I believe No.10 God will judge the world

And, uh, go through to the end of chapter twenty-five. Matthew chapter twenty-five and verse thirty-one. When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His throne in heavenly glory.

All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left. Then the King will say to those on His right, Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in.

I needed clothes, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me.

Then the righteous will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you, or thirsty, and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger, and invite you in, or needing clothes, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and go to visit you? The King will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. Then He will say to those on His left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat.

I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes, and you did not clothe me.

I was sick, and in prison, and you did not look after me. They also will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or needing clothes, or sick, or in prison, and did not help you? He will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

I would like you to turn to the Acts of the Apostles in chapter 17, and the 31st verse, which I'll read to you, and then we have a brief prayer. Acts 17, verse 31. I'll take up the reading from the previous verse.

In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice. By the man he has appointed, he has given proof of this to all men, by raising him from the dead. Father, we offer this word to you this evening, and pray for help in its delivery.

We ask too for blessing to be upon Andrew Bryant, and Jim Dean, as they minister Andrew in Brighton, and Jim in one of the villages. Bless them abundantly as they're engaged in proclaiming the gospel right now, and help us here for Jesus' sake. Amen.

If you ever have the misfortune of being in the rush hour, in Calcutta, you will appreciate what is meant by the expression, the quick and the dead. You're either the former, or you're the latter, because it's bedlam in Calcutta. When the shops and the offices and the bazaars turn out, and people try to make their way home, the quick and the dead, that's a phrase which really owes its origin to the prayer book, and the updated version of the prayer book, and the presentation of the creed, speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ coming to judge the quick and the dead.

Quick there means the living, and the dead. And if he's going to come back to judge the dead, then just apply a little bit of logic this evening, shake your head and get the machinery of your brain moving, it must imply that the dead will be raised, because it's hard for anyone, including, I speak with respect, our Lord, to judge and to speak to a corpse. So when the creed says of the Lord Jesus, that he will come back to judge the living and the dead, it presupposes that the Lord Jesus is going to raise from the grave, however people may have been buried down the centuries, whether through cremation, whether being buried at sea, whether being martyred in the jungle, whether being entombed in Durrington Cemetery, it doesn't matter what the mechanics of the entombment were, the Lord Jesus will raise every intelligent being who ever lived, and he will pass judgment on them.

Now does that sound to you as being a far-fetched idea? I would argue that logically it's quite reasonable when you approach judgment in any area of life. What do I mean? Well, you have your motor car and it's gone beyond three years, what do you have to do? Bring it into the garage. What does the mechanic do? He tests it.

He passes judgment on it. Is it safely able to negotiate the roads here in Worthing? If it is, it gets a certificate. If it isn't, it doesn't qualify and something has to be done.

Some of you are aware of these weird things called O-levels and A-levels, and they don't give them out with Green Shield stamps. You have to work very hard in your school, in your college, to acquire a bunch of them, or CSEs. What does the examiner do, that nasty little man or lady? She reads your manuscript, he looks at your essay, and he's either impressed or the reverse, and as a result you get your examination through, you get your credit, whatever the case may be, or you fail.

In every area of life, the idea of judgment is reasonable. Drive your car at 75 miles an hour down Chapel Road, the police pick you up. What do you expect when the magistrate has you in front of him? That he throws a book at you is dead right, because you were behaving in a very insensitive, a very foolish, not to say a murderous way.

So this whole business of judgment, far from being something illogical and removed from life, is part and parcel of life that we enjoy here on earth at this moment. But of course, the judgment that the Bible makes reference to is far more serious, however important your academic attainments might be, in your attempts to get your O and A levels, it's far more important than that, more important than getting your car through the MOT, more important than anything else in life, the recognition that God will one day judge you. And I wish I had the eloquence of a Spurgeon tonight to impress upon you the increasing burden that grows on my soul as I handle something that is so somber and so important that I don't feel qualified to bring it to your attention.

