The Passionate Pursuit of Holiness (Hebrews 12:14)

Hebrews 12, and when you've found your place, let's pray together.

Our Father, we pray today that You would speak to us through Your Word. It is our earnest desire to hear Your voice in the pages of Scripture. We know that You see our every thought. You know our every motive, every intention of our heart.

Everything that dwells within our hearts is naked and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. And so You search and know us more than we can know ourselves. And there is a terrifying element in that, that You see everything and we cannot hide anything from Your eyes, Your searching eyes.

And there is a comforting element in that, that in spite of how well You know us, You love us and have appointed us for glory in Jesus Christ. And so we give You our thanks as Your people that our standing before You rests not upon our ability to perfectly obey Your Word in every command and in every injunction, but we know that our standing before You rests upon Christ and Christ alone and His work, His merits.

And so we pray now that You would expose the thoughts of our hearts and the meditations of our minds through Your Word to us so that we may see what You see, at least a portion of it, and that You would do the work of reproving and rebuking us where necessary, exhorting and encouraging us where necessary, and comforting us where necessary.

It is in the light of Your Word that we see truth. So we pray that that would be the result of our time here together today. Sanctify us by the truth, we pray in the name of Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Will you read with me together Hebrews 12, verse 14? Pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. The author of Hebrews from time to time makes a number of statements throughout the epistle that are intended to get us to sort of stop and sit up and take notice and even take an inventory of where we are at spiritually speaking.

He is writing to a group of people, some of whom were at the moment that he is speaking to them or writing to them, they were considering going back to their old lives in Judaism under the temple and the sacrifices and the feasts and festivals and the Old Testament priesthood.

Some of them were wavering and considering that in order that the persecution that they were enduring would lighten up a little bit on them. He's writing to a group of people whom had already had a number of people, we don't know how many, but obviously some who had walked away from the faith and completely apostatized from Christianity and gone back.

And so he has these statements, these passages which are intended to sort of take us up short and make us stop and consider, am I really in the faith? Have I merely made an external profession of faith in Christ or is my profession of faith in Christ actually producing holiness in my life?

Has it resulted in, has my belief in Christ actually brought regeneration? Or am I among those who have simply made an outward reformation of my behavior and conformed myself externally to the standards of this group of people to whom I belong?

And do I really belong to them by virtue of the fact that I belong to Christ because I am holy and I am in Him and these are my people and I have experienced true regeneration? And verse 14 is one of those verses.

We have seen and we're on the cusp of just about ready to get into the fifth and final warning passage in Hebrews and Hebrews is famous for those warning passages, those passages that make it sound like a genuine believer can lose their salvation and end up perishing even after Christ has paid the debt for their sin and promised their glorification that they can perish in the end.

And the Hebrew warning passages are sometimes taken that way. My take on those warning passages as you have seen if you've been here with us from the beginning of Hebrews is that those passages are intended to address those in the congregation who outwardly look like they are believers, they pretend to be believers, they even outwardly conform themselves to the visible body of Christ, but then something happens in their life, something comes up and they, like a dog returns to its vomit, end up going right back to their life of sin and iniquity, going out from us demonstrating that they were really never of us to begin with.

Outwardly moral behavioral reformation is not the same thing as holiness. You see, verse 14 is intended to make us stop and to shock us, it's a little bit of cold water in our faith, pursue peace with all men and the sanctification or holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

You will not see the Lord if you are not holy. That's one of those statements that causes us to stop and say, now am I holy? Because morality is not holiness. You can be an outwardly moral person, never lie to your neighbor, mow the lawn of the little lady next door, help a blind person across the street, work at the soup kitchen, reform your external behavior, stop your smoking, stop your drinking, stop your swearing, stop watching certain movies, conform yourself outwardly to a moral standard, but that is not holiness.

You cannot have holiness apart from morality. Morality is an aspect of holiness, but morality and holiness are not the same thing. Holiness is so much more than morality. Though holiness includes moral reformation, moral conduct, moral behavior that is appropriate in the sight of God, morality and holiness are not the same thing.

