For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Eccl. 12:14).
William Thackeray tells of a visit to the Naples museum, where he saw a piece of wall from Herculaneum, which had been covered by the great volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. On that wall he saw a picture scratched with a nail. It was the figure of a soldier, and was evidently the work of a child. You could almost imagine the child turning around and smiling after finishing the etching.
Nearly all of us who have come to the years of accountability have had our Pompeii, our Herculaneum. Deep under the ashes of life lies the past--careless deeds, careless words, sins, and sorrows. Every time we open a box of old letters and look at our own childish scrawls or our mother's letters to us while we were away at school, we excavate our hearts and walk through the streets and rooms of the buried city, the city of memory.
But someday God will "bring every work into judgment," and then He "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6). We have all "sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Will we not all, then, be terrified at the thought of judgment? There is only one way to be saved from such fear, and that is to know that the Judge Himself has already died for us, has paid our penalty, and will appear before the court as our advocate. "For the Father...hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). And "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). Those who have repented, and forsaken their sins, and put their case in the hands of Christ need have no fear of the judgment. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24).
MEDITATION PRAYER: "Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord" (Ps. 26:1).
William Thackeray tells of a visit to the Naples museum, where he saw a piece of wall from Herculaneum, which had been covered by the great volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. On that wall he saw a picture scratched with a nail. It was the figure of a soldier, and was evidently the work of a child. You could almost imagine the child turning around and smiling after finishing the etching.
Nearly all of us who have come to the years of accountability have had our Pompeii, our Herculaneum. Deep under the ashes of life lies the past--careless deeds, careless words, sins, and sorrows. Every time we open a box of old letters and look at our own childish scrawls or our mother's letters to us while we were away at school, we excavate our hearts and walk through the streets and rooms of the buried city, the city of memory.
But someday God will "bring every work into judgment," and then He "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6). We have all "sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Will we not all, then, be terrified at the thought of judgment? There is only one way to be saved from such fear, and that is to know that the Judge Himself has already died for us, has paid our penalty, and will appear before the court as our advocate. "For the Father...hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). And "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). Those who have repented, and forsaken their sins, and put their case in the hands of Christ need have no fear of the judgment. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24).
MEDITATION PRAYER: "Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord" (Ps. 26:1).
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