And if ever I've been dependent on the Spirit of God in bringing a message during the years I've been a minister here, then it is this evening. The Bible tells us that a day has been appointed when men and women who lived on planet earth will be confronted with judgment. Now Jesus says on one occasion, Matthew 24 and verse 36, But Jesus makes it very, very clear, as do the Old Testament writers, a day has been appointed for judgment.

Some of you were in at Ken Jowett's Bible study on the book of Amos the other Thursday, and you might have come across the expression, the day of the Lord. And Amos warns the Jews, because the Jews believe that when the day of the Lord occurs and God brings together all of his purposes, the Jewish nation in particular will be favored. And Amos says, no, you who are looking forward to that day, remember, it is also a day of judgment.

And as God passes judgment upon the Gentile community in Old Testament days, so he'll pass judgment on you. You read those sleepy minor prophets, dusty minor prophets, because a lot of you never even read them. Blow away the cobweb from your Old Testament, and time and time and time and time again, you come across the phrase, the day of the Lord, the day of the Lord, the day of the Lord.

You move into the New Testament, and no way is that expression lost, as is indicated in the quote I gave you from Matthew 24. Of that day, says Jesus, nobody knows the moment when it will dawn, but he gives the full authority of his own being to the belief that the day will come. Listen to him as he speaks again in Matthew's Gospel, and he's warning those who do not listen to what the disciples have to say as he sends them out in ministry.

He says in the 15th verse of the 10th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. And when you move on into the epistle of Peter, and there are so many verses that I could read this evening from the New Testament, I'm spoilt for choice, you discover once more that he's speaking of this concept so lively in the Old Testament writers' understanding. To Peter 3 in verse 10, the day of the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

The Bible says that history has a point when it began, the history of mankind, and it has a point when it will conclude. And the way that you live your life here on planet earth will be judged by God. There was a man by the name of Immanuel Kant.

You may not have heard of Immanuel Kant, may even think it's a funny name, but he was a very interesting character. He was a philosopher. And he brought out an argument, which I don't think is too difficult for the majority here to grasp, as to why he believed in God.

And it's known as the moral argument. And it says simply this, within my vocabulary there is the verb ought, and I know what I ought to do on a particular occasion. Let's put this into a sort of semi-humorous fashion.

I know I ought not to bong somebody on the head, because people don't generally go around worthing, hitting others on the head, and being applauded for it. I know I ought not to do this. There are basic things, given a bundle of circumstances, where I know how I ought to behave, and I know how I ought not to behave.

Now Kant said this, how is it that we've got this knowledge? And he went on to say that there's an in-built barometer, so to speak, within our personalities, that comes from some supreme being, and we know the difference between right and wrong. And if I know that difference, if there is a law that I understand, even though I've never read the Bible, the law must come from somewhere. Where does it come from? It comes from God, who makes you say this ought to be, or this ought not to be.

Nikita Khrushchev was one of the leaders of the Soviet Union in the fifties and sixties. And on one occasion, when he was in the United Nations, he took his shoe off, and he bashed the desk in front of him with his shoe. He was so annoyed with the policies of certain power groups in the world, and he said it ought not to be, it ought not to be.

And he was in a frenzy. And what he never realized when he said it ought not to be, was that this atheistic man was in effect saying there is a law that I recognize, that comes from someone outside of myself, that compels me to say this bit of political philosophy and maneuvering in the world is utterly and completely wrong. Now if you know what's right, and you know what's wrong, where did the barometer come from? A fluke of evolution, you must be crazy.

My cat couldn't care two hoots whether I put the fish down on the floor and said you eat it or you don't eat it. He eats it if it's fish, it belongs to him. He's got no morality at all.

He'll even be so immoral as to go in the next door neighbor's garden where they have a fish pond which not only has fish but also frogs and we've had a steady supply of both those things in our living room from time to time. The distinction between a cat or any of the animal world and ourselves is simply fundamentally this. We know in given circumstances what we ought to do and the Bible tells us this, that one day because of the knowledge that we have, however fragmentary of the way that we should live our lives, we will be brought face to face with the judge and sentenced one way or another will be passed on us.

