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00:39 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the Café.
00:44 Hope you are doing wonderful today. It’s so good to have you here today. I’m so thankful for you.
00:49 And look, we are in an awesome study on the judgment and righteousness of God. Amen. And how we look at grace through faith as our path to being justified before God and not works.
01:06 Amen. And so we’re in the second part of a three to four-part—I can’t say three-part series, amen, because this thing is too big. It may go to four or five, but hopefully you’ll bear with me on that.
01:21 Amen. And the reason why is that God’s so loving, right? He is love, okay? God’s love is so magnificent. Oftentimes I try to express this to the congregation, and I lack words to describe God’s great love.
01:38 And I look in the testimony of my own life and how God saved me and He changed me. Oh, He made me new again, amen, a new creature. Old things are passed away.
01:53 Behold, all things become new when we believe on Christ, amen. And yet at the same time, the fact that God is love does not take away from God’s righteous judgment and, frankly, His wrath for this sinful world, amen. And we have these two things coexisting.
02:11 I believe we’re here today because God’s love is so great and His long suffering is so great that He is waiting and waiting for more and more to repent and be saved, to believe on Him, to have faith in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross.
02:26 And that is why we’re here today, because God cannot stand sin. It’s an abomination to Him.
02:33 And all those that are living sinful, unbelieving lives will have to answer to God.
02:38 So our text verse, we’ve got a couple of them here, but the first verse I’ll give you is Luke 1:37. For with God, nothing shall be impossible.
02:43 It’s easy in this world to get discouraged by seeing evil and wickedness triumph. You know, we talk about a broken world. Truly, we live in a broken world.
02:52 This world is very carnal. If you went off to a cave with a Bible for, say, I don’t know, three or four months, okay, let’s say a quarter of a year,
03:08 and you just studied that Bible in your cave, and apparently you had food and everything else you needed in the cave, but you didn’t have any media or anything else,
03:06 and you just studied the Bible, and you pondered the Bible, and you prayed over the Bible, and the Holy Spirit dwelled in you. It sounds like a pretty good vacation to me, but anyways, you leave that cave, you come back into the world.
03:19 What do you think your eyes are going to be witnessing? Great abject sin, great transgression against God’s ways, great perversion of God’s ways, and not just like a little bit,
03:32 but just outlandish, boastful perversion against God’s ways. Oh, how disgusting it is, and yet again, God has been faithful, and He has been patient and long-suffering, and He is saying, I’m going to wait. Thank God.
03:48 I mean, the world has been wicked for a long time, and I’m 42, I guess 42 and a half now, amen, and when you get up into your 40s, start counting those half birthdays,
04:01 but you know, I think back, well, what if God didn’t wait, you know, and I was saved, amen, accepted the Lord as Savior in my early 20s, getting out of college, amen.
04:13 I guess that’s somewhat late compared to the kids at church and stuff getting saved when they’re five or six, but I was saved, you know, relatively young, and what if God came before I was saved, or what if God came after I was saved,
04:28 but before I really gave my heart fully over to Him to fully live for Him, amen, because there was another six or seven years there where I was just totally yoked up in the world before I realized that this world has nothing to offer,
04:39 and that God’s sweet love is totally all that I should desire as a person, and that I started living for Him, and I literally, I mean, like literally, as you could imagine, sit there and say, okay,
04:54 I’m not going to listen to this kind of music anymore. I’m not going to watch this kind of movie anymore.
04:58 I’m not going to say these kind of words anymore, and it took time, and so what if God came before that time?
05:07 Well, before I’m saved, then I’d really be in trouble. I’d be in hell, amen, if I hadn’t accepted Christ as Savior before I started living for Him, then I wouldn’t have any heavenly reward, amen, because after we’re saved, what we do for Him is how we earn a heavenly reward on the Bema seat.
