The Seven Levels of Judgment - Part 1 — Dan Biser

The Seven Levels of Judgment and the Holiness of God

All right, I'd like to begin with reading of our scripture that as we have been talking about the seven levels of judgment, we begin with the first level, which we'll read of here in a moment. But I wanna set the background passage for what each time I go through these seven levels, what we'll be looking at in the scripture of where all this came from.

For me, as I have been praying over our nation and over families and situations of individuals, begin to look at why God is doing what he's doing in the lives of people. And that's what led me with a whole series of verses and scriptures to say, now, this is the hand of God that is stretched out against the people.

The best thing we can do is in studying the Bible, reading the Bible, we learn who God is. We learn his attributes. He's infinite, we're finite, we cannot possibly under, but it is enough for us that when we see in scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, when we see in history, we see a consistency of God, of what he's doing to the nations, what he does against his own people, and what he does against individuals when they set themselves against him.

So I wanna look at that as we begin here tonight. We wanna set up for our first study of this at the level of judgment. And again, it is probably the most serious of all the levels because of its initial impact.

And as I said, let's take our Bibles and we'll open up to where this all was founded off of. We'll read this each night that we look at these seven levels. And I see Leviticus chapter 26, and we'll begin reading in verse 16.

Leviticus chapter 26, verse 16. And I want you to see, and I might stop in my readings and point these verses out to you, but there's a phrase that's used over and over in this passage of scripture, which we really don't see anywhere else in the Bible, that says, and if you will not listen to me, then I will increase your judgment, your punishment seven times more.

Now, that's the basis of all this. The seven levels of judgment comes from this passage of scripture that God says, you sin, I judge you, and you're left with a choice. You either repent and make things right, or you continue on in your course and the sin remains.

Therefore, I will increase the judgments on you. And that's the development of it. So Leviticus chapter 26, verse 16, and note the verses that uses that seven times more. I will also do this unto you.

I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning hate that shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemy shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and you shall be slain before your enemies.

They that hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. This is our first verse here. And if you will not get for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

And I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield her increase. Neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.

And if you walk contrary unto me, and you will not hearken unto me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle and make you few in number.

And your highways, they shall be desolate. And if you will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me, then will I also walk contrary unto you. And I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.

And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant. And when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

When I have broken the staff of your bread, 10 women shall take your bread and one of them, and they shall deliver you and your bread again by way. And you shall eat, but not be satisfied. And if you will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me, then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury.

And I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall you eat. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your eyes.

And my soul shall pour you.". And I will make your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation. And I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.

And I will scatter you among the heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste. Let's pray. Blessed Father, we thank you now. Upon reading of your word, we ask of you for direction.

Pray for an honoring, oh Lord, of your great presence. Lord, these are horrible verses that we read when men's hearts refuse to be repentant, refuse to turn from their sins. And you being holy, being just, being righteous, you must meet that action, we know.

Lord, we seek of you for your mercy tonight. We ask of you for a leading, Lord, to teach us your ways so that we might not be guilty of the same trespasses, of the same iniquity, the same doom to repeat, as your own children of Israel did in the Old Testament.

Father, I seek you for your Holy Spirit, asking of you to come to open the ears, the minds, the hearts of your children, that, Lord, this world will not understand these principles, but, Lord, your own children should.

Teach us, teach us your ways, Lord, and help us to be responsive to it, I plead with you, for these things in the name of your great Son, the name of my Savior, the name of our great Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Repentance, Divine Consistency, and the Seven Levels of Judgment

Now those, that is the background passage, Leviticus 26. You see how many times that it's repeated and that phrase is used? If you walk contrary unto me, that I will walk contrary unto you. It is this parallel throughout the scriptures of back and forth with this.

Draw nigh to me, I will draw nigh to you. Therefore, the opposite of that is true. If you don't draw nigh to me, then I'm not gonna draw nigh to you. John 15, Jesus' last words that he was speaking of that time before his betrayal, when he said, if you abide in me, then I will abide in you.

And the same of that is the opposite paradox of this. If you don't abide in me, then I'm not going to abide in you. It is foolish for a nation, for a people, for an individual to dare counter the word of God when it is spelled out in book after book, chapter after chapter.

And it is repeated, not only in the scriptures, but it is repeated in the experiences of the church. God is consistent. And that is one of the attributes that seems that has been forgotten by the church.

