Amen.
Let us begin with a word of prayer.
Lord, we come to Thee this morning, and I feel so inadequate, I think as we should, to share the Word of God. Because it is not my words, Lord; it is Yours. And I do not want to misrepresent You in any way this morning.
So I ask that the Holy Spirit really anoint me to speak Thy Word. Lord, anoint us in such a way that we can hear Your words specifically, each one of us, for the things that You need to say to each one this morning.
Lord, we come to Thee. Lord, we share this precious table with Thee. Lord, You have offered Yourself once again fully to us. We want to come and offer ourselves fully to Thee.
And Lord, we ask now that You would bless this time. And Lord Jesus, do with this word as You intend to, to divide soul and spirit. Lord, bring us to that place where our whole lives are centered on our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I wanted to begin with that song this morning that we just sang, “Face to Face,” because if the Lord comes back soon—and praise the Lord, I think He will—our first experience when we are raptured will be to see Him face to face.
And I guess what is on my heart is this: are we ready for that? Are we truly ready to see Him face to face?
One of the deepest prayers that ever touched my heart was when a brother prayed many years ago. He said, “Lord, when I meet You, will I meet a stranger?”
We do not want to meet a stranger. So I think it is important that we know Who our Lord is, and that when we meet Him face to face, we are prepared in our hearts to see Him. So that is what is on my heart.
But let me bring you up to date in this saga of Abraham’s life, which we see is very similar to our own life of faith. As a matter of fact, if you read the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you get a full scope of this life of faith—living with the Lord and before the Lord.
This morning we are going to be in Genesis 19 and 20. Last time, I shared basically the difference between Lot and Abraham.
Lot represents the carnal Christian, living a worldly life—one foot in the world, still attached to the Lord and the things of the Lord, yet living a life of self-pleasing and self-pleasure. He was a compromised Christian because of his love for the world.
When judgment came upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the city in which he lived, the Lord sent angels and literally had to pull him out of that city. His life was exposed. When the Lord brought judgment, what he ended up with was himself and his two daughters. Everything else in his life was destroyed.
He lost all of that, even his wife. If you remember the story, she turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back. She just could not give up the world in her heart. She was so attached to it that she became part of the world from which she had been living.
Well, that was his life. We would say he was barely saved, and he suffered loss, of course.
Then there was Abraham, who represents the spiritual Christian: one who was following the Lord, one who loved the Lord. The key words to Abraham’s life are that he was a stranger and a pilgrim, and he remained that way all of his life, even in the land of promise.
In other words, the world was not something he grasped at or desired. He desired for the purpose of God to be fulfilled—that God would have a family of sons like His Son, Jesus Christ. The promised Seed, from which all blessings would come, was to come through Abraham.
Abraham had dedicated his life to that because God had appeared to him. He desired more than things for himself; he desired the Lord.
Now, we have brought out some of his failures and lapses in faith, so he was not perfect by any means. But he was one who had a desire in his heart to follow the Lord and to serve God and His purpose.
When judgment came on Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham was not there. Praise the Lord. He was up on the mountain. He was still living in tents as a stranger and a pilgrim. He was not the city dweller Lot had become.
So he was up on the mountain. He saw the judgment, but as a result of that judgment, he suffered no loss at all. We see the contrast between these two lives and the consequences of them.
We saw that God is not only the God of grace and the God of mercy, which we are so familiar with, but that He is also a God of judgment.
There is a purpose behind God’s judgment. Frankly, it is to destroy evil, to destroy anything contrary to His nature. We often look at judgment as a bad thing, and the world does. But brothers and sisters, it is a very good thing, because in judgment God finally brings to an end all things that are against Him and His purpose.
His grace is what we live by as Christians. But we know sometimes that we do not partake of that grace, and so God uses judgment to deal with those things. We will see more of that this morning.
There are a couple of other things that I did not want to skip over. We will see that He is truly a God of mercy and a great Redeemer as well. But the main thing on my heart is to be prepared when we see Him face to face at the judgment seat of Christ.
Let us look at Genesis 19:29, 31-38.
Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.
