Here come da Judge....

⁴² He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.  Acts 10:42

John MacArthur, in a two-part set of sermons on the resurrection, takes a different
approach from many on the Resurrection. He discusses What the Resurrection proves
as opposed to What proves the resurrection. The later, paraphrasing here, is proven by
the Holy Scriptures.

One of the five major areas that he discusses regarding what the Resurrection proves is
that it proves that Christ is the Judge of all creation and that upon His return, all will be judged by a righteous and just judge.

Well, we don't necessarily feel real comfortable with this whole judgment thing; yet, the
fact remains that there will be judgment of all by Christ as granted by God the Father
based upon Christ's fulfillment of His incarnate walk and Resurrection.

So we have two final and eventual verdicts: eternal life with Christ in a place He has
prepared for us or eternal life away from Christ in a place inhabited by the fallen angels
and those lost and deemed unrighteous. 

Without a belief and trust in the atoning work of Jesus Christ, we cannot and will not
be welcomed into rest and grace. In a very real and frightening sense, this is a choice
that we have the ability to make. It seems a very easy and uncomplicated one, but there
are many who simply choose to be their own salvation makers, whose efforts center
around their own ability to do enough good to reach a level of acceptance. There are even
those who believe that they can, through their own efforts and deeds, reach a state of
'God-ness' themselves.

God and man are simply in opposition; God is holy and just, unable to tolerate sin, and
we are sinful creatures unable to stand before a Holy God, ever, without the gift
of justification provided through, and only through, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His
Resurrection, His Ascension and Intercession. 

So we are faced with a choice. It's monumental in its significance and so simple in 
its nature. We have to accept that we need a Savior and realize that a loving God showed
His amazing grace by offering His beloved's life for the chance for us to make that
eternal choice.

How, then, can we avoid praising God!

Cannot hack into what has been forgiven!

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”  Hebrews 8: 12

I spent the morning walk listening to an Alistair Begg sermon on atonement. That's a
great way to grow while exercising! In going through the many aspects of what Christ
Jesus accomplished in the atonement of sin, Mr. Begg spoke of a computer analogy that
really hit home for me.

I do not know about you, but every so often I recall some of the downright horrible and
ridiculous things I did as a younger person. I could use the true excuse that I was simply
twenty-one going on fourteen, but the fact remains that some of the things I remember
both horrify me and sadden me. While I would be embarrassed to really go into detail
about many of these, I do find myself, at these times, reminding God that I am really
sorry to have acted in these ways; in a sense, I re-ask for His forgiveness. 

It has become common knowledge that once something is typed and saved on a computer,
all of the deleting one does really never truly expunges these files completely from that
computer. Somebody, somewhere has the geeek skills to retrieve things that we may
mistakenly think have been erased. It calls, certainly, for some forethought before doing
certain tasks and, certainly, some real contemplation before hitting 'send' or 'save!'

Well, I'm not going to go very far in comparing our Holy God to a computer, but, certainly,
being an all-knowing God, He would have and does have the ability to know what we are
thinking, saying, even typing. He also knows our every sin which, without the righteousness
of Christ, would still count against us. Yet, and here's the amazing part, with the
atoning sacrifice of Jesus, God could very well say, when we go to Him and apologize
for past sin, "I do not have any record of that sin. I have forgiven and forgotten that and
all other sins because they have been washed clean by the very blood of my beloved
son, Jesus."

That's atonement. The price, cost and debt has already been paid by He who become
sin despite being totally without sin so that we could be forgiven, completely, for
the sins we have, are and will commit. No hacker could retrieve these nasty files,
even Al Gore would have no chance and he, after all, invented the internet. The
point is that though we remember things that we have done we'd like to take back
and erase, God, in His infinite grace, through the precious spotless lamb, does not
remember them, forever!

Praise God!