God changes not. Spurgeon in his morning and evening taught me that word so eloquently as he used it over and over. God is immutable. Of course, when I came across that word, I said immutable. I didn't know what it meant.

I had to go to Webster's Dictionary, look it up, and there it is. It is the scripture out of Malachi. God changes not. Therefore, if God is the same God in 2012 as he was in the book of Leviticus, he is the same.

If he is the same God in the book of Acts to the first church, and he's the same God for us here right now, then it is that you and I ought to pay attention to who this God is, what he has declared, what he's doing, what he's going to do.

The Seven Levels of Judgment

Now, seven levels of judgment are laid out, and I take that from the seven times more I will add to your afflictions and your plagues and your consumption and your terror and the other phrases that he uses there.

So let me give the seven levels to you because each night as we go through this, we're gonna be looking at this. And we'll go back to this portion of scripture. We'll review the other verses that are before us, and we'll continue to look at future things that we're gonna be looking at for these judgments.

First level of judgment. It is the very first transgression. It is the beginning that there is no need for judgment. There is no need for punishment. There is no need for correction unless something be wrong.

So tonight, as we look at this, the first level of judgment, we're going to be examining the root cause of all this where it began, sin. Sin is the beginning of all this problem of judgment. Now again, God in his mercy has set up a way that once sin is committed, there has to be an answer to that sin, and that's the second level of judgment, God's response.

So as sin is committed, and we'll go back to Genesis, we'll look at that for a moment, we'll see that God immediately responds to the sin. And it is the same as true today. When we see Calvary, we know that a man who never sinned died for sin, because he knew that men were born sinners.

It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment. What are they gonna be judged for? They're gonna be judged for the sins that they allowed or caused, and they're gonna be answering for those sins in the judgment.

Now, judgment on the earth today, that's the judgment of eternity. Judgment here for today that's unfolding by multiplying factors across our nation today in rapid succession, what we're seeing is, is due directly to decades worth of sin that has not been answered for.

But again, God in his mercy and grace says, I give you the word so that you might understand you have provoked me, and that you could turn back that provocation, repent, confess, make the wrongs right, rest restored, I will stop the judgment.

Can't tell you how many times in scripture that I've read that where God says, if only you would return unto me, then I would stop, but you would not return. So therefore I increase the judgment. It's a very graphic picture, especially in the book of Jeremiah that we see that, if only you would come back to me, but you would not.

So that second level is God's response to the sin that begins the initial stage of judgments. The third level of judgment, it is against the land. We see highways, byways, we see mountains, we see plains, we see the states, the regions, God begins to attack the land.

We see this in the book of Exodus when God began to inflict in the 10 plagues of Egypt, there was a distinction between Goshen, where the children of Israel were, and where the Egyptians were. We see it in the promised land.

We see it in the United States today, and we'll see it in a greater fashion as judgments continue to escalate of complete annihilation, places like Sodom and Gomorrah, and things like that that we've seen in history as well as in scripture.

So the third level is when God uses nature, God uses weather, God uses phenomena to take place, and it is the judgments that is to shake the people back to respond to the sin that started it all. If they don't look at the land, which is on inconveniences, it is on outward things of our life, not so much life-threatening, although we know tornadoes and disasters like that can be life-threatening, God says, then I'll continue to inflict your life, and I'll inflict every aspect of your life.

Judgment Against Governments and Nations

So the fourth level that God says is against the government. God takes away from us wise, discreet, honorable leaders, and he gives us fools. He sets up the court jesters that you say, why in the world would they ever decide to do that?

And those kind of things where God says, and not just that, but the judicial laws, and the legislation of the laws that are passed for the land when these laws become sin against God, as abortion is, as homosexuality is, then God ratchets up the judgment against the government, and he removes government.

Daniel chapter two, God removes kings, and God sets up kings. He can give us a wise, good leader that can lead us like Josiah did, and the children of Israel to the children of Judah. He can give us men like David, who did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, or he can give us kings like Ahab, who did more evil in the sight of the Lord than any that were before him, or like Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, and they never recovered from that.

So it is that God can afflict the leadership and the government through these things of judgments. Fifth level, now he comes against his own people. The fifth level is against, as we see in the Old Testament, the children of Israel.

What we see today is the church. God can attack the church by removing his presence from it, and it is as that we see that the children of Israel in the Old Testament paid a very steep, costly price, and it is the same today as that the church, if it doesn't wake up, is paying an ultimate price that's going to affect generations from here on out, because we forsook the Lord, we never repented, we never corrected the sins, but we continued in them, and God takes out our way of living, our comfort zone, to shake us to the place that we finally realize, hey, we gotta do something.

