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The title of the message today and Tomorrow Morning, because I'll be with you at two sessions, is called the Day youy'll Never Forget. But before I get into that, I want to share with you. Back when I was in high school, I turned 14 and my older brother and sister worked at Burger King. It's a smaller college town, and so weren't a lot of options. But a lot of the kids worked at Burger King, and the Burger King didn't have a drive through. So this is a real problem. And the town would not allow the owner, Lou, to somehow make a drive through because it was in the old downtown and there wasn't a whole lot of space. Well, it's 14. It was time for me to make $3.15 an hour, and I was gonna go down there. And since I had an older brother, sister working and they did a great job, it was kind of a shoo in that I was gonna get the job. Problem was, I didn't want the job. I mean, I wanted money, but I didn't want to work there. Because at Burger King, anyone that worked at Burger King seemed like they came out within a week with zits. Acne. Everyone had acne. And so I kind of put that together. Like, if I work at Burger King, I'm gonna have a bad acne. Especially if you're working the fryer, you're over that hot grease and it's just coming up. And so it was one of those things where I just was not looking forward to. I was actually didn't want. I had bad vibes and bad feeling about the whole thing. But I was pleasantly shocked at how much I liked working at Burger King. Now, the reason I liked working at Burger King was because I didn't have to work at. In the restaurant. You see the shopping in this town, it was all downtown and all the old school kind of the shops in the downtown main drag. And people were always trying to find parking space, and there wasn't. But the Burger King parking lot had a lot of space. And they would park there and then they would go shop. Well, our owner realized that's taking up spaces for his customers who had to get out of their cars, go into the Burger King, come out of the Burger King, and. And so he had me assigned. I got hired, and they assigned me to work the parking lot. I got to wear a shirt, a T shirt. Not that polyester orange and yellow red thing that they had with the poofy hats. If you look at the old commercials, no, I got to wear This T shirt. And actually one of the nerd herd found this last week. I got to wear this shirt. And it was a Burger King beating the snot out of Ronald. And. And yeah, I got to wear that. So I'm out there, I got shorts on, I got my Burger King beating up Ronald. I'm feeling good. I could wear a baseball cap. And my job was simply. Well, if you had looked at the dumpster wall, he had this massive, huge 8 foot by 10 foot sign that said, no parking. Unless you are a customer of Burger King, you will be towed. My job then was to just simply tell people as they came in, hey, Mel, let's say Kevin and Mel decide to come and park their car. And then they say, we're going to go down and shop. And so as they start to walk off, I go, hey, hey, excuse me. And they turn around and go, I'm sorry, you can't park here unless you're going in to eat at Burger King. So I need you to move your car or we're gonna have to tow you. And they'd be like, well, they wouldn't do it that way. But people were like, so that's all I had to do. And then I'd be out there and I was kind of getting bored sometimes. So I'd start people driving by and I'm like, hey, how you doing? You know, I just start. I was a 14 year old, and so I'm just doing stuff and I'm like, actually. The owner realized I was actually bringing in traffic to eat. So I got this great job, something I thought was going to be horrible with lots of zits. Instead, I had this great job, got to wear my Whopper say Whopper T shirt and had a great time. Now, I will say there was one time where it was a little unsettling. Some of the guys from the military fort about 30 minutes away had come, and these were young soldiers and they parked their truck and they got out and they start walking off. And I said, oh, excuse me. I was like, I showed you. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Hey, guys, guys, guys. And they stop, turn around and go, I'm sorry, if you look at the sign here, you can't park here and then go shop. The only reason you can park and eat, but if you don't move, I'm going to tell them they're going to get you towed. And the guy goes, tomi walks off. And I went, hmm, this is a first. And it was the last. And I'm like, they're soldiers. Though they kill people if they have to, you know, the enemy. And right now I'm the enemy. So I went in and I told the manager, the manager goes, we're going to tow them. And I was like, where can I hide? So literally they call a tow truck, hook up the truck. I'm going, I'm watching this thing near the door because I'm going to run in and I'm