The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 10: Judgment

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

In real life discipleship relationships, courage, humility and vulnerability are required. Do you have a friend that loves you more than your opinion of them? For more information and resources on this series, visit coe22.com/bestsermonever. For disciple group curriculum please visit coe22.com/disciplegroups.

Do not give dogs what is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you. Church, you guys can go ahead, grab a seat. It's good to be with you. And as you're fine in Matthew Chapter 7, where we'll be. There was some research that was done a couple years ago. An article was published in a magazine called Relevant Magazine. And what they published were the five most misused or abused passages.

of Scripture. And the first one that they published was Philippians 413, which says, I can do all things through him who gives me strength. Now, the reason it's misused or abused is because most the time you see it printed like on a banner and then a football team runs through it. Paul's actually talking about suffering. He's about to be, he's about to be put to death and he's writing that passage. So it's not exactly a like, let's win the football game kind of passage, right? So it's misused and abused. The other one they wrote about was Matthew 1820, for where two or three are gathered in my name,

there I am among them. When Jesus said that, he wasn't meaning like when you go to lunch with a buddy and you pray, Jesus is with you at your meal. Jesus was actually talking about how you discipline somebody. And when you have to speak into somebody's life where the two of you that believe in Jesus are there, he's there in the middle of that to,

reconcile that situation. So that's a little different. Or Jeremiah 29-11, it's graduation season, right? But Jeremiah 29-11, for I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, or whichever version you learned it in. You know, and we printed on cards and all of that. But this was actually God speaking to the Hebrew people when they were in Babylonian exile, and he wanted them to know that he wasn't going to forget them while they were in occupied territory. a little bit misused if we write it on a graduation card. Psalm 4610, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. And a lot of times we read that and we think, be still and know that I'm God. You should have a quiet time. You should be still with God. This is actually a radical declaration of the sovereignty of God over everything that is occurring in all the cosmos.

a little bit different than a verse for your quiet time. And then the fifth verse that they said is one of the most misused or abused verses in the Bible is the passage that we're going to study today in Matthew chapter 7, judge not, right? You've heard it said, you've probably thought it, you've probably said it, I have. And when we say it, we misuse it or we abuse it

really in kind of two directions. Sometimes we'll say like, well, judge not, like, who are you to tell me what I can do or can't do? You mind your own business. I get to do what I want to do, and we sort of use it as a way to defend our behavior against anybody speaking into our lives. The other way that we misuse it or abuse it

is we'll say, well, judge not, I don't really know if I want to get in the middle of your mess. I don't really know if I want to kind of dive in deep to that whole thing, and that's kind of uncomfortable for me, or that's a sticky situation, and I don't really want to deal with it, so judge not. And we kind of err and misuse that verse in two different directions.

But here's the thing. If this is the best sermon ever, the sermon on the Mount by Jesus is the best sermon ever, then this passage that Jesus talks about when he says, Judge Not, is really one of the core ways, one of the most important ways that we can actually apply everything else

that Jesus has been teaching. because he's been teaching all these things that we're to do and the way that we're to live and how we're supposed to run to him and find life in him and find freedom in him. And then he comes to this point. He says, now, now don't judge. Judge not. And so what does it mean for you and for me to live out one of the core teachings of Jesus, to not judge? And so when Jesus says, judge not in Matthew chapter 7, verse one, judge not.

does not mean that Jesus is diminishing the call to holiness. It's not a license to do whatever we want whenever. Judge not, I get to do what I want. That's not what Jesus means in this. When Jesus says, Judge Not, it's not a permission to ignore sin or to tolerate injustice, to turn a blind eye. That's not what Jesus meant in this passage. When he says, Judge Not, it doesn't mean that we can't disagree on things.