So when I read in verse 14 that without holiness I am not going to see the Lord, that should cause each and every one of us to stop and say, now hold on a second, that sounds rather important that I be holy.

So what is holiness? This sounds necessary. If I can't see God without holiness, I better figure out what this holiness is, and I better figure out exactly how much of it I have to have, and what kind of holiness I have to have, and how that holiness is produced in my life, and what the holiness is that God is going to require of me.

How do I get it? Do I have it? Will I have it? There are two things in verse 14 that demonstrate just how important this holiness is. The first is the fact that you and I are commanded to pursue it. Pursue peace with all men, and holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

The second thing that shows us how important holiness is, is that we are told without it, you will not see God. That sounds pretty important. So our task today is to find out exactly what this holiness is, how it is achieved, and what this passage means, so that we can make sure that we will see God.

We are commanded to pursue two things in verse 14, and the next couple of moments is just by way of review, because we looked at part of this verse last week, and we're looking at the rest of it today.

We are commanded to pursue two things. First peace with all men, that is an outward orientation that has to do with my relationship with others in the body of Christ, in the world, in the home, etc. The second thing is I am to pursue holiness, which deals with my relationship with the.

Lord.

That's an orientation toward God, a holiness without which we will not see God. So last week we looked at the passionate pursuit of peace, and today we're looking at this passionate pursuit of holiness.

Notice the command in verse 14 to pursue holiness. We are to pursue it, not just peace, but we are to pursue also holiness. That word pursue is used 45 times in the New Testament, and again, this is just a couple of points of review.

35 times of the 45 times it is used, it is translated persecute. It describes the running after something, chasing it, pursuing it, pressing on towards something, striving after it, putting something to flight, pursuing it or hunting it down.

The implication of that is that it is an intentional and deliberate and principled knowing pursuit that occupies the mind, the heart, the affections, the will. It occupies us, and it is ongoing, and it is deliberate.

It is intentional. It's not haphazard. It's not accidental. There is effort involved in this. This is a work that we are called to do, listen, not in order to get saved, but because we are saved. That's a very important distinction.

It almost sounds as if you and I have to work at holiness so that we will achieve some level of holiness, and then, I don't know, a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, something happens, and we kind of reach that level where we get into heaven.

That's almost the way some people treat that verse, but that's not what's being described.

Here.

This is a work, a pursuit that we are to be engaged in, not so that we may acquire the standard by which we will be saved, but we are to pursue this because only people who are saved have the capacity to pursue holiness.

And you and I can expect a measure of success in this endeavor. This is something we are capable. If you're in Christ, if you're a believer, this is something that you are capable of doing, pursuing holiness.

We can expect that we could achieve these things, peace with all men and holiness, without which we will not see God. We should receive or pursue in expectation that we will receive or achieve, at least in some measure, these things that the author is describing here.

So this is not a fool's errand. Let's describe holiness. What is holiness? You'll notice if you're reading the NASB that it says that you are to pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.

Now that word sanctification sounds like it's very complicated and complex. You think I need a, I don't know, an evening course at a community college or some time at seminary to figure out what sanctification is.

You don't.

It's actually very simple. It sounds complicated, but it's not. Sanctification is holiness. It's a shorthand way of referring to that, which is why some translations translate that word in that verse as holiness.

The King James, for instance, says, follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. The NIV, make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

The ESV, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. That word translated holiness or sanctification comes from a family of words, a group of words, and they are all kind of related.

They describe being set apart or separate, reserved for a special use, dedicated to a special use, something made holy or something that even is holy by nature, something pure or something innocent. There is a moral quality to it as well as a non-moral quality to it.

So when God said to Moses, take off your sandals for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground, he wasn't saying that the dirt under Moses' feet was somehow morally better than the dirt somewhere else on the other side of the creek.

So it can have a moral quality, but it doesn't necessarily have a moral quality. There's also the word that is translated saint, which refers to believers. Now, be clear about this. The word saint refers to living or dead people who were or are believers.

