Video Transcript: The Righteous Judgement of God

We've been focusing lately on rebellion against the Divine Order dealing in turn  with sin and its consequences and then spiritual warfare. Now we move to the  third topic in this sequence the righteous judgment of God. Let's first consider  the word judgment. Judgment or good judgment is defined as the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions, something that everyone  needs in life. Roads are safe to travel on only insofar as drivers make good  judgments about such things as road conditions and their own abilities and  limitations. The success of businesses depends considerably on employers and  employees making good judgments in the exercise of their responsibilities at  work. Parents and teachers work hard to help their children and students grow  in discernment and in the self control necessary to put that discernment into  practice in their own lives. And of course, societies cannot function well without  the good judgment of their public officials, and especially the judges. They  appoint to render fair and impartial judgments about guilt and innocence and  deserved, even if sometimes severe penalties and punishments. Everyone likes  good judgment. Still, the concept of judgment conjures up negative images in  the minds of many people. That's probably because they equate it with a  judgmentalism in which people stick their noses into what doesn't concern them. And or self righteously condemn others for the same behaviors they excuse in  themselves. Judgmental may also be used to label those who judge with  unnecessary harshness. It's this last variety of judgmentalism that poses a  problem for many readers of Scripture, who think that God is unnecessarily  harsh in his judgments. No doubt some of those who make such a claim do so  in order to justify their rejection of God and His requirements. But many  Christians also are bothered by the extent and violence of various divine  judgments in the Old Testament, and also by what the Old and the New  Testament say about the final judgment and how they wonder how can a living,  loving God send people to an eternal hell? Well, he can't said Marcion of  Sinope, one of the leaders of the Christian church in the second century, at least the God of the New Testament can't Marcion believed that two different gods  were revealed in the Bible, the God of the Jews depicted in the Old Testament,  He saw it to be an arbitrary, legalistic, punitive and jealous deity who had no  connection whatsoever with Jesus or his message. On the other hand, Marcion  saw the God of the New Testament represented by Jesus who worked to  redeem humanity to be merciful and compassionate. And so Marcion rejected  the entire Old Testament as well as those New Testament books that transmitted the ideas of the Old Testament. His Bible consisted of parts of the Gospel of  Luke and the 10 letters of Paul, but with offending passages removed anything  that seemed to be of Jewish origin, including the concept of a final judgment.  Marcion was eventually convicted of heresy and excommunicated from the  church. However, his ideas live on in part in those who are reading the  uncomfortable accounts of judgment in Scripture, think God is not like that 

anymore. But that notion doesn't do justice to Scripture, which consistently  presents only one God at work throughout the entirety of the redemptive  historical story. Consequently, we need to understand how God's judgments fit  together with his mercy and compassion. For the moment, let's assume that  God is kind and loving, that will actually be the focus of the next lecture. But it's  not a stretch to assume that the one who created everything has an interest in  being kind and loving to the works of his hand. And we should assume,  moreover, that the Almighty Creator is in a better position than his creatures are, to be fair, in his judging is to say what judgments are necessary. Clearly, God  believes that his judgments are necessary in order to advance the plans he has  for his entire creation. In fact, God's willingness to deal with and judge what's  wrong, illustrates the strength of his commitment to his original plans for His  creation, and for us whom he is made in His image and given the supremacy  and dominion over God's other creatures in the earth itself. I contend that every  judgment of God is a mercy, sometimes a severe mercy, which is designed to  counteract the sin and rebellion that distances humanity from him, and to  reestablish at least a remnant into the privilege of his presence in hell. After all,  apart from a good connection with our Creator, there is no life, let alone ability to fulfill our potential. Let's look at the lengths to which God has gone over time to  help his image bearers and, first of all, in what is perhaps his the most famous of his judgments to date Noah's Flood. In the centuries after paradise was lost two  different lines of people populate the earth the line of Cain in the line of Seth  Cain's descendants are by and large, corrupt. Like Cain, they resented God and, and lived as if his provisions and demands were a burden rather than a  blessing. But say Seth's line was schooled in the wholehearted service of their  Creator. There came a time however, when even most of the descendants of  Seth had gone over to the other side, Genesis 6:11-12 tells us that with the  exception of Noah, The earth was corrupt in God's sight and full of violence. The Bible says God saw how corrupt the earth was, had become, for all the people  on earth had corrupted their ways, the whole earth was full of wickedness.  People acted as though God wasn't even there. They dreamed up all sorts of  evil things to do to each other and the world that God had created, making God  both sad and angry at the rebellion of his image bearers. That wasn't what he  had intended and planned for them. God had made it possible for human hearts  to be always and only inclined to serve their maker. But now all of God's good  intentions, were being opposed at every step, and by almost every person. It's  clear that God hated this wickedness, this rebellion against himself. And he did  not take it lightly to have his intentions disregarded, in attitude to which he had  every right since he created the world and its inhabitants. To be specific, there is not and never has been any blade of grass, or any animal or person, which has  not owed his existence to the Creator. There is not and never has been any  talent or skill, or any human creative thought or action that has been gotten 