We can't have different opinions about things. When Jesus says, judge not, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be discerning and be able to differentiate between things that are of God and things that are against the will of God, things that are of sin. And we know that those things are not what Jesus meant because if you look at Jesus' life, you see Jesus never diminish the call to holiness, and yet he never judges anybody. or you never see Jesus ignore sin or tolerate injustice, yet he never judges anybody. Or you see Jesus. He'll disagree with people all the time, but he never judges them. Or you don't see Jesus just, well, I don't know, I can't tell the difference between right or wrong,

and yet he never judges anybody. And so when Jesus says judge not, the word judge, literally, it's a court word, It's a legal word. And what it means is to hand down a sentence or a verdict. It literally means to condemn. And when Jesus taught this in other places, because the sermon on the Mount is, he may have preached it all at once here, but he most certainly preached it in bits and pieces

in a bunch of different places. And if you go over and look at how Luke records this portion of the sermon on the Mount, he actually says, Jesus says, judge not or else you'll be judged, condemn not or else you'll be condemned. So he links up in the teaching, this idea that judgment and condemnation are very, very, very closely related. Or when Jesus at the end of his life is brought up to the high priest, it says that the high priests

condemned Jesus or judged Jesus to death. When Paul, he writes in Romans 8.1, he says, for now there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. that's that's this same idea that when we judge we're actually passing a verdict or a sentence of condemnation on somebody and so judging carries this sense of like when we judge we're actually condemning somebody's soul we're actually passing judgment on somebody's faith and it also carries this sense of like we have a judgmental or critical heart and so jesus says don't do that don't be like that Now the issue is that I've never met anybody who's like, oh yeah, I'm judgmental. That's my problem. That's me. Yep. Nobody ever just comes out and says, that's my problem. And so the thing that you have to think about is, well, how do I know if I'm being judgmental? How do I know if I'm judging people? So if you ever seen Jeff Foxworthy, he did a like, you might be a redneck if. I did a you might be judgmental if. So here we go.

you might be judgmental if you use the phrase bless her heart bless her heart does she know that bathing suit doesn't all the way cover you know that one cut sorry you might be you might be judgmental if you're at the public's checkout line and you're looking at the people's stuff in front of you and you think they're really going to feed that to their family they're buying what are they doing why are they buying that combination of food? You might be judgmental. If when you don't have kids, you say, when I have kids, I will never do that. When I have kids, I will never let them watch TV in the car just to ride five minutes down the street.

Yes, you will. Yes, you will. Here's the thing. Listen, this is a little bit of a side. We have two kids. They're teenagers now, but when they were little, especially Gavin, when he was little, and he was still sleeping in a crib. I like to get up early,

but I don't want to see like four at the start of any time, right? Five is okay, four bad. But he would wake up at like four in the morning. And so what I would do when we would put him to bed is I would stick a sippy cup of water, we'll just say it's water in one corner of the crib, and then I would take Cheerios in another cup, and I put it in the other cup,

and then I'd just sprinkle pacifiers around the crib. And those of you that don't have kids, judging me right now, you're like, I can't believe he would do that. Well, just wait till you have kids and you'll see just what you do. You might be judgmental if your favorite part of going to the beach or the airport is people watching. You might be judgmental. You might be judgmental if you make fun of out of shape people while they're working out and you're driving in your car. We have a rule in our house that you are not allowed to comment about any, anybody who is working out when you are sitting passively in a vehicle driving down the road.

No room for judging anybody. Might be judgmental if you just scroll through social media and you think, man, I can't believe he. I can't believe she. You might be judgmental if you gossip. Did you hear? You might be judgmental if you say, well, at least I don't blank. You might be judgmental if you have a hard. hard time giving unqualified compliments. And I love their worship music, but I love his preaching,

but if you have to put butt after it, you've qualified it, and you just might be judgmental. You might be judgmental if you regularly give unsolicited advice. And then, all joking aside, you might be judgmental. If you base someone's value or worth on the amount of pigment they have in their skin. Listen, I don't, I don't want to stand on the right or on the left. I want to stand on the word of God when it comes to the issue of racism in our country and in our world. And the gospel says in Genesis that every human being, male and female, is created in the image of God. In the image of God, he created the male and female. And then if you go to Revelation, it says around the throne of God, the picture of the end

of the world, all that God is doing, what is going to happen is every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every ethnicity will be represented, bowed down before God. And so between Genesis and Revelation, all of Scripture says that God loves every single person that he created no matter the color of their skin. And so when he says, judge not, he's going to tell us why we shouldn't judge people. Because if you look, he says, judge not that. So that means judge not because, and then he's going to explain why we shouldn't judge. So judge not that or because you be not judged. So why shouldn't we judge? Because when we judge people, what we're saying is, God, I think, that judging people based on all of these external circumstances is the right thing to do.