It's not just a word that describes dead luminaries that are canonized or given a special status by the church through some ceremony or outward public recognition. That's how sometimes we think of the word saint.

I am a saint and you are a saint and I could refer to you as St. John or St. Mo or St. Susan. You're saints. If you're in Christ, you are a saint, living or dead, you are a saint. That word saint comes from the same word family as sanctified.

Now, let me ask you two questions and for this I do want a show of hands. And I will warn you, this is going to sound like a trick question and I will tell you this is a trick question at the front end of this.

So you already know that this is a trick question, but I want you to answer this question as honestly as you feel that you can.

Okay?

I've given you all of that to prepare you to lift your hand. Here's two questions. First question. How many of you are holy? You would consider yourself a holy person. There's about five, six, seven. More hands are going up because peer pressure is working.

There's about 10 people here, maybe 12.

Okay?

Now, maybe you were thinking to yourself, I kind of almost raised my hand, I thought if he asked me that yesterday, I would have said yes today. That guy cut me off on the way to church. So I won't say that today.

Second question. How many of you expect to see the Lord? Now that's quite a disparity, isn't it? We got a problem because only about 12 of you think you're holy and yet all but about 12 of you expect to see the Lord.

And this passage says that if you do not have holiness, you will not see the Lord. So we should probably correct something before we leave here today. And I will revisit these questions before I'm done this morning.

Now perhaps you had an issue with how you would answer that question because you needed a little bit more information, namely, what do I mean by holy? Now see, how we answer that question in our mind will determine how we answer the other question, are you a holy person?

There are three tenses to holiness. I'll walk you through these three tenses and then we'll revisit that question. The first, there is a past tense of holiness. We are made holy by calling. This is something that happens in the past at the moment of your salvation.

So this is not future holiness or your growth here in this life. There's a past tense of holiness whereby you are made positionally holy because of what God has done for you in Christ, namely, because of what Christ has done, you are called saint and you are called holy and therefore you are holy at the moment of your salvation, that is true.

1 Corinthians 1 verse 2, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified, the Corinthian church was sanctified, past tense, in Christ Jesus, saints by calling to all who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ their Lord and ours.

So Paul calls the Corinthian believers holy, he said you were sanctified, past tense, and you're saints, remember that's another word for holy or holy ones, same word family, and you're saints by calling.

Now listen, if you know your New Testament, you understand that if there was any group of people in the first century that you would never refer to as saints or sanctified, it would be the Corinthian church.

And yet the apostle Paul does that, he refers to them as sanctified, past tense, and as saints by calling. How can he call those people holy? And yet they were holy. Holy in what sense? Holy in the past sense.

They had at the moment of their salvation been set apart for God, called saints, placed into the family of God, that is a past sanctification, we could even call that a positional sanctification. Positionally in Christ in terms of God's calling and His intention, He has set them apart as His own and made them holy saints by calling.

Then there is a future element of sanctification, a sanctification that will take place when we die and we are freed from our sinful nature. Our fleshly and earthly bodies will die with all of its sinful lusts, and the sinful tendencies and the sinful weaknesses that we have in these fleshly bodies, those will all go away and die.

And we will stand in front of the presence of the Lord with unveiled faces and we'll see Him as He is, and we will be made fully and completely holy. Entirely set apart, morally perfect, practically perfect, no thought of sin, no inclination of sin.

I'm looking forward to that time when I can have, I can just think freely and never have to guard my thoughts, never have to guard my eyes, never have to check my heart because every inclination and every motive and every desire is only holiness and never anything.

But holiness.

My every reaction that will ever take place to everything that happens to me for the rest of eternity will be nothing but pleasing to the Lord and perfectly holy. That's future glorification, future sanctification or perfect sanctification.

Verse John 3, verse 2, Beloved, now we are the children of God and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He appears, we will be made like Him because we will see Him as He is and everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself just as He is pure.

That word purifies and that word pure come from the same family of Greek words that describes.

Holiness.

And that describes the return of the Lord. When we look upon Him, we will be transformed and we will become just like Him because we will see Him as He is. But the same is true if you and I die and go to the presence of the Lord.

