Doxological Evangelism

If you want to turn with me in your copy of God's Word to 2 Corinthians 6, we will begin in verse 14, and I'll read to the end of the chapter. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness or what harmony has Christ with Belial or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever or what agreement has a sanctuary of God with idols for we are a sanctuary of the living God just as God said I will dwell in them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people therefore come out from their midst and be separate says the Lord and do not touch what is unclean and I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me says the Lord Almighty. May God bless the reading of His Word as well as the preaching of His Word.

When we consider what it means to be a Christian and what it means to evangelize, we need to understand a number of different aspects of that. And we don't have time this weekend to go through as many sermons as we would want to preach. I mean, I think if we ask Brother Randall, how many sermons would you preach if you really wanted to try to thoroughly teach people evangelism?

It'd be more than two to four, right? And so we understand that. And so one of the things I wanted to try to get on your mind today is the concept that I learned from Edmund Clowney, who is now with the Lord. And Edmund Clowney had a... Hold on real quick. I have to...

Excuse me. Get this tickle out. And Edmund Clowney had a phrase that I learned from him, and the phrase was called doxological evangelism. And the idea of the phrase is that doxology is when we're praising God, when we're giving glory to God for all of his good works and who he is and his perfect attributes. And the idea behind doxological evangelism is that you are, in fact, at every moment of your life, a worshiper.

In fact, that's true of all your neighbors. It's true of people in remote jungle regions around the world. Everybody, in fact, is a worshiper. The question is not whether you are worshipping. It's not whether you will worship. The question is always what or who will you worship? and so as Christians we are commanded to worship the one true God there's only one God revealed to us in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit he's three persons one God and we worship that God and none other and when we worship that God we are making a statement not only in our hearts toward God but we're actually showing other people what we worship by what you spend your time and money and effort and maybe even give your life for, you are revealing to all those who look at your life what it is you worship.

And in our case, it's not a what. In our case, we worship a who. Most people worship what's. They worship objects and things, created things rather than the one true God. And so the idea becomes that having been saved from your sin, God didn't save you so that you could spend your life doing whatever it is you want to do and then make it to heaven at the end.

Some people have a doctrine like that. Some churches will teach that kind of thing. They'll call it fire insurance. So you say your prayer, you get saved, you ask Jesus in your heart, and then at the very least you're going to go to heaven when you die. And that's good enough for some people. And I'd question if some of those people are authentically Christian if you get to know them.

But for the sake of the argument here, I'm going to tell you that I think you were saved to do far more than just go to heaven when you die. I think God has a plan for you in this life. And that plan includes that you will offer your body as a living sacrifice to him, which is your spiritual worship. So whereas in the Old Testament, if you were a believer in the one true God, some of the things you would have done would have been going to the temple for sacrifice. you would have brought your spotless lamb and there were bulls offered and rams and there were peace offerings and free will offerings and there were the the bread offerings there's all the different things in the old testament and and and if you if you're a gentile like most of the people in this room or at least had a gentile upbringing you really don't even understand those things really well unless you study them hard and a lot of people end up going to seminary and learning some more details.

But in the New Testament, in the New Covenant where we are, we are worshippers at all times. And they were in the Old Testament as well. But our understanding is that the atonement that was necessary so that you may worship God in the first place has already been done on your behalf by Jesus Christ. Okay? So you're going to worship God not so that God will love you, not so that He will accept you.

You worship God because He's already demonstrated His love to you in the sacrifice of His own Son. And He raised Him from the dead. And so you actually have a certain hope of eternal life Christians should be certain In fact it more certain that Jesus will return one day to judge the living and the dead and that he lives right now than it is that you're actually sitting here listening to me.

You could be deceived about some of these things. You can't be deceived about the truth of Jesus Christ being the eternal God. So, if you look at John chapter 4, I want to get you just whetted for the idea that we are worshippers and that it in fact is what God wants. In John chapter 4, Jesus is at the well. Go to verse 17. The woman answered and said, I have no husband.

