God Judges The Heart

So we're so grateful.

We're so thankful.

It's not until we understand that although God sent his son to die on a tree for us, you in your own power, in your own understanding, in your own wisdom, you can never be enough.

There's no church you can go to, there's no prayer you can say, there's no specific Bible or words you can read that earns you salvation.

It is only when you realize and you confess that, Lord, I am not enough.

I need you.

I've done all I could do, I've tried the best that I could, but I have come to the end of myself, and it's when we come to the end of ourselves we realize that that's what he was waiting on the whole time.

For the joy of the Lord to be our strength, it cannot be the happiness of ourselves.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

God must replace everything you once loved, everything you once clung to, everything you once understood, and we trade our wisdom, our knowledge, our strength, our yoke, our burden for his.

Because the battle belongs to him, because with your own weapons, as mighty as you may stand, without the Lord, your giants will conquer you.

If you all stand for the reading of God's word just for a second, we're in Romans chapter 2 today.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

We're back on our series.

If y'all came to church to play, sorry, you're at the wrong place.

We take serving the Lord seriously, we take honoring God seriously, we take the word seriously.

Why do we do so?

Look here in verse 6 where Paul's writing in chapter 2, and it says this.

I don't know if this scares you, but it makes me examine myself.

Makes me examine my thoughts.

We're coming up on a new year in a couple of days, it'll be here before you know it.

And everybody's gonna have a new year's resolution that lasts a week.

We're gonna get that gym membership so we can pay six months to show up thrice.

That was a church, that was a Bible word.

If you got another man three times, gotta make it super spiritual, you know.

But it says, He will judge everyone.

Just because you come to a certain church or say a certain prayer doesn't exclude you from judgment.

Two weeks ago, we talked about he is the savior of the world, but he is also the judge.

This is his character, this is his nature, this is who he is, so he will be fully without blemish justified in his ruling.

But that doesn't just leave it in his court, that means we got to do something.

Are you with me today?

He will judge everyone according to what they have done.

Let's pray, Father.

We thank you so much for your mercy and your grace.

I pray for everybody under the sound of my voice.

If there's somebody here today that does not know you, or maybe there is somebody who is claiming you but have yet to relinquish the power of their life, the lordship of their life, their mindset, their framing, and how they see things.

They're still holding on.

Lord, I pray you shine your light in the darkest areas of our hearts.

Lord, don't examine anybody else in this room before you examine me.

Create in me a clean heart, oh God.

You're so much more worthy than anything I could ever give you.

In your name we pray, amen.

You're gonna get me crying before I even get started.

Hallelujah.

If you don't know today, I don't know if he mentioned it.

I had my ears and I couldn't really hear what he was saying.

But if you are a member of the church, now if you're not a member, you can still sit here and listen, but you don't have any voting power.

Okay.

There's benefits with putting roots down.

Amen.

Somebody being a part of something besides just sitting and watching.

So sorry if that hurt.

Um so we're gonna have a short business meeting following the church.

It's it's gonna be very simple, it's gonna be very short, short and sweet.

It's not gonna be long and drug out.

So uh make sure if you want to know what's going on, uh stay for that.

If you want to vote, stay for that.

And uh, and we'll see if your vote counts.

So I'm just gonna come on, y'all.

Let's get let's get some uh what do you call it?

The uh what's the people that ruined the the world?

What is it?

Political humor.

There it is, politics.

Sorry, there was another one, it was wrapped up.

So this week number five in our book of Roman series last or two weeks ago, we dove into the last section of chapter one.

Now, this week is going to be starting in chapter two.

We're gonna be going through verse one through 16.

So hold on, because if you think you got your stuff together, Paul's gonna expose you.

Turn to your neighbor and say, You getting found out.

Come on, put some ghetto in it.

You getting found out.

Come on, all y'all white people don't know how to do it right, but that's all right.

Today we're gonna be talking about God judges the heart.

God judges the heart.

How many of you know that you can be in a season of your life where you want to do good, but you end up doing it wrong?

You want to do something right, you want to do something even fueled with ambition, you want to help somebody, but you can jack it up and mess it up and thank you.

