Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Hebrews 9:27. As it is appointed unto men once to die, not twice, three times, four times, five times, and come back again in another shape or form. Once to die, and after that, the judgment. Not after that another life, not after that a reincarnation, after that, the judgment.

Now, we talked about the judgment of the Great White Throne that Revelation 21 talks about. How the whole world will be gathered in front of God, and that he will separate the sheep from the goats. He uses another picture in another part of his teaching, of a great net of fish. The bad fish will be thrown out and the good fish will be kept. He talks about the harvest at the end of the world. When the wheat and the tares will be separated.

And there will be a time when God judges the world by Jesus. Jesus will be the judge. If we meet Christ now, we meet him as savior. If we do not know him as savior, we will face him as judge. That's not a very good idea.

Now, the last lecture, we looked at some of the biblical facts about the judgment. We talked about how God would dismiss the people, say, "I never knew you." You might call me Lord, Lord, and sit in church and sing hymn books, but if I never really knew you personally, the Holy Spirit didn't come and live in your heart, then I will say to you, "Depart from me. I never knew you." I never knew you.

But what of those who have been written in the Lamb's Book of Life? Remember, those that were not found in the Lamb's Book of Life were cast into the Lake of Fire. But what about those that were written in the Lamb's Book of Life? What about you and I, hopefully every one of us, who have been born from above, who have been regenerate by God's Spirit? And for that reason and that reason alone will be in heaven, have been forgiven. The door of heaven has been opened to us because Jesus with a nail pierced hand opened it. No other reason. Our good works couldn't take the key and try and force our way into heaven. The key would not fit in the lock. But Christ swung the door open and invites those that know him, and that he knows intimately, because he lives within by his Spirit, to join him in his heavenly house.

Everybody that has died, their spirits are waiting in a chamber of the Father's house, for the resurrection and to receive their resurrection body. They are comforted, absent from the body, present with the Lord. Paul says it over and over again. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better, far better. But what of those then who have been written in his book concerning judgment? Will they be judged? Will we be judged?

Well, we will not be judged for our sin, because that's what God did when Jesus hung on the cross. Peter says that Christ took everybody's sin in his own body on the tree. It was just as if every sin you've ever committed, he'd committed. And he sort of absorbed like blotting paper the sin of the entire human race. And in some inexplicable way for the very first time in the whole of eternity, and the only time in the whole of eternity, there was a rupture in the Trinity itself.

For God the Father, and what does it mean? I don't understand, and who does? Turned his face away from his son for he is of pure eyes than to behold evil. And in Christ, God poured out his wrath against sin. And the punishment for sin was emptied out upon Christ. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He has suffered, he has been judged for our sin, so that when we thank him for dying for us and for absorbing our sin and for being punished for it, then God declares us free and cleansed and forgiven.

So, we are not going to be judged for our sin, but we are going to be evaluated for the life that we have lived from the moment we accepted Christ. And be careful of that word. I said it and I mean it. Evaluation, evaluated, not judged.

Now, I want to read quite a lot of Scripture because the best way is to let the Scriptures speak for themselves, plus you need to know where you should turn to show other people these Scriptures. Turn to Romans 14, first of all, verse 10. "You then, why do you judge your brother or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat." Now, remember he's talking about weaker brothers and stronger brothers. He's talking to Roman believers, Christians, born again, regenerate people, church people in the true sense of the word.

"Why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It's written, 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" Now, he's talking about us. Not only will the unbelieving dead, whether they like it or not, bow their knee to the judge, Jesus. We will, too. We will, too. And we will confess to God the sins that we have committed since we became a Christian.

Now, let me say something about sin before I go on. If you look at the front of this pulpit and imagine that this is the line of time. And I'm where God is out here. You can imagine that I am God. I see you when you are born. In fact, I see you before you're born because I can see the whole of the line of time. Before you're even formed in your mother's womb, I see you because I see everything, and so I see you on the line of time whether you'll accept me or whether you won't. And I see you going along here, whether you marry, how many children you have, and I see you step off the other end, and I see you here because I'm here, I'm outside of time.

So, it's very easy for me to know everything there is to know about you. When you kneel down and accept Christ as your savior, I, God, forgive your sin. After you've accepted Christ, it's like belonging to a family. I have a son. If he sins against the family, and there's separation, and he leaves home and lives in a pigsty, he's still our son because his sonship depends on his birth, but his fellowship upon his behavior.

And so he needs to keep confessing his sin and coming back and saying, "Father, I'm sorry," so that our fellowship can continue, and he can grow up as a son and live like a son and behave like a son, and we can have good fellowship together in the family. But he never stops being my son, whatever he does. I might wish that he wasn't my son, but I can't unwish him his birth.