I think it's the good thing to do. Therefore, God, would you please judge me? Because I think judgment is good. And so when we judge other people, it's actually an invitation for God to judge us. We think that being judgmental is a good thing. That's what we're doing. Or he goes on, he says in verse two, for with the judgmental, you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured out to you. Now, I love some promises of Scripture. This just ain't one of them. Because twice Jesus promises us. And why we don't judge people, what he's saying here is it's not only, God, when I judge, I think that judgment is right, but we're also saying to God,

God, in the standard that I use to judge other people, I believe that is the right, good, appropriate standard for which I should be judged. So please, God, would you please judge me based on the standard that I think is appropriate to judge other people? So not only are we inviting judgment, we're actually inviting a very specific kind of judgment from God.

Kind of judgment that absolutely none of us want to be judged by. none of us want to be judged by how successful or unsuccessful we are, how much money we have, what we look like, what kind of company we keep. We want to be judged by mercy and grace. We want to be judged by the goodness of God, not by our standards. And so when we judge,

now, I want to give you a couple other reasons why I think we judge that kind of go other places in Scripture, that when I judge, I think I'm showing everybody else something about you. But when I judge, I'm really showing everybody else something about me. Think about that. I think when I'm pointing out something about you that I'm going, hey, everybody, do you see what's wrong with them? But in that moment, what I'm actually doing is I'm actually exposing my heart to everybody else.

I'm doing the exact opposite. and what I'm exposing is my own pride and my own insecurities. And when I judge other people, I'm actually, this is the most arrogant claim that we could ever make. That when I judge other people, what I'm actually saying is, I am omnipresent. I can see everything there is to see about this situation. And I'm actually claiming to be omnipotent. I know everything there is to know about this situation. I understand everything there is to understand about this situation.

When I judge, I'm actually claiming to be omnipotent. I'm actually saying I have power to control this situation. If I were in your shoes, I would never have done that. In fact, I never would have gotten in those shoes. Because not only am I omnipotent, I'm also sinless. And so when we judge and we make those kind of claims, it is actually an act of idolatry. We're actually claiming to have attributes

that are only attributes of God himself. And so every judgment that we pass is actually an idolatrous claim to be God. And it is such, that is a burden that you and I were never created to bear. That is a weight that you and I were never meant to shoulder, Only God was meant to bear that kind of weight. And then when I judge, I'm actually sitting in the wrong seat.

I mean, think about being in a courtroom, right? And in Acts 1, verse 8, Jesus says to the followers, his followers, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Sumerian to the ends of the earth. He didn't say you're going to be the accusing prosecutor. He didn't say, you're going to be the judge. What he said is you're going to be my witnesses. You're not going to be witnesses testifying against other people. You're going to be witnesses testifying to how good and great in all that you've seen me do.

And when we judge, we get up out of the witness seat and we sit ourselves down in the prosecutor's chair. We get up on the judge's bench. That's what we're doing. And so he goes on, verse three, and he says, so why do you see the speck now literally the little chip of wood he says why why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye why do you see this teeny tiny little thing it may be destructive it may be sinful but why do you see this little itty bitty teeny little chip of wood but you don't even notice the log that's in your own eye or beam.

Like, why do you see this in your brother's eye, but you can't see this in your own eye? Like, what's going on inside of me? Now, what's so interesting is that the word for speck and the word for beam, they come from the same root word, which means there's a little thing that Jesus is doing here is we're trying to always see, you know why we're so good at finding the speck in somebody else? It's because we got a piece of it in ourselves. And part of what we're trying to do is we're trying to justify ourselves by pointing out the things that we recognize in ourself in somebody else.

So he says, why are you trying? Why do you see this little speck that's in your brother's eye when you don't see this log or this beam that's in your own eye? where he says, how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own eye? Like, how ridiculous is that, right? Like, I got this log in my eye.

And I'm like, come here, let me get the speck out of your eye. First of all, how am I ever going to reach it? Like, how do I get to you? I can't, even if I wanted to, I couldn't help you because I got a log. I got a beam in my own eye and you got a little piece of sawdust in yours and then he says this

you hypocrite now when we hear hypocrite we hear a very negative term in Jesus' day the word hypocrite meant actor it wasn't really now he uses it in a negative way but in general it was not a negative term

where we would say somebody is an actor or an actress they would say somebody is a hypocrite somebody's playing apart. Somebody is not something, and they're pretending or they're performing to be something else. And so Jesus says, when you have a log in your eye and you point out the speck in somebody else's eye, what you're being is a hypocrite. You're pretending and you're performing that there is nothing in you and there's something in them. So he says, you hypocrite, you pretender, you performer.

