D.A. Carson - The Parable of The Sheep and Goats

it's an enormous privilege to be with you and this morning we're going to focus session on the last part of Matthew 25 now Matthew 24 and 25 together are sometimes called the eschatological discourse that is the discourse about last things but when you look at those two chapters carefully you discover that half of Matthew 24 is really about last things and I don't have time to unpack that part at all but from halfway through 24 all the way to the end of 25 that is a chapter and a half it's all about how to wait for the end in other words it's not about the end exactly but it's about how to wait for the end before I read our passage let me ask a question and reflect on it with you how does our culture and visit the end of the world shall we see ourselves choking to death and our own pollution following the spirals of decadence and decay and meaninglessness powerfully portrayed for example by TS Eliot this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper of course he wrote in the days before nuclear holocaust so shall we think less in terms of TS Eliot that in terms of nuclear holocaust on the beach for example nuclear exchanges and eventually the entire planet dies or one of the new films of catastrophe that are circulating quite nicely or shall we project billions of years into the future after our Sun burns out will the whole human race colonize other planets we think less in terms of TS Eliot than Isaac Asimov or star wars or the like but all that seems very remote so most of us don't really think much about that in any case if we're going to think about the end we think only of our own end how should we think of our own end and then we may fight like Dylan Thomas who counsels his dying father dying father do not go gentle into that good night old age should rage against the dying of the light rage rage against the dying of the light or worst of all what many of us do in the Western world is simply refused to think about these things at all they're simply suppressed we live for today even amongst us who are Christians even one week when we confess that Jesus is coming again and we may actually sing hymns anticipating it from time to time yet whether or not that anticipation works out in terms of how we live or not is another issue we can be confessing believers and functioning atheists in terms of changing how we live some of course simply scoff at all such notions of Christ's return at the end of the age and resurrection existence Paul however says that belief in the fact that we Shahar resurrection bodies in the new heaven and the new earth is a necessary correlate to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead he ties the two together so tightly that if you hold it Jesus rises from the dead then you must see this as the first step toward the resurrection that we will experience at the end you can't have one without the other but at the end of the day my brief this morning is not to talk so much about the end per se as to how to wait for the end there are lots of different ways of waiting my son is a Marine a strapping 6-2 6-3 pretty powerfully built these big blue eyes that pierce you right through when he was about three 1/2 he was perpetually hungry he was born big and born hungry and it hasn't stopped when he was about three and a half you could be sure that when it came close to mealtime he was mommy's little shadow wherever she went he went he he had no idea of deferred gratification he wanted something to eat now and we had the disgusting rule of making people wait for their meal times and not snacking endlessly from between meals and and so he was mommy's little shadow and if she said to him hang on Nicholas just just wait it's only ten minutes he had no idea what ten minutes look like he just wanted food now meanwhile I might have been in my study trying to finish writing one more paragraph to finish something off all the pieces are in my head and I'm trying to get it down and I look at my watch and I see I've got ten minutes and I'm waiting for those ten minutes to pass to accept I want them to pass very slowly Nicholas wants them to pass very fast it's the same ten minutes but the way we wait in those circumstances is quite different there's the waiting for the Sun to go down when you're sitting beside someone you love and you don't want it ever to end there's the waiting for the nausea to pass when you're going through chemotherapy there's the waiting for a loved page person with Alzheimer's to go I've seen all of those up close haven't you very different kinds of waiting how then shall we wait for the end if we're Christians how do we wait for the end now the fact of the matter is that Matthew chapter 24 verse 36 all the way to 25 46 deals with the different facets of waiting for the end of the world of waiting for Christ's return and what I'm going to do is outline for you the five different facets that are presented to us in this chapter and a half but especially focus on the last one the last one is the parable of the sheep and the goats let me begin by reading that last one and then we shall go back and run through the argument that brings us to that point here is the Lord Jesus speaking then in Matthew 25 beginning at verse 31 when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him he will sit on his glorious throne all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left then the king will say to those on his right come you who are blessed by my father take your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink I was a stranger and you invited me in I needed clothes and you clothed me I was sick and you looked after me I was in prison and you came to visit me then the righteous will answer him Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink when did we see you as stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you when did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you the king will reply truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me then he will say to those on his left depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels for I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink I was a stranger and you did not invite me in I needed clothes and you did not clothe me I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me they also will answer Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you he will reply truly I tell you whatever you did not do for one of the least of these you did not do for me then they will go away to eternal punishment but the righteous to eternal life this is the word of the Lord now come back to chapter 24 verse 36 how then should we as Christians