This transcript of a sermon on Matthew 25:31-46 has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
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If you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to take them up and to turn with me once again to Matthew chapter 25. Today we are going to look at the parable of the sheep and the goats that we see in Matthew 25:31-46.
We have worked our way through the Apostles’ Creed up until this point, looking at God the Father who is the creator, then looking at the life and the ministry of Jesus as it is given to us, summarized for us in the phrases of the Apostles’ Creed.
Today we will wrap up the ministry of Jesus that is given to us in the Apostles’ Creed and next week move on to the work of the Holy Spirit, His ongoing work in gathering the church and giving fellowship among the saints and providing forgiveness and life everlasting to the people of God.
Today we will look at the phrase that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead, being reminded that this world is not all that there is, that there is a future glorious world that awaits the people of God and an eternal judgment that awaits those who reject God’s message. So follow along now as I read from Matthew chapter 25 beginning in verse 31.
“When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 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 a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.
Then he will say to those on his left, apart 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, I tell you the truth, 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. Let’s pray.
Our God and father above, we do thank you for these words and we thank you for the reminder that Jesus is coming back. And so Lord, as we consider these words, as we consider this doctrine that Jesus is coming to judge both the living and the dead, we ask that you would open our eyes, open our ears and change us. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So what do you believe about the end of the world? I ask this question because in reality, every single human being has some thought, some vision, some belief of what will happen when the world ends.
In the Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism and new age religions that are built off of the foundation of those Eastern religions, there is a belief that everything is moving back toward a state of the spiritual nothingness or Nirvana. That if we can just stuff our feelings, if we can just be unaffected by the things that happen in this world, we can shuffle off the evil of the physical world and be absorbed back into the great nothingness where there is peace forever.
Islam or Jehovah’s Witness or Latter-day Saints believe that the faithful will be whisked off to some other realm or world to reside in their respective paradises, being rewarded for the righteousness that they were able to work upon in their own power on this earth.
Even atheists, those who claim not to believe in a God, even they have a belief about the end of time. It’s bleak, but it’s a belief about the end of time as they believe that there is no spiritual realm. Everything is made up of the material stuff that we can see in this world and eventually it will all just wind down and decay until in the second big explosion, the second big bang, everything will just disappear into nothingness.
Everyone has a belief about the end of the world and it matters. It matters what you believe about the end of the world because it shapes how you live.
For the practitioners of Eastern religion, they seek to be unaffected by the joys and the happiness and the sadnesses of this world as they seek to detach themselves from this world so that they can be taken into the great nothingness.
For the Muslim, the Jehovah’s Witness, the Latter-day Saint, they pursue a life of righteousness here so that he can earn for themselves a place in the realm beyond.
And for the atheists, they live by the mantra, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, fooling themselves into believing that anything matters in a world where nothing matters.
The creed gives us a summary of what we believe the end of the world will look like and it answers the concerns and questions of all other major beliefs of the end of the world.
So today we will look at the creed as well as the summary of the scriptures’ teaching in the Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 33 to see what we believe and how that belief shapes our life in this world.
One quick qualification before I dive into this with us. I’m not giving us a grid or information that we can use to help pinpoint a date or a time when Jesus is coming back. Earlier we read from the parable of the ten virgins and the point of that parable is to be ready because we don’t know when Jesus is coming back.
Being ready is defined by the parable that sits in between the two that we have read today, the parable of the talents. God has given each of us gifts, spiritual gifts that we are to use for the growth of the church, material gifts in our homes, in our bank accounts, in our cars, in the stuff that we have in our homes. And we are to use whatever God has given to us for the growth of his kingdom.
When we talk about being welcomed as the good and faithful servant, of course, that goodness and that faithfulness comes to us through Jesus Christ, but we live it out in how we use the time, the talents and the treasure that God has given to us through the Holy Spirit.
Our focus today will be specifically on the return of the righteous judge and the hope that you and I can have as the children of God when he does return.
A GLORIOUS COMFORT
So first, let us consider the glorious hope that awaits at Jesus return.
Chapter 33 of the Westminster Confession of Faith opens with these words.
“God has appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ.”
In Acts chapter 17, in the latter part of that chapter, Paul is in Athens.
He’s addressing the philosophers there in the city of Athens, and he tells them in verse 31 of Acts 17, he says that God has appointed a time and a man for the nations to be judged. We know throughout the rest of the scripture that that judge that is coming is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He will come to judge according to chapter 33 of the Confession of Faith. He will come to judge all apostate angels and all humans that have ever lived, and he will judge according to the standard of his righteousness.
