III. The Actuality of Judgment
Understanding the actuality of judgment and its characteristics should cause some different responses. If you have called upon the name of the Lord and been born again by the Spirit of God, seeing this judgment from God’s perspective should first cause you to give thanks. What an awesome God who loved us so much that He sent His own Son to pay the penalty of your sin and mine. Why should our hearts rejoice in this? What should cause a great overflow of thanksgiving? The vast contrast between what we deserve and what God has done for us must. Look at these contrasts:
God removed us from the penalty of unquenchable fire that we deserve and placed us into His own home.
God forgave the iniquity of our heart and sent the Holy Spirit to live within us.
Through faith in the promise of God to save us by Jesus Christ we became objects of mercy instead of objects of wrath.
We were delivered from the domain of darkness and carried into the kingdom of His beloved Son.
We were spiritually bankrupt and now have access to the riches of His glorious inheritance.
The truthfulness of this judgment and our escape from it through Jesus Christ ought to cause us to pour out our hearts in love and adoration for the God who saved us. For those who are forgiven much love much.
But not only should the realization of this coming judgment cause us, who have been rescued from it, to give thanks, it should cause us who understand its significance and truthfulness to have great concern for those who are still under such a judgment. If the reality of the harshness and enduring nature of such punishment does not move you to consider the plight of your fellow human beings, then shouldn’t the love of God and the sacrifice He made on your behalf cause you to seek to win them to Jesus Christ? Shouldn’t it move your heart that the apostle Paul, who perhaps understood the contrast between the glory of heaven and the torment of hell more than anyone, said, “I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.”
My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would move your heart to see the reality of judgment and produce in you a motivation to be used by God to pluck out of the fire those who are falling headlong into the pit.
For you here who have not yet been born again, the concept of the impending judgment that the Scripture lays out for us I hope will produce in you two very different responses. I hope that it will cause you to see that a righteous God is just in bringing about your judgment. But secondly, I hope you will see His love for you in sending His Son in your place and that this will produce in you a desire to be reconciled with Him. God is not giving this message of judgment so that you will flee from God, but so that you will flee to Him. John’s message is a clear indication that God does not want you to perish. If He wanted you to perish, He would not have warned you. He was not giving the message so that you would experience torment but so that you might flee from it and find refuge in Himself.
A. It is imminent
The first characteristic of the actuality of judgment is that it is imminent. In verse 10, John declares, “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” This judgment is imminent. It looms above the sinner waiting to fall. The axe is laid at the root of the trees. John doesn’t mean it has been laid down in front of the tree, but the blade has been placed there. The woodsman is resting the axe to position it and make sure it strikes true, as well as to firm up his grip so that when he strikes the tree he is able to apply maximum force for maximum effect against the tree. The time for sharpening and filing the blade is over. Now the only thing that waits is the swing of the blade and the fall of the tree and its removal into the burn pile.
The Scripture makes it clear that our time here on earth hangs by a thread. In James 4:14, James says, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” How many have you known that have passed away as a vapor? You thought surely they will be here for many years. Surely they have plenty of time. But you don’t know what time you have.
There was a girl in college at Jacksonville that I knew. I began to share the gospel with her. She began to respond and seek the Lord. She started to read a Bible I gave her. I desired her to be saved but I had no thought that when she went home for Christmas break she would die in a car accident. Of course this was something that I couldn’t foresee, and perhaps she did call out to Christ to save her. But how many others have gone into judgment thinking they had all the time in the world and were wrong.
The apostle John makes a statement about the imminent nature judgment in his gospel. In John 3:36, he says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Whoever does not believe in the Son has the wrath of God currently (present tense) resting on him, abiding over him. The context of this passage refers to believing and being born again by the Spirit. Those who refuse the authority of Jesus’ message have the wrath of God upon them now.
If you have not received Jesus Christ as your Savior, the wrath of God hangs over you. There is a large stone hanging by a string suspended over your head. The string is ready to be cut. Only the mercy of God keeps that string from being severed and the weight of His judgment from falling upon you and crushing you into hell. You are here today because God is not willing that you should perish but that you should come to repentance. But recognize that God’s judgment is imminent. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow. But it will be, and it will be sooner than you think. And when it comes, you will find that it will be too late and you will wish that you had not resisted the Holy Spirit’s prodding and urging to receive Christ.
Judgment is imminent.