wait for the dawning of the consummated Kingdom for the coming of the king for the end of the age five things but then we'll spend our closing time on the last one the one that I've just read number one wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the Masters return wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the Masters return especially verses 36 to 44 but about that day or hour no one knows not even the angels in heaven nor the son but only the father as it was in the days of Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man for in the days before the flood people were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage up to the day Noah entered the Ark and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away this is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man now don't misunderstand that passage it does not say the days when Jesus comes will be as wicked as the days of Noah that's not the nature of the comparison the nature of the comparison is sheer normalcy in the days of Noah when the flood came the argument runs people were getting married and having babies and there was a funeral now and then and they were getting on with their business and worrying about the retirement packages and whatever did you see was normal now undoubtedly it was a wicked time but that's not the nature of the comparison drawn here it's the normalcy of the thing so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man we're told in other words there won't be a whole lot of immediate precursors that are tipping you off okay folks screw up your courage get ready because now is the time that you really should focus no you must understand that there will seem to be normalcy and that's when the master will return or to push it with another image two men will be in the field one will be taken on the other left now in the nature of first century farming in Israel two men in a field are likely to be father and son or conceivably two brothers or something of that order so very close ties but one is taken whether this means taken away in judgment or taken away to be with the Lord it doesn't really matter the point is that there is an instantaneous division one is taken and the other is left even though two are quite close one is ready and one is not and it's not just the men two women will be grinding with a hand mill they used to have whopping big mills for grinding flour that were pulled by oxen but in a little hand mill you'd have a flat stone another stone on top of with a stick sticking out and a hole in the middle you put your seed down the hole and then two women would squat another saw on either side of this hand mill and one would pull that handle around 180 degrees and then the other one on the other side would pull it around her 180 degrees and then the first one would pull it around 180 degrees and keep pouring in seed and gradually the seat would be ground to powder and in the nature of first century living almost certainly this would be two sisters or a mother and daughter again very close and one is taken and the others left behind what's the point verse 42 therefore keep watch because you do not know on what day your Lord will come but understand this if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into so you also must be ready because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him now the point of the analogy of the thief is not to say that Jesus has the ethics of a burglar when he shows up like all analogies there are limitations imposed by the context the point is that just as a thief's coming is unexpected so also Christ's coming is unexpected that's the full nature of the analogy and that's that's understandable I've only been robbed once in my home I was a university student at the time and my dad had loaned me a spectacular handcrafted leather case with straps and was cowhide it was well tooled it was it was impressive one of these hand pieces which today would cost an arm and a leg and he had had it a long time and he let me have it to bring some things back to McGill University where I was studying and I started downstairs and in the storage area connected with our little flat and when I got home that night we had been robbed the case hadn't even been locked the thief could have just opened it but couldn't be bothered do so but had taken some sort of sharp Shiv and just slashed it wide open was utterly destroyed now it was just a case the things we lost were just material things but on the other hand I assure you of this that if I had known he was coming that night he would not have got away with it whether we would have had just a few of our friends there to welcome him or phone the police in advance I'm not sure what we would have done but I guarantee he wouldn't have got away with it but the point is he came when we weren't expecting him and the lesson to learn at this juncture Jesus says is the return of Christ is going to be that surprising that unexpected so be ready be ready what does that look like well that brings us to the second point Jesus makes about how to wait wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service faithful or otherwise wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service faithful or otherwise now we're looking at 24 45 to the end of the chapter who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time it will be good for that servant to his master finds him doing so when he returns truly I tell you we will put him in charge of all his possessions but suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself my master staying away a long time and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he's not aware of he will cut him to pieces and a sign of a place with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth now what you discover as you read through these various little parables and so on all telling us different facets of how to wait for the return of the Lord in each case as you move on the new one picks up one or more of the themes that have already been laid out so in this case the the suddenness of the event the unexpectedness of it is picked up from the first one but now there's an overtone that was not there in the first now there is a slightly additional emphasis namely when he returns at a moment admittedly you may not be expecting when the master returns he will also ask you to give an account of your stewardship and supposing someone says I know he's coming back but yeah you know it's been a long time and thus begins to exploit the other servants this person who seems to be such a servant and has actually been put in charge yet yet now apparently he's corrupt with the funds and he is