From His Heart

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Today on, from his heart, we're going to learn that Jesus is our savior, but also our judge. Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

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He is terrifying. I mean, earth and heaven say, I got to get out of here. They run away and they disappear. Why? Because this is the end of time. No more earth, no more sky. It is done.

And this says that there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide because earth and heaven have fled. The Bible says it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The Bible says that our God is a consuming fire.

The judge is terrifying in holiness. And the judge is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Real love, real hope.

Speaker 1

It has truthfully been said that what you do with Jesus in this life determines what he does in the next life with you. You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, and today he'll help us understand what takes place in what is known as the Great White Throne Judgment. It's found in Revelation, chapter 20, when those who have rejected Christ will be judged and consigned to the lake of fire.

Now, note that today's message is not a warm and fuzzy lesson if you are an unbeliever in Christ. Hopefully, though, it'll bring us to better understand a holy God and awaken people to their sin so they can genuinely repent and, through their faith, be judged faithful.

The lesson is the second in the series from Pastor Jeff called "Forever and Ever: The Reality of Eternal Heaven and Eternal Hell." If you can, now open your Bible to the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelation as Pastor Jeff begins describing the transformation of our Lord Jesus Christ from Savior to Judge.

Speaker 2

Today we want to talk about the resurrection of the wicked. Because you mark it down, there will certainly be a resurrection of the wicked, and that comes at the end of time. The Bible talks about it in Revelation, chapter 20. So just to give you a frame of reference, when is this time coming? The Bible talks about this as the Great White Throne Judgment, the final judgment, the last judgment. It is the end of time before eternity begins.

Right now, we're in the present church age. That's the time that we're living in. It's the time between the cross and the resurrection and the rapture of the church. That's the church age. We believe that the rapture of the church is coming. It's an unsigned event; it could come at any moment. Jesus said, "An hour when you think not, the Son of Man comes." When the rapture of the church takes place, then we have the years of tribulation, the seven years of tribulation that are spoken of in Daniel chapter nine. The last half of that tribulation is the worst; it's called the Great Tribulation.

At the desecration of the temple, at that middle point, that's when the devil, the Antichrist, who is the devil in the flesh, reveals his true colors. He says, "No more worship of God. I am God. You worship me." And if you don't worship me, you will be killed. This sets up the Great Tribulation. Jesus Christ comes back to this earth at the battle of Armageddon and does battle with the Antichrist and all his forces, and he sets up his kingdom. You have a thousand years of Jesus Christ reigning on this earth along with his saints. We rule and reign with him.

At the end of the millennial reign of Christ, you have this thing called the Great White Throne Judgment. It's the final judgment before you enter into the eternal state, into eternity. Nobody is being born anymore; everything is fixed. There are a new heavens and a new earth, and you read about that in Revelation chapter 21 and chapter 22.

So let's look at the final judgment, the Great White Throne Judgment spoken of in Revelation chapter 20, beginning in verse 11. John says this: "And I saw a Great White Throne, and him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away. And no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds. And Death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death, the Lake of Fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the Lake of Fire."

Paul said there will certainly be a resurrection of the wicked. The resurrection of the wicked takes place right here at the Great White Throne Judgment. I want to share with you, since there is certainly going to be a resurrection of the wicked, three certainties that we see from the Great White Throne Judgment.

Certainty number one: the judge will sit on his Great White Throne. Sometimes you'll have people who get things confused, and they'll be praying. These are Christian people, and they're praying and saying, "Lord, I can't wait to meet you at the Great White Throne." You don't want to meet the Lord at the Great White Throne; that's a judgment of all unbelievers.

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And.

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And I saw a Great White Throne and him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them. The Judge sits on the throne, and this judge is terrifying in holiness. He is terrifying. I mean, earth and heaven say, I gotta get outta here. As one translation says, earth and sky run away from him and disappeared. They said, we gotta get out of here. They run away and they disappear. Why? Because this is the end of time. No more earth, no more sky. It is done. And this says that there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide because earth and heaven have fled.

In Revelation, chapter six, the people cry out and say to the rocks and the caves, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of the Lord, for the day of his wrath has come. And who is able to stand?" You can't say that to the rocks and to the hills to fall on us, because they're gone. This is just you as an unbeliever before God. It's a terrifying thing. The Bible says it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The Bible says that our God is a consuming fire. The Judge is terrifying in holiness. And the Judge is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. From Savior to judge.

Now we know that God is the judge. God is the judge of all the earth. But Jesus said in John chapter five, "For not even the Father judges anyone, but has given all judgment to the Son in order that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father." So God is going to judge the world in righteousness, but he does it through a man whom he has appointed. And that man is Jesus. And that's what Paul told the Athenians on Mars Hill. You know, all the Greek muckety mucks had gotten together. And Paul began to preach to them. And he said, "God is now declaring that all men everywhere should repent because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead." The Lord Jesus will sit on the throne. He will be the judge. The Savior who wanted to save every single person is now the Judge who will judge every single person.