When we look upon Him, we will be made perfect, entirely perfect in all of our conduct. The one who expects to be made fully pure, fully holy when he sees Christ, whether Christ returns or he dies and goes to be with Christ, the one who has that confident expectation in his future glorification, his future sanctification and holiness, will pursue holiness for his.

Entire life.

Someday you will be made completely and perfectly pure, holy, blameless, and morally innocent and perfect. That is hard to imagine, is it not? It's hard to imagine. But for the one who is in Christ, that is what God has predestined you to.

To summarize, there is a past tense of sanctification where you're called a saint and made a saint, set apart as God's own. Then there is the...and by the way, just a little bit of a sidebar here, there is an element of sanctification in the past that is tied to our election in Jesus Christ when God, before the foundation of the world, chose us in Christ to be pure and holy and blameless.

There is a sanctification, a setting apart that happened back in eternity past before anything was created, before even an angel was spoken into existence. There is an element of our sanctification being set apart that happened then, but I'm not focusing on that so much right now.

I'm focusing on aspects or elements of sanctification that we experience. I didn't experience my election. I wasn't there for it. He chose me in Christ before ever I was, but I experienced the fruits of the results of that election, namely my regeneration and my adoption and my justification and being born again and my calling.

Those are the things I experienced. So, for our sake today, past sanctification, when I or you got saved and we are put in Christ, we are there saved and redeemed, made God a part of God's family. That's the past aspect, the future aspect, full glorification.

Then there is today. Then there's today. Now, if you're in Christ and have been in Christ for any period of time, you're not what you were practically speaking at that moment, and you certainly are not what you will be practically speaking in the future moment.

That today aspect of sanctification is what we refer to as progressive or practical sanctification. This is the process by which we are progressively made into the image of Christ, the process by which we are progressively freed from sin.

Now, that happens over time. That is a slow and steady process that God does in the life of all of His children, every last one of His children, He sanctifies between the point that they are saved and the point that they are taken home to be with Him.

That sanctification process sometimes is quick, sometimes it is slow, sometimes it is painless, sometimes it is agonizingly painful. Sometimes it comes with great difficulty and effort, sometimes it is almost effortless.

But every believer is constantly being sanctified, I guess more practically it would be better to say that every believer is constantly moving either in the direction of holiness or falling into the direction of sin.

But God in the life of every believer is drawing us inexorably toward what we ultimately will be in the final day when we stand before Him and see Him as He is. Romans 8, verse 29,. For those whom He foreknew, He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.

2 Corinthians 3, 18,. We all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. Jesus prayed in John 17,.

Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth. It is this transformation from the moment of our salvation to our final glory, that process however long it takes, however long you live between salvation and your glorification, that progression in holiness is what we refer to as progressive or practical sanctification.

How does this happen? It happens when we come to know the truth and we respond to the truth and we obey the truth and we apply the word of God to our hearts and to our lives. When we deny ourselves and we do righteousness and deny our flesh and put off the deeds of darkness and walk in the light and in the truth and we make our emotions and our minds and our hearts obey what scripture says and we deny our sin and our lusts and we put on the new man and we walk in the light and in holiness.

This happens through the preaching of the word, through our worship, our fellowship, our service to one another, through the reading of scripture, through meditating upon scripture, putting God's word in our hearts, in our prayers and in our minds through meditation.

That is how we are transformed or sanctified in this world. This is the means of growth. And by the way, this is no secret formula. So if you came here and you thought, oh, the passionate pursuit of holiness, this is great.

Now I've got a formula by which I can walk with the Lord. The formula is simply scripture. I know that sounds overly pedantic, but it's not intended to be. The question is not, are you doing some secret thing to acquire holiness, but are you obeying the truth that is in scripture or are you living in denial of that truth and in disobedience to that truth?

And by the way, concerning the word of God, this event that we do on a Sunday morning from 1045 to 12 o 'clock is group sanctification because as we come together here, we worship, we fellowship, we serve one another.

We're bearing one another's burdens. We're visiting with one another. We're building one another up, encouraging one another. That's the whole point of a church gathering. And this is the most significant thing.