05:17 All of these things, I’m thankful for God’s longsuffering, and so I’m careful when I pray, oh, Lord, come, Maranatha, please come soon, Lord, when I pray that, because the earth is so wicked, I pray it carefully, understanding that I could have easily not been saved yet, and there’s someone like me or someone like you out there that hasn’t been saved, amen, and that God is patiently waiting, but that time has come.
05:39 It is so close, we can see that. It is so close to the Lord’s return. All right, so our text for us, John 8:24, I said therefore unto you that you shall die in your sins, for if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in yoursins,
05:53 and so what’s interesting about John 8 is if you’re familiar with John 8, it’s where Jesus is not going to condemn the woman that’s caught in adultery,
06:02 and the Pharisees and the scribes are saying, how could you not condemn her? This is the letter of the law, and so Jesus doesn’t condemn her, and so often John 8 would be used as someone defending maybe a sinful lifestyle and a loving God, right?
06:15 But then Jesus kind of pivots to the broader picture and says, you Pharisees, you don’t believe I’m God.
06:23 You don’t believe I am who I say I am. You don’t believe even though all of these miracles have been done. You don’t believe because even though many others look to me and believe,
06:32 you don’t believe because you have unbelief in your heart, so you have hypocrisy, you have unbelief, and so the Pharisees are saying we’re justified by law, and Jesus is clearly saying you’re not justified by law.
06:39 You’re going to die in your sins. You’re going to die in your sins. John 8:24, I said therefore unto you that you shall die in your sins, for if you believe notthat I am he, you shall die in your sins, and so what that means here, the implication is that we are justified not by the letter of the law.
07:01 Remember, Jesus did not condemn that woman that was caught in adultery. He asked everybody to throw a stone that hadn’t sinned themselves, and they were in their conscience. They realized they had been sinners too, so they go off.
07:12 Amen. They all leave, and he says, I’m not going to condemn you either. Don’t sin anymore, right?
07:19 Then what happens? He turns to the Pharisees and says, you people are the real wicked ones.
07:24 You think you’re upright because you’re following the law, but you don’t have belief, and so the implications here is that you’ve got the law, and you’ve got faith, and those two things are different, right,
07:34 and one says I’m justified by my works. I will tell you there are many people, and even denominations today, that I can think of that believe they’re justified by their works,
07:45 that literally what they do is the difference between being saved and not being saved, but Jesus is telling the Pharisees here very clearly it’s not by works, but by faith in John8:24,
07:55 for if you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins, and of course we get our doctrine from Paul and the Pauline epistles, those letters Paul wrote to the various churches,
08:07 but we understand that Jesus here is not going to contradict Paul, so Jesus’ ministry was to the Jews, amen, and he was telling the Jews to believe, amen. He was telling them to believe Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles, and Paul was telling them to believe.
08:22 You can’t do it by works. You’re justified by faith, and by the way, the whole Bible points to this. Abraham, right, Abraham, Father Abraham, okay, who the Jews looked to as their patriarch, Father Abraham was justified by faith.
08:36 Hebrews 11 tells us that it’s impossible to please God without faith, so what overcomes the law or what fulfills the law? Jesus Christ. Man could never fulfill the law on their own.
08:49 Christ was perfect, spotless, blameless, comes to this earth as the perfect, blameless lamb, dies for our sins on the cross, right, and is raised from the dead the third day.
09:00 He took upon our sin dead on the cross so that when we believe on him, we no longer have that sin imputed to us. We are now associated with him. We believe on Christ.
09:12 We make him Lord of our life. We accept him in our hearts. This is God in the flesh that did this finished work on the cross, and now we are believers in Christ, and God does not see sinful man.
09:22 God does not see sinful Clark. God sees Jesus Christ. Amen? Now, that is salvation.
09:28 There is still sanctification, the idea that the Lord still needs to wash our feet, so to speak. We still need to go and confess our sins and be cleansed from all unrighteousness, but sanctification doesn’t save you.
09:39 Salvation saves you, and so Jesus Christ overcame the law, and he’s telling the Pharisees and the scribes here, you guys are trying to live by the letter of the law, and you’re going to fail.