And so, when you accept Christ, your sin is forgiven. Your sins and iniquities, I refuse to remember, says God. "I will remember no more." When you get to heaven, you say, "Oh God, remember that sin." He's going to say, "No," because your sin has been judged. The thing that God does remember, however, is what you've done with your life since you are forgiven and received the gift of eternal life. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Let's go on. "So then each of us will give an account of himself to God." Nobody can do that for you. You have to do that for yourself. You know, there's that song, "We're going to walk that lonesome valley, we're going to walk it for ourselves." And we're going to walk it for ourselves. "Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another." You see, there's a judgment throne and Jesus is sitting in it, so why do you tell him to get out and move over so you can sit in it and judge everybody else? That's his job, not yours and not mine. We must not judge our brother Christians, our sister Christians. If we do, we're doing the devil's business, for he's the accuser of the brethren.

Or we're trying to do Jesus' job and be judge of all the earth. How can we possibly judge anyone? We don't know their motives, we don't know where they're coming from, we don't know why they're behaving like they're behaving. We don't know what burdens they're carrying. We have absolutely no conception why people behave as they do. Only God can possibly know the thoughts and intents of everybody's heart.

And the Bible says, "Therefore let's stop passing judgment on one another. Instead make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I'm fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself." He goes on and on. So here, Paul is saying, when you feel like judging anyone, something should curb you, and the thing that should curb you is to realize that every one of us has to give an account of our words and our works once we have accepted Christ. It will be an evaluation.

Now, if you turn to 1 Corinthians 3 next, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and verse 10. "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, who is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation, using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames," or by the skin of his teeth.

So here you've got the passage of Scripture that many people use to believe in purgatory. And yet we went into that in the study of Dives and Lazarus, didn't we? Thoroughly investigated that. This does not say certain things. It does say others. Let's look at the text very, very carefully. First of all, it says, "It is the man's quality of work that's going to be tested." It says that the fire will test the works, not the woman, not the person. The fire will burn up the works, not the person.

So, the testing will be applied. The fire, like a refining fire, will be used to pass through the refining fire all the words we have spoken. And there is a devastating work in Matthew that says, "We will be judged for every idle word that we have spoken." Every idle word. In fact, Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those that love it will eat its fruit." And we will be judged for words.

Isn't it strange that the passages that have to do with our judgment, our evaluation after we die, have most to do with our words, with criticizing and backbiting and gossiping, and talking about fellow believers? And not only that, the idleness, the frivolity. And it doesn't mean you can't have fun and can't say good things. Not talking about that sort of thing. But the words we haven't spoken perhaps, when we should have spoken, the word in season to the person that needed to hear it.

When Paul said that we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, he was talking about a place in Corinth. When Stuart and I took a party to the Holy Land, we went to Corinth, and they've dug up nearly the whole city. It's quite incredible because there are all the little stores and shops that Paul used to shop at when he went there. They've dug up the shop that they believe the first church in Corinth used to meet in, because there's all sorts of Christian symbols on the crumbling walls, the fish and all sorts of other symbols, the crosses. And they believe that this is where the believers in old Corinth used to meet.

And especially when Paul came to town, he gathered them in this great big room at the back of this shop, and they have actually excavated that. Well, Paul was doing so well in Corinth that the merchants began to get worried because the whole of the commerce of Corinth was around the prostitution that went on in the temple on the Acropolis on the top of the hill, at the worship of the goddess, or whoever it was they were worshipping. It was the sex goddess. And because Paul was preaching the Gospel so powerfully, all these people were becoming Christians. And of course, they were shutting down the business of the town.

And so the businessmen, in fact the guilds, the people that ran the guilds for the businesses were running out of money, because they were running out of customers, because everybody was becoming a Christian. So they stirred up trouble. And there was a Roman procurator there. His name was Gallio. And they went to Gallio and they said, "There's a guy here and he's preaching some heresy that has nothing to do with the God that we worship on the top of the hill. And he's going to shut the whole town down. What are you going to do about it?"

And Gallio said, "Bring him to me at the judgment seat." And so they went to the middle of Corinth where they have dug up or excavated the Bema. And the Bema is the judgment seat. And there Gallio stood on the top of the Bema and Paul was pushed and shoved and beaten and brought in front of Gallio. And there Gallio judged Paul. So when Paul wrote to Corinth, he said to the Corinthians, in that little tiny shop, and they read the letter, "We must all stand at the Bema of Christ." And they knew immediately what he meant because they had been there when Paul stood in front of Gallio.

And so you and I have to stand at the Bema of Christ and answer for the life that we've lived since we accepted Christ. "Only one life, 'twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last." Years and years ago, I found a poem that has been probably one of my favorite poems. Not mine, but it's become mine in essence, and it's one of my favorites. "When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ," incidentally, when I go to Corinth, I stand on the Bema with the crowd around me and I tell that story and then I do this poem. It's quite effective on sight.

