The Love of Christ Is What Motivates All We Do
Tom Shrader walks through 2 Corinthians 5, covering the believer's future resurrection body, the Bema Seat judgment where Christ evaluates the eternal value of each believer's works, and the fear of the Lord that compels Christians to persuade others with the gospel. Central to the teaching is verse 14, where Paul declares that the love of Christ controls and constrains believers, replacing self-centered living with a life oriented entirely toward Christ. Shrader uses the conversion of Paul as a case study, drawing on Major Ian Thomas's meditation to show how encountering Christ reverses all worldly measurements of worth and value.
“The love of Christ controls us — that is it, constrains us, it motivates us, it guides us, it drives us — that's what motivates us.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 2 Corinthians
Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: love of christ, eternity, motivation, resurrection, evangelism, fear of the lord, living for christ, judgment, feeling spiritually unmotivated, new believer, struggling with self-centeredness, seeking purpose, mature believer, questioning eternal significance of life, young adult, someone facing death or grief
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4, 2 Corinthians 5:1, 2 Corinthians 5:6, 2 Corinthians 5:8, 2 Corinthians 5:9, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 2 Corinthians 5:11, 2 Corinthians 5:12, 2 Corinthians 5:13, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 2 Corinthians 5:15, 2 Corinthians 5:16, 1 Corinthians 4:5, Ephesians 1:7, Revelation 20, Revelation 22
Theological Themes: bema seat judgment, resurrection body, eschatology, substitutionary atonement, sanctification, eternal perspective, the constraining love of christ, glorification
Full Transcript
Eternity and the Present Life
Turn, if you would, to the book of 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. Paul is dealing with the topic of eternity. It was addressed in the close of chapter 4, where he said the outer man is decaying, but the inner man is being renewed day by day. He tells us that we are to look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that we see are temporal. The things that we do not see are eternal.
Paul is talking about eternity, and that is not an opportunity for us to flip a switch and check out, or somehow think that it has no relationship to today and the way we live. It is exactly the opposite. When we have an accurate view of eternity, we will have an accurate view of today. When we have a clear understanding of eternity, all of a sudden we will understand the world we live in. This is not some idle, mystical discussion about ethereal matters that are simply open to debate in an endless discussion of theological terms and definitions.
That is all part of it, but there is practical, real-life change that takes place when I understand eternity — what takes place in eternity — the best we can with God's Word and what He has given us.
The Resurrection Body and Our Heavenly Home
In chapter 5, verse 1, Paul wrote this: "For we know that if this earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." He said we know this. He uses a temporary structure — a tent — and says this is our body. When this tent is torn down, in other words, when we die, God will give us a resurrected body. We saw the prototype of that resurrected body when we saw Jesus' risen body.
We will have a new body, and we will have that body for all eternity. This body and this life on this planet are temporary. We will receive a resurrected body created by God.
Therefore, verse 6, being always of good courage — those that while we are at home in this body are absent from the Lord. We are distant from the Lord. It is not that we have no contact with Him. We are indwelt by His Holy Spirit. We have communication where we speak to God through prayer, and we have communication where He speaks to us through His Word. We have contact, but it is distant contact.
The Key Element of Heaven
When we talk about heaven, I am afraid we talk about things like no pain, no tears, no worry, no hurt — the absence of all of those things. And indeed, that is heaven. But when we are limited to that, we miss the key element of heaven, and that is that we are in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ forever. It is not just the absence of these things. It is that we are in His presence eternally.
In fact, Paul says in verse 8: "We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." If I understand this, there is a godly homesickness in me. I yearn for this place that I have never been. Why? Because I will be in the presence of the One I call Savior, and that motivates me for this life here.
Heaven is not just about the absence of sin and all of these things. It is about the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ — the One we pray to, the One we worship, the One we bow down before. We will be with Him forever.
Walking by Faith, Not by Sight
Now, all of this we take by faith. We walk by faith, not by sight. It is not that we have checked our brains. It is not that if you are an orthodox, fundamental, evangelical Christian, you have stopped thinking.