dishonest in his own Labor's and he is exploitative and manipulative and controlling of other people he's become really a mean little petty boss a nasty piece of dictatorship but he's going to give an account of everything he's done so when the master comes back it's not just that he's coming back and that's the end it's he's coming back and then we give an account that's what the text says so wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service faithful or otherwise I am sure that there will be many many pastors who will fall under verse 51 on the last day people who are perceived to be leaders of the flock of God but have left the gospel behind or deeply deceptive in their own teaching or proceed with mere desires for power and it's not just pastors you can get leaders in the church like that too sometimes people who are successful in business think that they ought to be in charge of the local church - regardless of the state of their own lives they just want to be bosses they like power they just like power and they to Allah given account and that there may be other leaders in the church who who run this and run that and all of that but deep down they're nasty little tongue wagging gossips and they will give an account on the last day now if you put this truth into the framework of the entire gospel then we discover that the only thing that is going to make us acceptable at all is going to be Christ's death on our behalf Christ's shedding his own blood in Matthew 27 but one of the things you see about the gospel in the New Testament is that when the gospel does come to a person that person does change it just doesn't mean that that person becomes perfect it doesn't mean that that person has suddenly reached the consummation now that that's still to come on the last day all of us are going to have to plead Kreisler we'll have no ground for entrance yet yet having said all of this nevertheless if the gospel has truly come to us we will have changed we will not be what we would have otherwise being and we will give an account I love the words of John Newton now the way he said it was an old English that's too long and complicated to regale you with but his summarizing paragraph on this point is really moving you remember who he is he was a slave trader he transported he figures about twenty thousand slaves across the Atlantic before he was converted and eventually he was converted and some years later began to prepare for ministry and became pastor of the little Church in Olney in England I've been to the museum there that that has so many of his his remains including some handwritten manuscripts of his sermons that have never been published for example but he is the one who wrote amazing case four he said in his life that thereafter when he had nightmares it was it was hearing the slaves cry from the ship twenty thousand souls he says Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me and toward the end of his life he wrote then I am NOT what I ought to be I am NOT what I want to be I am NOT what one day I will be but I am NOT what I was and by the grace of God I am what I am and genuine Christians look back on their lives and say similar things if instead you look back in your life and there's no change at all your God is still money or power or sex or control manipulative Ness you give an account on the last day the gospel does not really come to you regardless of your creedal formulations and the master will cut such a person to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth so wait for the Lord Jesus in the second place as stewards who must give an account of their service faithful or otherwise number three wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know that masters coming may be long delayed wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the Masters coming may be long delayed we have now reached the parable of the ten virgins I'm not going to read this entire passage I'm sure most of you know the story but there are some wedding customs there that you need to understand to make sense of the parable in the ancient world the focus was on the groom rather than the bride just the opposite of today today you read a newspaper account and the bride is described in great detail what she wore in the taffeta this and the Train of that and and the the style of her dress and what her bridesmaids were wearing and and so on so and so and then down toward the bottom of the newspaper notice it says the groom was also present whereas in the ancient world partly because it was the groom who paid for the whole shot then things tended to focus on on him that's also why men got married a little later they had to pay for it so the bride here doesn't even appear she's not part of the story it doesn't really make a difference she's not there the way these things worked however was that usually there was some sort of minor ceremony in the bride's house at her brother's home or her father's home some ceremony for immediate family closest friends and because they weren't so concerned with time as we are today trying to get things done exactly by 3/16 or whatever therefore those things could go on a bit and then there would be a procession through the streets to the groom's place and at the groom's place that's where the official ceremonies began and if it was a relatively poor chap that was getting married they would go on for the rest of the day if it was someone who was posh Wow in that case they could go on for a week it would be a week-long wedding celebration and those who were invited to come would actually join in on the wedding procession to enter into the groom's place and and and and and and participate in the festivities in this case the groom is pretty posh when he gets there he's in a wold home there there is a gate and a wall and so forth and so this is apparently a pretty big do and and then people who are supposed to join in along the line are the ones who have their invitations they join in but you know experiences in this culture that sometimes the initial do at the bride's place could could be delayed and therefore you have to be ready to to join the party at night have your torches ready with an appropriate amount of oil so that you're covered and and amongst the people that are waiting are ten virgins five are described as wise ten as foolish The Wise Ones have brought enough oil to accommodate even the longest delay the foolish ones have not now some people have tried to say that the oil symbolizes good works or the oil symbolizes grace or the oil symbolizes the holy spirit you have to have enough of the Holy Spirit or you have to have enough of grace to get in or something like that misses