"When Life is Finally Fair"

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   David and Sharon McCain have every right to be angry.  Their 20-year-old daughter Lauren had an infectious smile and a contagious faith.  If you were to visit her My Space page on the Internet several years ago before Facebook became so popular, under the heading that asks you to identify the Love of My Life, you would read one word: Jesus.  She was every parent’s dream, but on April 16, 2007, she became every parent’s worst nightmare.  You see, Lauren was one of the 33 individuals killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre that took place that day.  As was Liviu Librescu, the 76-year-old math and engineering professor who survived the Nazi Holocaust and escaped Communist Romania.  But one thing he could not escape was the wrath and rage of the mass murderer.  He blockaded the door to his classroom and allowed his students to flee, but before he could escape he was killed.  So was Daniel O’Neil, a 22-year-old engineering student with a bright personality and an even brighter future.  He loved to compose songs on his guitar and post them on a web site known as residenthippy.com.  His best friend said, “He loved his family and was destined to be successful.  He didn’t deserve to have happen what happened.”  To which we would all, I’m sure, agree. 

   Those students did not deserve to die that day.  Their parents and loved ones and friends did not deserve to grieve as they did.  But tragedies like this remind us over and over again that this world does not always play fair.  Makes me think of how when my daughters were younger and Marilyn and I would lay down some rules or exercise some parental discipline over them and they would respond by saying – and oh, how many times I heard this! – “That’s not fair.”  To which I would reply, “Sorry, but life isn’t always fair.”  And indeed it isn’t.  We don’t always get our way.  Life doesn’t always go the way we expect it to or want it to.  Sometimes we get passed over by employers or let down by friends.  Sometimes we find ourselves or one of our loved ones dealing with serious health issues.  And sometimes death invades our lives at the most unexpected and inopportune times and in the most horrific ways imaginable. 

   Indeed, life isn’t fair.  And when its unfairness touches our lives, it’s very easy for us to ask questions, especially questions that relate to God.  Questions like, if a good God sits on the throne how can such suffering exist?  How can drug peddlers get rich?  How can sex offenders get off?  How can politicians get away with fleecing the very ones who elected them?  How can murderers be allowed to go free?  Questions like the ones David asked in our reading from Ps. 13 before when he said, “How long, O Lord?”  How long will all this unfairness, all this injustice be allowed to flourish?  And God’s answer comes back strong and uncompromising as he says 2 words: “Not long.”  For every day that we flip the page of our calendar we find ourselves one day closer to that day when evil will be dealt with finally, fairly, and forever.  Listen once again to the words of our text: “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”  We call that day “Judgment Day,” a term that is not very popular in our highly secularized culture where so many people much prefer the politically correct idea that all roads lead to heaven and God is so loving that he’s just going to kindly overlook all the bad things people have done in their lives, regardless of what kind of relationship they had with him. 

   And while many people may not like the idea of this final Day of Judgment, you know what we do like?  We do like justice.  We want fairness to prevail someday.  And that day is coming, my friends.  For although I don’t know all the words that we will one day speak in heaven, I do know one phrase that will never be heard there, and that is the phrase: “That’s not fair.”

   So this morning I want to spend some time talking about this final day of judgment that will take place at the end of time when Christ comes back to this earth and let’s see exactly what will happen on that day.  For the way I see it, based upon what I read in Scripture, Jesus will do 3 things on that day starting with this one:  He will publicly pardon his people.  Now I want you to think about what that will mean for you because if you can get a good grasp of this, it can literally change your life and give you the greatest of all hope.  But in order to understand it, we have to go back to the cross and examine exactly what took place there.  I like to explain it this way (use ledger illustration on Powerpoint)…

   So on the cross God’s justice was met.  Our sins were paid for in full.  The penalty was handed down and Jesus took it.  He bore in his body the punishment that you and I deserved for every infraction, every violation of God’s laws that we have ever been guilty of or ever would be guilty of.  Now think about what that meant.  Think of those times in your life when you’ve really blown it with God or with others – those times, guys, when you looked twice at a woman when you shouldn’t have looked once; those times when you skipped church for the flimsiest of excuses and let God know that he didn’t hold a very high place on your list of priorities; those times when you lied to save your own neck or cheated to get a good grade or did the very thing you told your child not to do.  The list of our sins is endless.  And yet when Jesus hung on the cross, he took every one of those sins upon his shoulders and shed his blood and gave his life for them, all so that the perfect justice of God would be satisfied and we could be rescued from the eternity apart from him that we all deserved.

   Recently I saw a short video on the Internet that illustrated this so well.  It begins by showing a hardened death row criminal covered with tattoos and shackled with chains being led to his execution.  He is placed in the electric chair and all the necessary wires that will send massive doses of electricity coursing through his body are attached at the appropriate points.  The gallery is full of men and women who will witness the ending of this life that so negatively impacted so many others.  Once all is ready to go, the warden gives a nod to the executioner who reaches for the switch.  But just as he is ready to pull it, a man comes running into the room and calls a halt to everything.  Then he brings in what appears to be a young teenage boy, maybe 13 or 14 years old, presumably his son.  Then he walks over to the criminal and unstraps him from the electric chair, and straps his son into it instead.  Then he gives a nod to the executioner, the switch is pulled, and the son dies the death that the criminal deserved.  And as soon as he does, the criminal’s chains drop from his hands, his prison garb becomes gleaming white, and he is free.