We are all sitting together under the preaching of the word. So that as the word of God is proclaimed, it's not just me telling you what to do, but it is all of us corporately as a body, placing ourselves under the authority of scripture and saying, here's what scripture says, here's what it means.

And now let's obey this and let's work this out in our lives. This is group sanctification. And you cannot habitually absent yourself from the means of sanctification and expect to grow in holiness. It does not work that way.

You can't take it flippantly. You can't take it haphazardly. You can't continue to be disobedient. You can't absent yourself from the body of Christ and expect that the spirit of God is somehow going to sanctify you and grow you in great leaps and bounds when you remove yourself from the very means that he has ordained and commanded for that end, which is your sanctification.

So this progressive sanctification begins as salvation and continues through the course of our life until we are finally at home with the Lord. Now, which of these three modes or which of these three tenses of sanctification are we to pursue?

Are we to pursue past sanctification? We can't do that because you can't pursue the sanctification unless you're saved. And once you're saved, you're already sanctified in the past tense sense of it, right?

So you're already set apart and sanctified in that. So it does no good to pursue that.

You've already saved. You already have that.

It can't be future sanctification.

Why?

Because you're never going to be perfect. And unless you're going to go drive your car off a cliff this afternoon, you can't really pursue that future glorification. God will bring it to you in his time, which means that the sanctification that you and I are to passionately pursue with intensity and determination and intentionality is our present sanctification.

We can pursue growth and holiness. We can pursue progressive growth in Christlikeness. As we grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ, we become more and more obedient, yielding ourselves more and more, walking in truth and walking in light, knowing his word, serving him, denying ourselves, and choosing obedience.

That is how we are sanctified. That is the sanctification that we are commanded to pursue. So now let's revisit the two questions that I asked. Let me ask them in reverse order. How many of you expect to see the Lord when you die?

Okay, about the same as last time. How many of you are holy?

Yeah.

You're set apart, right? Now, my work is done. We have corrected what was in error. You see, how we define holiness and how we think of holiness determines how we would answer that, what is now the second question.

Are you holy? Are you set apart in Christ because of what God has done for you? Are you saved? If you are, then you're holy in that sense. And if you are, then you have, from the moment of your regeneration, you have grown or progressed, in holiness, at least slightly, in this life, so that there is a difference between what you were when you were saved and what you are today.

And there should be a difference between what you are today and what you will be 5, 10, 15 years from now, if the Lord should tarry. This kind of sanctification, this progression in sanctification, is what the commands of Scripture are aimed at.

I'm going to read you a few of them. 2 Timothy 2, verse 19. Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal. The Lord knows those who are His, and everyone who names the name of the Lord is to abstain from wickedness.

That is a command to pursue holiness. You abstain from wickedness. 1 Thessalonians 4. This is the will of God, your sanctification. That is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.

Notice the distinction there between those who know God and those who do not know God. If you're pursuing sexual immorality, you're pursuing the same course, the same path as anybody else who does not know God.

And so Paul says, the will of God is your sanctification. And that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger of all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you, for God has not called us for the purposes of impurity, but in sanctification.

So he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gives us his Holy Spirit. Titus 2 .11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness, this is the wording of sanctification here, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people zealous for good deeds, his own people.

That's very similar to the language of 1 John 3. We're not yet seeing what we will be eventually, but when we see him as he is, we will be made just like him, perfectly sanctified. And everyone who has this hope, the hope that they will eventually be made perfectly holy, will himself progress and strive in holiness, moving toward that goal.

He will purify himself. Paul says, we are to deny worldly desires and live sensibly, godly, and righteously in the present world, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior.

That forward-looking hope purifies the believer. Romans 6, what then, shall we sin because we're not under the law but under grace? May it never be. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are the slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.

Paul says the equation is very simple. You were a slave of sin. You have become obedient to righteousness. Now just as before, you yielded your mind, your heart, your affections, your desires, your hands, your feet, and your eyes to unrighteousness to become the slave of sin, now having been set free from sin as a believer, you do the exact opposite.

