Does God Judge and Should Preachers Teach about God’s Judgment?
We as preachers must always remember the aim of our proclamation is nothing short of the redemption of eternal souls (1 Timothy 4:15-16). The judgment that we preach is not a sadistic message of savage brutalism. The judgment that we preach is the righteousness of God, with the hope and aim of demonstrating the grace of God to sinners in Christ Jesus.
Let’s answer that question with a few things today, first, a few passages in scripture, second, with a story, and third, with a few statements for us as listeners of sermons and as preachers of sermons.
First, let’s look at scripture.
What does Scripture say about God Judging?
Hebrews 12:23 shows that God is the judge of all: You have come to God, the Judge of all,
Acts 10:42 shows that the Apostle Peter understood Jesus to be the judge of all, Jesus having been given that role by God: He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.
2 Timothy 4:8 reveals that as he neared the end of his earthly life the Apostle Paul spoke of the Lord Jesus as judge: Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
Hebrews 9:27 speaks about judgment as coming after death in a final eternal decree regarding the state of individuals: Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.
Daniel 7:13-14 prophetically recounts the vision of Daniel regarding the authority of the Christ to come: In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
John 5:26-27 connects the trail of authority prophetically spoken of by Daniel by which Jesus (the Son) has received authority to judge: For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
This is just a brief smattering of passages. There are worthwhile longer studies examining more passages in depth. Even from these few verses, it is very apparent, that the scriptures speak of God as being the ultimate judge, and specifically, Christ Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:19-20). Anyone who makes a statement like “God doesn’t judge” is speaking either ignorantly (not knowing the truth of God’s Word), or in blatant rebellion against God’s word.
A Story of a Preacher Speaking about God’s Judgement
It was dark on the cold streets of downtown St. Louis. While the region didn’t often get much snow, there was some accumulation on the sides of the roads. Not the beautiful glistening snow of hallmark movies. It was the dirty, muddy snow covered in the excess filth of a thousand traveling cars. I turned my car from the main street into the driveway and parking lot of a 4 or 5-story brick building. It had a distinctive feature that many in Old North St. Louis knew well, a towering dark chimney stack rising high into the sky. What once was a building filled with the fire and smoke of industry, was now a building filled with men spit up and chewed out by choices, addictions, and hard knocks. The mission shelter had 44 beds available for up to 44 overnight homeless guests.
I walked past the line of men who had gathered near the side entrance of the building. I nodded and said hello to a few of the regulars whom I had gained something of a relationship with. In the summer there wasn’t much of a line, and often we would have “extra” open beds, maybe averaging something between 20-30 men each night at the shelter. In the cold winter though, it was different. It’s much easier to find a place to stay for the night when it’s 80 degrees, than when it’s 30 degrees. When the winter was cold, the line would be long. More than 44 men would line up. Starting with the 45th man there would be hope that someone earlier in the line would lose their place for the night due to poor behavior, intoxication, or some other unknown reason.
My role that night was not to preach, but instead to help cook and serve. There was a meal served, and then a 30-minute chapel service each night at the shelter before the men were marched upstairs to the showers and bunk room. While we had volunteers (individuals and groups) come in and lead chapel, I learned from my time serving (and from the wise words of a faithful man of God, who I will call Randy, who worked at the shelter) to always have a sermon ready. Sometimes volunteers didn’t show up. Randy had always told me “The man of God must be prepared in season and out of season”. If the volunteers didn’t show up, it was my role to lead the chapel that night.
I asked one of the homeless regulars, whom I will call Greg, who had been there every shift I had worked, “Who is coming to lead chapel tonight?”. “12 Shot” Greg answered. I did a double-take. I thought “12 Shot? What is he? Some kind of vigilante preacher loaded with shotguns coming to the hood of St. Louis?”. I followed up with another question “What sort of preacher is he?”. “The best,” he said. I raised my eyebrows. The elaboration from Greg was brief: “He preaches fire and brimstone and grace”.
After dinner was served the volunteer to lead chapel did show up. He visited with a few of the men who clearly recognized him. He shook hands with some and sat down to talk with others. When it came time for chapel I listened and marveled. “12 Shot” told how at one time he was a “scientific drunk”. He had figured out how he would maintain his buzz throughout the day. 12 Shot would use various mouthwashes and sprays he would mask his breath, and he would take 12 shots each day at intervals to never allow himself sobriety. He proclaimed with boldness that he was a man justly deserving of God’s righteous wrath. He shared many of his sins that he engaged in carelessly against God and with full diligence and care to the satiating of his own desires.