And Lot went up from Zoar, and stayed in the mountains, and his two daughters with him; for he was afraid to stay in Zoar, and he stayed in a cave.
Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on the earth to come in to us after the manner of the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our family through our father.”
Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. And the firstborn bore a son, and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. As for the younger, she also bore a son, and called his name Ben-ammi; he is the father of the sons of Ammon to this day.
You know, I started to skip over this story totally. But as I meditated on the Scriptures, I felt like I could not, because there is something that we need to learn from this story. The Lord would not have put it here if it was not important.
So what is it that we need to see in this story? Lot lived a compromised life, and therefore his whole family lived a compromised life. His daughters were not really brought up with a sense of trying to follow the Lord or being taught the things of the Lord.
When judgment came and they went up to the cave to escape, it was just them. You might remember from the story that the daughters were engaged, and the men who were engaged to them died in the judgment. Even though Lot shared what was going to happen, they chose to stay. They did not believe him.
So, discouraged and dismayed, and thinking it was the end of the family, they did not really go to the Lord and ask, “Lord, what should we do? Is there some provision so that our family name will not be completely obliterated?”
They simply went to man’s reasoning. They came up with this scheme involving their father, and they got him drunk so that he did not know what he was doing.
What were the results? The Moabites and the Ammonites. Why is that important?
It is because there are consequences to our sins, brothers and sisters, and we need to know that. Sometimes consequences go way beyond the time of the sin that we commit.
The result of Lot’s compromised life, and of his daughters not really knowing or following the Lord, was the Moabites and the Ammonites. They became enemies of the nation of Israel.
They were related, because Lot was Abraham’s nephew. But through the years there is a sordid history. As Israel tried to go into the promised land, the Ammonites resisted them and began to fight them.
Let me read Deuteronomy 23:3.
No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter into the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation shall none of them enter into the assembly of the Lord for ever:
Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.
You remember the story about Balaam and his donkey. The Moabites would not give Israel bread and water or help them get into the promised land. The Ammonites fought against them, and they were overthrown.
This was God’s judgment on the Ammonites and the Moabites. He said, in effect, “You cannot have anything to do with the house of God unto the tenth generation.”
Consequences, brothers and sisters. We often think as Christians that when we sin or do something wrong, it only affects us—that it is just between us and the Lord. That is simply not true.
Often it affects our families and others, and it has consequences far beyond the time in which the sins actually occurred. God eventually had to judge the Ammonites and the Moabites for their resistance to His purpose of bringing Israel into the promised land.
But I also want you to be aware of the great mercy of our great Redeemer.
The Moabites were excluded from the house of God. But if you look in the lineage of Jesus Christ, Who is the true promised Seed, you will find something very interesting in Matthew. It mentions women in the lineage, and one of them is Ruth.
Ruth was a Moabite woman, under a curse—not man’s curse, but God’s curse.
But she saw something in her mother-in-law, Naomi. The bottom line is that Naomi and her family had been in the land of Moab looking for food. Eventually, the husbands died there.
Naomi’s two daughters-in-law wanted to go back with her, and she said, “No, you need to stay with your people.” One of them chose to remain with the life she was comfortable with and familiar with.
But Ruth said, “No, no, no. I do not care what you tell me or how much you encourage me to go away. I am going to follow you wherever you go, and Your God will be my God.”
In other words, she was willing to give up her life. And God honored that.
You remember the story of Ruth: how she went out into the field, and it happened to be the field of Boaz. Boaz is in the line of Christ. He became her kinsman-redeemer, redeeming her from her poverty. He also fell in love with her and became her husband.
From the birth of their child came the lineage of Jesus Christ. I say that because our God is a great Redeemer. Praise the Lord for that.
Brothers and sisters, there are consequences. We need to be aware of that. But as we see the consequences of our past lives, or things that we have done affecting others, we need to pray and trust that God will be merciful and become the Redeemer in that situation—to redeem not just us, but others from the consequences of our sins.
Ruth, a Moabite, was under the curse of God. But God redeemed her.
Our brother shared on this a few weeks ago: we are of Adam. The whole race of Adam, because of the failure of Adam and Eve, came under a curse.