What in the world did I do?

How many of you know you can do a right thing in a wrong way?

But God judges, thank God He judges my heart because always what comes out of my mouth is not saturated in wisdom, it's not saturated in love, it ain't saturated in self-control.

Because how many of you know if it was self-control, you probably wouldn't have any words coming out?

Come on, somebody, let's get spiritual in the house.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all.

Keep your mouth shut.

Nobody wants to be impressed by you, anyways.

Keep it to yourself.

So let's look at the key text again.

He verse 6 in chapter 2, he will judge everyone according to what they have done.

This verse acts as a spiritual reset in a world obsessed with outward appearance.

How many of you?

Hopefully, you guys didn't do it, but if you did, we're gonna we're gonna pray for you after.

But how many of you left the house today without any makeup?

I did.

Huh?

Some of y'all all L nature wow.

Come on, somebody.

If some of y'all are single, if some of y'all are single, and you want to find you a good Pentecostal girl, if you go visit a UPC church, they don't believe in makeup.

So you see actually what they look like no matter what.

And then have you know after you you get her over here, she can she can look better, amen.

If you start off bad and then you find out later, I've seen some of them girls on TikTok and Instagram, and I'm like, you lying devil.

Very, I saw you before you started and after you started.

You should be in jail.

You lied.

Turn from your wicked ways, repent and sin no more.

Woo! Hallelujah.

My wife will walk and she'll be at the house, she'll work and she'll be up here doing something.

She comes back home and and I come back home from work and she's like, sorry, I didn't put any makeup on.

I was like, girl, I didn't marry you for makeup.

She's beautiful no matter what.

Doesn't matter if she's caked up, or if she went light that day, or if she went raw.

She's beautiful.

Now, I'm not trying to preach on makeup, but what I'm saying is this we have a culture that has built a system on the way outward expression and looks is who you are.

We have built that there has been culture built to where you need to pretend to be better than you are, you need to look a certain way, wear certain types of clothes, drive a certain car, live in a certain neighborhood or house, or have your kids or grandkids go to a certain school.

Now, some of us have this as a it's a conviction of ours, and this is what we believe.

I'm not talking about that.

What I'm talking about is that out there, they're all about the way things look and pretending to be something they are not.

That's what I want to touch on today because even though we may pretend in the church, God sees your heart.

You may raise your hands and worship, you may shout hallelujah, you may shout amen, you may do all the right churchy things, but who are you when you're by yourself alone and it's just you and God?

Because even though you may think you're alone, God is still there.

Who are you when nobody else is around?

God cares about our heart.

Let me give you a quick example before I even get in my notes.

This is going to be sermon number one.

I I use this as a reference all the time because it shocks me.

Because if I was God, I would have like right on David in the Bible.

Now, why?

Not only he had to condone it or he wouldn't have done it.

He cheated with a woman, adultery, slept with her, fornication, outside of their marriage.

She was inside of someone else's covenant.

So he stole that from someone else, then tried to cover it up, then he couldn't cover it up because the man Uriah was so faithful, he slept waiting.

He said, I'm I'm not gonna leave your side, I'm not gonna leave you.

I am your servant.

Well, then he couldn't go home with the wine and stuff and get his wife pregnant, and they think they got a child coming.

So what did he do?

He sent him into the front lines where it was almost without doubt he would die.

So not only was he a fornicator, was he an adulterer, he was a liar, he was thieving marriedly, and he was a murderer.

Yet, he is the one I quoted a minute ago.

How many of you know?

I like a big old yet.

Yet God saw his heart.

Now he still had to live in the echoes of what he did, he still had to go through the process of purification to buff out that stuff.

He was a great warrior, and even though he was serving God and doing God's bidding, and and and bloodshed was a part of that day.

Wars were constant because people always wanted to expand their kingdom.

How many of you know sometimes we get all caught up in churches down the street?

We have spiritual bloodshed all down the streets because we're in battle with each other.

But yet God called him a man after his own heart.

So, what does that tell us?