And Jesus said to her, you have correctly said, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly. Jesus knows this woman very well because he's God. And the woman said to him, Sir, I see you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you people, she means the Jews, she recognizes him as a Jew.

She says, and you people, hold on, I lost my place now. There we are. And you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. So Jerusalem would have been the center of worship at this time for the people who believed in the one true God. And Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

He said, You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. For an hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such people the Father seeks, to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. God is seeking those to worship him.

Now, it's not like God doesn't know where people are and he's looking around. You know, even go back to the Garden of Eden when God says to Adam, you know, where are you? God knew where he was. Sometimes God uses phraseology that helps us understand. And it's the idea that God is seeking. He's looking to and fro about the earth for those who will do good, who will be righteous.

And he doesn't find any. He's not surprised by this. And so what does God do? God makes worshipers. We talked yesterday about the new creation. And we read in 2 Corinthians 5 that all things have become new if you're saved.

That the old has passed away. And so what God does is God takes people who cannot help but hate him. who cannot help but worship all that is not Him, who cannot help but defy every known law that God reveals to them. And He actually changes our hearts. And He gives us a new spirit and a spirit within us that now knows to worship Him and actually has a desire to worship Him.

And if you've ever sat in church and you haven't felt like worshiping, if you've ever been singing the song or listening to the prayer or the reading of Scripture or the preaching and you've started to notice your mind wandering, maybe even into a sinful thought, or even just something unrelated to the worship of God, then you know the spiritual battle that you face with your flesh. Because as long as you are in your unglorified flesh, your unredeemed flesh, yet you have a redeemed spirit, you have a battle going on, whereby on a regular basis, there is a part of you that wants to worship Christ in purity. There's a part of you that loves Him. and wants to seek him and wants to be close to him and wants to give him the worship that is his due.

And yet there is a part of you that is unredeemed, your flesh. This is why we groan for the redemption of the body one day. This is why we're excited for the day that Jesus will return to judge the world in equity and the peoples with righteousness because he's going to give us new bodies. And you're going to have a body that is unable to sin and you're going to worship him for all eternity. and as a side note if that doesn't sound exciting to you then maybe you don't really know him and some of you young people are thinking well i like my body it's strong you know i can move quick i've got muscles we're looking at haddon's muscles today right god gives us the gift to crush our pride i think that as we age in this world under the curse we start to groan for a new body for more reasons than just the sinlessness of it but that's the reason you should want a new body is to be rid of sin to be rid of the internal temptation to sin so back to 2nd Corinthians thank you by the way so back to 2nd Corinthians 6 in verse 16 the apostle Paul says what agreement has a sanctuary of God with idols he says for we are a sanctuary of the living God so in some of your Bibles it's going to say you're a temple and the idea that Paul is trying to convey that would have been understood by the people listening to this is that the temple was the center of worship.

So in the city of Corinth, they were very religious people. The city of Corinth had places they went and they worshipped. And they participated in various types of worship. And they used all sorts of different means to help them with worship. And they most certainly were spiritual people. so it oprah you realize you can be spiritual and demonic right calling yourself spiritual without calling yourself christian spiritual is worthless We must be spiritual in such a way that it a capital S Holy Spirit spiritual that actually leading you along So going to a temple, whether it's a pagan demonic temple or whether it's a Jewish temple where they would have worshipped God at the time, and that's where they would have been able to meet with God and that's where the priest would have made the sacrifices of worship to God, that would have been an understood language at the time.

This is where we meet with God. And we've lost sight of this because most people in here probably understand the New Covenant teaching that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit now. One of the reasons we have this idea of asking Jesus in your heart, which isn't really a biblical phrase to use but one of the reasons we have the idea is we legitimately have Jesus in our heart when you're saved.