That whole Adamic race is cursed and cannot enter the kingdom of God. You were born of Adam, and that is why you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
But God is a great, merciful God and a great Redeemer. You are under a curse even from birth.
But here is the glory: through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, we can actually be born again into a new family, into the family of Christ, with a new life.
It is a spiritual life. It is a real life. It is not an idea. The seed of the life of Christ is put in you when you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are born again into a new family. There is no curse on that family. Praise the Lord.
As far as the old Adamic life in you, it says that you have been crucified in Christ. It is over. What a glorious thing God has done.
Brothers and sisters, as we look into the Word of God and study Genesis, I want to encourage us all not only to read it, but to meditate on it and allow the Holy Spirit to show us things.
This little simple story—almost one you might want to leave out of the Bible—is so rich. It really shows us something of Who our Lord Jesus Christ is, of this great God to Whom we are connected. He is the great Redeemer.
Let us now go to Genesis 20:1-2, 6.
And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the land of the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar.
And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister”: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.And God said unto him in a dream, “Yea, I know that in the integrity of thy heart thou hast done this, and I also withheld thee from sinning against Me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.”
The story goes on. Abraham is rebuked by Abimelech and sent away. Once again, God gets him out of a difficult situation.
What has happened? Once again, we see Abraham’s faith falter. After the judgment he witnessed from the mountain—the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah—something happened with Abraham, and we see his faith faltering once again.
He does something similar to what he had done before. When he first came into the land, he found famine and enemies, so he went to Egypt. He told the king of Egypt that Sarah was his sister because he feared he would be killed and that the king would take her because she was beautiful.
God got him out of that situation. Praise the Lord for that. Abraham got himself into a fix he could not get out of, and he was rebuked and sent away.
We see the same thing repeating here. He does the exact same thing with another king.
What is going on here with Abraham? First of all, we need to know that God is merciful. Abraham was His. Sarah was His. God had made His covenant with Abraham and Sarah.
When they got into this fix, praise the Lord, the Lord sovereignly got them out. There was nothing they could do.
Have you ever been in that situation in your life? You use your own reasoning and your own ways to solve your problem instead of going to the Lord. You get in a deeper hole, and you do not know how to get out. Then somehow the Lord moves sovereignly to deliver you.
That is our God. He is committed to us. Thank the Lord, even though Abraham did it the second time, God delivered him.
The other thing we need to know is how committed God is to His purpose and to His covenant. He was committed to having a family, a nation of people for Himself, which would come through the promised Seed He had promised.
The interesting thing to me is that the Lord spoke to Abimelech and said, “I did not let you touch her.” It was God’s hand that kept him from doing that. God was protecting His purpose.
We need to see the great issue that was at stake here in this simple story.
If you read the timeline from Genesis 18 through this passage, you remember that God had come back to Abraham and Sarah and reassured them that they would have a child. The child would be born from the union between Abraham and Sarah.
Sarah did not believe at first because she was far too old, and Abraham was far too old. But Abraham had faith, and God covenanted with them: “I promise you this. This is going to happen.”
Isaac was born one year after that. That is the very next story in the Bible: Isaac being born.
There is a one-year period in there. I do not know this, and I want to be clear about that. But it is possible that Sarah could have been pregnant at this point, because there is only a year between those two stories and this event occurs in between.
What if, because of Abraham’s lapse of faith and failure, God had not sovereignly acted with King Abimelech? Whose child Isaac was would always be in question.
You see, the enemy is always out to destroy God’s purpose. Through this little slip in Abraham’s life, there was a little wedge that the enemy needed to try to destroy the line of Christ, because it had to come from Abraham.
I want to emphasize that I do not know for sure whether Sarah was pregnant. But I do know one thing: if Abimelech had been allowed to touch her, the line of Christ would always have been in question. God would never allow that to happen.
Oh, brothers and sisters, even our lapses in faith can be so dangerous. We need to have a life before the Lord. We need to be up to date with the Lord at all times.
The longer our lapse, the more danger there is. If we are away from the Lord, if we are not current with the Lord, there are always dangers out there. If it were not for a merciful God Who often acts sovereignly in our lives, where would we be, and what would we have done?
