“When Books Are Opened” Rev. 20:11-15; Daniel 7:9-10 8-19-07
School is starting soon. People are scrambling trying to buy backpacks, pencils, paper, look at lists on the internet, making sure the summer reading for school is done, and looking forward to a time when books will be opened, and knowing that means the books will be shut to summer time off, swimming on summer mornings, summer work.
The books of education open, the books of summer are shut.
In our passage, it speaks of the opening of books, and thus the shutting of them.
It is a terrifying scene and a hopeful scene. I will concentrate on the hopeful scene.
The hope is that we will have our names written on the Book of Life. If you know that you’re going to heaven, and you have that assurance, then that is all the more reason to live like it now, and to look forward to when these books will be opened.
The sad is that no more chances can be had. The image here is a that everyone’s name who has ever lived has their name written in the Book of Life. But some blot it out. How do we blot it out? God offers us forgiveness and we do not take it- and here comes the holy white out, the holy back space key. Jesus died for us to wipe away and erase forever our sin, and we refuse to recognize that and trust in that.
Maybe we think we don’t need to be forgiven. I know some like that. Maybe we think we can define what is right or wrong. I hear it a lot in my culture. No one should tell me how to run my life. One of the most common complaints I heard in all that debate on the Sabbath last spring was- no one should tell me what to do with my time and my life. It is as if even God should not make any suggestions, or had the right to give a commandment about time. How about the Creator- should the Creator of life have any say in in how we should live?
Some think they know better than the directions. I have done this on occasion, but hopefully we recognize our mistake. Friday night we were trying to get the dvd to show for the visitation. We had five grown men hovering around a machine for about twenty minutes. Three left in frustration. A lot of time and life was wasted. Then, it occurred to me- let’s see if there are any directions! There were, we pushed a button, and things worked! When you think you know better than the directions, you can end up wasting a lot of life. But when you continually think you know better than God’s directions, you waste your whole life. You can blot your name out of the Book of Life.
Some are too proud to take it. They think they can earn their way to God’s kingdom. If you are an angry person, that can be a sign of pride. We all have a bit of pride in us- even the most shy person. We are like drowning people refusing to grab hold of the life guard’s hand. We are like trapped miners who believe they can still dig their way out. We have to give up trying, and let God help us. If we think we can save ourselves, we blot our name out of the Book of Life.
Maybe we love sin too much. We can really love sin more than God. I have seen drug addicts love their drug more than their job- so they lose their job, they lose their marriage, they lose everything but they love the scratch that the drug gives to their itch. We can love our sins so much that we risk our eternal life. It can be we love our sexual immorality, and the more we give into it the harder and harder our soul becomes to God. We may even see it getting harder and we just don’t care.
A year ago I happened to be in Chapin Middle School visiting Kay about something, and I saw two kids in chairs waiting to get in to see the principal. One looked agitated, and then looked sad. Another was energetic, happy. I had to sit there too for a minute, so I asked them what they were doing there. The sad and agitated guy said that he got in trouble for calling his teacher a name in class. The happy and energetic one said that she was sent to the principal from her teacher to get a special award. When we come before God- and one day we all will. Which will we be like? Will we be like the ones who are assured their names are written on the Book of Life- because we have believed and trusted. Or will we be like the person who knows they have blotted their own name out of the book?
Everyone will be there before God. The Great White Throne of Judgment is a picture of the idea that everyone must give an account before God. No matter whether you are someone with no education at all or if you have taught at Harvard and MIT. Whether you have no money at all, or if you are Bill Gates- we all stand before the throne of the One who made heaven and earth. The passage says even the sea will give up their dead. This is a rebuke to those who think you have to be buried to come before God. Those who have been in the sea, those who are burned in a fire, those who die in a mine- their souls all come before God. In the ancient world, every ruler had a list of their subjects in a book. If they died or moved they would be blotted out.
There are two books mentioned here. One is the Book of Life and other books contain a record of the deeds we have done.
Moses said long ago that he would have his name blotted out of the Book of Life in order to save his people (Ex. 32:32). Psalm 69 asks God to blot the wicked out of the Book of Life—it’s a prayer saying how long will the wicked triumph? Paul speaks of his fellow-laborers who are written in the Book of Life (Phil. 4:3). In the letter to Sardis, it says the one who overcomes will never be blotted out of the Book of Life (Rev. 3:5; 13:8). It is a common term.
It is the book that says whether you made it to God’s presence and will live forever. Every true believer in Christ has their name written in this book. I once wondered as a kid how a book could be so very large. Then along came the computer. I have an 80 gigabyte hard drive- that is the new standard. That holds 80 billion bytes of information. I would have enough room on my little computer to hold everyone’s name in the whole world, and I could find all the names in a flash. When I was a child, I would have thought this impossible for God or anyone to do quickly, much less on my home computer! Is your name on the list? We put our name there, the Bible says by accepting God’s gift of eternal life. The Bible says “He who believes in me, I will in no way cast out.”
Other books contain our deeds. It is obvious from this that God cares about what we do on earth. What we do on earth is not meaningless nor forgotten. Each person is judged according to what he has done. This is after the Book of Life- if your name is not found in the Book of Life- according to this passage you would be thrown into the Lake of Fire. Your deeds do not get you into heaven. But your actions come out in the presence of God. Jesus spoke about degrees of reward in heaven. He said blessed are you when men hate you because of me for great is your reward in heaven (Lk. 6:23); Matthew 16:27 says that God will reward us according to our works. How you get along with your brother, your sister, your boss, your spouse, your child, your parent all make a difference. Scientists confirm this. They can take electrodes and touch different parts of your brain, and you can relive or at least remember a particular moment in your past. It is as if the brain stores what you have done in a great big organic tape recorder. The brain contains 100 billion neurons, and each neuron contains roughly a trillion bytes of information- so basically we cannot use up the whole brain in our lifetime. If God can store it in a brain, how much more can he store in the spiritual mind?
There is so much to learn out there. Be careful what you read and let into your mind that will be played before the billions in heaven. I know some people might be a bit embarrassed that we watched some of those things on TV, or viewed some of those sites on the internet. The Bible says what you say in private will be proclaimed from the rooftops. As some of you go back to school, exercise your mind, and love the Lord your God with your mind as well as your heart and soul. Those of you who are not in school, I would encourage you to still be a good steward of your mind and of your body and spirit. There was a poll done about ten years ago in which four out of every five Americans believed that they would one day give an account of their lives before God. If this is true, we should be filling out book up with good things instead of evil things or blank pages. W.C. Fields often made fun of the Christian faith. But on his deathbed, he was found reading a Bible. He was asked, “What are you looking for?” He answered, “Loopholes!” Today your book is still open. Fill it with hopeful things.