independently of God's provision. And so God never has to answer to anyone  but himself for what he does with his world. He has a say so the right to govern  it as he chooses, nor will he ever yield his will to the desires of those who rebel  against him. People often change their minds, especially in the face of  opposition. God never does. He always remains committed to his perfect plans  and intentions. And so in this case, God started decided to destroy his world  with a great flood and start over. The one who brought order from chaos just as  easily turned order back into chaos, and started over. But God's mercy was also  revealed in the midst of judgment, for God came to Noah whom scripture  identifies as one who walked faithfully with God, just like every person has been  created to do. God took the initiative to come to Noah to tell him how he and his  family and Representative creatures of his world might escape the coming  judgment. What's more, God gave Noah's contemporaries opportunity to escape his judgment, as grieved as God was by Noah's generation. He graciously  postponed judgment for a time while Noah, whom the apostle Peter later called  a preacher of righteousness, while Noah shared his faith and God's message  with his world. But as it turned out, Noah's preaching was to no avail. Any who  did listen ridiculed him the means of salvation, the preaching of righteousness  and God's patience were there, and yet everyone refused and ultimately  received their judgment. God's righteous judgments always end in disaster for  those who persist in wickedness. However, his judgments never bring only  death and destruction. For those who trust and honor God as Noah did and  urged others to do they preserve life. In this and every other judgment of God,  there's all always more happening than the violence and the destruction that  accompanies judgment. There's also the corresponding opportunity for the  enhancement of the life and health of those committed to live as God has  intended us to live. Judgment for the wicked always means that the righteous  will have greater opportunities to express experience of blessings of God. For  those on the ark, the the floodwaters of judgment became waters of salvation,  and eventually a fresh start for the God's world. People were again put in touch  with the original purpose of humanity. To emphasize this God even gave the  survivors instructions similar to those used with Adam and Eve in the Garden of  Eden, he told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Unfortunately, it  didn't take long for things to go awry in the restart. Even Noah and his family  messed up badly. And through the succeeding generations, things became  worse. I'll mention just some of the better known judgments of God that followed in the in the next centuries. First is, one is God's judgment on Sodom and  Gomorrah, whom God would have spared for the sake of only 10 righteous  people. There were God's judgments on Egypt, carried out in the process of  delivering his people from slavery. We spoken before God's judgments on the  Canaanites carried out in the process of fulfilling God's promise of a homeland a New Paradise, where God's people could live and prosper under his protection. 

And then there was God's judgment on his own people to which he allowed  them in which he allowed them to be killed or taken into captivity by the  Assyrians and the Babylonians, because they ignored or rejected God's rule  over them. There are many more examples in scripture of God's judgments, in  which his punishments upon the wicked served not only as a righteous reward  for their sin, but also as an incentive for the witnesses to examine their own lives and turn from their own wicked ways so they might avoid the same fate. In fact,  in all the judgment stories, escape from judgment had been possible if the  sinners had only stopped their rebellion against God and done what they knew  to be right. But Sodom's residents persisted in their wicked behavior. And even  the men who were pledged to become Lot's son in laws refused his pleas to  leave the city. Pharaoh ignored the council not only Moses, but also his own  court. And he persisted in full hardhearted rebellion against the LORD, rendering the whole of his country liable to God's judgment. Even though some of his  citizens were undoubtedly part of the mixed multitude that join Israelites on their  departure from Egypt. The Canaanites saw what the Lord had done on behalf of  his people in delivering them from Pharaoh and during their subsequent years of wandering in the wilderness, Rahab spoke of the fear of the Israelites and their  God, but only Rahab and her family did what Caleb's family had done years  before, converted to become part of God's people. And with regard to God's  judgment of his people, as shown in their exile from the Promised Land, those  who remain faithful suffered along with the nations. Still, God would reestablish  him in the land, for this was not yet his final judgment. It is less important for us  to take every judgment of God as an invitation to repentance, and an incentive  to become the worshipers and servants of God that every person was created  and equipped to be. These judgments are instructive, moreover, to show us  what the final outcome will be for those who refuse to repent, but persist in  rebellion. Jesus was clear about the present opportunities people had to escape God's judgment, but he also spoke of of coming final judgment from which there  would be no escape. What Zephaniah and other Old Testament prophets called  The Day of the Lord. Say for example, Zephaniah 1:12-18. In that passage just  makes clear that there were many people in Zephaniah's day who thought they  had plenty of time to right what was wrong. They were complacent about their  faith in life. They were also complacent about God, supposing that he just smiled and everybody and and thought he would do nothing either good or bad. Maybe  they thought God was not powerful enough to do anything. Or maybe they  thought he liked will to do anything, let alone judge anyone. Either way, by their  reckoning God had not shown his hand for so long. Evidently they had not seen  him at work and the catastrophes and violence of their day. As a result, they felt  no need to depend upon God and had a false sense of security about their  future. In essence, they were unbelievers. I'm sure that not all the people in  Zephaniah day were utterly corrupted haters of God. I'm sure that some even 