I got to thinking: why did Abraham lapse? What was the reason for this lapse in faith at this time?
He had done it once before. Also, you might remember the battle of the kings, when Abraham defeated all those kings with just four hundred and some men. There was a great victory in his life, but after that there was a lapse. He got a little shaken and fearful, perhaps thinking, “Look what I have done here. Maybe these kings will come back seeking vengeance.”
The Lord came to him and said:
Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
Often, even after great victories, there is a letdown in our lives and the enemy can get in. The Lord wants to protect us.
There was a great victory at Sodom and Gomorrah. Men of this world would not see it that way because the cities were destroyed, but it was a great victory in that God prevailed over all the evil of those cities.
Could it have been that there was a little letdown? Abraham had interceded so diligently for Sodom and Gomorrah. He had asked the Lord, “Even if You find ten righteous people in that city, will You spare it?” And the Lord said that He would. But the Lord did not find ten, and He destroyed it.
Sometimes, when we are diligently praying about an issue and it does not turn out quite the way we thought it would, we can become offended a little bit with the Lord. It can throw us into despair, and we can falter in our faith.
That happens to us, does it not? We have to be careful about being offended with the Lord in our lives.
Sometimes things happen to us, and I guarantee you, if you are an older Christian, somewhere already something has happened in your life where there was a good chance that you could have been offended—or were offended—by the Lord.
I like the Lord’s response to John the Baptist, who certainly was not anticipating having his head cut off for being faithful to the Lord. He was in prison, and his faith was faltering. He asked, “Are You the true Christ?”
The Lord said, in effect, “Tell John that I am raising the dead. I am doing all these things. And do not be offended.”
That is a key word: do not be offended with the Lord. If you are offended with the Lord, get on your knees and say, “Lord, I am offended. I am sorry. I know it is a sin. I do not understand.”
The Lord is merciful, and He will work it out with you. But do not allow yourself to be offended with the Lord.
I think there is a third possibility. When Abraham saw the God of judgment, when he saw Sodom and Gomorrah totally destroyed, I am not sure he was ready for that.
Hebrews says that God is a consuming fire. Have you ever seen God as a consuming fire? Probably not. Abraham did.
I wonder if Abraham was really ready for that—whether it somehow threw him off a little. I do not think he was offended, but I think he just was not prepared for it.
That brings me to my concern this morning: are we really ready to meet the Lord at the judgment seat?
That song talks about the glory of seeing Him face to face, and it is marvelous. He will straighten things out. But brothers and sisters, the judgment seat of Christ is where the Lord clears the table of all the evil in our lives—all the stuff.
We need to know what the judgment seat of Christ is about. Are we prepared for it? Are we unfamiliar with this God of judgment? I think we are all very familiar with the God of grace and mercy, but I wonder how familiar we are with Him as the God of judgment.
One thing we need to understand right away is that the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah was a judgment of life and death. That is what was at issue. We will never face that kind of judgment.
That has already been settled because you have been crucified in Christ. Hallelujah. You did not feel any pain, did you? It was done.
In Christ, on the cross, it says that we were crucified with Him. It is a done thing through faith. Hallelujah.
John 5:24 says:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.
Your judgment has already occurred as a Christian. You have been crucified with Christ. The judgment is over in your life as far as this issue of life and death is concerned. You now have eternal life, and it will never be taken away. If it is eternal life, how can it be taken away?
I want you to know that you are secure in Christ. You will never come under this judgment.
For those who are not Christians, that judgment of life and death is what is referred to as the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20. The book of life is brought out there. We will never be part of that judgment. The judgment of life and death for us is over. Thank God for that.
However, this does not mean that there is not a judgment for Christians. There is. It is called the judgment seat of Christ.
Romans 14:10-12 says:
For we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of God.
For it is written,
As I live, saith the Lord, to Me every knee shall bow,
And every tongue shall confess to God.
So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.
And 2 Corinthians 5:10 says:
For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
There is nothing in the judgment seat of Christ that refers to life and death. This judgment seat is for believers. Unbelievers will be judged at the great white throne after the millennium. The judgment seat occurs just prior to the millennium and just after the rapture.