We can't go on like this. Our problem today, in my belief of what I see, is that I don't hear and I don't see people saying to correct the problem. Now, I hear people preaching repentance, but it is the identifying of those things is to say, you will not do this anymore because the people's response, so the people and the preachers are not in oneness about this, then there's no unity, and it breaks down, and so God is afflicting his people in such rebellion that we won't respond.

We can read it, but we don't respond. We can hear it, but we don't respond, and the spirit of God is quenched, grieved, resisted, limited, blasphemed. So these are the atrocities of judgment against his own people, and there's other things that we'll look at when we get to that.

Personal Judgment, Death, and Cataclysm

Sixth level, now it's getting close. Now it's becoming very more personal, and then in the sixth level of judgment that we see, it comes against, actually against the people. Now, weather affects people, but it's really, weather is a phenomenon on the outside, and people can run to shelters and run for cover and avoid it and things like that, but when God stretches out his hand to start to afflict individuals, he allows our choices to affect us.

Life and death is now becoming an issue. It's becoming a question. We see, as a way of example real quick, we see that when God sent darkness on Egypt, there was three days of darkness, and that gross darkness affected the people, mentally, emotionally.

They couldn't get light, they didn't have light, and not everybody is content in the dark, that's for sure, but it became an inward. We see by this in the scriptures, I'll send wild beasts that should devour your children.

I'll send calamities into your life, pestilence, disease, things that we've not heard of or experienced for a long time, and now they're all coming back, and it's beginning to make people sit up and take notes, but people are starting to die.

We have this most recent scare of meningitis that's taking place, and 12 people have died with this, and what's happening here is that that which was taken for granted, a shot by a pharmaceutical group, is now costing people lives.

Whooping cough has made a surprise comeback. Bubonic plague is out on the West Coast. We see these things, we hear about these things, and these are things that have not been on the news, they have not been on the scope of things for a long time.

We're on the sixth level, and individuals are dying. One of the greatest catastrophes in the last 18 months of the history of the United States on this sixth level is murder suicides, and that's into the hundreds.

Hundreds of people have died, murder, suicide, families, epidemic rate, and I began to set my prayer light against that, that every night I was praying that Lord, however, Satan may come in to devise people to harm others like that and to take their own lives.

I was praying against that demonic force with that, and I was grateful that it began to de-escalate. But then we come to the seventh level, and whereas we saw death and issues of life and death in the sixth level, there's no question about it in the seventh level.

Seventh level is a cataclysmic event, it is the worst. This first level is the worst because it initiates sin. The seventh level is because it finishes life. The wages of sin is death. And when hundreds of thousands of people are killed in the blink of an eye, that is something to sit up and take notice because people today are not ready to go out of this life into the next life.

They are not ready to meet God. So therefore, their eternity in hell is fixed, and it ought to bother the church more than anybody else from upon the face of this planet, especially when it's our sons and daughters, especially when it's our husbands and wives and our grandchildren and our loved ones.

But this event is coming, and it is on the horizon now. The pastor asked me most recently, he said, where are we at on those seven levels? I said, we are on level number six, getting ready for level number seven.

So the burden on my heart to share this, to get this out, I can't tell you the weight of pushing down on me, and I have got to get this out. So the reason that I'm giving this Leviticus 26 is the background passage for us.

Those are the seven levels. We'll look at them, each one, one by one, and we begin tonight with level number one, the initial beginning of sin. And we're gonna look at this in three sections. We're gonna look at this back in Genesis chapter three.

Original Sin and the Fall in Genesis 3

If you take your Bibles and turn there right now, and in Genesis chapter three, we have the first sin ever committed, original sin, it's called. And it is, is that it seems to be one of the biggest problems that we're facing today.

Men, women, and children do not recognize, nor do they look at their choices as sin. They look at it as choices. They look at it as, well, everyone else is doing it. Humanism, to me, not so much religion, but humanism has taught the church today to accept sin.

You cannot, in any profound way, look at Calvary, look at Christ's death, and be happy with sin. It cost him, who knew no sin, too much. It cost him his life. He took a beating that marred him physically, that scarred him.

The man of sorrows in Isaiah 53, the transgressions that he bore on our behalf because it was our sins. And then we see a world out there that knows about the cross, sees the cross. They deny the cross, they reject the cross, and they spurn, they spurn the Son of God who died for them.