the point entirely misses the point entirely the whole story turns on one feature the groom's delay nor does it matter that they went to sleep both the wise ones and the foolish ones went to sleep what else you going to do you're waiting for hours but at noon at midnight rather the cry goes up here comes the groom we would say here comes the bride but they say here comes the groom you assume the bride is there as well and those who have lots of oil then they fill up the little containers again from an additional flask and get everything going and and and they're ready to join the procession whereas the foolish ones they didn't bring any extra oil and their lamps have gone out there's nothing they can be done and they say let us have some of your oil and it's just not transferable there wouldn't be enough so they have to go into town and knock up some some little little shopkeepers living above his shop perhaps and and wake them up in the middle of the night we need oil we need oil very really urgently and by the time they've got the oil and they they get back the parade has already gone by and the legitimate guests have entered into the compound the gates been shut and they're shut out in other words wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the Masters coming may be long delayed we don't know when he's coming we don't know when he's not so we would have to be ready but there could be a long delay and we will be held accountable for waiting for that time that becomes significant as to how we live if for example we knew unambiguously that Christ were coming back in two years unambiguously certainly without any hesitation without any debate at all don't you think it would make a difference on what we did in those of these next two years but supposing he's not coming back for another 200 or more then you have to start thinking institutionally it's not just a question of of winning somebody to Christ winning as many as possible to Christ there's now also a question of how you train them how you train these people to win other people how you develop institutions and structures to pass things on to another generation to your children to your children's children did you see you are thinking institutionally because you don't know when he's coming and he may be long delayed that sort of truth is taught in many places in the New Testament Peter writes in one of his letters don't you know that with the Lord a thousand years is like a day a days like a thousand years if he's long delay don't don't be too surprised he'll come when he's ready and you have to be ready when he comes but but but you have to throw in the possibility that he may be long delayed now the first generation of Christians had to come to grips with his truth as well and begin to think about the formation and structure of local churches and their governance and how to pass things on to the next generation institutional structures of discipleship and discipline and the like did you see it's a little different if everything's going to happen in the next 36 hours or three weeks so how do we wait for the Lord's return we wait as those who know the Masters coming Mabel delayed the number for which I'm going to deal with at great length tomorrow with the pastor's I will say relatively little about it now verses 14 and following wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves Commission's to improve their masters assets wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves Commission's to improve their masters assets this is the parable of the talents now that word talents in many of our English Bibles can sometimes trip us up the reason the word is used in English is because the Greek word is talent tongue and a talent tone sounds more or less like a talent so it's come down to us as the parable of the talents you're given so many talents and you have to use them responsibly but a talent tongue in Greek doesn't refer to a talent it's a way to measure it's a weight measure of precious metal so that a talent ton of silver was about six thousand denarii e about twenty years of wages of a working person and if it was of gold then it was a huge amount of money so you're talking millions and millions of dollars in each one of these talents least each talent tongue being worth a great deal and this money has been entrusted to them now I'm not going to go through this parable in detail as I said I will deal with it at greater length tomorrow but the point of the parable is pretty clear if the lord and trusts things to you here pictured as bags of gold lots of money if the Lord entrusts things to you then while you wait and the waiting here once again is long delayed picking up again the earlier theme these themes get pulled together one by one into each new powerful as it comes along the law that the delay is long and as you wait you are responsible for improving the Masters assets the two faithful slaves actually improve their masters assets the other one just buries it in the ground and then things he can get away with handing it back and that's enough I should say this about this parable when we read it and we hear what the last slave says we almost have a certain kind of sympathy for him master he said I knew that you are a hard man verse 20 for harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed so I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground see here is what belongs to you you can understand his point can't you he's a slave so if he invests the money and the economy goes belly-up and he loses it all he's accountable if on the other hand he works hard to invest the money in it buys and trades companies and eventually makes a good deal of profit he doesn't get any of it in return he's a slave it's all for his master so he decides instead he'll simply withdraws services now from our point of view that makes sense because after all if you're in a trade union you have the right to withdraw your services but the whole point here is that in the social ordering of the day he's a slave this is no more justifying slavery than the earlier parable justified burglary it's an analogy the point is however that in the analogy the slave must do what his master says and if he doesn't he's in big trouble so the point is that genuine Christians don't have the right to withdraw their services either were not Union employees under Jesus we're his slaves and genuine Christians find that slavery to be actually delightful and liberating but what you can't do is withdraw your services as long as we're here we're tasked with improving the Masters assets now there are many lessons to be learned on that one too I'm going to skip them I don't have time and now