He comes to dwell with you. He's called Emmanuel, God with us not just because he was incarnate, which of course he was and you can't deny that, but because he's even with his people at all times now. You know he suffers with you when you're persecuted? It's a privilege to be counted to suffer along with Jesus Christ. But in the New Testament, we have the teaching that we are a sanctuary of the living God.

We are now, in a sense, I'm going to say the center of worship. So don't misunderstand this. What I mean by center of worship is not that something about you makes it worthy of worship, but it's because of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ that God has now made you a vessel that he's happy to dwell in. and now instead of going to a particular temple where somebody else a human who is not also divine is making sacrifices on your behalf you go straight to the throne room of god throne room throne room of god because jesus christ has opened the door of the sanctuary for you and you go boldly to the throne of grace not because you're so great but because you actually by faith recognize that Jesus Christ is so great that you can go in the presence of God and you can worship Him in holiness and purity not because of your holiness and purity not because you had a good week this week and thought that you sinned a little less than last week but because every single time you come to God it's only by the blood of Christ making you sufficient for that task.

But we go and we worship and we praise Him and we recognize that even one day, this is hard for us to grasp, I've known Christians who think you're going to die and know everything. I don't think that's how it works. You're still a creature, you realize, for eternity. You will always be a creature. And the confession tells us that God is comprehended by none but himself.

You realize you will spend all of eternity learning about God and you will never comprehend him. That doesn't mean you won't have understanding. It doesn't mean you won't have apprehension of knowledge about God. We know a lot of things about God. A lot for us, it seems like a lot, because it's more than we can know, right? But you will spend eternity always being excited.

Because there will always be more for you to learn about God. and everything you learn about him is perfect and fantastic and worthy of worship and it's going to be just wonderful the reason you get bored quick side note about his incomprehensibility the reason you get bored is because you've mastered something so you loved crossword puzzles for a while and then they just started to get easy you know you played a game and the game was exciting and how many games do you still play that you played 30 years ago, some of you, or even a couple years ago with some of you. Things get boring because you kind of master them. You feel like you've understood enough of it that it's just not interesting anymore.

God is eternally and perpetually interesting. Because we will never comprehend Him. But you are a sanctuary of God. And so where I'm trying to relate this to evangelism becomes that you are a worshiper everywhere you go. So we're all sitting in a church, right? We call it a church.

It's really a church building. The church is the bride of Christ, the people of God. But we're in a church building. That's common phraseology. And we're worshiping, right? I hope you're worshiping right now.

Do you know that the songs is not the worship? It's part of the worship. It's an important part. All of the things we do in church is worship. You know your worship leaders, your pastor, and not the guy singing or playing. Did you know that?

A lot of people don't know that. They have worship leaders at some churches and then pastors. Then they have youth pastors and senior pastors and athletic pastors. They have all sorts of distinctions now. You're a worshiper right now. What you're worshiping or who you're worshiping, I don't know.

I hear a couple of amens. I like to believe, well, they're hearing the word preached and the spirit of God is provoking them. But I've sat in sermons and I've daydreamed about. I've daydreamed about worldly recreations that are lawful and yet weren't appropriate during worship. I've had sinful thoughts in the middle of prayers. You're a worshiper right now, but here's the thing too.

We are worshipers when we leave here because you're a sanctuary of the living God. It's no longer that you have to go to a particular place in order to meet with God, which is how God painted that picture in the Old Testament for his people so that we would learn how holy he is and how difficult it is to come to him we learn from reading the Old Testament scriptures and those Old Testament saints learned that it is hard to come to God that the purity required to come to God is greater than we could even imagine I don know if you ever thought it through Can you imagine looking at your lambs and your sheep and inspecting each and every one of them? Put yourself in the position of some of these Old Testament Jews doing sacrifices and looking for blemishes.

Because you genuinely want to do what you think God wants. You want to bring the spotless lamb to Him. because he said to. I have a feeling there were no real spotless lambs out there. That what people eventually learned was, well, we can just bring the best we have, but nothing's actually good enough for this God that I worship. And the true believers of the Old Testament who in their heart were regenerated by faith and trusted in the promised Messiah who was to come, they would have felt woefully deficient every time they brought a sacrifice.