There is a gentleman named Jonathan Edwards. The Encyclopedia Britannica says Jonathan Edwards is the greatest mind that America has ever produced. You line them all up, and according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Jonathan Edwards is at the top of the list. You know what he thought about the Bible? He thought it was the infallible, inerrantly true Word of God. You know what he thought about Jesus Christ? He thought He was God come in the flesh, born of a virgin, who died on a cross. You have not checked your brains when you come to Christ in repentance and faith.
We walk by faith, not by sight. It is important to understand that sight can deceive us. I love those sleight-of-hand magicians — the street magicians. This one fellow does these extraordinary tricks, and you find yourself thinking, how does he do this? He has one where he is standing in front of a restaurant, works a card trick, takes you through all those gymnastics, and asks what your card is. He throws the cards against the window, and your card sticks on the inside of the window. I watched a show where they revealed all of his tricks — how he did everything. And it is simply moving things around. It is illusion, because our sight can deceive us.
We walk by what we know, not necessarily by what we see. You know the old phrase, "seeing is believing." Well, if we listen to what Paul is saying, what we are really saying is: believing is seeing. We walk by faith. We believe this, and one day we will see it. One day we will see Him. One day we will be in His presence. And Paul says, I would rather be there than here — and that should be true of all of us. We ought to yearn for that moment, not to be escaping from this world, but to be with the Savior forever.
Our Ambition: To Please God
Verse 9 says: "Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him." This is a fascinating thought — that whether we are with the Lord or we are here, our ambition, our goal, our desire, our aim, our target is to be pleasing to God.
Pleasing God by Reflecting Him
Our aim and our ambition is to please God. Apparently, in all of eternity, in heaven, our main ambition will be pleasing God, glorifying God, honoring God. Dr. Grudem was here with us yesterday, and he said something that I understood: God is pleased when we respond like Him. I wrote that down. How do I please God? I respond like Him. I begin to think like He does. I begin to act like He does. I begin to look like Him.
When our girls were small, I used to use this as an illustration. You could take either one of our girls — take Sarah — line them up with twenty kids you don't know, and I would say, "Pick out my daughter." You'd go, "That one right there. Round face, freckles, glasses — she looks just like you." You are supposed to look like your Heavenly Father so that everybody can pick you out and say, "Surely, you must be one of His kids." That's what Jesus said, isn't it? Let your good works shine in such a way that men see those good works and glorify your Father in heaven. You're supposed to look just like Him.
How do you please God? You respond like He would. You demonstrate love and kindness and gentleness. And also, you share truth. You don't compromise.
Standing Before the Judgment Seat of Christ
That introduces us to the verse we have before us today, verse 10: *"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be compensated for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether it is good or whether it is bad."*
Here is what it says, and you don't need me to help you here: God is going to judge you. Christ, specifically, is going to judge you. Now that could scare you. That could be something very intimidating. You are going to stand before a judge — not like a judge on this earth where you get Johnny Cochran to defend you and somehow slide right out of it. There is no faulty judge here. It is a perfect judge, a holy, righteous judge who has all of the information. No trial attorneys involved, no pleading your case. You will stand before a holy, righteous, all-knowing judge.
That would be intimidating, and yet I don't think that is why Paul says it there. When I was a little boy, there were four of us and I was the oldest. When my mom would discipline us, finally I would do something that reached the point where she'd say, "Tommy, go upstairs and get the brush." The brush was the instrument with which she delivered corporal punishment — about this length, a little bit thicker, the hardest wood I've ever been around, with bristles on it. But my mom, she wasn't just inflicting physical pain. She inflicted all sorts of emotional pain.
She would say, "Tom, go get the brush." That meant I was walking through the entire house, upstairs, down the hall, to the bedroom. I'd get the brush, bring it back, and she'd be in the farthest part of the house. You'd present the brush to her, she would take it, and then give it back and say, "Take the brush back" — and you'd go all the way back. My mom was here last night when I was demonstrating this, and she said, "No, I think it was worse than that, Tom."
I eventually reached a point where she could not really scare us much anymore. My mom — and some of you know her — is about this high and probably weighs about ninety pounds. So she came up with something new. You know what she would say: "Wait till your father gets home." My dad had apparently never heard of anything called due process. He would race upstairs, and he would just wail away. This is probably why I'm so screwed up today, now that I think about it.
When you heard "wait till your dad gets home," at least in my house, you knew it was all over. How about this: wait till you get home to your Heavenly Father. It could have that fear involved — but it shouldn't.