That if you're here today and you think you're too dirty, you think you've done too much, you think you've gone too far gone, you think you've messed up too much, I've done everything wrong in my life, I come with an assurance that God judges us by our heart.

And thank God that He does.

Because sometimes my heart and my brain don't match up.

So Paul reminds us that the church and that the judgment of God pierces past the surface and it goes into our very souls.

God doesn't grade on a curve.

I'm sorry, I'm the bearer of bad news.

I wish he did.

I wish there were levels of sin that's like, ah, God's like, no, that's not that bad.

If you have to use that phrase and it's not that bad, guess what, buddy?

You got yourself tricked.

Because all sin in God's eyes is a separation from him.

God doesn't grade on a curve, he judges with perfect knowledge, he judges with perfect justice, but he also judges with perfect mercy.

He judges with perfect grace.

If you ever hear me pray out loud, and if you've been here for a while, you hear me every Sunday.

The first thing I ever say out of my own prayer time, I say it back there with the worship team.

I say it before we start service, I say it before we go on with the message.

Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and your grace.

Why do I pray that way?

I tailored my prayer, my muscle memory of what I say.

This is my prayer from my heart because I want God to fully understand that I appreciate his mercy and grace that I have not earned and can I never earn.

I know that what he has established and built in my life has been nothing because of what I have done.

And so when I begin to pray, I thank him for his mercy and I praise him for his grace.

These are things that abundantly flow from him that I cannot formulate myself.

He judges perfect in knowledge, in justice, and in his mercy and his grace.

So let's do a full passage breakdown from verse one to verse 16.

If you have it in your Bibles, make sure you mark it so that you can study ahead.

If you're like me, more than half the page is study notes.

I love it.

I eat it up.

So 1 through 16, Paul now shifts.

Now think about this.

Last chapter, verse or chapter 1, was about rebellion, a rebellious world.

Okay, so now that was Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Now he's gonna shift his focus to the religious crowd.

I don't know if you know this, but that's you.

You ready?

I told you if you came to play today, it ain't the time.

Pick another Sunday.

Paul exposes the hidden arrogance of church people.

How many of you know somebody can humble brag and say, oh, God has blessed me with yada yada yada, and they just build themselves up until their heads in the clouds.

This is a hidden and subtle arrogance masks itself as humility.

This is a cautionary tale for every believer.

Do not, this is why I say, Thank you, Lord, for the grace, thank you, Lord, for the mercy.

Do not forget that where you are is not because of your hand.

Because the same hand that puts you there is the same hand that can take you out of there.

He exposes the hidden arrogance of religious people who judge others while quietly excusing our own sin.

Church, where are you at?

We see in other scriptures we judge people trying to get the splinter out of their eye while we're knocking things over with a plank in ours.

We like to point out other people's business, other people's problems, but how short-sighted we can become when we live an extended amount of period in God's mercy and grace, like in the book of Corinthians, all these people that had spiritual gifts that could attest to God's power and his goodness and who he was through his people, and they still took them and perverted them for their own gain.

Hidden arrogance in the church.

This chapter is going to mirror and show us.

If you don't know this about the word of God, it is to be a reflection of who we really are.

It should be that we look into this every single day to see that if the way we look, the way we act, the way we respond, who we are as a person, not the things we do.

Do you understand me?

Who we are.

The things we do sometimes don't match who we are.

But through time and through almost no effort, eventually, people who do certain things and try to pretend who they are eventually will come out.

The Bible says that truth will eventually be revealed.

So let me encourage you today to stop any lies or form of deception because you probably think you're hiding from people that already truly see you.

Chapter two confronts hypocrisy, hypocrisy, it confronts self-deception, and it confronts shallow religion, and it calls us to honest repentance and humble obedience.

Repentance and obedience should follow each other.

So point number one, as the title of this message, you probably already guessed this, but God sees beneath the surface.

God sees beneath the surface.

Let's read one through three.

One through three.

You may think you can condemn such people.

Now, now, if you think about, if you read this in order, you realize, as we just discussed, that Paul was in talking about rebellious people.

He was talking about sinners, he was talking about sinful nature, what that meant.