So the Judge will sit on his Great White Throne. Hey, great means that it is great in power and in awesomeness. White means it's great in purity. Throne means its purpose. What is its purpose? To judge in righteousness. So the judge will sit on his great white throne.

Second certainty: The judged will be raised to stand trial before him. You see the judge. Now we see the judged. It says in verse 12, "And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne." It says in verse 13, "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them." There's a resurrection of the wicked.

Now, when a person dies outside of Christ, what happens to that person? Well, we saw last week in Luke 16, when the rich man died, he went to a place called Hades. That's where his soul went. His body, the scripture says, he was buried, and in Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torment. So the body goes into the grave, the body goes into the crematorium, the body goes into the sea, wherever you plant the body. But the soul goes to a place called Hades.

Remember we said, what is the difference between Hades and hell? Hades is like county jail. Hell is the state penitentiary. No one gets picked up for a crime by a police officer and gets taken right to the state penitentiary. No, they go to jail. And from jail, you go and stand before the judge. And from the judge, you get your sentencing. And then you go to the state pen. Hades is the place that all the unrighteous dead go, awaiting the great white throne judgment. And Hades is a place of torment. But it's only for the soul. The body is in the grave. But the sea gave up the dead which were in them, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them.

And there's a reuniting of the soul and the body. And God gives every wicked person a new body, so to speak. A body that can last forever. A body that will experience the horrors of hell forever and ever and ever. It's not a glorified body, but it is a body that will last forever. Jesus said, "Don't fear those who are able to kill the body but are unable to kill the soul. But here's who you need to fear: the one who is able to kill both the body and the soul." In hell, the judged will be raised to stand trial before him.

And the scripture says in verse 12, he says, "I saw the great and the small." So who's gonna be there at this judgment? Well, it's all the unbelievers of all the ages. They're going to be there. And it's only unbelievers. See, we have this idea that when you die, you know you're going to stand before God, and that's what's going to determine whether you go to heaven or hell. And so I come in fear and trepidation, I stand before God. He's got this big scale, this big balance, like in chemistry class. And God's going to pile all your good works on this side and all your bad works on that side, and he's going to weigh it out.

You remember Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where you're a good egg or you're a bad egg? That's the way people think about God. It's nothing like that. Nothing like that. The only people here at the Great White Throne Judgment are unbelievers. And the only thing that's being decided is the degree of punishment. The judge will be raised to stand trial. So you have the great and the small. They're going to be there.

See, it's from one end of the spectrum to the other. I saw the great and the small. The great, or the megos, that's the Greek word for great. Megos and the small, mikros. We get micro from that. So you have the big shots and the little shots and all the other shots in between. The great and the small. They're all going to be there. You know, sometimes we see things happen today, and if somebody's famous or somebody has a lot of money or somebody has connections, they can be accused of a crime and they can be guilty of that crime. And somehow, some way, they get off. And we say, what in the world? I mean, how does that happen? Just because they have money, just because they have fame, just because they have connections, they can get off. Everybody knows they're guilty, but they get off. Not in this court.

The great and the small will be there, and the great aren't going to be able to finagle their way out of it. But not only do you have the great and the small, you have the rejecters and the neglectors. They're going to be there. You say, what is that? Well, that's two ends of the spectrum. See, the rejecters are those who are out and out against the Lord. They're the ones who go on speaking tours saying that God doesn't exist. They're the people who hate God, who shake their fist in the face of God and say, "God, I will never believe in you. I'll never come to faith in you."

There's a poem that I heard years and years ago. I've never forgotten it. It's a communist poem, a godless communist poem. And it says this: "I fight alone and win or sink. I need no one to make me free. I want no Jesus Christ to think that he could ever die for me." That's the out and out rejecter shaking his or her fist in the face of God. So angry at God, hating God, the rejecter.

But now on the other end of the spectrum, what do you have? You have the neglector. This is not the person who's shaking his fist, shaking her fist in the face of God. This is not the person that says, "God, I hate you and I'm never gonna believe in you." This is the person, according to Isaiah 53, "All we like sheep have gone astray. Each one has turned to his own way." This is just the person that says, "Yeah, I believe the song from the Doobie Brothers. Jesus is just alright with me, but I'm gonna go do my own thing." I'm not mad at him, I don't hate him. I just not really going to follow him. I'm going to follow what I want to do.

The neglectors, now I can identify with the neglector because that's what I was before I came to Christ as a high school kid. I wasn't hating God, I just wanted to do my own thing. I didn't understand God and his grace, but I was just wandering away from him and just thinking, well, I'm just going to live it up. And in my heart, I always wanted to go to heaven. I just didn't know how to get there. Neglectors are like that. They think, well, I'm just kind of doing my own thing. I'm following the crowd, you know, everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it. I'm just gonna go along with them. They will be there at the Great White Throne.

And then you have the riotous and the religious. They're gonna be there. Two ends of the spectrum. The riotous. What does it mean to be riotous? That means you're wild and have uncontrolled behavior. You are wild in violence, you're wild in hedonism. You're just living it up. Or you're a drug cartel dealer or you're some kind of mass murderer. You're just out of control. The riotous, they're going to be there.

