Don't Forget the Judge
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever heard the expression, “So and so will be late to their own funeral?” Maybe this is true of you - you are a person who is always late to things. Why are people late to things? There seem to be 2 main reasons: Either people are simply late people - they have a billion things to do or they underestimate how long it will take to travel somewhere and they simply arrive late, or people are late because they forget something. I had a good friend in college who forget something just about every day! He’d forget his wallet on Taco Bell runs, he’d forget his pen to class, he’d forget his Bible during Bible study and he’d forget his notes on the few occasions that we were allowed to use them on exams. Why did he forget things? I’m not entirely sure because he’s very smart, but part of it had to do with the fact that he didn’t always pay attention and he wasn’t very organized. As a result, he’d forget things and he’d show up late to important events.
Today, many people look at time and are pretty easy going about things. I’ll do this in the future. I’ll deal with this on another day. I’m only x amount of years old, I have plenty of time to do this later! I don’t need to pay attention now because I have my whole life in front of me. Even people who are older have similar sentiments - I’ll take the trip after this happens or I’ll make this important decision later. What happens, often times, though? Things don’t exactly go according to our plan! Later comes and we don’t get something accomplished because we weren’t prepared. We weren’t organized. We weren’t paying attention and life passes us by.
Sadly, many people forget to do business with God. They hear about God as a child and they put Him off. I don’t need God and His rules today - I’ll do business with Him later because I want to live it up today. I have other priorities here and now. We can be tempted to put God off for later, and in doing so, many people forget to do business with God altogether.
Friends, time is of the essence. Many of us are aware of this and have done business with the Lord, but each of us can be tempted to forget to do this on a daily basis. We can forget the urgency we must have to share the Gospel with others as well. It can be easy to forget and to push things to the back burner as we think that we have more time. Tonight, we’re going to be in Psalm 50:1-6 as we look at the fact that God is the Judge and He is summoning the universe to Himself. We cannot forget our God and all that He has done.
1 The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks; he summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2 From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God appears in radiance.
3 Our God is coming; he will not be silent! Devouring fire precedes him, and a storm rages around him.
4 On high, he summons heaven and earth in order to judge his people:
5 “Gather my faithful ones to me, those who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”
6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God is the Judge. Selah
God is Coming (1-3)
God is Coming (1-3)
One of the most incredible truths of Christianity is that our God speaks. We can know our God through His Word! This particular Psalm speaks to the fact that there will be a time of judgment whenever He comes. The Psalmist says that God is summoning the earth - what does this look like? How many of you have ever been summoned to serve on jury duty? I haven’t had this honor yet, but Lindsey has. She was able to avoid it due to student teaching but if and when you get this call, you are given some responsibilities to uphold and one of those responsibilities is you have to show up to the court because you’ve been served or summoned. God summons the earth and He does so in order to make an announcement that He is coming - He will not be silent. Notice, the Psalmist doesn’t simply say that God summons Israel - He does so to the entire world! Every where the sun touches is being summoned to Him. Jesus affirms that all the world is under the Father’s authority
45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
God shows all people of the earth His existence simply by the sun shining day in and day out or by rain falling throughout the year! Romans 1 shares with us that the whole world is without excuse because we all experience the truth of His existence through creation. These are simple reminders of our God’s existence. If we know that God exists and we know that God has spoken in His Word, what must we do? We must pay attention to what He says. We must obey and be prepared! Throughout God’s Word, we are reminded that He is coming. Certainly with Jesus Christ we know that He came once and He promised that He would come again! Whenever He comes a second time, though, it won’t be as an innocent baby in a manger or as the sacrificial lamb - rather, He is coming as the great judge
12 “Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work.
His coming will not be silent - it won’t be a secret event contrary to what some think. It will be a coming and everyone will see Him
7 Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be. Amen.
Psalm 50 notes that fire will precede Him and a storm will rage around Him. We, in the Midwest, think of storms being devastating and we’ve experienced such devastation in the past. In the Bible - especially in the Old Testament, whenever God appears somewhere, there is a storm. We see this in Psalm 18, specifically. We know from Scripture that God is holy and that He calls His followers to be holy as well.
29 for our God is a consuming fire.
Why is our holiness so important to God? Because in a world of unholiness, holiness stands out. How do we demonstrate holiness? By being other than sin. By being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ - by dying to self and following Christ. Why should we practice this? Because we know that our God is coming back and that He will not be silent. There will be a time of judgment at His arrival and it will is crucial for us to share this reality with others. Because we know that God’s Word is truth and we know that Christ is coming back, the most unloving thing we can do is not warn people of His coming!
God is the Judge (4-6)
God is the Judge (4-6)
Whenever He comes, He will judge the world. Whenever people think of a judge today, they think of lots of different things: who is this judge, why is he the judge, what are his credentials, what will the verdict be? In our world, especially our country, people don’t like judges because they want to be in control of everything. They definitely don’t like it whenever you say something that comes across as judgmental because that’s not nice and they’ll say that that isn’t your place to pass judgment - after all Matthew 7:1 says
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
Based on this, I guess we shouldn’t call sin sin because people in our world call that judging - right? Obviously this isn’t true.
20 Publicly rebuke those who sin, so that the rest will be afraid.
We are to call sin what it is: sin. We do so out of love but we never water down the truth of Scripture. When it comes to judging someone’s salvation, though, that is completely different story. We can evaluate someone’s fruit but we cannot evaluate their salvation because we aren’t the judge of that. The judge is God and God alone! Some people complain about this. Why is God the judge? Isn’t everyone basically good enough on their own? The Bible says no.
The Bible shares that God is a righteous judge and He calls upon several witnesses for this trial of sorts. He summons the heaven and earth to judge His people. How will God’s judgment work? We are all found guilty based on our works. Even if people think that they’ve done enough, they haven’t.
In our Bible reading plan, we’ve been in the book of Judges recently and today or tomorrow, based on how you start your reading, we’re in Judges 7/8 and we’re reading about Gideon and his army going up against the Midianites. We know this story well, as the army keeps getting shrunk by God until there are 300 troops remaining. The Israelites, as directed by God, experience a tremendous victory. How does the story end, though? At the end of Judges 8 we see that Gideon dies and then this
34 The Israelites did not remember the Lord their God who had rescued them from the hand of the enemies around them.
They didn’t remember the Lord their God and how He had rescued them from their enemies. This is the cycle in the book of Judges: They suffer, they repent, God sends a judge, they are freed, and then they forget. There is a gave danger in forgetting the Lord and all that He has done - and sadly, in our world, many people have forgotten or are completely oblivious to what the Bible says about the Lord our God. There is a danger for many people who have grown up coming to church to simply think that everyone already knows about Jesus and there’s no work to be done - as we studied during our last Bible study, there are about 3.2 billion people out there who are classified as “unreached” and most of which have never heard the name of Jesus. What must we do as a result of this? Friends, we can’t forget the judge. We can’t forget the fact that Jesus is coming back and there are many people who have never even heard of His name.
Conclusion
Conclusion
There are some things in life that we can forget. You can forget an item at the grocery store. You can forget a sock in the dryer. You can forget to bring a pencil with you to school. But you can’t forget to business with the God of the Universe. While people might think that they’ll just do business with Him later on, we know that we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. We aren’t even guaranteed another breath! Therefore, we must listen whenever God speaks through His Word. We must get to work with what He calls us to do! We must point people to Christ and encourage them to repent and trust in Him. We do this because it’s what we are called to do, but we also do it because we don’t know when He will return. While we look forward to this day as Christians, we also know that this time will be a horrifying time for those who are not in Christ. As a result, there is work to be done!