Now you make your mind, your eyes, your heart, your will, your hands, your feet, and everything do the will of righteousness, do righteousness so that you become the slave of righteousness. And if you submit yourself to sin, you become a slave of sin.

If you submit yourself to righteousness, you become a slave of righteousness. Do sin's will and you will be in bondage to that. Do the will of righteousness and you will be in bondage to that. So make yourself then a slave of righteousness.

There's no secret to that. 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1,. Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

God's purpose in your salvation is your sanctification. God could have taken you home the minute you believed and instantly glorified you. He did not. Why? Because he is doing something in you through this life, namely, he is making you more holy.

And he is progressing you in growth in holiness, making you fit and ready to see him. And so he commands us then to pursue holiness, to deny ungodliness and to practice righteousness, to present ourselves as slaves of righteousness, to make no provision for the flesh, to deny our lusts of our fleshly body, to abstain from sexual immorality and to pursue purity, righteousness, holiness, and godliness.

And listen, he empowers us to do this because he gives us his word, which informs the heart and the mind and renews us in the inward man. He gives us his indwelling Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of righteousness and holiness.

And he has planted within the believer brand new affections, brand new desires, and he has given us a new nature. That is to say that everything is stacked in your favor to pursue righteousness. It's not like you have everything against you and you got to do this all on your own effort.

In fact, it is quite the opposite. Everything is stacked in your favor to be holy, to pursue holiness. God is training you for this. Does that mean that it's easy? No, it's difficult. I understand it's difficult.

It's difficult for all of us. There's nobody in this room for whom holiness and the pursuit of it is an easy pursuit. It's hard for all of us, but it's possible for everybody who is in Christ. And not only that, it's demanded of us.

This is the race we run. Remember, we are pursuing something in the manner of a race. This is the race we run. It is the race of holiness. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the Holy One, who endured the hostility against himself at the hands of sinners and pursue, run and chase after holiness.

And here's the good news. This is the very thing that God is sending discipline into your life to accomplish. This is the very thing that God is at work in you both to do and to will for his good pleasure.

So God's intention on your life is to make you holy, to grow you in holiness, and to progress you in Christ-likeness. That is why his eyes are fixed on you in this life. So since that is the case, you can pursue it with 100 assurance that having pursued it, God will create it and produce it in your life.

This is what he is doing. He has called me to pursue the very thing that he is doing. So what do you think the chances of success are for those who will pursue holiness? It's 100 chance of success. God will produce in your life.

If you apply the means, walk in obedience to him, God will produce in your life the very thing he has commanded you to pursue because God sanctifies all his children and all of his children will have some degree of holiness before they leave this world.

That's the kind of holiness that is described at the end of verse 14 when the author says, it is without that holiness that you will not see God. Without that holiness, you will not see God. Now he is, when he talks about seeing God here, he is describing seeing God in a salvific sense because there is a seeing God that all people who have ever lived will experience.

The unrighteous, the wicked, the unbelievers, they will see God. They will stand before him. Revelation describes that one whom God has appointed as the judge of the living and the dead. He will take that seat on the great white throne and all the dead will stand before him.

All unbelievers will stand before him and they will be judged according to the deeds that they have done in their bodies, the deeds which are written, the crimes against him that are written in that book.

And they will hear the sentence pronounced and they will hear their condemnation announced and then their eternal damnation will commence. So every last person who has ever lived, every unbeliever, even the worst of them will see God, but it will not be a delight or a joy or a pleasure or anything that they're looking forward to.

In fact, every last one of those sinners who right now is in torment is dreading the day when they will be resurrected in non-glorified, but imperishable bodies and stand before the great white throne and hear their final judgment announced.

There's not an unbeliever in hell who is looking forward to that reprieve. They don't want to stand before him. They don't want to confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and bow the knee and admit everything that they have denied and rejected and fought against their entire lives.

They don't want that. So every unbeliever will stand before him and see him in that sense. But only believers will look upon his face and for them that will be blessing and joy and delight indescribable.