He goes down a big list of things that kind of streamlined it.

So all these things on the outside kind of fit in with it.

So he even is calling out some behaviors that we may still hold on to today because it's hard to buff things out, amen.

Takes a little longer than from Sunday to Tuesday to get out that old behavior, amen.

But he's he's reminding them that listen, in the first part of this book in chapter one, you may look back, you may look at these people and just Pharisees did this all the time.

They would pray out loud, oh Lord, thank you that I'm not a sinner like him.

Thank you, God, for blessing me with wisdom and gifts beyond what anybody else can touch.

Oh God, thank you for my perfect and wonderful hairline.

Oh Lord, you know the numbers on my head.

Thank you, Lord, for there being so many.

Hallelujah.

Lord, I've seen my neighbor's wife.

Lord, thank you for the blessing I got home.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, Lord.

That my kids don't act like they're kids.

Woo! Hallelujah.

You see how we could pray?

We act like we're praying and meaning something, but instead it's just a bunch of fluff.

Now, we may not pray this out loud because some of y'all are hidden Pharisees.

Excuse me.

We may not pray this out loud, huh?

We may not pray this out loud, but we sure think it.

Is it any different?

Let me pray, let me go back and give you a very small principle Jesus gave some people.

They were trying to trap him.

He said, You think fornicating is bad.

But I say if you look at a woman with lust, what does that mean?

If you're thinking it, seeds already planted.

But just because we're secret Pharisees doesn't mean you're any better.

So then he starts with this you may think you can condemn such people.

He's referencing the people from chapter one.

But you are just as bad.

Now hold on.

You're telling me if I'm going to church and I'm doing all things right and everything, then I'm just as bad.

Now let's get to why he's saying this.

He's saying to the church, and you have no excuse.

When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself.

If anybody ever been told by your parents growing up, if you point one finger, you got three fingers pointing back at you.

So I started pointing like this.

You are condemning yourself.

For you who judge others do the very same things.

Let's go on to verse 2.

And we know that God in his justice, his perfect justice, will punish anyone who does such things.

Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God's judgment when you do the same thing?

We have a false sense of protection because we go to a church or we say a certain prayer, we read scripture.

When in reality is church people love to judge and eat their own faster than most people out there in the culture.

Matter of fact, people inside of the church, if you do anything wrong, oh, you gotta be disciplined, you gotta be corrected.

Hold on now, we don't we don't do that around here.

Which may be true, which may be true, but we should be more loving than the bar down the street.

We should be more receptive and receive those that do not know God more than the people down the street, more than the bar down the street.

This is Paul's mic drop moment when he opens up this.

He says, Don't get too comfortable.

I could just see him like, don't get too, don't, don't get too comfortable.

I'm about to lay it down.

Don't assume you're safe just because you go to church.

How many of you know sin can find its way in the church?

This is why I don't come and bring a word that tickles your ears.

This is why I don't come and bring a word with sugar on top.

I don't care if I offend you, it's the word of God.

I'm not trying to cause issues in your life, but I am trying to help you see yourself so that we can be mature believers and we can have biblical literacy to understand truly what the word says, not how we feel.

Don't assume you're safe just because you go to church.

Don't assume you're safe because you know scripture or you look holy on the outside.

Looking holy on the outside means nothing if the inside is chaos.

If the inside does not truly belong to the Lord, you're doing everything in vain.

Sin isn't always loud, and sin isn't always obvious.

Some sins hide behind polished appearances and polite speeches.

Religious arrogance is just as offensive to God as open rebellion.

Hypocrisy blinds us to the need for his grace, it blinds us to the need for his mercy, it condemns others to make us feel better.

What's the first thing children do and most adults?

When we're in trouble, well, they did this.

They're the reason I acted this way when in reality you are responsible for you.

It doesn't matter how they act, it matters how you act.

When you stand before the Lord, you're going to be judged by yourself.

Your pastor won't be with you, your mom and dad won't be with you.

Your best friend won't be with you.

It will be you and the Lord, and you will have to account for every thought, every word, every action, everything you didn't say, and everything you wanted to say.