B. It is meticulous
The second characteristic of this judgment is that it is meticulous. In verse 12, as John the Baptist mentions this judgment of Jesus Christ he says, “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Not only is the judgment imminent, but it will be meticulous. The Lord Jesus will judge with painstaking accuracy. He will THOROUGHLY clear His threshing floor. Not one piece of material will be left behind. Not a grain of wheat, not a husk of chaff. All will be judged and in accordance with righteous judgment. No one will be able to hide. Revelation 6:15-17 says, “Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’”
There will be no hiding places. There will be nowhere to run. Fear and terror will fill the heart of everyone who has not been made right with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. When the great day of His wrath has come who will be able to stand? There will be no high-powered lawyers seeking for their clients a lessening of sentence. Let me rephrase that: there will be high-powered lawyers, but they will not be advocating for anyone, not even themselves. There will be no lessening of sentences. All evidence will be against the defendant because the judge knows everything, even the thoughts of your heart. How could you hope to escape in a situation like that? Your own thoughts will condemn you before the Lord in that day. You who always try to put the best spin on your situation: in that day, those attempts will be futile because God knows every intention of your heart.
John says that Jesus will thoroughly clear out the threshing floor. There will be no cracks in which to hide. There will be no defense given. He died for you to be your Savior and if you reject Him, He will become your judge. You will stand there on that day and the gaze from His eyes will see right through you. You will not have an answer; finally your tongue will be silent. There will be no hope for you because when He desired to be your advocate, you refused. First John 2:1-2 says, “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
On that day you will stand before the great white throne of judgment. But come back to today for a moment, for today you have an opportunity to call upon the name of the Lord and receive Jesus Christ as your advocate who shed His blood for your sin, so that you might be cleansed once for all.
He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor. You will not be overlooked.
C. It is twofold
This brings us to the final aspect of the actuality of judgment. It is twofold. The end of verse 12 says, “He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” The question you must ask yourself is, “Will I be gathered into the barn with the wheat, or will I be burned up in unquenchable fire with the chaff?” The judgment will consume you or pass over you. There are no other options. You are on one side or the other. There is no limbo. There is no neutral zone, no fence on which to sit.
God has given us a clear indication in the Scripture of how to be gathered with the wheat. He has not made it difficult to understand, but the Holy Spirit must open your eyes to it. Though a child can comprehend it through the Holy Spirit, the most highly intelligent person cannot without Him. If you are not sure how God would save you, you should ask Him now to reveal the truth of this good news of salvation to you. You and I have all been born chaff, sinners, ready for the fire. We have inherited from our father Adam the nature to sin. Because we are sinners we transgress God’s Law. He is righteous. He is holy. He cannot allow sin into His presence and must judge it. He will judge us by sending us away from His presence into hell. But don’t think that in hell you will have any opportunity for fellowship with your friends. You will be in torment in that place. A little child lost in a store is surrounded by all kinds of people, but he is not comforted in the least because he has lost all bearing and there is no one he recognizes. There will be no fellowship in hell, only a fearful sense of tormented lostness, even if surrounded by others, because the mercy of God will no longer be present. There will be nothing to comfort the sinner in hell.
The penalty of sin is eternal separation from God. And our sin justifies our being sent there. But the love of God was shown to us in that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sin and my sin. God’s remedy for our lost condition was that Jesus suffered that penalty for us. Then how do you receive the gift of this eternal life from God? How do you receive the forgiveness of your sin? The Bible says that you must repent over your sin of rejecting Christ, of trying to find your own way to heaven by your good works. Place your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ by calling upon Him to save you from your sins. This is the simple gospel.
God does not want you to perish. He has given you the message so you might escape it because He loves you. He has not given to you a message of judgment because He hates you and wants you to suffer. He has called you to repentance because He wants you to escape judgment.
If you smelled natural gas in your home and you loved your family, you would certainly tell them that they are in imminent danger of an explosion, that it will thoroughly consume them and if they don’t get out they will get burned up. If you hated them you would step out of the house quickly and quietly. But God loves you. Not only did He warn you about the coming wrath, but He provided the way of escape through His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Flee from the wrath to come. Flee to Jesus.
And if you as a believer understand this coming judgment and recognize its reality, then you will warn those around you of the impending danger. Don’t let Satan use all his tactics to distract you from the fact that people are daily perishing without Christ. If you were in that home that I mentioned where you smelled the gas, and at that time you remembered you had some bills you had to pay, would that distract you from the