looking for if these guys are coming back. Anyway, they tow off their vehicle and I'm like, can I go inside for right now? They're like, sure, you can go inside. So I go inside and I literally hang out in the walk in cooler. I figured I can throw the shelf with all the stuff across the entrance and I can at least delay the inevitable death. They did come back and they were ticked and they were looking for me in the live. They're like, where is that kid? Anyway, thankfully they were shipped off to another country. But no, I'm joking. That didn't really happen though. So. But anyway, my whole point is this. Sometimes we can have something that we really, really, really, really dread and we're just terrified by it. We're scared about it, like we're fixating, we're anxious. And it can be the total opposite of what we thought because our perceptions are reality, but our perception, if it's off the it doesn't make it correct. We're just wrong. And I want to cover. A future event that's going to happen. And I want to bring some clarity from scripture because scripture should interpret scripture, but sometimes we don't. We grab a verse, we run with it and we're off. And when I was young, I was taught incorrectly by good intentioned people, but they were wrong. And that's what I want to cover this morning. And tomorrow morning in my time with you, I want to cover. And it really comes from two verses. Typically they use Romans 14:10 to 12 and 2 Corinthians 5:10. And we're going to look at those. And so the first one, Romans 14:10, 12 says, why do you judge your brothers and sisters? So Paul's writing to Christians because he's talking about brother or sister. That's Christians. Why do you treat them with contempt for we will all stand before God's judgment seat. Now right there, that kind of makes me nervous when you throw that word judgment in. We're going to stand before God's judgment seat. And it goes on. And Paul quotes from Isaiah 45:23. He says, as surely as I live, says the Lord Every knee will bow before me and every tongue will acknowledge God. Then he goes on to say, so then each of us, each of us, if we trusted Christ, will give an account of ourselves to God. Well, that starts making, that can make you nervous. Like we got to give an account. Like what all account. Like what does it cover? So then the text from second Corinthians is what kind of pushes can push you over the edge in the wrong direction. For we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. This to me stirs up pictures like this, the judgment seat of Christ. I'm gonna stand before Christ. Individually, each of us have trusted Jesus. We're gonna stand before Christ and he's going to judge us on the good and the bad. Now I gotta tell you about a camper I had back in my high school camp in Texas. She was a senior from Dallas Metroplex. Her name was Abigail. She came to camp, didn't have any religious background, didn't have life wise, but came because heard that our youth camps were awesome and she wanted to be there. So she got in. She was in the cabin with some of the older girls in our high school camp. Our high school camp rocked. And we had club every night, teaching God's word, worshiping the Lord, fun stuff, crazy games, zip lines, all this fun stuff. Waverunners, all that stuff. We would as a staff, as a leadership team, we'd always ask the counselors and the senior counselors, what kids don't know the Lord and who should we be praying for. And Abigail was one of the handful of kids that didn't know the Lord, didn't go to youth group, didn't know anything. And so we were praying for Abigail's salvation. We just wanted the Lord, you know, the Lord's the one who desires to seek and save the lost. It's the Lord who wants no one to perish. And so the spirit of God's the one who converts. But we can release the hounds. And so we're like, lord, release the hounds. You know, we like go after Abigail. So we were praying. Well, then as we get toward the end of the week, I asked one of the senior counselors, hey, did Abigail trust Jesus yet? And the senior counselor was like, no. And I'm like, no. Because I had been. I bounced around from camp to camp because it Was over all the camps. But I headquartered out of the high school camp with my family. That's where we ate meals and stuff. And I'm like, I've been seeing her. She's having a great time. She's loving it. And she goes, yeah, I know. I go. She's like, yeah, she loves the activities. She loves her cabin. She sings during times of worship. She listens. She talks during the Bible study. She's interested. And she even made a comment to the counselor that Jesus sounds awesome. I'm like, why hasn't she trusted Jesus? And the senior counselor said, I don't know. I go, it was the last day of camp and it was rest period. So all the kids are in the cabins chilling out in the air conditioning because it's 102 degrees out with 