Services | Judgment Seat of Christ

Bulletin

Hymn # 469 “Love Lifted Me”

SCRIPTURE READING – I John 4:16 - 19
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate

Praise and Worship
“In the House”
“Battle Belongs”
“This IS What We Live For”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Judgment Seat of Christ”

PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection

“Echo Holy”
Look to the Son”

Sermon Notes
II Corinthians 5:10 All believers must appear
I Corinthians 3:10 – 15 Be careful how you build

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

I want you to imagine you might have been in this situation. You're a salesman and your sales have been trending down. Or perhaps you're in the machine shop and your widgets, many of them are having to be scrapped. And then you get a note from the owner of the business that says that they want to see you at the end of the day. I would pretty much imagine that you'd be really nervous that you are going to have to talk to the owner of the business because at this point you weren't performing as what others thought you ought to.

It's interesting in that situation we're very concerned about what the owner thinks.

However God also has sent a message about what he thinks about performance.

But it seems that very few people are concerned about what he thinks.

So I invite you to listen to this message about the message that God sent us about our performance.

This is the message with this week's message. But in case you didn't hear the last message or you've never heard me speak.

I need to preface the message by saying that the Scriptures clearly say and therefore we believe that we are saved by grace, unmerited favor. None of us deserve to be saved but because of God's love and forgiveness and mercy he chooses to save us. And the way we know that grace has been applied to us is that it's through faith.

And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. Not just Savior but Lord and Savior. And so when we talk about what I'm going to talk about sometimes people will confuse it and say well there's something that we are adding to our salvation or taken away from our salvation. The Scriptures do not teach that. Last time we took a look at we're in a race therefore win it.

It's not good enough to just be in the race that the Scriptures encourage us to have the attitude and the expectation and the result of winning the race that is set before us. Today the Scripture will talk about building.

And again it is not building so that you can become saved or keep your salvation. It tells us something different in that. That in essence what the Scriptures teach us is accountability.

Jesus taught a parable to those who were listening and he gave a parable about a master who was going to go on a trip and he gave one of his slaves and we don't like that word in America but that's what we're talking about. Five talents and another two talents and a third one talent.

The gentleman with five talents, the Scripture says he immediately went out and traded and acquired another five talents. And the one with two talents immediately started trading and gained another two talents. And the one with one talent decided to dig a hole and put it in the hole.

And then the master comes back from the trip and the one with five talents, joyfully says, "Here master, you gave me five, here's another five." And the master said, "Well done, good and faithful slave.

You are faithful in a few things. I will have you reign over many things." And then the one with two talents said, "Master, you gave me two, here's another two." And the master gave him the same compliment.

I put you in charge of a few things, therefore I'm going to have you reign over many things." And it was accountability, God said.

This person, this slave was given his master's goods. It wasn't his goods, it was his master's goods and he invested it and was able to obtain a return and it was one with five. They both doubled, they just both had different amounts. But the one with the one talent who buried it, uncovered it, gave it back and said, "I knew you were a hard taskmaster and so I just returned to you what was yours."

And Jesus' response in this parable was, "You evil and lazy slave, why don't you at least put it in a bank so I can get some interest?"

But you wasted it.

And his compliment was, "Basically, you're going to be cast out because you weren't trustworthy in a little thing."

And so the Scriptures, while it teaches us that our salvation is based on God's love and his grace, that the life that he has given us and the talents that he has given us, we are going to be accountable for.

And so in the Scriptures, and if you have your Bibles, and you should, we're going to take a look at two different areas. One's in 1 Corinthians, the other will be in 2 Corinthians, but the first one is in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10.

And it says this after you've turned to it.

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Now I want you to understand that this is the judgment related to believers.

There is a judgment related to non-believers, and that is known as the Great White Throne Judgment, and that is where it is looked, if your name is, whether it's written in the Book of Life, and then if it's not, and you're judged, you're cast into hell.

This is not talking about those people, it's talking about believers.

So if you don't believe in Jesus, this isn't for you, but there is a judgment, maybe you ought to consider that. But this one says that believers, we must all appear.

All means no one's excluded.

So you, me, Paul, Peter, James, Mark, all of the saints from the beginning to when Jesus comes and there is no more, are all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, which is called the Bema Seat.

And there is this, so all of us have to go.

So what I want you to understand is, God has given us advanced notice that we're going to be held accountable.

He's not some of us, but all of us.

And what I want you again to understand is, if you take as an example, your boss, and you've not had a really great quarter or whatever, and your boss sends you a note that says, we need to discuss a few things at the end of the work day, you're probably a little nervous.