This judgment seat is for believers, and it is individual. It says “all,” so it does not exclude any of us. All will be made manifest. Everything is going to be made manifest. There will be nothing hidden.
Our life, our works, our words, our deeds, our thoughts—now think about that. I have thought about it because I am sharing on it. I am not sure I want that video shown before all the rest of the family.
But this is a family judgment. Each individual will be judged individually in front of all the family. It is a family judgment.
In 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, it says:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble;
Each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is.
If any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.
Our God is a consuming fire. This is the judgment seat. My question this morning is: are you ready for it?
I believe God shares this with us so that we might be ready, so that we might not be caught off guard. I do not want to take away from the glory of seeing the Lord face to face. I really do not.
But you remember Moses asked the Lord to show him His glory. The Lord said, in effect, “You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.” He put Moses in the cleft of the rock and shielded him as His glory passed by.
That is His glory. We have to be ready to see the glory of God. That is what God wants us to do, and He wants us to prepare now. He wants us to prepare now, brothers and sisters.
How are we made ready? Everything will be revealed, but there is something that will not be revealed at the judgment seat of Christ. Do you know what that is?
Anything that is under the blood of Jesus Christ will not be revealed.
Your old life, before you accepted Christ—when you accepted Christ, you took Him as the blood sacrifice for you in your place. The blood completely obliterates your old life before you accepted Christ. That will never be brought up. That is marvelous. That is really marvelous.
But we do have failures. We do sin. We do not always follow the Lord as we should. What do we do about that?
1 John 1:7 and 9 gives us the answer:
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The Lord is sharing with us how our lives can be made ready for Him. That incident you would never want to share with anybody can be gone.
He says that daily we should be walking in the light. We get up in the morning and go to the Lord: “Lord, examine my heart. Examine me. During the day, show me anything You need to show me through the Holy Spirit impressing my heart.”
“Lord, I want to put those things away if there is anything between You and me.” We do not always know. We can easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we are good and all right with the Lord.
I have heard people on their deathbeds saying, “I am okay with the Lord,” and brothers and sisters, I knew they were not okay. They had been deceived.
We can be deceived into thinking we are okay. Life is going great. Things are wonderful. “I must be okay with the Lord.” Not necessarily true.
I thank the Lord for those times, but it does not mean everything is okay. Brothers and sisters, the Lord says, “Live in the light as He is in the light.”
That is what we are called to do daily. It should be part of our daily life to go to the Lord and say, “Okay, Lord, as I go through this day, may the Holy Spirit bring up anything that needs to be dealt with.”
Then, when we are convicted of something, we need a sensitive conscience. We need to obey when our conscience pricks us.
When that occurs, we can immediately go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I see this. I did not see it before, but now I see that this is wrong for me.”
It may be something that is not necessarily an outright sin. It may be something others can do and it is okay, but the Lord is not allowing you to do it for some reason. The Lord says, “No, that is not good for you. I do not want you to do that.”
Then you say, “Lord, forgive me. By Your grace, I will have victory over this thing.” It may be a habit in your life. It may be something you have been dealing with for years.
But you say, “Lord, You have brought it to my light. I put it away. I ask forgiveness.” And the blood of Jesus Christ covers that. That is the way we get ready.
It is interesting that it says we have fellowship with one another. You may think having fellowship with brothers and sisters is not important. It is greatly important.
Very often, when we are fellowshipping together, somebody shares a testimony, a prayer, or something else, and a heart is pricked. The Lord is not trying to expose it openly. He pricks your heart, and you are able to go back to the Lord.
You can say, “Lord, as that brother or sister was sharing their testimony or prayer, it really convicted me of something in my life. I ask Your forgiveness. I put it under Your blood.”
The blood of Jesus Christ is so powerful, and we can go on in peace with the Lord.
Fellowship is very important. When we are out of fellowship, often there are things in our lives that the Lord wants to deal with, but He cannot because they cannot be exposed. He often uses brothers and sisters to expose us. A lot of parents will attest to this: He uses our children.
Well, enough said. Walk in the light. That is the secret.
1 John 1:9 says:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Unrighteousness is not necessarily just outright sin. Unrighteousness is doing something the Lord has told you that you should not do, or disobeying the Lord.