90% humidity, and I love Michigan. And. And so I go, let's go down there and talk to Abigail. She goes, okay, let's go. So we go down to the cabin. She knocks on the door, abigail, would you come out? Abigail comes out on the porch. And I see her. She goes, ambush. What are you doing? I go, I came to talk to you. She's like, okay. So basically the three of us sit there and we just. On the deck and we just. I started asking her questions, and again, she says she loves everything about it. She loves her counselors, she loves the kids, blah, blah, blah. We get to one point. I go, well, and then, what's your thoughts on Jesus? She's like, he's awesome. And then I said, have you trusted him? Have you said, jesus, I want you to be my savior? And she says. She just kind of went all of a sudden, changed countenance. She goes, no, I mean, my brain. I couldn't understand it. And I go, why? She kind of hesitated. And I go, this is safe. You can say whatever you want to me. I said, I just want to know why, so maybe I can explain anything or help you. And then she says, it just comes out like a. She goes, if Jesus was so great, though, and loved me, then why would he put my sins on a screen so everyone in heaven could see them? I've done some bad stuff, and I'd rather go to hell than that happen. Because you see, there has been teaching that our past, good and bad, the good things we did for the Lord and the sins that we've committed are gonna all be brought back up for this testing, this assessment. And I want to say is, that's wrong. Context is so very important. And scripture interprets scripture. So What I want to do today, but even more so tomorrow morning, is we're going to dive into Scripture and you will see for yourself why that concept, that teaching of our sin is going to be brought back up is wrong. What a diabolical scheme of the enemy to get us scared for the day we stand before Jesus our Savior, who left heaven, took on a body, lived in this world, got beat, abused, rejected, never sinned, and then took on all our sin. Like that should be the greatest moment of our lives when we get to see Jesus face to face. And I was taught, better watch what you say, better watch what you do. It's going to be brought back up. When I started first camp, I worked at, I ran a junior high camp. And I remember this is when I started getting into this pastor friend of mine had taught on this, and it just opened my eyes. I hadn't just hadn't thought about it. And I was like, oh, my goodness. And then I started looking at scriptures. I'm like, oh, my goodness. This has been taught to me wrong. And then I was going, and I was sharing with my staff on a staff meeting before the next week of camp started. And I was sharing this with my summer staff. And as I was sharing it with them, one of my staff, sweet, sweet college girl that had been a camper, grew up going to the camps. And she goes, can I say something? I go, yeah. And she goes, and she had great parents. I knew her parents, I knew her family. She goes, I just got off the phone with my mom and she said to me, be careful what you say and do remember, because you don't want it brought back up. And she goes, and my name is Grace. And I never forgot it. Here was a girl who was precious, loved the Lord, served the Lord, had great family, but did not interpret the text accurately with other texts of Scripture to understand the judgment seat of Christ. Now, the judgment seat, that name in and of itself brings, well, makes me think of the courtroom. The Greek word is actually bema. So I like to talk about the bema seat of Christ. It just takes that whole kind of reaction that I can have sometimes with, oh, yeah, it's not that, but it's still bema seat. The bema seat of Christ, the judgment seat of Christ. That is not going to be a courtroom situation. Don't see it as a courtroom where the defendant gets accused, judged 20 years in prison. No, see it as an Olympic platform. The bema seat is actually. I had some pictures when I went to Greece on a study tour and There, in various Greek cities, archaeological digs, they'll find in the middle of these old cities, where was a platform and it was a stage, if you will. And it was places where things would like, if someone had got the keys to the city, you give it to them. If there was something big happening, it would happen at the Bema. But I want you to think of the bema not as a courtroom, but as a Olympic platform. It's not about condemnation, but the day the bema seat of Christ is going to be about our commendation. And I'll show you Scriptures, but looking back at this one, even this one that talks about at the end, whether good or bad will receive what is due us. Even in this one verse, if you start. So we make it our goal to please Christ. We have been given this opportunity, and we'll talk about this here in a minute. About to steward our lives. How are we living our