   It’s a powerful picture of what our Heavenly Father did for us, my friends, when he allowed his own Son to be executed in our place not in an electric chair but on an old rugged Roman cross, all so that our sins could be paid for, his righteousness could be ours, and we could be set free from the eternity in hell that we all deserved.  And on Judgment Day the reality of that rescue, the drama of that deliverance will be publicly acknowledged as our Savior and Judge proclaims to us: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”

   But there’s more that awaits us that day.  Not only will Christ publicly pardon his believing people, he will also publicly applaud the service of his saints.  We heard this before in our Gospel lesson from Matt. 25 and the great Judgment Day scene that Jesus depicts for us there where he separates all of humanity into 2 groups, the sheep and the goats, the believers and the unbelievers, the Christians and the non-Christians.  And after inviting the sheep to join him forever, he will say: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Now please understand that those good deeds that he will acknowledge on that day are not what gets us into heaven.  They are not what save us for as we noted before, we are saved only by what Jesus has done for us.  But those good works are the outgrowth, the fruit, and the proving ground of our faith.  But as we noted a few weeks ago in my sermon, what you do for others and what you do for God during your time on this earth does not go unnoticed by him.

   And that’s nice to know, isn’t it, because we all have a hunger for approval, don’t we?  We all have a desire to have the good things we do recognized.  And I don’t mean that in a prideful or sinful way.  It’s just the way God has made us.  For example, if we husbands clean the house for our wives, even though we’re doing it because we love them and we want to lighten their load, deep down in our hearts we hope that when they walk in the door at the end of the day they’ll notice what we did and let us know how much they appreciated it.  Or wives, when you out of love cook a special meal for your husband and you go to all that trouble and make that big mess in the kitchen and you finally serve that food to him that you have so lovingly prepared, don’t you hope that he at least acknowledges what you’ve done and expresses his appreciation in some way?  Of course you do! 

   We have a built-in hunger for approval.  And while it’s one thing to receive that approval from a spouse or a parent or an employer or a friend, imagine what it would be like to hear that approval coming from the One who made you, the One who saved you, and the One who knows you better than anyone, warts and all.  Well, the day is coming when that will happen for you, my friends.  If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus as your one and only Savior from sin, your one and only hope of salvation, then one day you will hear him say to you, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”  And he will publicly applaud the service that you rendered to him out of nothing but sheer gratitude and appreciation for all that he did for you.

   And then one more thing that God will do on Judgment Day is he will honor the wishes of the wicked.  You see, my friends, God is ever the gentleman.  So he will never force himself upon somebody who wants nothing to do with him.  That doesn’t mean he won’t continue to try to woo and win that person to himself as long as that person has breath in his body.  But some people dig in their heels.  Some people stubbornly resist and refuse the promptings and efforts of the Holy Spirit and they spend their entire lives telling God to leave them alone.  And on Judgment Day, this fair and just God will do precisely that.  He will honor their requests for all eternity.

   On my bulletin board in my office I keep a stark reminder of this in the form of a quote from Max Lucado in one of the first books he ever wrote entitled And the Angels Were Silent.  There he says: “Hell is the chosen place of the person who loves self more than God, who loves sin more than his Savior, who loves this world more than God’s world.  Judgment is that moment when God looks at the rebellious and says, ‘Your choice will be honored.’”  You’ve probably heard someone say at some time or another, “How could a loving God send someone to hell?”  Listen, my friends.  God doesn’t send anyone to hell.  He has done everything possible to keep people out of hell.  So if a person ends up there, it isn’t God’s fault.  It’s their own.  People send themselves to hell.

   In I John 2:1 the apostle John is speaking to Christians when he says: “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.”  What a comforting thought that is to know that we have an Advocate who pleads our case before the Father based not upon our own merits but rather upon his, upon the saving work that he did on our behalf.  But the unbeliever has no such advocate.  The unbeliever stands before the judgment seat alone and has no one to speak in his defense.  And my heart breaks, as I’m sure yours does too, for all those people in our world – and I’m sure we all know some of them – who show no interest in Christ, who want to live life as they please, and who desire no relationship with the One who made them and saved them.  For Judgment Day will be a day of rude awakening for them as they are brought face to face with the harsh reality of their eternal destiny, a destiny that will find them forever separated from the One who is the source of all love and goodness.

   So I beg of you, my friends, don’t face your judgment alone.  Place your trust, your life, and your very eternity into the nail-scarred hands of the One who loved you so much that he died for you and rose again so that you can be certain that when you die and leave this world behind, he will be waiting for you at death’s door to usher you into what David called in the 23^rd Psalm “the house of the Lord forever” where life will finally and forever be fair.  

Amen.