He says these things can be forgiven and put under the blood if we repent and come to Him and confess before Him. That is the way for the Christian after we accept Christ.
I want to reemphasize that this should be done in our daily life—not waiting for some crisis in our lives before we come back to the Lord.
If we walk in the light, it is the Holy Spirit Who does the examination. He is the One Who pricks our conscience.
That is often where the Lord gets the gold, the silver, and the precious stones in our lives. We allow the work of the cross.
The Lord brings something into our lives and says, “You need to go this way.” And you say, “Lord, no, I do not want to go that way.” Can you see the cross there? Your will crosses the Lord’s will.
Finally, you submit yourself to the Lord and say, “Lord, You are right. I do not like it, but I am going Your way.” That is the cross, and you submit to that.
Praise the Lord for what the Lord can do.
What if you do not walk in the light? What if you choose to keep going the way you are going?
Praise the Lord, the Lord has something else. It is called judgment.
The Lord uses grace and judgment all the time. You probably do not realize it, but He does. He is a God of judgment as well as a God of grace.
When we do not respond to grace, there is judgment. But judgment itself, if you look at it as the hand of God in your life correcting you, is grace.
There are two words for judgment. One is discipline, and the other is judicial judgment. For the moment, I am talking about discipline.
When we do not respond, when we are not walking in the light, the Lord will discipline us.
That is what happened at the Lord’s table. They were taking it unworthily, and the Lord said some were asleep—that is, some had passed away.
The Lord uses discipline in our lives, not to punish us. We are not talking about punishment; we are talking about correction. The Lord corrects us and brings us in line with His own life.
Hebrews 12:5-6, 10-11 says:
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.
That is what the Lord does. Is that not grace, brothers and sisters? What if the Lord just chose not to discipline you? How much we would miss of the Lord in this lifetime if it were not for His discipline.
If we find ourselves under the disciplining hand of the Lord, what should we do?
1 Peter 5:6 says:
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.
In other words, repent of your rebellious spirit, because that is what it is, and say, “Lord, I am sorry.” Humble yourself under His disciplining hand and remain there until He lifts the discipline.
When God does this in our lives, as soon as we ask Him to forgive us, He forgives us. But we need to be clear that His disciplining hand may not immediately lift, because He knows us so well.
He wants to be sure that His corrective action has an effect in our life. He will forgive us, but the discipline may remain for a time.
You remember David’s failure with Bathsheba and her husband, whom David had killed. The disciplining hand of God came upon him. When David saw his sin, he asked for forgiveness, and the Lord forgave him.
But the disciplining hand of the Lord was on David for the rest of his life because of that. Is that bad? No.
We may say how awful it was that God’s disciplined hand remained for the rest of David’s life, but that was not bad because it kept David in line, brothers and sisters.
We have to trust God as the One Who knows how to discipline us and correct us. We have to believe that He is a gracious and merciful God and that He will not discipline us any longer than He has to, because He loves us.
So we should respond in humility under His discipline and not rebel against it or struggle against it.
If we do rebel, we can go to the Lord and ask forgiveness. The blood of Jesus Christ will cover it, and it will not come up at the judgment seat of Christ.
What mercy.
What if we rebel? What if we do not come under His discipline? That is possible. For the rest of our lives, we can just keep going on and never get straight with the Lord.
We never come under His hand of discipline. We do not listen. We go our own way.
Well, it will be settled at the judgment seat of Christ. It will be settled then.
I want to say something: how precious is the blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, brothers and sisters, it is so powerful to take away your sins.
The Lord says, “I will remember your sin no more,” because He sees the blood of His Son Jesus. As far as the east is from the west, it is gone.
I do not know how God does it, but He totally forgets. I think He is able to forget because it is obliterated. It is not there any longer. It is gone.
On the other hand, we need to see how important it is in our lives that when we sin, we do not just let it go on and on. We go back to the Lord and get it straight with Him.
We need to confess. We need to get it under the blood in all sincerity and repentance.
We need to walk in the light daily before our Lord, allowing Him to deal with things in our lives now. Deal with them now, so that when we see the God of glory, we will not be totally burned up.