lives? And it should be about pleasing Christ and those. When you do things for the Lord, that's what will be rewarded, that's what will be praised. Christ literally will praise you for the things you did with his strength by his help. And yet he still rewards each of us individually. But if you just go seven verses more, so from 2 Corinthians, 5, 9, 10, if you go down to verse 17, it ties it together. It says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. When that happens, the old is gone. Sin is paid for as far as the east is from the west. Psalm 103 says, so your transgressions have been removed from you. And then he goes on to say, talks about God reconciling. And he says, all of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. So this is a part of that prior verse that talks about good and bad, saying, yeah, but we're not going to count the sins against you, so the bad is not going to be brought back up. That's just barely the tip of the iceberg. I remember. And I love this because it says, the old is gone. We're new creations. I used to work with a guy, and he. He liked legalism. He liked that little bit of spiritual arm twisting to get people to do things kind of out of duty, but not out of relationship. And so, and it was, and I get it, his upbringing, his dad, and the way his whole family life, it was very manipulatively Guilt ridden. He used to always say when someone says something, yeah, you know, the Lord's good. He goes, yeah, but we're sinners saved by grace. There's always that we're sinner. You're a sinner saved by grace. Now that is true. But we were sinners as our identity. We are now saints who struggle with sin. My identity is not sinner. I'm a child of God, beloved, I'm a new creation. Christ changed me. His spirit indwells me. So yeah, we sin, we struggle with it, but that's not our identity as a sinner. Our identity is a saint. We're a child of God. I also love Romans 8:1. Therefore there is a now, not later, not after that day. The bama seat of Christ. There is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ. Jesus. Christ died for our freedom. Handful of verses. We're going to look at some of them really fast now. The Lord is a spirit is the spirit. And where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. It says it there. He doesn't want us fearful. He doesn't want us feeling shame. He doesn't want us being manipulated and feeling all anxious and guilty. He wants us to be free. And again, depending on your denominational background or how your parents raised you or what group you were in, this is hard for some of us. For some of you that have really grace filled churches and you understand undeserved favor, this is not. You're like, yeah, this is a no brainer. But. But for some of us. And every week when I teach on Thursday, people come up and go, oh, I needed that. There's another one. Romans 8:15. The spirit you receive does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again. The slavery is this fear. Rather, the spirit you received brought about adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, abba Father. He's our father. We're children of God. He doesn't want us fearful, especially for the day we stand before him. Galatians 5:1. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. I love the repetition. It's like, are you getting it? You know, kind of thing. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then. And do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery or fear. I can't remember what airport it is, but when I see the word stand firm I think about sometimes they have those trams that take you or those trains that take you from one terminal and they take you over to this terminal and you have to ride these to get to the, you know, get to your plane. When I get on those, I never, ever touch the grab handles or the bars. And I don't sit down because, you know, that's, you know, that's for other people that, you know, need to sit. So I just, like. I just like to get my stance as if I'm going to be surfing or snowboarding. You know, I get my stance. And Michelle, my wife, she's always like, can't you just hold on? Like, no, I gotta ride this train. And so anyway, the train starts going, and some are lame. So don't pick one of those. Gotta pick the fat. I've done a lot of traveling. Pick the ones. And I don't remember what airports, but there's some that are like. They're literally shaky. And. And then he goes and stops, you know, And I stand firm. And I like it. But anyway, standing firm, that's the picture in my mind. I need to steady myself and don't let any fear, false accusation, the lies of the enemy, my own flesh talking trash. I need to stand firm in the freedom because Christ has set me free. Why do you think you like the counselors so much? They're just sloshing, Jesus. They're free. That doesn't mean they don't struggle with wanting to be lazy or