Now our minds kind of wrap around that and we say, you know, as the surveys show, more than half of the people in America believe in hell. The Pew research in a 2015 survey said 58% of people in America believe in hell. And as the Barna research followed that up and said, yeah, and of those who believe in hell, the 58% who believe in hell, less than one half of 1% believe they're going there. Hell is always for somebody else. It's for the quote unquote bad person. It's for that riotous person. It's for that person shaking his or her fist in the face of God. Hell is for the Adolf Hitlers of the world.

Now, if you mention Hitler's name, as Hitler going to hell, nobody seems to get too upset about that. They're like, well, I mean, if anybody's going to hell, it would be Hitler. Hitler's a terrible guy. Yeah, he is a terrible guy. He killed 6 million Jews plus millions of others. Probably 11 million were under his name as far as people he was responsible for their deaths. Terrible guy. Will Hitler be in hell? Yes, yes, Hitler will be there. Herod will be there. All sorts of people from history will be there. Pilate will be there. Lots of people who lived a riotous life will be there.

But then you have the other side of the spectrum, the religious. The religious person is going to be there. See, this is all under the heading of: And I saw the dead, the great and the small, the rejecters and the neglectors, the riotous and the religious. They will be there. There are a lot of people who are very, very religious in false religion. And what do they say? Well, they say, "Well, you know, all roads lead to heaven." No, they don't. One road leads to heaven. And Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me." That's what Jesus said.

So they will be there. Those who are religious with world religions, but then those who are religious with Judaism and Christianity, they will be there. Caiaphas, who was high priest, who presided over the trial of Jesus, he will be there at the Great White Throne. His father-in-law, Annas, will be there at the Great White Throne. All those guys that were part of the religious muckety muck in Jerusalem and in Israel in the first century that rejected Christ, they'll be there. They'll be there. False cultists will be there. The Jim Joneses and the David Koreshes, the Marshall Applegates, the false prophets and false Christs, they'll be there.

And you know who else will be there? The person that came to church Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. The person in a church just like this came to church. "Hey, I walked down an aisle, I joined the church. I got baptized." You did a bunch of checking the boxes, but you never got saved. You just know about Jesus in your head. You check boxes in your head about Jesus, but you never got saved. What does Jesus say about this day? Matthew, chapter seven: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, many. Not a few. Not some, many. 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.'" What a frightening passage of scripture.

He's not talking about Sunday morning bench warmers. He's not talking about somebody that said, "Well, Lord, I came at Easter and Christmas. That's got to be good for something." He's talking about people who preached in his name, who cast out demons in his name, who performed miracles in his name. I mean, have you done any of that? You know who did that? Judas. Judas. And Judas will be here at the Great White Throne judgment.

Hey, the riotous and the religious, they'll be there. The great and the small, the judged will be raised to stand trial before him. And certainty number three: the judgment will be righteously and fairly delivered. And I saw the dead, he says in verse 12, the great and the small standing before the throne. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. The sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds.

How does God judge? He judges righteously. He judges fairly. Because as it says in the book of Genesis, "Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?" So the judgment, the scripture says, will be based on deeds. They're judged, every one of them, says it twice. According to their deeds. According to their deeds.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the second verse message in Pastor Jeff's series, Forever and Ever, the reality of eternal heaven and eternal hell. Today's lesson is entitled "From Savior to Judge." It's eye-opening for some, encouraging for others, and perhaps appropriately convicting for some.

This month is a pivotal month for From His Heart, as it is the end of our calendar year and a time when we traditionally receive about 25% of our entire annual support. This support allows us the ability to accept new invitations to connect on air and around the world on more stations, and that sharing is vital news for many. Everything you give is used to produce and distribute these broadcasts. If you're so moved to help us financially this year, we would be much more than grateful and would like to say thank you by sending you a brand new, beautiful, high-quality daily devotional book called "The Heart Is God's Home."

This inspiring book, written by 39 pastors and church leaders including Pastor Jeff, will help you draw closer to the Lord who lives within you. Each daily devotion reminds you that God's presence is as near as your own heartbeat, with scripture, uplifting insights, and a heartfelt prayer to help you apply what you've read. Just request your copy of "The Heart Is God's Home" when you give your best gift by December 31st, and you can be sure that your support will help more people around the world discover real truth, real love, and real hope in Jesus together.

Let's keep sharing the love of Jesus. Call 866-40-BIBLE to get your copy, or go online to fromhisheart.org to make your secure year-end gift and receive this year-long devotional book for each day—a powerful reminder that God is as near as your own heartbeat. Just call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org.

We pray that the message we began today, called "From Savior to Judge," was a blessing to you and that you'll be right back here tomorrow for part two. I'm Larry Nobles, inviting you to join us on Thursday when Pastor Jeff Shreve shares real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart.

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There is tremendous truth There is hope that you always dream love he can heal every scars of truth, Real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and he has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more@fromisheart.org.