When we are under His disciplining hand, we should submit in humility, ask forgiveness for our rebellious ways and sins, and allow Him to work in our lives.
He wants us to have a joyous reunion with Him at the judgment seat. He wants to be able to reward us. He wants His children to be ones to whom He can say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
He wants to be able to say, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” That is the reward.
How will we be rewarded? I just said it, but there is more to it than that. The Lord says, “Enter the joy of the Lord.”
I do not know how much we know about joy. We know about being happy, but true joy—spiritual joy, joy that is of the Lord—I do not know how much we know of it.
To me, the joy of the Lord is just being one with the Lord, with nothing between us, being able to enjoy the glory of the Lord. To me, that is joy. If the glory is still burning you, you cannot enjoy it too much.
There is a reward. Often people, particularly evangelicals—and that is my background—talk about grace. We never talked much about judgment other than the great white throne judgment. This matter of reward was not understood because everything is of grace; it is nothing we can do.
But I want you to know something: those who partake of the grace of God are rewarded.
If you go through this life following the Lamb wherever He goes, it will be by His grace, not by your strength. If you are faithfully watching and praying as we are encouraged to do, it will be by His grace.
If you are overcoming, read Revelation. He keeps saying, “He that overcometh,” and there is a reward after every one of those promises. But you can only overcome by His grace.
So you cannot boast. It is really the Lord. It is really grace.
Do not be offended by the word reward, because those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes, those who are faithfully watching and praying, and those who faithfully serve the Lord’s people in His house—giving meat in due season—are doing so by grace.
How did they overcome? It is marvelous. They overcame first by the blood of the Lamb. That is what we have been talking about.
They overcame by the blood of the Lamb because so much in their lives that was negative was put under the blood. They overcame by the word of their testimony. In other words, the Lord was real in their lives, and they had a testimony.
And they loved not their lives unto death. In other words, they were willing to go the way of the cross.
It is all by grace, but there is a reward. That reward is entering into the joy of the Lord.
For the others, He talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, you need to be clear about that. It is not because they are being beaten or whipped. It is because they are so grieved in seeing what they have missed.
When we are grieved, there is not much joy.
But there is an additional reward for those who have been faithful to the Lord, as we have talked about this morning. They will get to go to the marriage supper of the Lamb. They will be able to enter that door.
The marriage supper of the Lamb is the thousand-year reign of our Lord Jesus Christ on this earth. They will reign and rule with Christ. They will be part of that kingdom, administering that kingdom in righteousness.
What about the others? We always ask, I guess. The Lord never emphasizes that part much, frankly, but He does want us to know because He does not want us to be taken off guard.
For the others, it is still the grace of God. They will eventually enter the joy of the Lord and assist in the administration of that thousand-year reign.
But if you look at the city, New Jerusalem, it is without spot or blemish. It means that during that thousand-year reign, the Lord will work with them and bring them to the place He wants them.
No one will be left behind. The Lord is merciful. He is gracious. I call it His remedial work during that thousand-year reign.
But that is not the Lord’s heart. The Lord’s heart is for us to be ready to meet Him.
This morning we have shared that we need to be ready, because the judgment seat of Christ is not just a place of bliss and seeing the glory of the Lord. That glory will burn up all that is not of Christ. And that is a good thing.
I hope we have been encouraged to stay current with our Lord Jesus Christ. In trying to prepare for this, I have been touched personally by how much I just let go in my life and do not really get straight with the Lord.
May the Lord use it to prepare us, to prepare us as a people.
Lord, we come to Thee this morning. We thank You, Lord Jesus, that You are such a gracious, loving God.
Lord, I want to thank You for the discipline in my life. It is Your loving hand. Lord, I want to thank You that even at the judgment seat of Christ, things will finally be fully and completely dealt with.
Praise the Lord for that. Nothing that is contrary to Your glory will be left. I praise You for that, Lord. I worship You.
Lord, I pray that You will touch our hearts in these few days that are left before You return, that we may be a prepared people, a ready people—a people who not only love You, Lord, but pursue You. Lord, really pursue You.
I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.