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Raising Kids to Love the Nations
Written by T. Kim |
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Many of God’s people began to love the nations by reading books or missionary stories. Hudson Taylor’s father was “deeply stirred about the spiritual state of China” after reading several books, especially one about the travels of a certain Captain Basil Hall. Start with just one nation (or a few), and teach your kids who they are. Wonder with them over a map. You could try different foods with them until they find ones they like, or give to the work of the gospel and relief efforts in specific nations.Like most kids her age, our four-year-old has no filter. Several months ago, she closed our front door, sat down, and announced, “I only like English.” We had been living in a new culture for a little over a year at this point. When I asked her what she meant, she made her stance clear: “I only like people who speak English.” Then suddenly checking herself, she asked, “Does God speak English? Or does he speak [the language where we serve]?”
She couldn’t explain why she felt such a strong preference for those who spoke her language. However, as a fellow human wrecked by sin, I understood well the desire to surround myself with those who do not make me feel alien or uncomfortable. As with her, what any of us really thinks or feels about the nations is directly related to what we believe about God.
As Christians, we’re not aiming for the mere flower of common courtesy or appreciation for otherness. We want the fruit of genuine love that comes from God (1 John 4:7). This love does not end in talk, but in deed, caring for both the temporal and eternal good of others (1 John 3:16–18). Raising our kids to love the nations means raising them to obey from the heart God’s command to love their neighbor, including those from other people groups. It’s part of bringing up any child in the Lord’s discipline and instruction (Ephesians 6:4).
So how do we cultivate that kind of love in young children? Parents can begin to draw them into God’s global work in at least five practical ways.
1. Tell them the whole story of Scripture.
Loving the nations begins with seeing the wider story of what God is doing in the world. We can tell our children that God created people, unlike any other creature, in his likeness (Genesis 5:1–2), but sin broke our relationship with God and one another (Romans 5:12). In the beginning, all mankind spoke one language (Genesis 11:1), but in response to humanity’s evil plan at the Tower of Babel, God confused the people’s language and scattered them to live all over the earth (Genesis 11:7–8).
Since the beginning, however, God has been sculpting the history of the nations and determining the boundaries of their dwelling place so “that they should seek God” (Acts 17:26–27). “He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him” — without discrimination — “should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus reconciles us now to God and one another by his blood on the cross (Ephesians 2:16). The nations will be his inheritance (Psalm 2:8), and one day they will stand before him, crying out, “Salvation belongs to our God!” (Revelation 7:9–10).
First, keep this story warm in your own heart (because our kids do learn to love what we love). Then proclaim it to your children. Before they can love the nations, our children must first behold the King of the nations and marvel at his love and salvation for every people. Let his words build their view of the world, brick by brick. Start from a young age and tell them, in terms they can understand, the faithful story.
2. Pray for them and with them.
Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China in the nineteenth century, credited his parents and their prayers when asked about his love for the nations.
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5 Practical Points for Preachers
Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
There is an ever present need to take heed to ourselves. Our lips are always a few steps ahead of our feet. There, we must be resolute in guarding against the multitude of temptations that Satan will seek to use against us.This past Tuesday, I had the privilege of giving a pastoral charge to two men coming to be licensed to preach within the bounds of our Presbytery. The charge to those being licensed or ordained is a solemn event, happening only once in a man’s life and ministry. The charge was built largely on the ministry of the Apostle Paul and some of his charges to Timothy and Titus in the pastoral epistles. Though one can only say so much in a three to four minute charge, I carved out five practical points for these men as they enter in on a preaching ministry. Here is the essence of that charge:
1. Prioritize first preaching to yourself whatever you plan on preaching to others.
John Owen once famously declared, “Truly no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart”…Unless “he finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.” We never want to step into the pulpit without having seriously and soberingly preached first to ourselves whatever passage we are preaching to the congregation. When a man does not preach the Scriptures to himself, first and foremost, he will deliver hyper-intellectual, experientially theoretical, or dry and lifeless sermons to the people of God.