Is he going to fire me? Is he going to reprimand me? Probably it's not going to be a raise. And so we get nervous. What is the boss going to say about our situation because he sent us a note? Well, Jesus and our Father has sent us a message.

All of you, when the time comes, are going to have to appear.

And we are all going to be judged at that Bema Seat, not for our salvation, but what our accountability is for what we've done good or bad in the body. And again, the situation is, a lot of times there was a false doctrine, if you will, that says whatever you do in the body isn't related and you don't have to worry about it because God gives us a spirit and it's all about spirit and therefore that's the spirit. Now the scripture says, you've been given a body, what have you done with it?

If it's good things, we're going to produce certain judgments. If you've done bad things, you've been certain you're not judging. But again, we all must appear and we all must be, again, recompensed for his deeds, compensated.

Now I'm going to tell you, as I frequently say, when I point one finger at you, three fingers come back at me.

Well, it's more than three fingers this time and I'll tell you why.

Because I'm teaching this stuff.

And the stuff you teach, God holds you to a higher standard.

So it would much be better and I think that's why a lot of pastors preach salvation because they got theirs so I can preach salvation and I don't have to be judged by other than preaching salvation. So I'm telling us that we are all going to be judged whether we do something good or bad and we're going to be paid for it.

I ain't perfect.

I am going to be judged by what I do, but hopefully because I'm trying to teach you

the Word of God.

I'll get at least half a check mark.

Yeah, you taught it. You need to live it a little better.

So again, there is this sense of we all have to appear and we're all going to be compensated. Now I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

Sorry, verse 10.

Paul is going to use a building as an example of our lives.

So he says this, "According to the grace, the unmerited favor of God, which was given to me like a wise master builder I laid a foundation and another is built upon it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it." So first Paul says, "A wise master builder first lays a foundation."

I'll give you a situation here. This building that we're in was originally supposed to be built so it could have two stories.

When you do that, you have to build the foundation as such so that it will sit two stories.

When we decided to take half of the sanctuary space and build the second story, we found out that the foundation wasn't enough to support a second story. So we had to dig trenches and dig platform 24 inches in so they would withstand earthquakes and whatever. But the foundation had to be proper in order to support the building. So he says, "A wise master builder makes sure that he has a proper foundation." Now Jesus has talked about foundations. He says, "There's a fool who builds his house on sand."

That fool, when the storm comes, the house is going to fall down because sand is a terrible foundation to build any sort of structure. You can't even put a tent up where sand will come and wash away. So Jesus says, "The wise person builds a foundation on the rock." And that rock is Jesus. And if you do not build your life upon that rock, that foundation, it doesn't matter how magnificent the building that you build is, it's going to crumble on the day of judgment.

And so first you need to understand as you start, have you laid the foundation? Is it a strong foundation? And again, that strong foundation is Jesus Christ.

And so Paul understands as a wise master builder, he has laid out that foundation as Jesus. But he understands that he is going to minister. So he's writing to the church in Corinth. He'll write to the churches in Galatia, he'll write to the Ephesians. He's doing his ministry and other people who become believers because of Paul's ministry or the team like Silas or John Mark or others, they are in cold ministry and they're building in. Timothy, he says, "Timothy, I'm giving you this authority. Do these things." And Timothy continues on. He understands that he will not always be the construction contractor, that there are others who are going to build on it. So he goes, "I've made sure that the foundation was secure and other people are going to come along and add to this building." But he said, "But each man must be careful how he builds on it."

I am a lousy person when it comes to construction.

I always say 80percent of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.

And so I usually would pay people to do those types of things because I'll tell you how

naive I was about construction.

Many many many decades ago, we bought a new house in Riverside.

And my in-laws gave us some money to do a patio and then we were going to do a lattice cover over it. And so I and my in-law was building this. I had a hammer and I'm up there and I'm counting away and the hammer is kind of getting beat up and I'm noticing my stepfather, he's going boom boom boom boom. I'm going, "What kind of hammer you got?" I discovered there was a difference in hammers. I thought a hammer was a hammer was a hammer.

So it's a good thing I didn't build anything for you. So you must be careful how you build it so that the nails actually get lodged in the

wood or the screws or whatever. You're careful how you do it. Why? Because you don't want to build it again. You want to enjoy the patio for 20 years. You don't want to every six months have to fix another part of the lattice or whatever. So be careful how you're building your life.

So many people kind of think, "Well, I'm going to live forever and therefore I'll worry about it forever or later."