We are responsible for ourselves, the way we think, the way we view things.

This is why it's important to know God's word so that listen, and this sounds like it's well, you can't tell me what to do.

But listen.

The word of God dictates what I can and can't do.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I love all of you in this room, but I don't care about your opinion.

If it contradicts, I I want your wisdom, I love your friendship, but if it contradicts this word, I'm gonna toss you out the window faster than anything you've ever seen.

You don't matter to me more than this word.

And I've told my board members this.

If I ever preach something and it's off or doesn't line up with this word, you come to me immediately and let's correct the problem and see if I did it on purpose?

If I should be out of here.

Well, y'all don't agree with that?

If anybody ever fills a pulpit and they do nothing but ear tickling and sugaring things down and they're not preaching the true word of God and they're scared about their tithe money and if people's gonna give here or if they'll show up or not, I don't care if this church ever gets any bigger, fills up anymore.

We will know the word of God, we will follow the word of God because God is going to look us all, every individual in this room, all of us in the eyes one day, and say, Did you serve me?

Was I the Lord of your life?

Did you know who I was?

And more importantly, do I know who you are?

Here's the hard truth.

You don't have to be a prodigal to be lost.

You can be a Pharisee all day long.

You can be full of religious experiences and all the things that that go along with religious behavior and the religious spirit.

I believe sometimes it could be a religious spirit that latches on to people and they think they gotta get all super spiritual to matter, and that's not that's not biblical.

We're in our men's Bible study, we are we're talking about experiencing God, and over and over again it says that we don't make the plans and try to try to make God come along with us.

We look and and and try to see what God is doing and come alongside of Him.

Do you see the difference there?

It shifts from ownership, it shifts from Lordship, that God is the Lord of our lives, not us.

You don't have to be a prodigal to be lost, just a Pharisee.

So point number two, God's kindness is a window, not a shield.

It is a window, not a shield.

Let's dive into that.

Verse 4, it says, Don't you see how wonderfully kind, how wonderfully tolerant and patient God is with you?

How many of you are so grateful and thankful for his patience and kindness and goodness and mercy and all the things that he gives freely?

Does this mean nothing to you?

Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

This verse is one of the most misunderstood in the modern church.

Grace isn't an excuse to keep on doing what you've already been doing, it is not an excuse or right of passage for your sinful nature to keep on surviving.

We are to take up our cross to be born again.

The old has died, the nude, the new has come.

It is not an excuse to keep on sinning, it is space for us to repent.

Some think if God hasn't punished me, maybe it's not that bad.

There's that phrase again, not that bad.

That is the deepest form of deception.

God is not soft on sin, you understand me?

But he is patient with the sinner.

Thank God, as soon as I sin, he doesn't snap and deal out judgment.

He doesn't just go boom, you messed up.

Sorry, it's over.

What he does is he gives second chances, third chances, 88 chances, 972 chances.

His chances don't stop.

Thank God they didn't.

There's no telling how many times I would abuse that system and say, Oh, I'm gonna get it right, I'm gonna start doing right again, I'm gonna start acting right, I'm gonna give up everything, Lord.

I'm all yours, and then I would go right back to the things that I do.

I go right back around the same people again, and I will fall, I would struggle, and I will fall short again.

But God sees your heart.

So keep pushing on, keep running the race, keep chasing after him because he is patient with us.

Thank God.

Imagine being on a sinking ship, the delay in the water rushing in is not safety.

Let me let me break this down for you.

Some of y'all look like a mule looking at a new gate.

So if you're on a sinking ship, it doesn't immediately go down and everyone dies.

There is a slow sinking that happens.

There are chances for you to find the life raft.

You understand what I'm saying?

There are chances.

All of us, if you think of all of us on a ship, and the ship is going down, our sinful nature is drowning us.

And God is giving us chance after chance after chance before we are swallowed up by our sinful nature.

So God gives us mercy by not immediately dealing out the punishment or what the wages of sin is.

So we have the opportunity to not spiritually die because we are having mercy and grace that God is pouring out, and it becomes our lifeboat.