In Lectures to My Students, Charles Spurgeon explained the dire need a minister of the word must have to be so affected by God’s word that he has a burning fire for the proclamation of it within. This will only come as we preach God’s word consistently to our own hearts, the Holy Spirit fanning the flame of love for the triune God and the ministry of His word. Spurgeon wrote,
“I have such a profound respect for this ‘fire in the bones,’ that if I did not feel it myself, I must leave the ministry at once. If you do not feel the consecrated glow, I beseech you return to your homes and serve God in your proper spheres; but if assuredly the coals of juniper blaze within, do not stifle them, unless, indeed, other considerations of great moment should prove to you that the desire is not a fire of heavenly origin.”
2. Keep Christ and Him crucified and risen central in all your preaching.
The Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nearly every man I have known began his ministry of preaching starts it off his ministry with this commitment. However, as the years roll on, so many deviate from this and allow themselves to be sidetracked by subjects and emphases that–while they may have roots in the teaching of Scripture–supplant the central focus of Scripture on Christ and the salvation that is in Him alone. As Geerhardus Vos explained,
“It is possible, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, to preach things of which none can say that they are untrue and none can deny that in their proper place and time they may be important, and yet to forego telling people plainly and to forego giving them the distinct impression that they need forgiveness and salvation from sin through the cross of Christ…there ought not to be in your whole repertoire a single sermon in which from beginning to end you do not convey to your hearers the impression that what you want to impart to them, you do not think it possible to impart to them in any other way than as a correlate and consequence of the eternal salvation of their souls through the blood of Christ.”
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Help! I’m Raising a Legalist
Written by Ginger M. Blomberg |
Sunday, January 21, 2024
By teaching our children both law and grace, we can help them see the tragedies of both legalism and prodigalism. We can show them the beauty of God’s goodness and mercy through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son who loved us and paid the penalty for us. Once we see God’s grace to us, we can extend it to others in love.Good Intentions
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever opens with this dire judgment: “The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world.” The book’s narrator then quickly runs through a list of just what made the Herdman kids so bad, saying, “They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain.” Later, the narrator also introduces Alice Wendleken, who wants very badly to play Mary in the church’s Christmas pageant. Alice plays Mary in the pageant every year “because she’s so smart, so neat and clean, and most of all, so holy-looking.” This year, though, Alice is stunned when she ends up losing the part of Mary to Imogene Herdman. Alice starts keeping a list of every naughty and irreverent thing the Herdman kids do, hoping that someone will realize how bad they are and kick them out of the pageant and out of the church.
As Christian parents, we want our kids to do the right things. Some of us have found, though, that in trying to avoid raising Herdmans, we are inadvertently raising Alice Wendlekens, kids who follow the rules not out of love but for control. How do we teach our children to be discerning, both to recognize and to do right, but at the same time to show God’s love and care for the imperfect people around them?
Law
It is vital for us to teach our children what is right, but it is also vital for us to examine our goals in teaching. An old comedy skit said, “Parents don’t want justice; they just want quiet,” and, oh boy, has that been true for me sometimes. I am sorry to say, I have sometimes taught my children the law because I just wanted them to act decently and not embarrass me at church.
But why did God give us his law? For one thing, he knows what is best for us, and he has revealed rules in his word to teach us to act in ways that may seem hard but will usually be for our good and the good of those around us. If we avoid lying, then most of the time people will trust us more. If we honor our parents, we are likely to have a good relationship with them.
Much more importantly, though, God gave us the law to reveal his character. Our God is holy, just, and good. He cares about people who are marginalized by society. He hates when innocent people are harmed. He loves when people do right and are kind to each other. His law teaches all these things about him.
In teaching us about God’s character, the law (and Israel’s history of trying to follow it) also shows so clearly both our need for God and our separation from him. Paul says in Romans 7:13 that through the law, “sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandments might become sinful beyond measure.” We need there to be goodness and justice in the world. We also need a way to get to it. God’s law shows the standard of his character and also how far we are from reaching it.
We want to teach our kids to follow the law, in the sense that we want them to know and do what is right. As Christian parents, and really just as humans, most of us want our kids to know enough to be happy and to be “healthy, wealthy, and wise” (as non-theological lawgiver Benjamin Franklin advises).
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