And they would have known God has to supply a sacrifice that's better than anything I could come up with. They would have to have known that. That's why Jesus rebuked people that didn't believe in him when he stood before them. Because he expected that from the Old Testament scriptures they would understand exactly who he was going to be and what he was going to do.

Don't fall for the Mr. Nice Guy Jesus that we're taught about in the United States version of Christianity. Oh, Jesus is perfectly kind. Absolutely. But Jesus wasn't nice in the way that we paint the picture of him sometimes. He was very hard on people who refused to worship him in the purity of heart that he deserves.

So turn to Psalm 96. Pastor Randall quoted this for us last night. I want you to see that you are a worshiper of God first and foremost and that it is actually your worship of God your doxology, your glorifying of God not only on Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon not only in your private prayers but it's your worship of God that God can use to evangelize and God will use it so in Psalm 96 I'm reading from the LSB if it sounds unfamiliar that's why because it's a little bit newer sing to Yahweh a new song sounds like worship to me sing to Yahweh all the earth it doesn't sound like Jew worship he says all the earth this is a command all people everywhere are to worship him we're to sing to him sing to Yahweh bless his name proclaim good news of his salvation from day to day do you know that you and a group of your Christian friends can go to a street corner and just worship God do you know you can bring your hymn books I bet Pastor Allen would let you take these you could make your own you could buy your own hymn books in fact some of you are willing to drop money on a probably blasphemous movie coming out of Hollywood right now but you wouldn't invest $100 to get some hymn books so you could worship at home or on the street if your phone broke you'd buy a new one that day you'd drop $1,000 you'd agree to a $25 a month 40 month contract or something like that.

But man, to get Christians to buy a Bible that will last them a little while, that's tough. I don't mean to indict you. I'm guilty with you of all these things. I want what I want when I want it and what makes me feel good right then and I have to fight the flesh. But proclaim good news of his salvation from day to day. You do that through your worship.

We'll see in a little bit he talks about worship more. Recount his glory among the nations. it doesn't say recount his glory in the privacy of your local church with your friends that agree with you Christ is worthy to be worshipped and praised wherever you are, whenever you are, and in whoever's presence you are and I dare say if one of your people in your life that was supposed to be your friend or they were supposed to be a loving family member of yours, if they were somewhere publicly and people were bad-mouthing you, it would bother you if they wouldn't raise their voice to defend you a little bit even. At least to say, hey, I like that guy.

And you go all over the place and you listen to people blaspheme the name of your Lord and you keep your mouth shut because you're afraid you're going to offend them. One of the things that leads to evangelism will actually be correcting people with the use of God's law when they're violating it, especially publicly. I'm old enough to remember in this country, and some of you are older than me, when women didn't cuss and blaspheme in public.

You know you've got a bad culture when the women are dirtier mouthed than the men now. Because the men are too busy at home playing video games and using pornography now. That's our culture. You understand that, right? And the women are out making noise and being loudmouthed to try to get attention because the guys aren't interested in real women anymore.

But you go out publicly and you're at the store and you hear somebody blaspheme God's name. Or you hear somebody start talking about Mother Nature. Mother Nature. Well, let's talk about Mother Nature. Verse 4. For great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised.

Listen, He is more fearsome than all the gods. Mother Nature is a little g-god. God. Let's see what God thinks of her. All the gods of the people are idols. He says, but Yahweh... made the heavens.

Why do you think God combines the talk of idolatry with his creative power? One of the main lies that we're told today is that God isn't the one that created everything. That he's not the one in control. It's evolution, right? That's what all people are taught in most of the public schools. And it's hard to have a conversation with someone where They don't refer to Mother Nature or Earth Day or who knows what all the things are.