Observations About the Bema Seat Judgment
Here are some observations about this verse. All believers will be judged. What we have before us here in 2 Corinthians 5:10 is what we call the Bema Seat judgment. In Revelation chapter 20, you will see the great white throne judgment — that is where unbelievers are judged and condemned. We will not be condemned in our judgment. We will be judged, and that is a process.
All believers will be judged, and I don't fully understand how this is going to take place. There seems to be, from Scripture, the idea that all of us see or understand the result of that judgment. I don't know if Christ gathers together all of the believers and we come up one by one — but we have eternity, so somehow it works. All believers will be judged, and Christ will be the judge. There will be perfect judgment, perfect justice.
Verse 10 tells us that we are going to be judged according to what we have done, whether it is good or whether it is bad. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 5 tells us this:
The Judgment of Believers
"Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things hidden in darkness, and disclose the motives of your heart. And then each man's praise will come from God." Not from man, from Him. He will bring to light those things hidden in darkness.
When I read that, I think about all the dark things I've done that nobody else has seen. But I don't think that's what this is referring to, because our sin has already been judged — we'll talk about that in a moment. I think He's talking about those things we've done that nobody has seen, but they were good things. I consistently get anonymous notes of encouragement. Periodically there will be a little something included — a gift certificate, an act of kindness, a thoughtful word — and I have, on occasion, been the giver of those things myself. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, but God knows it.
God judges those things at that time, and He discloses the motives of your heart — in other words, why you do what you do. Some of us do things that are blatantly good, things everybody can see are good, and that is precisely why we do them. Why do you do those things? Why are you even here right now? Maybe you are here right now for the totally wrong motive.
I know men who are dating a woman they want to impress, and she says she goes to church on Sunday, so they come along. You can spot them a mile away. All through the worship they are reading the bulletin, elbowing her, saying, "Look at how much money they took in last week." Their hearts are disclosed — they are no more there to praise God than this stool. Ray Stedman writes, "This is a time of disclosure to us of what has been hidden in the silent inner reaches of our own heart. Everything will be unveiled, revealed, manifest."
What This Judgment Is — and Is Not — About
So here are the observations. All believers will be judged, and Christ will be the judge. As believers, however, our sin has already been judged. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7 says, "In Him we have redemption through His blood." We have already been saved. We have already broken the bondage of sin. This judgment for us is not about our destination — if you are a Christian, you are as certain of heaven as the saints already there. We have forgiveness for our sin.
Let me spend a moment here for anyone who did not take communion today and would say they are not a Christian. There is forgiveness available to you in Christ. You can find forgiveness for your sin in Him.
I had a meeting not long ago with an individual who came in deeply unhappy. I had watched this person at church — you could see the unhappiness clearly — and they were just as unhappy one-on-one as in a group. They said, "I'm so frustrated. I come here and I see happy people, people with peace. I want that. I'm miserable. I thought if I had stuff I'd be happy. I made a hundred and ten thousand dollars last year, spent every dime of it, and I'm miserable." The answer I gave them was Jesus. But the person said, "I have sinned so much, God could never forgive me."
Maybe you are sitting there feeling that right now. Understand that is a lie from the pit of hell itself. I don't know what you have done, but sin is sin as God judges it. This room is filled with people who have done awful, sinful, despicable things, and they have joy and peace today, and the guilt is gone — because Jesus Christ forgives that sin and takes away that guilt. If you are here, that forgiveness is available to you.
Good or Bad — A Question of Motive, Not Morality
So back to verse 10: He judges us according to what we have done, whether it is good or bad. I just finished saying He is not going to judge sin, so let me clarify something. The way the phrase "good or bad" is used here does not speak to what is morally good or evil. We use the word "good" in many different ways.
I played Friday with a friend in a member-guest one-day golf tournament. The front nine was best ball, and the back nine was a modified scramble — meaning both players hit a drive, you pick the best one, and play it in from there. On the tenth hole, I was up first, lost interest in my swing partway through, and flipped it into the trees. I told my partner, "Don't worry about it, Scotty — just knock it down the middle and let's get this over with." He hit it into the bunker on the right.