God's mercy isn't permission to keep on sinning, it is an invitation to salvation, it is an invitation for daily sanctification.

Point number three: your life is the evidence.

How many of you know in the church house?

We got some grade A fruit examiners.

Come on, don't pretend like it ain't you.

Huh?

We look at somebody and we immediately zero sum game.

Oh no, they can't do that.

I know where they were Friday.

Huh?

Are we real in the church today?

Oh no, no, no.

They they they they can't do that.

They can't do that.

I know they still do this.

When we start to have this position of religious mindset, we will write off people that haven't fully got to the end of the story yet.

We will get in the way of God's mercy and grace because, well, that's just enough.

This is like the 50th time that I've had to forgive them for their mouth.

Here's the way I think.

My wife will sometimes make fun of me for this.

I am patient enough to wait for the 51.

Because I believe and I hope that soon, how else will they know the patience, the love, and the mercy and grace of Jesus, if not from the people that say we serve him?

Let's go on.

Now, here this is a word that some of y'all know very well.

Probably got it in the dictionary next to your face.

But let's go.

Verses five and six.

It says, but because you are stubborn, some of y'all didn't want to say the word.

Stubborn.

Nobody look around, keep looking forward.

Don't look at the person you're thinking of.

Don't whisper to your neighbor their name.

But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself.

For a day of anger is coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed, for he will judge everyone according to what they have done.

Paul dismantles this idea that outward religious identity can save you.

Raising your hand, we we already talked about this, raising your hand in worship.

You may do the TV, carry the TV, may do the washing the window.

Whatever your style, whatever your flavor, you may jump around and do a holy stomp a little bit.

It doesn't matter.

You can do it all right, it can look good.

But if you aren't serving the Lord, it is nothing but waste of time.

Paul dismantles this idea that outward religious identity can save you.

This is an echo of the teaching of Jesus that God will not ask what church you attended, He will ask what you did with Jesus.

He will examine, He will examine your fruit.

If you do it in love, it is good to help somebody in their garden.

But don't be trying to take the place of the Lord.

Every motive, every action will be recorded.

Our works do not earn salvation, but they reveal whether salvation has taken root.

You can say you're a Christian all day long, but when your life testifies against you, the courtroom of heaven will have the final say.

So they had the power to do it.

They have the authority, the name that carried that authority to do it.

Yet their hearts were not close to the Lord, they were far from God.

So you can say all day long that you are a Christian, but when your life testifies against you, the courtroom of heaven will have the final say.

True faith, point number four, perseveres in goodness.

Look at verse 7 to 10.

He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers.

Verse 8, but he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves.

Wake up, church.

You being in this building doesn't save you from God's wrath.

Are you living for yourself who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness?

There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil.

If you do not turn from your wicked ways and you keep doing the same thing that you did when you were claiming to be apart from God and now you're claiming to be a part of God, now you have to change something.

Do what He desires for the Jew first and also the Gentile.

Verse 10 But there will be glory and honor and peace from God for all who do good, for the Jew first and also the Gentile.

For God does not show favoritism.

So it doesn't matter how long you've been coming to a church.

He will not show you favoritism for the denomination you belong to.

He will not show favoritism to who your mom and dad was, who your kids were, who your pastor was.

It does not matter when we stand before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, there will be judgment.

I know y'all came for so much encouragement this morning.

Amen.

But I would be doing you a disservice if I skip this part.

Because it is the word of God.

If we skip the judgment, there's no reason for us to shape up, there's no reason for us to examine ourselves, there's no reason for us to actually want to serve the Lord because there is hope, there is peace, there is joy, but there is also judgment.

And so when you belong to the Lord, this judgment, like blood on the doorposts of the Israelites, when they sacrifice and the angel, the Lord told them to put blood over the doorpost, and death will pass, and you will not lose your children.

But all of Egypt lost her firstborn because it wasn't covered by the blood.

The blood of the sacrificial lamb of Jesus Christ saves us from death.

This section speaks not of sinless perfection, but it talks about holy direction.

The saved life is a transformed life.

Let me tell you something.