There are of course some people who say well, in one sense judgment is continuous. It's not such a question of the day of judgment but judgment is a process that's knitted into the very fabric of life and in one degree I admit to this. There was one great philosopher who said the story of the world is the judgment of the world.

Think that one through. The story of the world is the judgment of the world and in many senses we're being judged in the 20th century for the sins of the 19th century as the 19th century people were judged for the sins of the 18th century people. Some of the great barbaric acts of history have already been judged.

Nations that were once great, that went around the world as though they could never be toppled, have been brought low and to utter historical extinction. Where are the Caesars? Where are these mighty men who arrogated to themselves the position of God? Where is that man, that madman by the name of Helio Garbalus, one of the Caesars in the 3rd century, who reckoned he was God himself and ultimately died a terrible suicide's death? Where is the power of Assyrian Babylon? Where is the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler? Extinguished. The history of the world in one sense is the judgment of the world for the story of mankind is a story of disaster, one after another being compounded into the 20th century.

But the Bible makes it very clear that though judgment is already with us, there is a day when judgment will be visible and absolute. There are some who say, and with a degree of reason, that we are judged when we die, after death the judgment. And in this sense I will agree that when we die, we have reached a point of no return.

Inasmuch as we cannot come back from the grave of our own volition, neither can we change any of the decisions that we had made heretofore before the point of death. There is no possibility of responding to the gospel after death. And so in that sense it is true to say that when we die, we face judgment.

But the Bible makes it clear that the judgment on the last day will be public and not private. It will not only affect the soul, it will affect the body. It will not only have reference to a single individual but to all men.

Are you with me? Are you hearing me? Because these things need to be written across your mind and your comprehension must be clear. When the Bible says that God has appointed a day to judge the world, the Word of God means just what it says. And what is more, the judge has been selected.

Isn't that what our scripture indicates? The judge has been selected. We are told in that verse from the 17th of Acts, he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. Who is going to judge the world? Well, the Bible makes it very clear here.

It is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the judge. Listen to our Savior as he speaks in the 5th chapter of John's Gospel.

And we are told in the 22nd verse, Moreover the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Now someone who knows John's Gospel might find that a very puzzling statement because later on in the 12th chapter and the 57th verse we read of our Lord Jesus Christ declaring that he has not come into the world to judge the world for I did not come to judge the world but to save it. Verse 47 of John 12 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words.

Because that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. Now there is no contradiction. The opposites there are just what seem to be apparently contradictions.

But if you think them through they are not. When Jesus is speaking about his ministry on the earth during the period of his years here on the planet he refers to his ministry in terms of salvation. He came to save.

He is the Savior. He comes not to condemn but to seek and to save what is lost during the years that he is here. But we've now in the creedal statement gone beyond his death to his resurrection, beyond his resurrection to the ascension, beyond the ascension to his return.

And to him is given all authority in the universe. He has all power invested in him including the power of judge. He has the right to act for the Father.

The power of attorney is his. And someone has neatly and I trust sensitively said you either meet Jesus Christ here on earth as Savior or one day you meet him as judge. The man has been appointed who will judge the world and no one can argue against the selection.

There is nothing unfair in this. The judge before whom you will stand has known the type of life with its strains and its temptations that you have known only he's known it more because he never broke under the stress of temptation at all. You will have no right to say that this being is unqualified because he's never experienced what you have experienced.

He's experienced it and more. And the God-man before whom you will stand has been carefully selected by God the Father. God the Son shall be the judge and in the interim period it's God the Spirit at work through the ministry of gospel proclamation today who convinces men and women of sin and of judgment of the fact that they need to repent and as our brothers sang they need to get ready.

The third thing we've discovered that a day has been appointed and the judge has been selected. The scale has been defined. The scale has been defined.

For he has set a day when he will judge the world. That's what I mean by scale. Another word, scope.

He will judge every man and every woman. I care not whether you're a natural descendant of Abraham or whether you're a Gentile. Whether you're a Jew or a non-Jew, whether you are rich or poor, whether you were born in the West or in the East, whether you had a great degree of intelligence, whether you were mediocre or whether you were dull.