We went over to my ball in the trees to decide which one to play. He looked it over and said, "You know, I think if you just got it up quick over this tree and carried it, I think we can reach the green." I said, "If I could do that, I wouldn't be over here in the trees. There's a reason I'm behind this tree." He said, "Which ball do you want to play?" I said I didn't care, so we decided to play his out of the trap. He hit first — we were about a hundred and eighty yards out, needing a fairway wood — and he hit it over into the trees where I had been. I said, "I got us there in one. I can do that." He said, "Well, maybe I didn't make a good decision." And I said, "Scott, it's not a moral issue. You might have made a stupid decision."
The Judgment of Works
We cannot simply categorize our lives as good or bad in a moral sense. One author writes this: "These Greek terms do not refer to moral good or moral evil. Matters of sin have been completely dealt with by the death of the Savior. Rather, Paul was comparing worthwhile, eternally valuable activities with useless ones. His point is not that believers should not enjoy certain wholesome earthly things, but that they should glorify God in them and spend most of their energy and time with what has eternal value." That is the judgment: what have you done with your life since you became a Christian?
Obviously, you cannot do something good before you are a Christian. "No one does good, no, not one." So the judgment must look at our works from the moment of salvation onward.
My mind has been consumed lately with our move. We have been in our house for twenty-one years and I have been finding all sorts of things while packing. But there was one thing I wanted to find and could not find — until Tuesday night. It was the first Bible I ever had, the one given to me when I went to Larry Wright's Bible study. In the front I had written March 6th, 1980. I had always said God saved me in March of 1980, and apparently that is the date. To Him be the glory for that gracious mercy He extended.
As God judges my life, He is going to judge from that day to the time I die, weighing what I did and determining its eternal value — does it glorify Him? Obviously, then, I ought to spend my time, my energy, my effort, and my money to glorify Him.
The Promise of Christ's Return
In the book of Revelation, chapter 22, Jesus says, "Behold, I am coming quickly." Consider what He means when He says that. If I call Susan at the end of the day and she asks when I will be home for dinner and I say "quickly," she is thinking fifteen minutes, maybe thirty. Jesus says He is coming quickly, and yet it has been two thousand years. Some say He may have said that, but He is obviously not coming — it has been two thousand years.
Peter tells us that a day is a thousand years to God, so technically He has been gone only two days. When Jesus says "quickly," what He is saying is that it will happen at any moment, in the twinkling of an eye. We do not know when it is going to happen.
Here is what He gives us: "My reward is with Me, and I will render to every man according to what he has done." He is talking about delivering a reward to the believer. We already understand the condemnation of the unbeliever — there is no reward for the unbeliever. He is speaking of the believer, and He will bring a reward. Scripture is filled with Jesus reminding us that there are rewards, and some will say they do not want to be motivated by a reward. That is fine, but it is there, and I assume He tells us this to change the way we respond — to affect our behavior.
What is that reward? I do not know exactly. There are all sorts of speculations. We receive crowns, and all we can do is take those crowns and lay them at Jesus' feet. What I do know is this: He is coming, He tells us it can happen quickly, and He is bringing a reward. At the end of the book of Revelation He says, "Yes, I am coming quickly," and the response is, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." That should be our prayer.
Summary of the Judgment
Here are the observations: all believers will be judged, Christ will be the judge, and all believers' sins have already been judged. So this judgment is not about sin or moral standing — it is about eternal value. The purpose of this judgment is to determine the rewards given to the believer. Paul writes this right in the middle of this section because he wants us to understand it. He is trying to tell us how to live.
Persuading Men and Defending His Ministry
Everything before us focuses on the temporal, and now in verse 11 Paul begins to move again into this world and how we are supposed to live. "Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord" — and that word means the reverential awe of the Lord, knowing Him for who He is, worshipping Him and praising Him — "we persuade men." Our whole mission here is to share the gospel. We try to share the gospel with others.
Paul also begins here to offer a brief defense of himself. Remember the background of this letter: Paul is under continual attack. So he says, "We are persuading men, but we are manifest to God, and I hope that we are made manifest also in your conscience." The New Living Translation puts verse 11 this way: "It is because we know the solemn fear of the Lord that we work so hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know it too." He is trying to speak plainly while under attack from false teachers and those who would undermine him in the church.