I hate to say this, but when God comes back to get his people, there's going to be churches that are going to be full of the same people that were there the day before.

You understand what I'm saying to you?

People that claim God because they go to a church house, but they do not know him.

People that claim to be a part of the body, but they are not grafted into the true vine.

People that claim to live a new life but have never been born again.

People who claim salvation but never pick up their cross and follow after Jesus.

There is a separation from the sinner, the pretenders, and then people that are saved.

We must decide if we're going to preach the gospel to the world, we must be bearers of truth.

And the truth is, it doesn't matter what church I go to, that I will be judged the same as anybody out there.

And the life I lived, the thoughts I had, that is where I will be judged.

Paul's trying to tell him here listen, you got to redirect.

If you keep going down sinful paths, if you won't turn away from sinful nature, if you want to be closer to God, the only option to be closer to God is to move further away from sinful nature.

You can't have both.

You have to choose.

Are you going to choose pride or are you going to choose humility?

Are you going to choose being faithful and sanctified, or are you going to choose to live your own way?

And we have these things that we like to show off.

It's called a little uh name tag.

We like to write Christian on there so everybody knows.

We are by label Christians, but not by definition.

There's a difference.

We can try to proclaim Jesus, we can try to portray Jesus, but if we do not know him intimately, if we do not know him, if we are not one with him, if he is not in us and we are not in him, like Jesus portrayed, how can we say with honest hearts that we are the church when the church does not look like us?

We must be those who portray Jesus.

Holy direction.

The saved life is a transformed life.

Perseverance and godliness is evidence of a heart that's been touched by grace.

True faith produces a longing for God's glory, not just the gifts.

True faithfulness produces the longing for God's glory, not just the gifts.

My personal opinion, and from what I read in scriptures, being filled with the Spirit, being used in gifts of the Spirit, are a byproduct of an internal transformation.

Just like good works cannot earn you salvation, but salvation produces out of you good works.

True faith produces a longing for God's glory, not just his gifts.

Paul warns this if your life is filled with selfishness and rejection of truth, don't assume you're okay just because you come to a place of worship.

You're not saved because you said a prayer once or attended a specific church.

You are saved because you have been born again.

As we close, point number five is God judges even the secrets.

Even the secrets.

Let's look at verse 12.

When the Gentiles sinned, they were destroyed, even though they never had God's written law.

And the Jews who do have God's law will be judged by that law when they fail to obey it.

For merely listening to the law doesn't make us right with God.

It is obeying the law that makes us right in his sight.

If you come to a church service every single Sunday and you hear the word preached and you never apply it, what is the point of you being here?

Even Gentiles who do not have God's written law show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it.

They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing the right thing.

And this is the message that I proclaim that the day is coming when God through Jesus Christ will judge everyone's secret life.

Before my life completely belonged to God, a verse like that would have shook me to my core.

Because I had a lot of secret things I didn't want nobody else to know about.

The word of God, the Holy Spirit, exposes the darkness.

The word of God shines light into that darkness, and it brings up the option for us, for those who do not know God, to say, Yes, Lord, shine your light in the darkest corners of my heart.

Search me, oh God.

Create in me a clean heart.

And Paul, in these verses, he went in even deeper.

God's judgment is fair, God's judgment is impartial, and it's comprehensive.

It makes sense.

Whether you're a Jew with the law or a gentile without it, all of us are accountable and not just accountable for public behavior, but a secret life.

The unseen motives, internal rebellions, and private sins.

This silence is every excuse that we may have.

Oh, I didn't know.

Paul just said the Gentiles didn't have God's law to read.

But God revealed it to them.

Or I tried to be a good person.

Or this is the best one when we like to point fingers.

Well, I didn't do it as bad as them.

I wasn't that bad.

You may have been so good to not break the church rules, but if we are with sin, we are breaking God's heart.

Doesn't matter if everybody knows about it, or if it's something hidden away.

Whether it is in public knowledge or eyes, or if it's something in secret, God's heart becomes broken when his children disobey his sin against him.

Just as us as parents, our hearts can become broken when our children do things against us that they know better not to do.