Not until you get to a certain age that you go, "Oh gee, I'm mortal.

Maybe I shouldn't drive 110 miles an hour down the freeway.

Maybe climbing Mount Everest is not in my future because I'm not..." So we become more, but that's how we need to understand how we build on it.

"For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid which is Christ Jesus." So he confirms that. That foundation is Christ.

"Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, pressure stone, wood, hay, straw."

This is there are different ways to add to this building.

There's different materials.

And in Paul's day, the more valuable the building, the more great stuff was in it. So like some of the temples had gold and silver and all kinds of neat stuff.

The emperors and all that, they had marvelous buildings. The poor people had houses built of wood.

That's why in Rome, the old adage, "Narrow fiddle while the Rome burned." The reason it burned was because all the poor people lived in little small houses that were next to each other, next to each other, and the fire just wiped them out. But the emperors didn't live in wooden houses. They lived in marble and brick and all those types of things. And so Paul's saying, "Your life shouldn't be a wooden structure.

Your life shouldn't be like the three pigs where one of them built a house out of straw.

You ought to build your life on precious material.

One because precious material tends to, because it's precious, last longer than hay or whatever."

Again, many decades ago, and I was telling one of my grandsons this story, my son and I had a chance to go to China.

And one of the last cities that we were there was in Shanghai. Now my son had the cities because he never meets a stranger. So he'd go out and he'd go to wherever and he'd meet all these people and whatever. So I decided that I would also take a walk, and it was like close to midnight.

I want to tell you the one story that happened that I didn't tell anybody that was kind of embarrassing. But as I was walking by, there was a police station being built. It hadn't been finished yet. And as I walked by this police station, the counters were in marble.

And the reason the counters are in marble is because the Chinese have an attitude of we've been here for 5,000 years, we're going to be here another 5,000 years, so build it with things that will last for 5,000 years.

We can't even have a washing machine last more than a year.

It's a whole different attitude. And we need to have an attitude that I'm going to live a life that is a valuable life to God.

And I'm going to build on that life with gold and silver and precious stones, rubies and diamonds and emeralds and opals and whatever the precious stones are that we might say that my life is reflection of my value of God.

My building doesn't mean that I'm more valuable than you. My building is a reflection of what He has given me that I invest back for Him.

And that's the secret. What are you doing that invests back with God? A lot of times we want to invest in our lives.

God gave the talents to invest for Him.

He's given you a lot, your life, to invest for Him.

Everybody, Christians, I don't know how many times I'm here, "Well, my purpose and my dreams and my, my, my, my, my, what's His purpose? What are His dreams? What are His desires?" We should build our lives with value for Him because He's given us the talents.

And again, we use that term "talent" by thinking, "Oh, I, you know, I'm, I'm good at singing or bath or..." Yes, that's fact. But some of the talents is, "I breathe in, I breathe out, I breathe in, I breathe out. I'm still alive. That is a talent that He has given me because it's His breath, not mine."

Each man's work will become evident, for the day we'll show it because it is revealed with fire.

And the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.

So there's going to come, if you will, a judgment.

Refiner's fire.

Those types of things that are going to say, "You may have an offering of gold. Is it pure gold or 30percent gold?"

Refiner's fire will make it more pure and more precious, but it will be revealed.

Precious stones will go through the fire.

If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.

I say this over and over and over, and I keep repeating it, repeating it. And it's kind of like the pastor who first Sunday that he came to a new church, he preached a sermon.

And then next Sunday, he preached the same sermon. And the third Sunday, he preached the same sermon. The chairman of Deacons went up to the pastor and said, "Don't you have other sermons?" He goes, "Yes, I do. I'm waiting for you to do the first one."

And so I seem to keep repeating.

If you're not satisfied, and if you're not happy in the shack that you're living in,

even if that shack is in Malibu, you want a bigger and better shack. Nobody, I haven't heard of anybody who says, "You know, I bought my car in 1972, and I'm perfectly happy with it."

Well, what do you do about GPS? "Oh, I, you know, whatever." What about the gas? Because the gas, you know, it doesn't have lead. Well, you know, it doesn't run as well as it used to. No, nobody's happy, other than if you were a classic car person, and then you, again, you treat it like it's precious, but you just don't drive a conqueror.

You want the newest and best.

You want the rich person's car.

Even if you don't know how to drive it, that's still what you want.

If you're not satisfied for the temporary, why be satisfied for the eternal?

God is going to give us a reward.