we come to our one the past the sheep and goats now I'm going to tell you what I understand parable to mean in a moment but let me tell you how it is often understood I think misunderstood a little bit because it's ripped out of the context it's often understood to mean something like this on the last day according to this parable with this interpretation of it on the last day we'll be judged on the basis of how kind we've been to poor and indigent people it's as simple as that and as much as you dig wells in the Sahel for poor people there and as much as you run a soup kitchen or in as much as you look after poor people and as much as you've done all of this you've done it for Jesus so that it doesn't matter what you believe or how much you trust Christ or whether you believe in the resurrection of the Dead or anything if in fact you you you are careful with respect to poor people and generous and self-denying then you're in and on the other hand if you are hard-hearted and selfish and stingy condescending arrogant selfish then you're out and the final desert division is spectacularly decisive verse 46 then they will go away to eternal punishment but the righteous to eternal life the sheep and the goats it all depends on what you do in fact when I was a young man everybody was reading for a while a book simply called in as much that was the title because in the King James Version which the author of the book was quoting verse 40 reads I tell you the truth in as much as you did it for one of the least of these brothers you did it unto me in as much so that book's title was simply and as now on the face of it there's something along the line of looking after the poor and the indigent and the hungry and the ill clothed there's something about that here all right I don't - duck that in the slightest and I insist that there are many many many passages in the Bible many chunks of Scripture that deal with generosity and and the importance of caring for the poor especially the poor who are poor for no fault of their own the poor because they are oppressed or the poor because because they have been exploited or the poor because of natural circumstances or the poor because they have come from terrible family backgrounds there are lots and lots of passages that that the talk along those lines read Amos for example or read the opening chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah many many passages run along such lines and I don't want to dilute any of them yet at the same time to take the interpretation of this passage that I've just outlined for you and make it the whole turning point of what will happen to us when Christ returns means that just about everything else in the New Testament doesn't make much sense after all where is this Gospel of Matthew going this gospel of matthew like all the canonical gospels is rushing toward the cross what does Jesus have to die for why does he say on the night that he was betrayed this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this in remembrance of me this is for the remission of sins well why does he have to die what why does he say that the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many why is there so much in the New Testament that talks about the importance of Christ's death and resurrection on our behalf and as the one who bears our sin why is it that Christ's righteousness is reckoned to me my sin is reckoned to him and he pays for it all he takes the punishment that's what he does so that I might be free why are there so many texts that say believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved if at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what you believe so long as your to the port now sometimes there are just tensions in Scripture and you just have to live with them but on the face of it there are so many texts in Scripture not least in the book of Matthew itself that make this interpretation at least a bit suspiciously off-center somehow but I think that there are lots of hints in the text about how you should understand this parable let me state the point and then unpack it for you wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are so transformed by the gospel that they unselfconsciously serve brothers and sisters in Christ let me repeat that and then explain it wait for the Lord Jesus as peoples as people whose lives are so transformed by the gospel that they unselfconsciously serve brothers and sisters in Christ now there are two bits in the parable that we simply have to understand more closely both in verse 40 and in verse 45 Jesus says something like this whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and the brothers are understood to be male and female hence brothers and sisters you did for me and again in verse 45 I tell you whatever you did not do for one of the least of these that is these brothers you did not do for me so the question is this in Matthew's Gospel who are Jesus brothers you see if you assume that this is Jesus way of talking about everybody in the whole wide world who is poor or indigent or broken then you necessarily come out with a first interpretation but if you think that these brothers may be referring to a particular subgroup then you have to find out which group and the only way you can find out is by discovering what Jesus means when he talks about his brothers as he does in a variety of passages in this gospel occasionally the brothers of Jesus in this gospel are his literal half-brothers that is the sons and then for the sisters the daughters of Mary and Joseph but when he is not speaking so literally then without exception his brothers are his disciples for example Matthew 12 46 while Jesus was still talking to the crowd his mother and brothers and that certainly means his half-brothers his biological kin stood outside wanting to speak to him someone told him your mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you he replied to them who is my mother and who are my brothers pointing to his disciples he said here are my mother and my brothers for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother now he's not denying that he had kin he's not denying the genetic relationship between Mary and himself he's not denying the genetic relationship between his half-brothers and himself what he is saying is that those closest to him those who are part of his shall we say most important family controlling family there is disciples for at the end of the day those are the ones who will be with him forever those who are the ones who by the power of the gospel are declared to be genuinely the sons of God joint heirs with him or again it's not just here but in other passages we find