First, first, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Now what Jesus doesn't, Jesus does not say, don't see the speck, don't say anything about the speck, don't help your brother take it out. what he's teaching is how to help somebody, how to see it, how to say something about it, how to actually help somebody take the speck out of their eye and eye. So what do you do?

What do you do when somebody legitimately has something in their life? Have you ever gotten something in your eye before? You've ever been like working in the yard and you're edging in the yard and a piece of mulch like flies up and it hits you or you get dirt or dust or sand, something in your eye? you leave it there and eventually it begins to fester, eventually it begins to get infected, and it grows worse and worse and worse and worse. So what do you do when you legitimately do see something and somebody else's eye and you want to say something and you want to help take it out, but you don't want to be a hypocrite? I think the first thing you have to do is you have to decide what your goal is.

is it restoration or is it publication? Look what Paul says in Galatian 6-1. If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Like, do I want this person to be made whole or do I just want everybody else to know what's wrong in their life?

And I think we have to settle that. if we're not going to be hypocrites. Look what he says in verse three. He says, notice the log that's in your own eye. And then verse five, take the log out of your own eye. That if we're going to really honestly, non-hypocratically help somebody, what we have to do is we have to notice what's in my own eye.

I need to do an inventory of my own life. Listen, one of the scariest things about preaching this was about five minutes before I walked out here and I went, oh God, I'm about to step on the stage and tell everybody else not to be a judge and not to be hypocritical. And I just had to go, God, please, I know there are things in my life. I know it. And we have to notice those things. And we have to then take them out. And the way that we take them out is we confess them, we repent of them, we remember the gospel, and we just finish. our eyes on Jesus and we run to Jesus. That's how we notice it in ourselves. That's how we first

take it out of ourselves. And then we have to discern what's preference and what sin or destructive behavior. Listen, if it's preference, just shut up and smile. That's it. You can quote me on that one. And then if it's actually sin, if it is destructive, it honestly is not the loving thing to do to let somebody run down a path that will fester and infect their lives. And when we do that, when we let somebody run off and we just kind of step back and go, well, I don't want to judge or I don't want to get in the middle of that. What we're saying is, I really want to do what I'm more comfortable not getting in the middle of that. And that really is just selfishness on our part to not lean into the middle of that.

And then we need to respond, not react. Listen, if you have kids that are about to be teenagers, like, I don't carve this, write this in Sharpie somewhere and permanent, you want to respond, not react, right? If you've had teenagers, you're nodding right now, aren't you? Because everything in you, they'll do the, and everything in you wants to react, in the moment and you just have to go, don't react, don't react, don't react, I need to respond.

Like how, when you, when you want to help somebody, how would you want them to help you? How would you want them to come to you? And you better have enough relational deposits in the bank to be able to cash them in. And you need to pray, and then you've got to pick your moment. because the moment matters a ton. And then let me give you two powerful words. Me too. Me too.

Not how dare you, but me too. Like when you go to somebody and you want to come up to them, you want to come in the humility of a fellow sinner. And you want to come in the compassion of a fellow struggler. If you want to help somebody and do it in a non-judgmental, non-hypocrical way, you want to come to him and you want to say, me too. I've struggled just like you. In fact, you got this little itty-bitty speck in your eye.

Let me tell you about the log I've had in my eye. Me too. I know what you're dealing with. I know the temptation. I know the struggle. I know the pain. And then we speak the truth in love. that we would stand on the word of God and we would stand in the way of God,

meaning that we would stand not on our opinion, not on our preference, but we would stand on the truth of God's word, but we would do it in a way that reflects the way that God has treated us. And the way that God has treated us is that John says this, in the beginning of John, when he says about Jesus, he says that Jesus came full of truth and full of God, grace. He didn't balance those two things out. It wasn't like he was trying to get them all to add up to a hundred. And so he's like, well, I got to bump the truth up in this situation. So I'll let

grace drop down a little bit. Or I need to go kind of 80, 20, 70, 30. No, Jesus came full, 100% truth and 100% grace. And that when we would want to honestly help somebody in a non-judgmental, non-hypocritical way, we need to always bring the gospel. If you can't bring good news into that moment and into that discussion and into that situation, it's not the time to say anything. We all know John 316. It's one of the most famous verses, but I think John 317 may be more important than John 316.