with anxiety about this or worrying. But you, like, they have no cell phone on them. They get up early and go to bed late. They don't stop working. They're in the dining room, serving there. They're up at the zip lines. Nice heat up there. Serving. They're with your kids. But what you see, what causes the charley horse between the ears? And you're like, man, they got less money than me and they got less freedom than me, and they're happier than me. It's because they're free in Christ. They literally just go, Lord, bring it. More sweat. More, Jesus. That may not make sense to you, but as you're jumping around, sweating on the gauntlet, as you're greeting and you're jumping around and we had some hot days this summer, and they're just jumping around. They're thinking, oh, I'm sweating a lot. It's like, okay, Lord, I'm yielding to you. More, Lord, bring it. Just fill me. Fill me so I can slosh it out. So the more sweat, the more they're like, yeah, bring it, Jesus. And then this last one I'll share with you. You, my brothers and sisters, you are called to be free. There's a Handful of places in Scripture that talks about our calling, and this is one of them. We're called to be free. Do not use your freedom, though, to indulge the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love. So it's not a license to just go do whatever you want to do. We shouldn't do that. That's not what this is teaching. But it's saying, be free and then use that freedom to go ahead and willingly serve others humbly. So again, Christ died for our freedoms to take away. I got two next two slides. I just. I wrote them out. I want to read them to you because I want to make sure I cover this as well. Because as I was prepping for this summer, I realized I tried to think of like a high school student. And normally there would be the junior high and high school kids in here if we were on a full week. And so I'm always thinking, what. What might be the gaps that I need to bring up Scripture to help close the gaps in the questions. The Bible teaches that all sins, both confessed and unconfessed, those committed and those you haven't committed yet, have been forgiven and atoned for by the work of Christ on the cross so that all believers will never face those sins again. That's just what scripture shows. I mean, I used to think when I was younger, what happens if I hit my brother and then we get in a car wreck and we die? Do I go to hell? I didn't confess that sin, and I didn't understand quite how that worked. We'll touch on that here in another slide or two. And also, if God were to punish the believer for sins that Christ has already paid for on the cross, he would be requiring two payments for sins, which would be an unjust act. The idea of sin being brought back up for judgment invalidates the all sufficiency of Christ's death on the cross. And then I pulled a couple verses. Romans 5:19. For as through one man's disobedience, speaking of Adam, the many were made sinners. Even so, through the obedience of the one Jesus, the many will be made righteous. In Hebrews 10:14. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. So again, I'm kind of trying to make, if you will, a legal case, scriptural case, on why we do not need to fear sin being brought back up. And why is that important? So that we can live in freedom and we can naturally slosh Jesus onto other people so that they come to know who Christ is Jesus was an amazingly attractive person as the God man in Galilee. They're all working, they're fishing, they're living hand to mouth. They're doing the leather work, they're doing tent making, all this stuff. And you survived. It was not a booming economy. And Jesus would get in a boat with his disciples and start to float across the Sea of Galilee. And people would go, there's that. And they thought he was a rabbi at the time. There's that rabbi. He's amazing. And we read two different places in scripture that comments about it. 5,000 men, another time, 4,000 men. That's not counting all the women and children that would have come that weren't counted. Walk around the lake to catch up with them wherever he's going to dock. There was no rock concert. There were no free T shirts. There was no food. There was none of it. It was a dude sitting in a boat teaching. I'm telling you, Jesus is some kind of amazing. I cannot wait. I cannot wait to be with him, hang out with him. Love it. Now, these two phrases I didn't make up. Actually, some commentators and some scholars talked about this. I like the way they phrased it. But this is one more important part, because there was confusion for me when I was younger. And I mean, I had wonderful parents. They were growing in the Lord. They weren't Christians when, you know, and they didn't have Christian parents. And they grew and they studied God's word. And so we were constantly growing and learning God's word. And my dad was military, so