust, your unforgiveness, it will all be read out for everyone to hear.

Followed by Jesus standing before the judge to declare: “Paid in full.”

Paul talks about life in view of this impending judgment in 1 Cor. 3.

He says:

For those who are in Christ , those who will be judged by the book of life, your foundation is Jesus.

If you’re not in Jesus, you’ve not repented of your sins, been baptized, and placed your trust in Jesus, your foundation is not in Christ.

You have no foundation.

Someone that I really enjoy watching right now is a pastor by the name of Jeff Durbin.

He has a lot videos on Youtube where he goes and he debates people on the street, and he’s so gentle and patient with people (I want to be like him when I grow up), but he doesn’t compromise on truth.

He tells people that outside of a foundation of revelation from God, there is no reliable foundation.

That without God, from an atheistic worldview, there is no foundation for morals, logic, or science.

If that’s you today, let me tell you in the gentlest and most loving way that I can- you have no foundation for life.

You are responsible for building from scratch your own worldview and for making for yourself meaning for your life, and I don’t think you can do that without God.

If you are a highly evolved bag of stardust that is the result of millions of years of accidents in an unguided unpurposed universe, your life has no meaning, value, or purpose, and there’s no right or wrong:

Richard Dawkins the most famous atheist admits this:

“There is no good.

There is no evil.

There is only blind and pitiless indifference.

The universe does not care.”

If you share his worldview, you must admit the same.

There is no foundation for you to stand on.

And you must admit that your life is meaningless and that you have no worth, meaning, or value.

I refuse to believe that about you.

We can stand in judgement based on what is written in books, or based upon what is written in the book.

For the rest of you, your foundation is Jesus, and your life is the building you build upon that foundation.

It’s a foundation of grace, and as a result of this grace, what kind of lives should we live?

Lives of godliness and grace.

What kind of building are you building?

Will you be ashamed as your deeds, good and bad are read out?

Or will you have built a building of faithfulness upon the foundation of Christ?

Is your faith genuine?

John says:

Do you freely confess your sins, or do you cover them up and pretend that everything is going okay in your life.

We are not okay.

It’s okay to admit that we are not okay.

John says later in his 1st letter:

This does not mean that you won’t sin.

I know that’s how it’s been translated.

But clearly John didn’t intend that, or he wouldn’t have said earlier that if we claim not to sin, we don’t know Jesus.

What John is saying is that those who choose to live a lifestyle of sin in view of God’s grace, does not know him.

Paul put it another way:

Let me encourage you with this: the apostle Paul, the man who wrote 20% of the books in the Bible, the man who was personally trained by Jesus for three years one on one in the desert, the man who gave up everything to follow where Jesus told him to go- that man did not conquer his sin until the Roman officials made him kneel down as they took a sword and removed his head from his body and Jesus raised him to life to reign with him.

Even Paul dealt with sin.

“For I do not understand the things I do.

For the things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I do.

I don’t understand myself for I do the very thing that I hate.

Oh wretched man that I am! Who can save me from this body of death!?! ......Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!”

We will never conquer our sin until we die.

But we can, by God’s grace, do a little better today than we did yesterday.

And we can view our sin like Paul did- as worse each passing year.

1 Cor.

15:8-9 (55 AD) “least of all the apostles”, 1 Tim.

1:15, “worst of all sinners” (62-66 AD)

Paul was distraught over his own sinfulness.

Because he was concerned with the building he built upon the foundation that Christ laid.

Paul was a man who wept over his sin.

And as he is judged, Jesus will stand and say “paid in full” for every charge leveled against him.

Let me ask you this:

When’s the last time you wept over your own sin?

The word of God comes with huge consequences and huge responsibilities.

Is your life one lived with the realization that you have sinned and you are no better than anyone else?

How do you react to verses like 1 Peter 1:17?

There are basically two ways to read that passage.

You can basically, say “God has no favorites?

Well, shoot.”

Because if God had favorites, you know you’d be one.

The other way to react to this passage is to say, “God has no favorite?

Thank God!” Because you realize the depth and the ugliness of your own sin.

Or put another way:

Do you understand the depth to which you’ve been forgiven, even if you’ve been in Church your whole life?

Even if we’ve broken the command of God once, we deserve Hell.

Because we have been given grace, we need to build a house of grace.

We can stand in judgement based on what is written in books, or based upon what is written in the book.

Let’s talk about what this looks like, functionally.

I just want to take a look at a couple of the hardest passages of Scripture for many, and maybe they might be hard for you as well:

Ouch.

I know I’m not the only one who has trouble sometimes controlling my tongue- sometimes speaking when you shouldn’t but ALSO not speaking when you should.

How about this one as we’re taught how to pray:

Forgiven people forgive people.