profess to be believers in name, but didn't really take seriously God's  instructions about how to live. But what it all came down to was unbelief in one  form or another. Zephaniah described why the day of the Lord should provoke  such fear in unbelievers. He spoke of it as a day of wrath of Day of distress and  anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom of clouds and  blackness. Zephaniah said that the judge would lose all the things they put their  trust in. And even if they could keep them, those repositories of misplaced trust  would not be able to save them. Their fate would be inescapable. For the day of  the Lord would be a day on which the Lord judge sin and no sinner would  escape. Zephaniah also said that the day of Lord would could come anytime  that it would come as a surprise. He didn't use the same image. Jesus later did  but his meaning was the same. It would come suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. Zephaniah's words were directed specifically against his own  nation of Judah. His prophecy was fulfilled in part when his people were carried  away into exile in Babylon, and Jerusalem was destroyed together with the  temple of God. But what Zephaniah prophesied had a broader fulfillment too in  another day of the Lord that would be revealed by the coming Messiah. In fact,  Jesus referred to God's imminent judgment at the beginning of His ministry. He  like John the Baptist before him proclaim the kingdom of God has come near  Repent and believe the good news. Jesus taught that God's judgment was  something to fear. But the good news of which He spoke was that repentance  was still an option. The prospect of judgment can become therefore, a means of  grace. In fact, Zephaniah's words and other scriptural warnings and judgment  are meant to be means of grace to everyone who is guilty of neglect of God and  disobedience to the Sovereign Lord, are merely complacency with regard to  serving Him. That's because the Lord will come not only to punish the sinners  and the complacent but also by implication and by outright promise to protect  and preserve those who are neither corrupt nor complacent. Those the gospel  message is to those who have been forgiven, and sent on the right path through the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Repentance was and is an option, however,  that becomes close to the person's death. For then, those who sins have not  been forgiven, are irrevocably destined for judgment. But it's an option that will  be closed as well for the living on the day that Jesus Christ comes again to  consolidate his reign and judge all sinners on that ultimate day of the Lord.  Despite all the distinctions that separate people today, there will be only two  groups. There will be Unforgiven sinners, and the forgiven, no longer called  sinners, but saints, two groups, unforgiven sinners to be judged, and the saints  who get a pass. And where you stand makes all the difference. The day of the  Lord is is a day in which God silences all opposition. That's the day he judges  and eliminates all that is evil. That's the day it will become apparent who's in  charge and it will be apparent who's the judge, it will be apparent who saved and who's condemned. This is heavy stuff. And it must be admitted that all this 

biblical talk of the day of the Lord and God's final judgment still sounds rather  bleak to many people. But remember the point I made earlier, that judgment for  the wicked always means that the repentant will have greater opportunities to  express experience the blessings of God. God's judgment of sin is necessary,  so that all God's purposes for humanity can be realized. On the Day of  Judgment, everything Jesus Christ stood for and stands for everything biblical  will be vindicated. All persecution suffered for the cause of Christ all Shame  endured for his sake, all ridicule for Christian principles will be vindicated. It's a  day in which our faith will be confirmed, and a day in which the sin that  continually plagues us will be wiped away so that those who God is saved may  enter into an eternity of joy. The God who has forgiven the sins of those who  trust in Him will look at us and say, because of your acceptance of my son, your  Savior and your obedience to Him, you may get out of the judgment line and into the line that takes you into the joy of my rest. That's the rest. The perfect rest  that God has had in mind since the beginning since the Eden and then again  after the flood, and then again in his installation of Israel in the Promised Land  where they can worship and serve God wholeheartedly. To get to that promised  land, that final ultimate rest, there must be a final and ultimate judgment of sin  and Satan and everyone that opposes Almighty God, that final judgment of of  God on sin is necessary to usher in his kingdom of lasting joy and peace.