we'd go to different cities. We moved like 20 times or my mom did. I didn't move that many. My mom and dad did, my siblings. But we'd go to wherever the Bible was taught. Didn't matter the denomination. Are they teaching God's word accurately? And so I learned over time this. But I like these phrases. We're going to talk about legal forgiveness and then we want to talk about fellowship, forgiveness. Two different things. First, I want to look at legal forgiveness. Again, these phrases aren't in the Bible. These are just good capsulating phrases that will help us understand the scriptures and how it plays out. Legal forgiveness, it's through faith in Jesus Christ. His death, his resurrection. This is what justifies us and gives us standing before God. And we're allowed to be in heaven. We're allowed to be with him because we legally are forgiven. It's not by what we do. It's all what Christ did. You don't earn salvation. It's grace plus Nothing. And so we ask Christ to come into our lives, take away our sin, forgive us, be our Lord and Savior. And we are. Then in that event, that moment, we are legally forgiven. Sometimes, like, say, I would have thought I confused confessing sin. I didn't confess that. So am I in trouble with God? Is he mad at me? No. I am saved. Corinthians. Paul writes the church in Corinth, and he says, brothers. So he's talking to Christians. He says, brothers, I cannot address you as spiritual but worldly, mere infants in Christ, you look like unregenerate men. So he's writing to Christians who are living like extreme pagans in their very pagan culture. But they're still legally forgiven. They've trusted Christ. They're a new creation. The spirit of God indwells them. Now, I'm very visual, so I have to picture things. And that's why, even with some of you, I was asking you to spell your names yesterday or today. How do you spell that? Because I have to picture. And so as I think about this forgiveness, I go, you have people. Well, let me go to this. We have a sovereign God. He predestines. He knows. He knows our lives before we live them. It says, these things are written in this book. He has a plan. But Scripture also says we have an uncoerced will. We have a free choice. We can make our own decisions. We're not robots. Now, I don't know exactly how that all works together, but I don't have to know. All I know is Scripture says both. And I do know that sometimes theologians, they want to pick a side, but I don't know how you fully can, because Scripture says both. So God, he's in control, but we can make our own decisions. And so as a church in Corinth, they were making their decisions to just live like pagans, but they were still saved because they trusted Christ. Legal forgiveness. But fellowship, forgiveness, this phrase that the commentator says, I like it. Fellowship forgiveness is different than legal forgiveness. That has to do with fellowship in this life with God. God's always with us. He's always next to us. He doesn't leave us. He doesn't forsake us. But we, if we start to choose to sin, we don't feel close and have fellowship with God. We're not looking toward God for anything. We're doing what we want to do the way we want to do it. And we, in a sense, have moved the Lord off the throne of our lives. Or as I was going to say, as I picture Things I picture our life, our hearts are like a house. And even though we're saved, we're legally forgiven. We've trusted Christ. Some of us can live where we have the Holy Spirit in the back bedroom. He's in our house. He's in our hearts. He hasn't left us. This is why we're to pray, to be filled with the Spirit continually. Because sometimes we just naturally want to put him in the back bedroom so that we then hang out in the living room. We got the remote control. We're going to go where we want to go. And instead, when you say, holy Spirit, come have freedom in my life, I want you to have control. I want to have fellowship. I want to hear you. I want to act on what you lead me to do. Because if I do what you say, my life is going to flourish way more than if I sin sin. Three things about sin. Sin never satisfies. Sin leads to more sin because it never satisfies. And we all know sin destroys. So I'm going to be way better off if I choose to listen to the Spirit than not. And so in this house of my heart, I don't want to be like the church in Corinth where a lot of those people, they were saved. The Holy Spirit was in them, but they had pushed the Holy Spirit to the back bedroom and shut the door, and they were doing whatever they wanted. That's not why we have been given freedom. We should stand firm in freedom. We should serve others humbly and obey and serve the Lord. So fellowship, forgiveness, it relates to our fellowship in this life. It's not relating to our relationship or standing with God. Unconfessed sin stands as a barrier to our fellowship with the Lord