He will judge you. He will judge every created being that had intelligence from Adam onwards on this earth. I will even argue but not take the digression or else it would cost me too much time that on the day of judgment too he will judge the fallen angels and they too will be sentenced as a result of his holy convocation.

The judgment will be universal. Once again, listen to John as he reports the words of our Lord Jesus Christ from the 24th verse of the 5th chapter. I tell you the truth.

Yes, if you've got scripture I'll be glad you turned to it because it's a very, very important passage. John chapter 5 and verse 24. I tell you the truth.

Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth.

The time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself so he has granted the Son to have life in himself and he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Now moving to the important aspect that I'm pushing at this point.

Do not be amazed at this for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good will rise to live and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing.

I judge only as I hear and my judgment is just for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. Tell me if there's any meaning left at all in English language and sometimes I wonder the way that words are prostituted in these days to give them a subtle twist and change of direction. If I have any understanding of the vernacular does not that indicate that when Jesus returns the dead will be raised, all the dead and those who are alive too will be caught up to meet with our Lord Jesus and stand before him on that great day of judgment You listen to David so clearly read from Matthew 25 the parable of the sheep and the goats I wish there was time to go into it and to show you how the poetry is to be understood but the principle surely was obvious to you that Jesus was saying that all the nations of the world the representatives of all nations every individual shall stand before him and he will separate them into the category of sheep and goats the saved and the unsaved those who are in the family of God and those who are excluded from the family of God If I had the time I would take you through parable after parable I'd take you through the Acts of the Apostles into the epistles that Paul wrote into the epistles that John wrote into the epistles that Peter wrote and finish up with Revelation and almost my friend, take it from me as someone who reads the Bible so very, very regularly on every page this message of judgment is there Oh, I wish sometimes in preaching down on the promenade in Worthing or on Montague precinct with all the scuffing and the jeering that people sometimes launch out at me and others who are preaching I wish that we had the abilities to hold those people's attention as you are listening to me this evening because this is the message that is far more important than any other message you may hear not because I'm preaching it, God forbid I wish that someone else was here to preach this because I feel so utterly unqualified to bring the force of Scripture before you right now but this is spellbinding this comes with the authority of God all of us in this tabernacle whether you're a child or whether you're an adult all of us one day will stand before Jesus Christ no exception this judgment will be about issues which are non-negotiable non-negotiable what do I mean by that? well, there will be two things that will be uppermost in the mind of our judge as we stand before him what did we do with the gospel? and secondly, and let me say this needs hammering in evangelical circles today what did we do with our fellow men and women? I'll come back to that in a moment or two let me pick up an immediate objection there are those who say but how can you possibly bring the Hindu from India before Jesus Christ and ask him to judge them or ask them to submit to his judgment when they've never heard the gospel or how could you bring an Old Testament Jew and judge them on that basis? well, the word of God makes it very clear there are a number of tests all of which lock into gospel privileges which are brought to bear on the day of judgment the Hindu has this moral law that Nikita Khrushchev witnessed too when he was thumping the bench in the United Nations with his shoe and Romans 1 tells us that those who have been unreached with the gospel ignorant of the gospel of Christ will be judged according to the law of conscience and those who lived as Jews pre the era of Jesus Christ will be judged according to the Mosaic law but the majority of people here in the West will be judged according to what they did with the gospel of Christ and also, I added, what they did in their attitudes, in their behavior patterns to men and women on this earth what do you mean? by what have you done with Jesus Christ or to the gospel of Jesus Christ? well, why did Jesus come into the world? the Bible makes it clear that during his 30 odd years on planet earth he did not come to condemn the world he did not come to judge the world he came as Savior when he died on the cross of Calvary he was shedding his blood for the sins that you have committed and I have committed and the Bible says the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses us from all sin there is no more precious thing on God's earth than the blood of Christ I would trade one drop of that blood for all the wealth of Johannesburg's gold mines all the diamonds of Kimberley are not worth the