Monday Mail - 9th December 2013

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Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!


Yesterday morning was the second in our three-part Advent Series, and were thinking about the difficult topic of judgement, from Revelation 20:11-21:4.

As far as I remember, my main points were:

Judgement is good news

"It's not fair!" is the cry of every child at some point, as as we grow up we learn that life often isn't fair, and it can never be fair in this life. Some people have awful things happen to them and there seems no compensation. Other people literally get away with murder, and in the case of a few dictators, with millions of murders. But God will bring justice. He will redress the wrongs, protect the vulnerable and punish the guilty.

We see in Rev 20 that everyone will stand before God's throne in judgement. It doesn't matter if they are dead, or what happened to their body – it could be in a mausoleum, burnt to ashes or at the bottom of the sea. It doesn't matter how great or how insignificant we are in life, we will all stand before God's throne of judgement and have to answer for what we have done. Hebrews tells us that nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight; everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account." He knows everything that has been said, thought and done, by us and to us, and he will judge fairly.


Judgement is bad news for us

But God's judgement is bad news for us. God's new creation is perfect, so his standards are perfect, and we never live up to them. Just as one example, God gave us everything and yet we so rarely live out the kind of gratitude that we owe him. We all fail to live up to his standards. If the judgement was in monetary terms, some people would be in debt by a million pounds, others by a billion, so it will be worse for some than for others but we would all be in debt and so none of us deserve to get into God's perfect kingdom.


Great news – there is a way out

In Rev 20, everyone is judged by their deeds as recorded in the books, but there is another book – the Book of Life, and those whose names are in that book are spared the Lake of Fire and get to enter God's new and perfect creation. In Rev 13, we see that the book's full title is The Book of Life of the Lamb who was Slain – it's those who are forgiven through Jesus death, those whose guilt Jesus has taken and to whom he gives his perfection and the right to enter his kingdom.

So praise him, and live out of gratitude to him!


God bless,
John

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