Verse 12 continues the same thought. The New Living Translation reads: "Are we trying to pat ourselves on the back? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart before God." There are people going around talking about all the ministry they have, but their heart is not right. This is about the heart.
Verse 13 says, "If it seems that we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God, and if we are in our right minds, it is to benefit you." Why would Paul do this? Why does he live this way? Why does he take beatings and punishment? Why does he take what could be a comfortable life and instead live the life of a saint on the run? Why has he experienced the beatings and the stoning?
Setting Paul aside — what about you? Why do you do what you do?
The Love That Drives Everything We Do
I am always here for the lesson, and I try to be present for part of the worship as well, but I also work around the campus. I will go over and see some childcare worker — some guy — and he has got this kid who is just crying and crying and crying, and here is this gentle guy. I am thinking there is no way I could do that. I could not handle it. I could do this lesson fifteen times, but I could not spend fifteen minutes doing that.
Why would they do that? Why is it that when we get here at six-thirty in the morning there are already people here who have made coffee for those who will serve? Why are there people all over this campus all week long? Verse fourteen is the answer: "For the love of Christ controls us." That is it. It constrains us, it motivates us, it guides us, it drives us. That is what motivates us.
What It Means That One Died for All
So what motivates you? The love of Christ. We used to be driven by our own desires, but now it is the love of Christ. We understand that one has died for all, therefore all died. He died for His people. Now we are no longer under condemnation.
Every sin that has ever been committed by every person that has ever lived must be judged, and it will be judged. It will be paid for either by Christ and the cross, or by that person in hell for all eternity — and in hell it will never be stamped "paid in full." Those are the stakes. We died with Him, and when we died with Him something happened. You see it in verse fifteen: we died for Him, so that we no longer live for ourselves. All of a sudden we are living for Christ.
From the Most Selfish to the Most Selfless
Larry Wright was my mentor. He was the most humble, selfless man I have ever been around. Do you know how he used to describe himself? He said there was a point in his life where he was the most selfish guy in the world. He said there was a point where somebody was trying to reach him — trying to share with him, trying to break him down emotionally as a non-believer — and they used an illustration. They said, "What if your wife and your kids died?" And Larry said, "I wouldn't care." That is a hard heart. Maybe your heart is like that.
I never knew that Larry Wright. I only knew the saved one, who would sit for hours and talk to strangers about the gospel. I would sit in a booth with him, and we would talk about people he did not even know — people from this church — and I would start to share what they were struggling with, and he would begin to weep. What happened? How did he go from the most selfish guy in the world to the most selfless guy I know?
Well, the same thing that in theory happens to you and me and every Christian. We no longer live for ourselves. Isn't it interesting that the very first thing we ask, no matter what it is, is: what is it going to mean to me? Even when we start talking about the war in Iraq — is that going to mess up deliveries? What is that going to do to gas prices? People are going to get killed on both sides of this issue. Will gas go up a dime, or do you think it will go up a quarter? What is that going to do to my stock prices? We take everything and run it through that same filter.
I was driving down the freeway the other day and I saw lights, lights, lights. I got on the radio and they said there was a wreck on the 101. I am thinking, you have got to be kidding me. I am in the left lane — there is no way I am getting off. What does this mean for me? I got up there, and there were cars and bodies strewn all over the place, and I am thinking: you understand this is costing me almost ten, maybe fifteen minutes? I am pathetic. That is your natural flinch.
A New Way of Seeing People
What happens is, as Christ changes your life, all of a sudden you live for Him rather than for you. It is no longer "what does it mean to me?" but "what does it mean for Him?" He died on our behalf. He rose again. When He died, you died with Him. When He rose, you rose, and you are a new creature. Things begin to change, and part of what changes is your worldview and the way you see people.
Look at verse sixteen: "Therefore, from now on, we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer." Let me read the same verse from the New Living Translation. Verse sixteen: "So we have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them. Once I mistakenly thought of Christ this way, as though He were merely a human being. How differently I think about Him now."
That is what we do by default — we evaluate people by worldly standards. We will roll over for the right person if they have the right prestige, the right calling card, the right title, if they are making a certain amount of money or they have political power. We love to have our picture taken with them. We are attracted to money, fame, prestige, and power. What can you do for me? That is how we look at people. You have value. You do not. You build buildings. You dig ditches. Paul says: not anymore.