That's an idol. I'm not telling you that you have to get in an argument with everybody that's buying meat at Kroger at the same time as you or wherever the stores are called. Is there a Kroger's down here? Yes. Okay. I know there's some regional type things.

I don't want to get regional. but there's ways that you can try to be polite and kind and still defend your Lord and correct people when they say things that are mistaken and what I want to tell you is that if your heart is one of worship if you're constantly worshiping Christ it will become easier for you to have those conversations that's really the point here I know I'm supposed to have four points and alliterate them. The point is you should be worshiping God all the time. And you're worshiping God when you're pumping gas and you're thinking about the glory of Christ and you're thinking about the fact that you deserve to be in hell right now and you're not.

You're actually pumping gas that you can afford still which is a blessing. And you're thinking about those things and you have a song in your heart and you're not listening to most of the trash that they put out now and your mind's not thinking about the trashy TV shows and all, I don't even know the names of them. You're actually maybe meditating on the scripture you're practicing to memorize right then.

You're working on the catechism questions and answers that you're trying to memorize. You're reminding yourself of the songs that you're trying to sing to God. And then somebody comes along and you're in such a worshipful attitude and maybe they just give you a smile and they say, hey, how are you doing today? And it's actually natural at that point to say, well, I'm doing better than I deserve.

You know, you say something that catches their attention. And a lot of times people ask, well, what do you mean by that? And sometimes you say things like, well, praise Jesus, what a beautiful day. You don't have to necessarily fight with everybody. Sometimes it gets that way, I get it. but that worshipful attitude that you have that you're supposed to have because you're offering your body every moment as a living sacrifice to God is doxological evangelism it gets people's focus on God listen, splendor and majesty are before him in verse 6 strength and beauty are in his sanctuary well what's his sanctuary? we just read it in 2 Corinthians 6 right? you are the temple of the living God.

This is one of the reasons you don't join yourself to a prostitute. It's one of the reasons you don't join yourself to idols. It's one of the reasons you don't unequally yoke with people who are not believers, no matter how important the cause. They'll probably offend some people with this one, but you don't hold hands with Roman Catholic God-haters in a fight against abortion.

And it's not because you don't want to see abortion ended, it's because you actually want to see abortion ended, and you want the power of God on your side so you don't join hands with idolaters. And you care more about the souls of your Roman Catholic friends and neighbors than even the lives of babies. Because God's glory is what is at stake when we partner with idols.

Amen. And so God says, Ascribe to Yahweh, O families of the peoples, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength do you do family worship I like hearing that yes right away I was good I didn't know what family worship was I got saved as an adult I didn't know Christianity until I was 30 years old I got the gospel I got saved I didn't know the next thing I got saved and the one thing I understood was Jesus saved me. I didn't know much more.

And I had a sense that the earth was younger than I'd ever been taught. That was the two things I kind of knew. I really didn't know Christianity. And I went to church And I went to a church that did not disciple me to be a leader in my home of worship And my family has suffered because of that And it wasn until I started to listen to some different people that were teaching Reformed faith that said, you need to do family worship.

I said, I don't know how. And they told me. There's people in this room, we sit down, we'll tell you today. I'll give you an outline. It's not that hard. You got the bulletins from church, kids?

Take the church bulletin home. Just go through the same songs and readings you did at church. But we need to be worshipers as families. You know how many opportunities I've had now to just do evangelism with a friend or a family member because they visited my home. And we have now made family worship such a priority that we're doing it, whoever shows up, whenever they're there, if they're there two, three days, even if they're not Christian.

I say, you don't have to join us. And I found most people, they like to hear it. They're interested in what we're doing. Doxological evangelism. That doesn't happen if you spend your time making sure you're in front of the game. I'm not going to say don't watch games.

Don't watch them on Sunday, I will tell you that. But you make family worship a priority, no matter how old you are. no matter how many people are still in your home you worship Christ every day ascribe to him glory and strength verse 8 ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name lift up an offering and come into his courts what's your offering? yeah you offer your body now as a living sacrifice to him Christ has already made the offering We don't re-sacrifice Him when we do communion as Protestants. We don't have crucifix up there with Him hanging there still, do we?