Is there any greater assault before a holy just God than for men to take sin casually, to take sin lightly, is that we must begin with this, the reason that all these calamities are happening in our life today, the reason of the downward spiral of our society, the lessening of the church, holiness gone, power gone, souls lost and perishing, seemingly no way to see them reached or rescued, drugs and addictions of alcohol and all these other things, afflictions that are coming.

A generation being brought up that knows nothing about the God that we're serving or the God we're talking about, all begins with this initial thing, sin entered in somewhere. If there is nobody left to deal with that sin, if there is nobody to teach the good way, to show the good way, then that sin blossoms into its fruitfulness and it creates what it was designed to do.

Sin, the day that you eat is the day that sin enters in, and that day is the day of death. Death is happening all around about us because men take lightly the issue of sin. Now, let us go back to Genesis chapter three, and we're gonna read this account of what happened, what transpired, and then we're gonna begin to shape the issue today, where sin is found and how it's found and how we need to deal with it.

And then we'll come to the last part of this, sin enters in Genesis chapter three, it enters into the world, it's born into our flesh. Men are born in sin, but the choice of sin, that's the reason Christ being born as man knew no sin.

He had the capacity to sin, but he knew no sin because he chose not to sin. You and I being born again Christians are left with that commandment, be as I am whole. Yet what we see in the church today is anything but whole.

So we're gonna answer that question on our last round. So three different rounds we're gonna look at here, and the first one begins with the original sin in Genesis chapter three, begin reading in verse one.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea, half God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Oh, isn't Satan, oh, questioning God, causing us to question God.

Don't you ever be too hard on him because the choices in our life has been no better. We have listened, given ear to Satan, and we have allowed for him to creep into our minds and our hearts and corrupt the truth with a lie or a half truth.

The woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. God half said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die a death.

And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die, for God does know that in the day that you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be open and you shall be as God's, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit, she touched it, and she did eat it.

And she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

The Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou? He said, I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you was naked?

Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? Isn't it amazing all these questions in Genesis 3 that God asked, where are you? Who told you? God knows all the answers, but God still asks the questions.

I tell you that before we're done here tonight, God is asking questions. And he already knows the answer. He's just waiting to see whether we tell the truth or whether we're gonna lie like Satan. Who told you?

The man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou has done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou has done this, thou are cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon your belly shalt thou go and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman in between your seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply the sorrow of thy conception.

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. And thy desire shall be to thy husband. He shall rule over you. And unto Adam, he said, because thou has hearkened unto the voice of the wife and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, thou shalt not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall I bring forth to you and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

Till thou return unto the ground for out of it, thou was taken for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return. So we see the beginning where sin entered in. And it has been an onslaught ever since then.

There's nothing to read here about as a children's story and to make it almost comical. And we've done that at times. I feel that we've made pictures of this, not with the full regard of where it all began in this.

And men, women, and children who try to explain today why they are the way that they are have no understanding of original sin. They have no understanding about where it all came from or what it is. It is rebellion against God.

God said, don't look at the tree, don't eat the tree, don't touch the tree. And Eve said, I will. Men today are saying the exact same thing to the Holy God. I don't care what you say, I'm going to do it.

And so they do it. And then the judgment comes. And when the judgment comes, then they have the audacity to come to the church, to come to me, to come to individuals and say, what kind of God is this?

Is that he's winged? Understanding why the original sin is a problem for us today is ever so needful. It needs to be taught. And I have not done it. I did not grow up with the catechism being taught, but I have come to appreciate it more and more in these later years of my life here where I'm at now, because it does teach the very basic principles where sin came from, why sin's here, and what we need to do to address it.

And that's the condition of the church today. We need to say, hey, this sin is costing us too severely. Let's deal with it. How do we deal with it? Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe, all to him I freely gave.

If Jesus paid it all, then let's take what we owe and go to him. So it is, is that understanding original sin is where we begin here. Sin entered in and it became a part of the flesh. And it is throughout scripture.

We see this. We see the anointing that God put on John the Baptist that he leaped in Elizabeth's womb. We read where Jeremiah said, where God said, and I chose you before you was born, before you came forth out of your mother's womb, I ordained you to be a prophet.