Because John 317 says this, for God did not send his son into the the world, to condemn the world. There's our word. But in order that the world might be saved through him, that we would, when we see something in somebody's life and we need to say something or we want to honestly help them, that we wouldn't come in a spirit of condemnation. We would come in the way of Jesus and we would come that they would be saved and that they would be healed and that they would be restored. And then the last one is this, when, not if, when, when we screw it up, apologize. I'm sorry.

I mean, I don't know how many times I've had to go into my kids' bedroom at night and get down next to their bed and look them in the eyes and say, I yelled at you for you losing your temper. I'm sorry. I lost control, and that's it. I'm sorry. I said some things, I'm sorry. And one of the best ways that we can help others is when we do slip into judgmentalism,

or we do slip into being hypocritical, is that we would come back and we would go, I am so sorry, that is not at all the way I wanted to handle that. You just got a glimpse into my heart. You just got to see my log. And I'm so sorry. Now, if we're going to talk about the idea, of judging, there's a couple things that need to be said. And honestly, they're kind of hard things to be said. But if I didn't say them to you, it really wouldn't be the loving thing to do.

And so the first of those is that Jesus, this might be good for some of us. Jesus is the perfect and just judge. 1 Samuel 16.7 says this, for the Lord does not see as man sees. man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Now at first sight, you're like, yes, way to go God, until you're like, uh-oh, uh-oh, if God sees everybody else's heart, that means God sees my heart. Or Jesus in John chapter 8, verse 16, he said, my judgments are true. John chapter 5, verse 30, he said, as I hear, this is Jesus speaking. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just.

In Revelation 16, there's a picture of the throne room of God, and angels are all around Jesus as he sits on the throne. And here's what it says. Just these are the angels crying out to Jesus. Just are you, O Holy One, who is and was. Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your judgments. I've yet to see the worship song that is like, hey, let's write about God's justice and judgment. Let's sing that worship song.

And we want to sing the holy, holy, holy, like we want to sing that one. Jesus is actually all of the omnis that we claim to be when we're judging. He legitimately sees all. He legitimately knows all. He legitimately has the power to control all. He legitimately is the one and only who is perfect and sinless, which makes Jesus the perfect and just judge.

And there is a coming day of judgment when we all will be judged. Matthew 1236, Jesus says this, I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak. Hebrews 927, it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment. There is a day that is coming and it is a day of judgment when the perfect and just judge will judge every single one of us. Matthew 2531, Jesus says this is a little bit longer. when the son of man comes, he's talking about himself, comes in his glory, all the angels will be with him. And then he will sit on his glorious throne,

and before him will be gathered all the nations. There it is, all the ethnicities. And he will separate people one from the other as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. And he'll place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

And then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Romans 1410, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and confess to God. So then let each of us give account of himself to God. For 2 Corinthians 510, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due. Now the good news is that because that judgment comes from the perfect, sinless,

all knowing just judge Jesus. All that is wrong in the world will be made right. All of it will. But what it also means is that every single one of us will be held account for the sin that we have committed, the careless words that we have spoken, that if we stand before that throne in our own power, in our own merit, we will confess, we will admit everything that we have said, everything that we have done,

everything that we have left undone, everything that we have left unsaid will be laid out before the just judge. And what we are due is the condemnation. The wages of sin is death. But Jesus is not only the perfect and just judge, he is also the merciful justifier. John 522 says this. The father judges no one. but is given all judgment to the son, that all may honor the son, just as they honor the father. Whoever does not honor the son, does not honor the father who send him.

Truly, truly, I say to you, and here it is, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever, whoever, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've said, no matter what you've left undone or left unsaid, you and I fall in, we fall into the whoever category. and he says, whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me, not whoever hears my words and tries to keep them in their own strength, whoever hears my words, my gospel, my good news, and believes me has eternal life,

not will have it, has it, already has it. He does not come into it. judgment, but has passed from death to life. That what the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the just and merciful justifier, that if we will come see, God is holy and God is righteous, which means that God is holy, he will not tolerate sin. And God is just in his ways, which means he, he will deal with our sin. The wages of sin is death, but God is also merciful and loving. And how do you reconcile those?