and His control over our lives. So then when we confess our sin, this means we're saying, God, I agree with you. This is not righteous behavior. And I want you to have control again. So God never breaks away from us, but we turn our back and we just kind of don't really want to hear Him. And so fellowship, forgiveness, the more we confess our sin, one to another, the more we share how we confess to the Lord. It's just saying, lord, it's not about me. I want it to be about you. Would you take control? I don't want to be thinking this way. Realign my heart on this. That's why we confess. It helps us fellowship with him better because he's always there. So normally at that point during the week, I ask if there's any questions. I know it's A little odd, but if this doesn't make sense, please get with me today and let's talk about it. Because, again, I'm just. I'm a learner. I'm just trying to keep learning God's word. I'm no expert, but I see the evidence of Scripture is overwhelming in this area, and I'm so happy about that. It's so freeing. Now, the Apostle Paul, he'll take cultural things. I'll talk about this tomorrow morning. About royal language and how with the Caesars and Rome controlling the world, he would use some royal language and everyone would identify with it. He does the same thing with games. Games were a big part of that culture. And so he uses that talking about athletes and in competition, and instead he's actually talking about the believer competing in a spiritual contest, unlike just the athletes that would compete for physical, imperishable rewards. Do you not know First Corinthians 9, 24, 25? Do you not know that in a race, all runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. And I like, Hoedown brings this up with our summer staff. It didn't say run and get the prize. It says run in such a way as to get it. You're running to win. You don't have to win. You're to run the best race you can as the person that God made you to be. And it says, everyone who competes in the Games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Again, no talk of shaming, no talk of putting down the losers. It's just talking about running to win. And I like, you just go online, you start pulling up past pictures of Olympians, and they're like, yeah, there's joy. There's no fear. It's not like the judges all of a sudden bring out the losers and then shame them in public. No, the Bema seat of Christ, the judgment seat of Christ, is about our commendation, not our condemnation. So for you, all my encouragement, for some of you that won't be here tomorrow morning, that God gives us a lane to run. We each have our own lives. We're uniquely made. Your personality, your temperament, your skills, your passions. He's made you unique and he doesn't want you. Comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy. It's the thief of joy, so it doesn't do you any good. It's not going to get you where you want to go. So don't Compare to anyone else, just simply say. I say to the Lord, Lord, I want to be. I want to be a better ambush tomorrow than I am today. Every day. Lord, help me to be better than I was yesterday. I'm going to run in my lane as hard as I can to be the best ambush Daniel Wallace I can be. And again, there's no shaming in this. God entrusts us with this life. He's sovereign, yet we have an uncoursed will. He entrusts us with two things. First, one is his priorities. He wants us to embrace his priorities. We learn scripture. We understand the heart of God. I love reading about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I just keep reading about what he did and how he acted. And I'm just starting. I mean, it's funny how you can read something over and over, and then you just. And then all of a sudden, months later, years later, you go, oh, my goodness, he was so gracious. But it's in a whole awakening of the level of it. It's amazing. Do we take on his priorities? He's not going to force us to. But if we love him, we'll want to obey him. That's his love language, his obedience. But that's the first thing he entrusts us. Will you take my priorities and make them yours? And the second thing he does, he says, I'm going to let you steward your life, and you can make the decisions. I hope you steward it by living your life with my priorities and loving others the way I would want them loved. And I would love them. So the question I have is, how are you investing your time, talent, and treasure again? Not because you're scared of a courtroom situation when you stand before the Lord someday, but because you love Him. And Christ's love compels us. And we experience how his grace is stunning. And we want to be the best person that we can be, that God made us to be, because he has a plan for us, to help us flourish. Creation does best when the focus of the created is the Creator. It's just true. So I want my focus to be on my Creator, and I want to live the way he designed me to be. And I'm just going to give you a few verses. We'll cover more tomorrow morning. But for the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Matthew 16:27. I'm not making this stuff up. This is in the Bible. He's Going to reward each person. Again, the phrasing is very repetitive. We'll go over to Corinthians 1st Corinthians 4, 5. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness. And he'll expose our motives, because that's the key here. It's our motives. It's not just what we do, it's our motive for doing it. And he's going to expose those motives and he's going to see that. And then he says right there at that time, each you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Each of us will receive our praise from God. There's nothing about fear, there's nothing about shame. There's nothing about sin being brought back up. So that's why back in those early verses I started with, when it talks about good or bad, sin has been paid for, it's removed. And therefore the judgment seat of Christ, the bama seat of Christ is about our commendation, not our condemnation. It's not about shaming, it's not punitive. Our sin is paid for. It's been satisfied by Christ's work on the cross. So freeing. And then to wrap up this picture, I came across the guy and I heard that he liked to collect pictures of walk off home runs, you know, and so you're not hurry, you're not in a hurry to run the bases because the ball's over the fence. The crowd goes crazy. That baseball player is just running. He's enjoying himself hitting first base, he's running. Crowd's going crazy. He's all happy players, teammates coming out, waiting at home plate. And the reason this person loves to do this, in his mind, it shows. It's the view that he pictures of entering heaven. He says he makes the comment, look at the faces of the teammates waiting to welcome him home. Look at the excitement of fans with arms raised, huge smiles and maybe even hugs for a perfect stranger next to them. They all can't wait and are celebrating his arrival to home plate. I think this is just a tiny glimpse into the exhilaration of what it's going to be like when we're in heaven. We're going to be so jazzed. We're going to be worshiping Christ. He is so worthy. We're just our hearts. There's not going to be any insecurity. There's no sadness, there's no death, no night, no sickness. There's like some Christians that you don't like, you're not gonna have that feeling. And Some of you that are introverts, it's not gonna be there. So when you say billions of Christians of all time are in heaven, you're like, yeah, you know, no, we're just gonna be like, ugh. I mean, think about the response in this moment, in this picture. How are people feeling introverted or not? They're just like. And they may not even like the dude next to him because he was a big dude and he's taking up more of the seat next to him and his seat. But boy, the home run, they're high fiving, they're just all that's gone. I think it's gonna be amazing. And we're gonna be celebrating each other's praise that God is gonna give each one of us. Day is like a thousand years. A thousand years like a day. So time's not an issue. We're not gonna be bored and we're gonna be celebrating if this is what we can do on earth for hitting a ball over a fence, how much more when we're with Christ and in his presence with the love that he has with glorified bodies where we're not dealing with all the yuck of our flesh nature. So tomorrow I'm going to dive deeper into scriptures. I'm going to present even more compelling scripture to help us see accurately what it's like. The Bamis seat of Christ, when Jesus praises us for what we did with his help on this earth and our sin will not be brought back. And I'll leave it this bank on these three things. Christ is king, Christ will return and Christ will reward. Father, thank you so much for this time to be together. I thank you for this summer, what you've done over these Sundays. Lord, thank you for these men and women, these friends that have come, these new families. Lord, we're all on this journey to run in our lane the race you've set before us, Lord. It's encouraging though, to know I'm running alongside of others that are running hard for you, Lord. We just thank you, Jesus, for all that you did. Your death, your resurrection. You sit at the right hand of the Father, you, Holy Spirit, you're in us and dwelling in us. We ask that you have greater freedom in our hearts, in our homes of our hearts. Sit in the recliner, be in all the rooms. We want to follow your leading so that we may experience continued experience of freedom. Enjoy. And that we can slosh your truth and love on the people around us so that more could be with us together at the Bama. We love you, Lord. Thank you again for this time. Bless these families. In your name we pray. Amen.