blood of Jesus Christ it is the most precious thing in the universe angels hallow the blood of Jesus and the blood of Christ has its power still to cleanse men and women I would not want to go through this world without a knowledge that the blood of Christ and its power has been applied to my life but having had that explained and rejecting the gospel message means that when one stands before the throne of Jesus one is undone and utterly condemned because it's only through him and the shedding of his blood that there is salvation ah, but you said you added a rider and I did indeed what was that rider? well, it's simply this that consequent upon confessing Jesus as Lord if faith means anything at all it moves into action that's why Jesus taught the parable of the sheep and the goats and you remember how at the end of the parable you've got this little discussion between the man who said he didn't do anything for Jesus and the man who said well, when did I not do this and not do the other? you remember, the parable finishes with the value of the cup of cold water what is Jesus teaching? that if I have been changed by the blood of Christ then my life will show it and the way that I live from that moment on is an indication of the quality of my faith you're not saved by works but faith that does not move into action is a paralyzed faith it's less than a biblical faith I go further it is not a saving faith faith without works is dead if you've not got no concern for the third world and the need of people out there your faith is dead if you've got no concern for your neighbor or for strangers who come into the tabernacle on a Sunday night or a Sunday morning your faith is dead if your bank balance is just there to accumulate more and more and more and you know the need that exists I say your faith is dead you say, I'm preaching hard this evening my friend, I'm not preaching hard enough one day I will blush in the presence of Christ that my preaching like my lifestyle was so anemic God asks from those whose lives have been changed a sense of compassion towards others it's a disgrace if anyone comes into the tabernacle and feels lonely it's a disgrace as brother Patterson was saying this morning if you've got a good home and you never invite anybody in it it's a shame if you've got many talents and personality advantages that others have haven't got and you don't use them all these things you see are going to be assessed on the day of judgment Christians will be judged not for the sins they committed for those who have been absolved by the blood of Christ but they will be judged for the way that they control their time the way they control their finance the way they engaged as best they could within the limitations of their talents in gospel communication and that's one of the reasons why the doctrine of judgment needs to be brought to Christians as well as to non-Christians I'm through actually I'm not but the time says I'm through let me repeat what God's word says and it's not my comments that are important it's God's word that needs to be imprinted upon your mind indelibly God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed he has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead he's coming back he's coming back to execute judgment and he's coming back to set up his glorious kingdom I'm going to ask our two brothers to come back up here and just sing that song again and then we're going to have a minute of quietness they're locking together little snippets of scripture that speak of the shock of the return of Christ listen to them prayerfully as they sing it Life was filled with guns and wars Everyone got trampled on the floor I wish we'd all been ready Children died, the days grew cold Piece of bread would buy a bag of gold I wish we'd all been ready There's no time to change your mind The sun has come and you've been left behind Man and wife asleep in bed She hears a noise and turns her head He's gone I wish we'd all been ready Two men coming up a hill One disappears, one's left standing still I wish we'd all been ready There's no time to change your mind The sun has come and you've been left behind Life was filled with guns and wars And everyone got trampled on the floor I wish we'd all been ready Children died, the days grew cold A piece of bread would buy a bag of gold I wish we'd all been ready There's no time to change your mind How could I have been so blind? The father's come, the demons died The sun has come and you've been left behind You've been left behind Let's just pray How to be ready Ready for the advent of Christ Simply by praying something like this If you want to ensure that you're right with God then Follow me in your mind As I pray a penitence prayer Heavenly Father I apologize for the careless way in which I have lived my life I recognize that many of your laws I have deliberately broken There were circumstances when I knew what to do and deliberately went the other way I come with blushes on my face into your presence I acknowledge my guilt I turn to your son I believe that he died for me I accept the pardon of his shed blood And I commit myself now to you Fill me with your spirit And however long is left of my life Or of the story of man on this earth May I live it for your glory Recognizing that the day is coming When the son shall return And I shall be with him Forever Father bless those who prayed this prayer or something similar And we praise you For all the benefits of the gospel In the name of Jesus our Lord Amen