How do you have a God that is completely just and completely righteous and completely holy and at the same time is completely merciful and completely loving? James says it this way. Mercy triumphs over judgment. that it's on the cross of Jesus Christ, where we see Him who knew no sin, become sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. That when Jesus cried out on the cross, it is finished.

What he was crying out is that the sentence and condemnation to death for those who believe in him is done. It's finished. For you who place your trust. in Jesus, you have already passed from death to life. You will not face this kind of judgment where you'll be cast out. That the gospel is that Jesus takes the judgment that we deserve and gives us the freedom that he holds. He takes the death that we deserve and he gives us the life that he holds. He takes our sentence.

in our condemnation, and then he gives us adoption as sons and daughters of the king. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to just imagine for a minute. You need to close your eyes, close your eyes. I want you imagine an officer shows up at your house, and he has an arrest warrant for you. It puts you in handcuffs, takes you downtown, charges, they're legitimate. So they put you in an orange jumpsuit, put slippers on your feet, they take away all your possessions, everything you have. In the morning, they put handcuffs on you,

there's a chain that goes down, there's shackles around your feet, and they walk you into a courtroom. And they sit you down, and as you walk into the courtroom, you recognize everybody that's sitting in the gallery. It's everybody that knows everything about you. you walk in and there's a prosecutor sitting over here to the right and you walk in and it's just you on the left

and you sit down and you look up and there's the judge and it's Jesus and he says the stack of paper and he just starts reading the charges against you witness after witness after witness could be called against all of us and he looks at you what do you say and you just look and you're just like what can I say? You know everything. You've seen everything. I mean, I've done it all. And the gavel drops,

and the verdict, the sentence is guilty. And the condemnation is death. And then what he does, the judge gets up and he steps out of the judge's seat and he walks down and he walks over to you and he says, stand up. And he takes the handcuffs off of you. He takes his robe off, he takes his suit off that's underneath it, and you're thinking,

what is he doing? This is the most humiliating, embarrassing thing I've ever seen him do. And then he says, give me that orange jumpsuit. You kick off the slippers, pull off the jumpsuit, and then he takes his robe, and he puts his robe around you, and he takes your jumpsuit, he puts it on, puts his feet in the suit, puts his feet in the slippers, takes the handcuffs and he puts the handcuffs around his hands and then shackles around his feet. And you look at him and you go, but Jesus, you didn't do anything. And he says, just, will you trust me? Will you trust me to pay the sentence that you deserve? Will you trust me that us trading places that I actually can pay for the crimes that you've committed?

And then you just look at him and you're like, why in the world would you do that? And he just looks you in the eyes. And he just whispers because I love you. And you said, I love you too. And so the invitation right now is for you to allow the just judge to become your merciful justifier, to allow him to trade places with you, to make the great exchange, to allow him to take your place on the cross, to take your death sentence and give you life. And the question is, will you trust him to be that?

And so I want to pray for you right now if you bow your heads. And if you have never trusted Jesus to be the full. payment, to take your judgment, and to set you free, I invite you to do that right now. If you're watching online, you can hit that little button, you can turn to somebody next to you, you can pick up the phone, you can text them. But Heavenly Father, thank you, thank you, for your son, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect and just judge. And Lord, I thank you that one day all that we are and all that we have done and all that we have left undone will be laid bare before you and in that moment you will look at us and you will say i know everything there is to know but come on

come to me so lord jesus we trust you we put the full weight of our life on you that you would set us free and that you would give us life. Oh God, we love you. That you did that for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That he who knew no sin became our sin. And you finished the work of setting us free. Oh, God, don't ever let us become complacent. And God, whenever tendencies to judge or to be hypocritical rise up in us, God help us to fix our eyes on you and to remember that you did for us what we could never do for ourselves. God, don't ever let us forget it. And God, right now, would you pour your spirit out in a way that would cause our hearts to explode in worship for you? We pray it all in your name, Jesus.

Amen. So that's what we're going to do right now. We're going to worship. We're going to look at Jesus and we're going to tell him, I trust you. I love you. Thank you for taking the penalty of my life and my judgment and setting me free and giving me life. So would you stand up? We're going to do that by singing. Maybe some of us need to come down, front, kneel down. And we need to just thank God for. for setting us free, that we would also give, give of our lives, our treasure to God as a sign that we are so grateful that we've been set free by him. So let's worship God. Let's tell him we love him. Let's tell them we are thankful for him. Let's tell him how grateful that we are. Let's worship together.