09:50 You’re going to die in your sins. You are not going to live forever with me. You’re going to hell.
09:55 Amen? And so we understand this very great truth, and I wish I had time. We’re trying to explain this idea of by grace through faith. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone to our little kids, five and six years old,
10:15 and we’re talking about someone that would go feed like, you know, feral cats, right? Feed cats that are out in the alleyway, and the cats were hungry, and they needed food, and that person would feed the cats, and then they would say, I’ve done something good.
10:27 I’m good enough, and we were telling them that that’s not good enough, but the person that believes on Jesus Christ and has faith, even if they’re not perfect, even if they’re not the one doing the good deed like feeding those cats, they are still going to be in heaven.
10:38 Amen. Because that is good enough because they believe on Christ, and we see here the idea of death. There is a first death and a second death.
10:46 Amen. The first death is when we die. Amen? Judgment comes from the lost after the first death before the second one. It’s at the white throne judgment.
10:55 Zephaniah 1:14-15, the great day of the Lord is near. It is near, and hasteth greatly. Even the voice of the day of the Lord, the mighty men shall cry there bitterly.
11:06 That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.
11:14 And so we realize here that God’s wrath is not something that we are calculating or thinking could happen. God’s wrath is foretold in the Bible to happen, and it’s actually given a place, and that place is the white throne judgment.
11:26 And on the white throne judgment, the mankind, those that have not accepted Christ as Savior will face God’s judgment. They will answer for every word they’ve spoken, every deed they have done. They will answer.
11:42 They have to give an answer for it. They will not be able to be saved by their works. Amen. Whether it’s the Pharisees or whether it’s the example I gave of somebody that thought they were justified by feeding cats or giving to charity or having relatives in the church or whatever it is, you aren’t justified by that.
11:59 We can think as believers that, number one, we can thank God we won’t be at the white throne judgment. As I understand it, we’ll be at something called the bema seat, which is much more like an awards ceremony, where our works that we do for ourselves will not be rewarded.
12:13 They’ll be burned up, amen, like wood, hay, and stubble.
12:17 But those that go through the fire, those that we did for the Lord out of a pure heart—and I wish I had more time to get into what that would mean—but out of the working of the Holy Spirit, those things that we did for God, we will receive a reward at that judgment.
12:29 So one, the one that is justified by their faith is going to be rewarded by God in heaven and be with God for eternity in heaven. And the one that is not believing, the unbeliever, the one that does not believe in Jesus Christ, will face God at the white throne judgment,
12:44 and they will be judged harshly for everything that they’ve said and done, and they will be cast into the lake of fire for an eternity.
12:54 They will go to hell. They will never, ever be near God, which is part of hell. Hell is a real place.
13:00 There’s burning in hell. We read that with a rich man that’s asking for one drop of water. We realize that hell is written about in the Bible, maybe even more so than heaven.
13:08 And we realize that in hell, part of the torture is you’re going to realize fully your need for God, and he won’t be there for you like he is in heaven, where it is perfect and wonderful, and there’s worship, and there’s beauty and peace, and there’s no sin, and there’s no sickness, and there’s nothing bad in there.
13:15 So no corrupt thing will go there. And so you have this great dichotomy, this great choice to make, heaven or hell, and it all relies on not what we do but what we believe.
13:34 It relies on do we truly believe that Jesus Christ is who he says he is? He’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him? Oh, I hope we believe today. I wish I had more time to go on, but you’ll have to tune in next time as we look at the judgment of God.
13:49 Anything is possible with God, even righteous judgment, and we’re going to get to this idea of how God will judge and why we simply need to believe and follow him, and we’ll be blessed for that.
14:03 I thank you again for listening to KJV Cafe, for tuning in. Please tell a friend about it if you could, and tune in next time,
14:13 and we’ll get to the latter part of this series. Take care, God bless, and amen.