Christ has already made the payment, and then He rose again, and He lives forevermore to make intercession for all those who draw near to God through Him. And so you come to God, and you lift up an offering to Him. You give Him yourself. that means that you do things differently maybe than your body wants to do them sometimes and I dare say that a lot of people in Christianity even myself I think some of us have hearts that really want to serve God because God has given us that heart and we have neglected the reading of his word and the listening to the teaching of his word to such an extent that we really don't know how and so I do think there's some Christians out there that have some good intentions but they need to put a little more effort in to know what God would have them do on a regular basis to see the repeated commands in scripture that remind us of some of the things that maybe are more important because they're focused on so much to take seriously when you read a scripture that says you're supposed to do something and to be willing to say I may have been doing this wrong even for decades but if I did if I've been wrong no matter how long I've been wrong Lord now that I'm seeing this in the scripture grant me repentance and help me to do it from now on be assured all those who are prideful are an abomination to God there's a lot of people that are going to go to hell that never did some of the big bad dirty sins that we see in the world but then look at verse 9 worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness tremble before him all the earth it's about worship but as Randall aptly pointed out last night and if you didn't hear it get the download it's also about the great commission everything in God's plan is intertwined it's not like you've got these separate doctrines we study things separately sometimes but everything is intertwined you're a worshipper and you are an evangelist some of you are a mother some of you are a son, some of you are a father some of you are a pastor you have all sorts of different roles in this room I'm sure already but they're all intertwined in our worship of Jesus Christ in purity and in holiness you worship him in the splendor of holiness you enjoy holiness you enjoy being around people that want to live peculiar lives and set apart lives and now here we go say among the nations Yahweh reigns You don do that just in your church building And you don't do it just in family worship.

Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns. I'm not telling you, you all have to go to another country. I think it's just, just go outside your little circle and say it. We talked about it last night. when you sanctify Christ Jesus as Lord in your heart and you're prepared to have an answer for anybody that asks you for the hope that's within you, part of proclaiming who he is is proclaiming him as Lord.

Do you know there's people that go around this country and they tell people that they should believe in Jesus and pray a prayer so that they don't go to heaven but they don't have to trust that Jesus is the Lord? And yet in Romans chapter 10, it says if anyone's going to be saved, he's going to believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. It says he'll confess him with his mouth that Jesus is Lord, right?

You might not be the best follower of Jesus, but you acknowledge that he's Lord if you're a Christian. And you know what? If you tell other people he's Lord, and if your heart is so filled with worship of Christ that you're more afraid of offending him than you are of the person in front of you, you will open your mouth to defend his honor when it is being blasphemed.

And you know what? A lot of people will listen. And some people, they may clean up their act a little bit at least. And some people, they'll listen to the whole thing. And you'll tell them the gospel and they'll get saved. And I'm not big on just changing morals for people.

But as a dad with little kids, I wouldn't mind if the morals of our society were a little better, even amidst some unbelief. I'd much rather have a lack of gay pride parades in our country, even if people were secretly gay like they were 50 years ago and they weren't parading it as much. I'd rather have that than be afraid to take my kids out on a summer day because, oh no, is this the day of the parade? you know okay so that's okay to speak up for Christ and in some cases it's the proclamation that he's the Lord which carries with it the truth that he has a law that pierces people's hearts helps them to see their sinfulness which is the only reason a person will run to a savior for forgiveness you could try to be Mr.

Nice Christian all you want you start telling people that they need forgiveness, which you have to tell people this. If they're going to get saved, they can read between the lines. They know they have to be forgiven of something. So you can talk about God's love, God's kindness, God's mercy, God's grace. Nobody's going to get saved unless they realize they need those things, which comes from the knowledge of sin.