Major Ian Thomas and the Two Ways of Seeing Christ
When I read and studied this passage, I came across a piece of literature by Major Ian Thomas. Larry used to use this all the time. Major Ian Thomas puts himself in Paul the Apostle's shoes, looking at the Lord Jesus — first before conversion, and then after. I had a copy of it. The only copy I have is in a Bible, and when I packed boxes the other day, that Bible was packed. I was determined to find it and use it. Twenty boxes of books were stacked there, and in one of them is this Bible — and all the boxes look the same. So I prayed, "Father, you don't want —"
A Prayer for Direction
Before returning to the text, I asked God not to let me waste time opening twenty boxes. I prayed, "Father, show me where to start. You don't want me to waste my time opening twenty boxes, do You?" And He didn't — He wanted me to waste time opening nineteen boxes. But I found it.
Evaluating Christ by Worldly Standards
Let me read this verse again, because I think it is so good. Verse 16: *"So we have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them. Once I mistakenly thought of Christ that way as though he were merely a human being. How differently I think about him now."*
Major Ian Thomas, writing from Paul's perspective, evaluates the person of Christ this way: There was a time when, as Saul of Tarsus, I made my own independent evaluation of this man called Jesus. I investigated his life to see if the leader of this Nazarene cult was worth following. I made my own independent evaluation of what he was worth. I was not unfair. I was not unkind. I applied to him all the normal, natural standards by which any life is evaluated in any age.
I looked first into his ancestry and discovered there was a cloud over his birth right from the start. As I investigated, it became quite clear that he was the illegitimate son of a faithless woman who had been taken in by a kind-hearted carpenter and raised as his own son. He was an outcast from the very beginning, and socially he was worth absolutely nothing.
I investigated his professional standing and discovered that he was born of peasant stock and attended no schools. He was raised as a simple carpenter in a village of no standing in Israel, and professionally he was worth absolutely nothing.
Nothing by Every Measure
As Saul of Tarsus, I investigated his theological and ecclesiastical background. I found that he had sat at nobody's feet. He had been to no seminary. He had no theological training. In fact, he was repudiated by all the ecclesiastical authorities of his day. He was nothing but an incorrigible street preacher and rabble-rouser, and as far as his theological standing was concerned, he was worth absolutely nothing.
Furthermore, I looked into his standing financially. I found that he had no bank account, that he was born in a cave and laid in a borrowed manger, and that he lived in other people's homes. He was a scrounger. He was always borrowing things. He borrowed money to pay his taxes. He borrowed his clothes from other people. He rode around on a borrowed donkey. He died on a borrowed cross and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Financially, from the standpoint of the accumulation of the world's goods, he was worth absolutely nothing.
So as I investigated and applied to Jesus the normal standards by which any life is evaluated, I discovered that this man was not worth following. He was worth nothing.
The Damascus Road Reversal
But. But on the Damascus Road, something happened. There, in a blinding flash of a moment, I looked into the face of a man and saw God. I discovered that He, who I thought to be worth nothing, was Lord of everything — that He was the God of glory, that everything that is made is upheld by the word of His power, and that He is behind all things, that He is the very imprint and image of God.
There I found that He, who I thought to be nothing, was everything, and I, who I thought to be everything, was nothing. In that moment, I came to a tremendous reversal of all the values of my life. Later, I learned that I, who was nothing, could be filled with Him who was everything, and that would make my life something.
I'll pick up there next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. Let it change our lives. God, as Your people, prepare us for that judgment. Help us understand that it is there and it is before us. Help us live a life that is pleasing to You. Use us in ways beyond anything we could imagine.
For those who are here who do not know Your Son Jesus, our heart aches for them. We pray that if it is Your will, this might be a day of salvation, that they would come to repentance and faith. We pray that You bring them forward to talk to the men who are at the front of the worship center after the service, that they could answer their questions and share this gospel with them.
Father, thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You that He died for our sin and that we have eternal life today — not because of anything that we have done, or could do, or would do, but because of Jesus. God, we love Him. Help us love Him more. Help us yearn and look forward to the day when we will be with Him forever. God, that is our prayer, offered to You in Christ's name. Amen.