God sets things into motion to deal with the sins of this world and the sins of our own life. And there is only one remedy, and his name is called Jesus. Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

Personal Ownership and Recognition of Sin

Now I want to begin to look at identifying sin. We've got to deal with our sin. Pronouns are everything. It's pronouns are everything in prayer. When you listen to people pray, it was a lesson for me that I learned in listening, trying to take the good and throw out the bad.

And the bad that I hear in people's prayers today is when they talk about God, but they never talk to God. And people do the same thing with sin. They talk about sin, but they don't deal with sin. And so the pronouns in the sin, it's very important for us that we understand judgment is happening because of personal sin.

I identify it in a very internal fashion, my sin. We're going to look at that here, that there are four phrases that we have to identify in scripture that deals with judgment happening because of these four individuals' sins.

First one, I, personal, I have sinned. Second one, you have sinned. Third one, we, you and I have sinned. We have sinned. And then the fourth one, they have sinned. Now identifying throughout scripture that there are over a hundred verses that identify in this, of that confession, that testimony, that either the individual said it, the people said it, or God said it.

And we're going to go down through these. And this is a lengthy, there are 68 verses of these. I'm not going to give all 68 to you, but I want enough verses to tell you, to show you in the Bible, when sin is identified, it's because God is pouring out judgment on them.

And when they saw the judgment, they did one of those two things. They either repented and owned up to the sin and God stopped the judgment, or they disregarded God's command and they continued in their sin and therefore judgment has continued.

The reason that we are on level number six of the seven levels, and the reason that on the horizon is the seventh level of a cataclysmic event, is because the church, who should know these truths, have not done these truths.

They've not taught them, they've not owned up to it, and there is no humility in the church today at all. Pride, rules, and reigns. If my people, which are called by my name, humble themselves, we haven't humbled ourselves, pray, we don't pray.

90 of the North American church do not pray, and if they do pray, they don't pray rightly, they ask amiss, seek my face. Most men and women sitting in the pews of today have no desire to seek God's face.

They go to church to ease their conscience and to get something out of it. And the fourth thing, turn from their wicked ways. No repentance. Because those four things are not done, and the sin is not identified, then the sin continues, and we continue to ratchet up six levels, now on the seventh level of disaster, and it's gonna cost dearly, because we would not do what we were supposed to do.

And our purpose, again, of beginning this study is to identify these things, see it in ourselves, see it in others, see it in them, and pray. Praying to identify it, praying to change it, praying for God's mercy to help us with it.

“I Have Sinned”: Biblical Examples of Confession

So let us begin now, as we begin to look at the four individuals of sin, we've seen where original sin came from, Eve's choice, sin entered into the world, and now it's a part of us. Now we have to identify that testimony, I have sinned.

Now it's easy, it's easy for us to sit here tonight, and to point out there to the world. They said, look at how horrible Washington is, look at how horrible Hollywood is, look at that person next door to me.

We judge other people, but you cannot go judging other people until you've judged yourself. It's the parable where Jesus was talking about, and he said, how in the world, you get a speck in your eye, you get, of course, that that was a piece of wood in your eye, you don't want somebody that's got a piece in their own eye to be taking it out of your eye.

He says, get it out of your eye, then go take it out of their eye. Proper priorities is what we're looking at. So starting in scripture now, I want us to go through, and I'm just gonna name a couple of each of these four groups for us to identify what God was saying, what God was doing, and then to make it practical for ourselves, all right?

So scripturally, let's begin, and I want to give you the first time that it's mentioned in the Bible, I have sinned. Now, apart from this original sin that Adam and Eve, that they sinned, did you notice there, did they say, I have sinned?

Adam sinned, God comes to Adam and says to Adam, what have you done? And Adam falls down and he says, I have sinned against you, O Lord, I have transgressed your commandment. He didn't say that, did he?

He said she did. And God comes to Eve, and he says to Eve, what have you done? And Eve falls down in sackcloth and ashes and humility, and she cries out, oh, let this be on me, I have sinned, I made the choice, I listened to that serpent.

She did not. What did she say? Serpent beguiled me. Then he comes to the serpent and he curses the serpent. Serpent didn't even have a chance to answer for itself. Ownership of sin. It might be easy for you to cast judgment on others, but I have a little phrase that I use with people, don't ever forget where you came from.

As Christians, as a church, it's easy to condemn them. But don't you forget that you was once guilty. Don't you forget that you was once in darkness, you was once in sin. God had mercy for you, and God had patience for you, and it is our responsibility to pray for them, that they come to a place that they say, I have sinned against the Lord God.