"When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ, and he shows me his plan for me, the plan of my life as it might have been, had he had his way, and I see how I blocked him here and checked him there and would not yield my will. Shall I see grief in my savior's eyes? Grief, though he loves me still. Oh, he'd have me rich, but I stand there poor, stripped of all but his grace. While my memory runs like a hunted thing down the paths I can't retrace. Then my desolate heart will one night break with tears that I cannot shed. I'll cover my face with my empty hands and bow my uncrowned head. No. Lord of the life that's left to me, I yield it to thy hand. Take me, make me, mold me to the pattern thou has planned."

And you see, it's very important that we understand we have been saved to serve, not saved to be saved. We have been blessed to be a blessing, not blessed to be blessed. And when we get around to figuring that out, then we will not be ashamed when we stand at the judgment seat of Christ. Because every knee will bow. You've just read it. And we will give an account of ourselves to God.

Now, when we have given that account, our work, our life has been tested. What is gold, and what remains, like this old building that we've just been reading about, it's put to the test, will remain. I heard a lovely story about somebody dying and going to heaven, and they walked up and down the streets and they saw all these beautiful houses, and they said, "Boy, I wonder which one is mine? Peter, which one is mine?" And Peter was showing him around, and they were walking on streets of gold. You know, they just used that for asphalt up there. Can you imagine? And he was walking around the golden asphalt, and there he saw this beautiful house, and he thought, "Well, maybe that's mine. I had a nice big one like that down here in Earth." And he said, "Is that mine, Peter?" And Peter said, "No, that's not yours, that's your gardener's actually." "My gardener's?" "Yes, that's your gardener's."

And they walk along the golden asphalt a bit further, and then they come to a little tiny hut. And Peter said, "This is yours. Nice and clean and white, you know, it's fine." And he said, "This is mine? This little hut?" And Peter looked a bit apologetic, and he said, "Well, we did the best with the materials you sent up." "We did the best with the materials you sent up." And there's more truth in that than you realize. So what materials are we sending up?

Now then, the evaluation will take place, and then the appreciation will follow. And there are rewards spoken of in the Scriptures over and over again. First of all, heaven itself is a reward. That's pretty obvious. Let me read something to you. "Speculation can help us get the picture of what heaven must be like, but eyewitness accounts are surely better. It's exciting to look over the shoulders of holy men who've looked through heaven's door, to see what they saw. Even though the men were privileged to glimpse the throne of God, and they lived at different times and in different places, they all saw the same things. Most of them saw thrones, bright mist or clouds of glory. Some seem to see the figure of a man, and the Apostle John confirms that this indeed was Jesus. All saw the appearance of fire. All used words like transparent, translucent, adjectives to describe the ice-like sea of glass, gold that was transparent, and walls of the heavenly city and the streets of gold.

"Many saw brilliant lights and colors which were absolutely exquisite. Blues and greens predominated with lots of fire colors and flashes of transparent ruby red everywhere. Jesus wore a white, white robe with a golden girdle, and there were gold crowns for the elders and white linen for the saints. Luscious, leafy green trees, growing by the river of life, and fire flowed from the throne. The trees bore many different fruits for everlasting nourishment and the healing of the nations." This is the heaven that is described for us. Who would not want to go and live in such a place? We can go there if we wish because of Jesus, for whosoever will may come.

And we've talked a lot about heaven. And of course, these adjectives and pictures are absolutely nothing to the glory of the reality that awaits us. This should comfort us, those of us that have lost loved ones. This should really comfort us. You've got to realize that the guilt that perhaps we suffer because we didn't do what we should have done for our loved ones down here, they're really not worrying about that just now.

I remember when my mom died. I got this terrible guilt trip for a long time afterwards. And yet the minister that buried my mom, an Anglican priest who was a huge help to me and I was able to get him to do the funeral and look after things for me. The day that my mother died, he said, "How are you doing, Jill?" And I said, "I'm not doing very well. I'm just sitting here thinking of all the things I should have said. I had the chance and I didn't take it. I had the prayers and I didn't pray them. I had the love and I didn't give it. I had the words and I didn't say them."

And he gave me a verse, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And I wrote this, "Always, Lord, always? The day my mother died, I read in the word of God that Jesus said to his disciples, 'If you love me, you would rejoice because I am going to the Father.' 'Can't you rejoice for your mother?' the minister asked me. 'I could if I weren't grappling with guilt,' I replied. 'How was I to cope with the guilt that said, I had the chance and didn't take it. I had the prayers and didn't pray them. I had the love and I didn't give it. I had the words and I didn't say them.'"