similar kinds of expressions 23-8 you are not to be called rabbi for you have one teacher and you are all brothers so the disciples of Jesus are again called brothers or again in chapter 28 the last chapter after the resurrection of Jesus chapter 28 verse 10 then jesus said to them after the resurrection do not be afraid go and tell my brother's to go to Galilee there they will see me and the brothers in the context is clearly the disciples so what you have then in chapter 25 in the parable of the sheep and the goats is this truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine these these disciples of mine you did for me in other words what Jesus is talking about is the attitude of Christians toward other Christians especially those who are being persecuted being put in jail robbed of all of their goods to Jesus in chapter 10 warns that that is going to happen to a lot of Christians did you know that there have been more Christian converts in the last hundred fifty years than in the previous eighteen hundred years combined and there have been more Christian martyrs in the last hundred and fifty years than the previous eighteen hundred years combined there are a lot of people around the world who understand that following Jesus costs something and when it when it happens to these brothers and sisters our brothers and sisters in Christ what is the response of the remaining brothers and sisters well if they're genuine brothers and sisters in Christ without even thinking about them they bring them food and clothing they provide shelter they hide them from persecutors they risk their own they look after them and what does Jesus say and as much as you did it to one of the least of these you've done it to me because Jesus identifies with his church do you recall when Saul is persecuting Christians in the book of Acts and takes his terror campaign to Damascus on the Damascus Road the resurrected Christ appears to him and he says to him Saul Saul why are you persecuting not the church but why are you persecuting me because insofar as we are persecuting the church we're persecuting Christ Christ identifies with his own people and as much as you've done it to the least of these you've done it to me for there is a sense in which after all the church is itself Christ's body here on earth again do not misunderstand me not for a moment am I trying to diminish the many biblical passages that do talk about the importance of being generous with respect to the poor generally there are a lot of biblical passages along those lines but this isn't one of them this is focusing on Christ's brothers and sisters that is fellow Christians the other little bit of detail that is very illuminating is this both the sheep and the goats are surprised by what Jesus says have you noticed that Lord Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty when did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothes you they're both surprised both a sheep and the goats are surprised by Jesus words did you see they are not surprised at the place assigned them that's not what they're surprised turns on but at the reason that Jesus gives that is they didn't think that when they did do these things or in the Sheikh case of when they didn't do these things they were doing them or not doing them to Jesus that's what surprises them and now you see the point the Christians don't see other Christians in need maybe in need for natural reasons in need in this congregation because of losses or hurt or lost jobs or whatever or in need because of persecution or violence or whatever the cause may be and they they don't stop and say well Wow well I got to get a few extra brownie points if I do it to this brother or sister therefore I'm doing it to Jesus that's not the way any Christian thinks no Christians start saying I will be kind to my brothers and sisters in prison in a totalitarian regime and see if there's something I can do because I want to do it for Jesus you do it because they're brothers and sisters that is part of what shows you to be a Christian and meanwhile the goats likewise are not saying to themselves well I'm not going to do it because I want to stiff Jesus I can't stand him don't want to have anything to do with him and therefore I won't have anything to do with them no they they don't care about them they're Christians no concern of theirs they're they're not thinking that what they're doing is actually an offense against Jesus himself in other words the surprise of both the sheep and the goats turns precisely on the fact that Jesus is identified with his people and what we do towards other Christians were doing toward him so we are to wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are so transformed by the gospel that they unselfconsciously serve brothers and sisters in Christ now the implications of this for the local church are huge for you see if we start participating in a local church this one or any other one and quite frankly we're more concerned to be the kingpin we're more concerned about how people are treating us then we are about caring for others then we might find ourselves here with the goats because genuine Christians are so transformed by the gospel that they learn to care for and serve their brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus that's you can spot the genuine ones and we are to wait for the Masters coming as people whose lives are so transformed by the gospel that we are unselfconsciously serving brothers and sisters in Christ waiting for the master to say truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me I'm sure that in this congregation there are people here who provide meals for those who are going through really difficult circumstances I imagine the church has a poor fund to help brothers and sisters going through difficult economic times or you lose someone and you don't feel that you can even organize meals and the church takes over or there's someone going through chemo treatment and the entire family is disrupted and the church takes over why because they're sitting around and saying oh well you know I don't really like them I don't want to do it but I'll do it so I can get some brownie points with Jesus it doesn't work like that these are your brothers and sisters in Christ and unselfconsciously if you're a Christian at all you'd do these things for them and then here on the last day the master saying and you know what my child you did it for me and that's how we're supposed to wait for Jesus let us pray you

Channel: Bethesda Baptist

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Id: Q4IOxqLrhz0

Length: 52min 41sec (3161 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2013