And again, the amazing thing is, as Jesus talked about giving rewards, the slaves would say, you know, when the master would say, "Well done, good and faithful slave," the response is, "I'm a non-profitable slave. I've only done what you've told me to do.

I'm only telling you what he's told us to do. So the fact that I'm telling you this isn't like I'm giving you some great original thought.

So I've only done what he's told me to do, and yet he gives us rewards."

That's like your boss saying, "Take the trash out." And you go take the trash out, and he goes, "Here's a $200 bonus. I only took the trash out, yeah. But you did what I told you to do when I told you to do it."

No, no, no, I get a paycheck, I get heaven, and yet you still give me a reward.

Let's get the best reward.

Yes, heaven is better than the other place.

But let's all of us, let's all of us at FBC West, being whatever is the equivalent of Malibu, get the reward. I mean, you're alive anyway, and we're all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ anyway.

Why not get the reward?

Because, number one, if you've been in any kind of sports or any kind of game or whatever where you win, that's kind of cool. You enjoy it. So playing a game is fun. Winning is more fun.

When we go to the BBC of Christ, yeah, we're there. We kind of won.

Why not really be happy by getting reward?

And if any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss. I think there's probably a lot of people, especially pastors, who tend to think that God is going to be really impressed with us.

Especially pastors who tend to go to a little church and work really hard so that they might get hired at a little bigger church and work really hard so they don't might get hired for a bigger church and then a massive church.

Because they're doing exactly what everybody else does.

They're trying to increase their fame and notoriety and value.

There are people that we don't even know the names of. And one example, I knew his name and I forgot it, so that tells you how.

He was a missionary. He went to a country. He spent his entire ministry till his death at this location, at this town, and not one single person came to salvation.

So you might say that that man's wasted his time.

Except his son showed up after the man's death and started ministering. And pretty much the whole town prevented because the father planted and watered.

Don't be too quick to judge by success, but by your faithfulness to what God has called us to do.

You see, without faith, it is impossible to please God. So you can try to build your own ministry for your own purposes and you'll receive exactly what you wanted. So if I were to preach, now I'll be honest, do I enjoy compliments? Yes, I do.

But if I'm preaching to get compliments, if and when you compliment me, I got my reward. But even if I am true to the Word of God and I explain it and I preach it and I give it,

because he's worthy and I'm going to do it whether you like it or not,

then someday I'll receive the reward.

So don't be so concerned about whether people recognize you or not.

If you're washing feet, keep on doing it.

Because I know as you wash feet, people are going to come and give you dirtier feet

and smellier feet because they saw you serve that person. So they want you to serve them. Hey, I'm not a wash your feet person.

But that's what God has called us to do. So that's what we do. We're told to forgive. Yeah, but it's hard.

So is dying on a cross.

So is God saying, Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.

They forgives me that he forgives you. So there are things that he has taught us to do that we respond in faith. And those things are precious.

But the things that are not, we will suffer loss.

How.

Again, you're in heaven, but how devastating must it be for those?

Well, when it's their time at the Bema seat,

they hear the first person say, God say, well done, good and faithful slave.

And then you show up and they say, well, there's Joe.

You're here.

Desire.

Expect demand of yourself that you may hear him say, well done, good and faithful slave, that you built on the foundation of Jesus. Things that are a goal and silver and precious stones. And there may be a little straw in there, but you. That was only my new part of what happened.

Maybe before you heard of this message.

But notice the promise here, even in that situation, but he himself will be saved yet through as though fire.

Your works will not save you. The fact that you present to him gold and silver and precious stones doesn't get you into heaven.

And doing wood and hay and stubble doesn't keep you out.

Just means the rewards aren't there for all.

We are told that we are the temple of God.

Temples in that town will tell you two things.

The richness of that town is the nicer the temple, probably the richer they are, and the value that they placed on that God.

And so if you go to Athens, you'll see the Parthenon, and it is a big, massive temple. And it doesn't matter where in Athens you are, you can see it.

Because the Athenians really thought much of their God. As a matter of fact, they built little minor temples. That's where you get the Nike shoes. There's a little temple for Nike.

So they built a big temple, and they built a little couple of small. But those little small temples were dwarfed to this one. As we build our lives on the foundation of Christ, as temples, we ought to say, I am His.

I am on a hill. And the whole world is going to be able to see that the Lord God of heaven and earth, Yahweh, Jehovah, Lord, is my God. And knowing I'm not ashamed, I am proud.

I am proud to be identified with Him.

And I am building my life permanently and preciously on His foundation.

And all God's people say.