And the knowledge of sin comes from an understanding of what God's righteous commands in his law is. the love of Christ controls us we said last night and a little bit before that in 2nd Corinthians 5 we see that excuse me sorry lost my place a little bit before that in 2nd Corinthians 5 Paul uses a little phrase knowing the terror of the Lord knowing the fear of the Lord we persuade men I think it's about verse 11 I need to turn back there there should be not only that attitude of worship that you have but you should have a healthy and reverent fear of God and now you may have assurance of salvation I hope you do in fact if you're a Christian I hope you get to the point where you are absolutely certain that you have God's forgiveness that's something that I think is promised in the gospel for people, not necessarily immediately a lot of people struggle to understand that but what I want you to be able to also see is the people around you disaster may come I love how the sermons end up intertwining, because I keep thinking about things Randall said last night. You don't know when disaster will come, but you know it will. Because look, in verse 11 of Psalm 96, Let the heavens be glad, let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar as well as its fullness.

So while most of your pagan neighbors worship the earth, the earth actually worships God But anyway let the field exult and all that is in it and all the trees of the forest will sing for joy Listen before Yahweh Why For He is coming He's coming to judge the earth. I dare say there's going to be a lot of people that they're going to be shouting to God that day, I thought the Bible said don't judge. Right?

If they're going to be able to open their mouths. So that was facetious. I don't think people have a lot of time to react when Jesus Christ returns to judge the earth in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness there will be no second chances there will be no time for people to argue with God or make a case to God that somehow or other he's unrighteous or unjust or they weren't warned or they were going to do it later.

So the imperative as somebody who knows this and who by faith actually believes it is that you will act as if you believe it. Your actions tell me what you believe. It's that simple. If your actions are that you are not concerned about the people around you, that imminent destruction is upon them because you believe Christ will return, then I question if you actually believe He'll return.

And I certainly don't think you're eagerly awaiting for it, which is, in the book of Hebrews, that's the people God said He's going to take with Him. And so there's an imperative, as you are a worshiper, that you come to God by faith. And faith means you're going to believe what God has said, and your actions will be appropriate. And if you believe that Yahweh is coming, Jesus Christ himself is returning to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end and that his righteous judgment will be perfect and it will be based upon the perfect standard of the life that he was able to lead a sinless life the only people who will be saved are those who are found hidden in him.

The only people who when God judges them will actually make it into his presence are the ones who when he looks at them, all he sees is his son's life. That's called imputation. Where God looks at you and he declares you righteous on the basis of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. And not because you're righteous, not because he even granted you some kind of righteousness, he accounts you as righteous because of your faith.

That's how he saved Abraham. It's how he saved everybody in the history of time. and it's the only way that you're ever going to make it to be with God. So by faith, you not only believe that Jesus Christ died and rose for you, but you believe that God made the heavens, you believe He's going to burn up the earth, you believe a lot of things that a lot of people are going to tell you are silly.

And they won't use a nice word like silly, just so you know. But you believe a lot of things just because God has said them. And then you act as if you actually believe it. So in conclusion, I want you to be a worshiper. And I want you to be compelled to worship because God's worthy of your worship. But as well, as part of your motivation that you have in your heart that you love people.

And you realize that evangelism isn't just waking up in the morning, praying for people, and maybe reading your word, then having coffee, and then going out and telling people the gospel, it's your whole life of worship. It's how you're going to declare among the nations that Yahweh reigns or in the new covenant, I would say Jesus reigns. And he is your King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And you should boldly and unashamedly be able to say that to others. Father, grant us the strength to believe these things. give us faith Lord we are weak and we confess our weakness to you we confess our reticence to even believe the things in your word that are unflatable to our flesh and we thank you that you've given us your spirit that we might have the mind of Christ and we would understand spiritual things and so Father help us to walk in newness of life and cause us to be pure worshipers in the splendor of holiness. And I ask all this, and I thank you for all this, in the name of Jesus Christ, whose precious blood was spilled for us.

Amen.