Preparing for the Judgment Seat of Christ

This coming Sunday, I have the privilege of preaching at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. I am going to preach on the importance of the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Judgment Seat of Christ lays a foundation of accountability for all followers of Jesus Christ. Accountability is a cornerstone of personal growth, as it establishes a framework for responsibility, integrity, and continuous improvement. Accountability provides a structured framework for monitoring and evaluating tasks, projects, and processes, ensuring that they align with overall goals. It helps identify potential risks, errors, or inefficiencies early on, allowing for timely corrections. The practice of being held accountable is essential for fostering a resilient and high-performing work environment. Our passage for the message is II Corinthians 5:9-10, 14-21. There are three essential truths about accountability that we learn from the Judgment Seat of Christ; the catalyst, the character, and the calling.

God’s Righteous Judgments

Once again, I sit here in front of my monitor writing down my thoughts on this next Bible lesson that we are teaching in our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. This week, we are going to dive down in the book of the prophet Nahum. The Bible presents the nature of God, in other words, the character of God to humanity. The main character trait that people remember about God is that He is love. Some people ignore all of the other character traits of the Lord and simply focus in on one aspect, love. God definitely is love. He is also righteous and just. He punishes sin. He protects victims. He takes revenge for those who cannot defend themselves. When we examine God, we need the full picture of who He is. The book of Nahum presents God as being wrathful. Nahum explains to the readers WHY God judges people and nations. The focus of this week’s lesson is the righteous judgments of God.

Faith and Obedience go hand in hand

This coming Sunday, at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to study John chapter five. This is the story of the healing of the lame man. Last week, we learned about Jesus, the healer in the Gospel of Mark, chapter five. This week, we are also going to learn more about Jesus the healer. The healing that Jesus offers leads to eternal life. This healing changes us for all of eternity.

As a church, we are walking through the entire Bible, from cover to cover, over a three year period. We are now in year three. It took us three years to walk through the Old Testament. We have been studying the Gospels for about two months now. Each lesson just keeps getting better and better.

The Judgment of the Lord

As we continue to walk through the Word, we have discovered many insights about the Lord and about ourselves. This week, we are going to cover II Chronicles 36. Throughout the Bible, we see the Lord offering hope over and over to the people. In Jeremiah 31, in one of our previous lessons, we covered the transformational power of the New Covenant. In the midst of a very difficult time in the history of Israel, the Lord reminded the people of the hope found in the coming Messiah. This Messiah is going to bring a New Covenant between God and the children of Israel. The people of Israel were familiar with the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was to point the people to the coming Messiah. The people were unable to obey the Old Covenant because of their sin nature. The New Covenant was going to deal with mankind’s sin nature so that those in the New Covenant would be able to obey the Lord and no longer be enslaved to their sin nature.

The vanity of happiness

“But God wants me to be happy, doesn’t He“? I have heard people declare this many times, in the form of a question of course, even though their minds are already made up. Mantras like “YOLO” were popular at one time. “If it feels good, do it” was another popular saying for a time. If you do not know, YOLO means “you only live once” which implies, have fun at all costs because you only get one time around. Each older generation declares that the younger generations are selfish, unlike themselves, when they were younger. I want to look at a passage of Scripture that speaks of people about 3,000 years ago. According to our modern way of thinking, the people 3,000 years ago should have been much less selfish than we are today because each generation claims that the next generation is much more selfish. Let’s take a practical look at the people of Israel, almost 3,000 years ago.

A Criminal’s Cross

Last night at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, one of our worship leaders preached a powerful message about the crucifixion. The focus was not on Jesus but, on the two criminals who were crucified with Him. In this story, we get to associate ourselves with one of the three main characters. There is the rebellious sinner, the repentant sinner, and Jesus Christ. As the late Wayne Barber used to say, “there is no vacancy in the Holy Trinity” so, you are not allowed to associate with Jesus in the story. You and I either associate with the rebellious sinner or the repentant sinner. That is why the Apostle Paul quoted from the Psalmist when explaining the state of all mankind:

Will eternal punishment be the same for all lost people?

Yesterday, I tried to answer the question of whether heaven would be the same for all believers or will there be different rewards. With this article, I would like to address the question of eternal punishment, will it be the same for all lost sinners or are there different levels of punishment.

First of all, we have to establish that the punishment for all who do not confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is that they will be punished by God with what the Bible describes as the second death. It is in the lake of fire that will last for eternity. All of it is torture yet, for some, the torture will be worse than for others.