God will send Jesus back to judge for two reasons, both centered on showing the glory of God.
First, Jesus will come to show the glory of God in the salvation, the eternal salvation of the elect. God has said, God told Adam and Eve after they sinned that he would send a redeemer.
And when Jesus returns, we will see the glory of the mercy and grace that God has showered upon those who believe. But we will also see the glory of God’s justice as he condemns the reprobate, as he condemns those who are wicked and disobedient, those who refuse to bow their knee willingly to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He will come to judge.
I want us to specifically right now, a little bit later, we’ll focus on the judgment that comes upon the reprobate, but I want us to specifically focus right now on the comfort that should come to the child of God in knowing that Jesus will be returning.
We know from places in Revelation that when Jesus returns, all the ills of this world will be done away with. We know from places like Romans 8 and Colossians 1 that that all of nature is anxiously awaiting the return of this judge because they are waiting for the effects of sins to be done away with once and for all, for the earth to be remade anew so that we can see the glory of creation as God intended it.
Those promises are given to the children of God that we are and will be seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We will have all the hurts healed, all the tears wiped away. We will see the glory in the scars, both of our Savior and of the scars in our lives.
And we are to take great comfort as the children of God in the truth that Jesus is coming back to judge both the living and the dead because we are covered in his righteousness. And yes, we will stand before God and give an account of our lives. But Jesus, the advocate who advocates upon our behalf as he is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, he will advocate for us on that day and say, “He is covered by my righteousness. We will welcome him into the glorious presence of God in the new heavens and in the new earth.”
Why do I want us to focus on, why do I want us to think about the comfort that should come to the children of God right now as we think about Jesus coming back as judge? It’s because oftentimes the children of God who truly understand the depth of their sin, who truly understand that God calls us to be holy inside, not just holy outside, even though we understand that we are covered by the righteousness of Jesus, we have a tendency to read, to proclaim, “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead” and get scared.
Psychologists, sociologists have done studies on family dynamics and they’ve come up with some generalities and stereotypes that typically have a kernel of truth. In families that have three children, the youngest is typically the class clown. The middle child is typically the rebel. But the oldest child is typically the rule keeper.
The oldest child looks at his role or her role within the family and says, “I am here to keep the rules and to set the standard for all of the other children.”
This causes problems with siblings. Believe me, I know I am the oldest child. It probably still causes problems with my younger sister and younger brother. But the tendency with the older child, and I can tell you this is true as well, is to think that dad and mom only love us because we keep the rules, because we keep the peace.
And that’s why, brothers and sisters, I think oftentimes the child of God gets afraid rather than comforted when we think about the return of Jesus. It’s because we think like the oldest child, we think that the only reason God loves us is because we keep the rules.
But that’s not true, brothers and sisters. It’s not true that we are the oldest child in God’s family, and it’s not true that he loves us because we keep the rules. Brothers and sisters, the true oldest child, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has kept the rules. And we have been gifted his righteousness.
And so yes, we stumble. Yes, we fall. Yes, the flesh still wins the battle oftentimes against the spirit in our hearts. Rather than love, we pursue anger. Rather than joy, we wallow in despair.
God does not take his love from us because of those things. He loves us because he loves his son and his son has covered us in his righteousness. We don’t have to keep the rules to be loved by God. We pursue holiness because Jesus has kept the rules for us.
And so, brothers and sisters, when you read the phrase or you come across those passages in Thessalonians, which we’ll look at here in a few moments, or in Revelation or in Matthew 24 and 25, when you come across those passages where Jesus says, I am separating according to the sheep and the goats, brothers and sisters in Christ, you are a sheep and you are secure.
It should bring you great comfort when you hear that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead because he has been judged in your place and you have been given life.
Romans 8:1 reminds us that we are no longer under the condemnation of God because of the work that Jesus has done.
As we struggle in this world with our own holiness, as we see the horrors and the difficulties and the hardships of living in this world, we should be comforted by the truth that he will return to judge the living and the dead.
A GLORIOUS JUDGMENT
This line reminds the children of God of the glorious comfort that comes from Jesus’ return. But it does also remind us of God’s glorious judgment.
2 Thessalonians 1:5-12 tells us this,
“All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right. And as a result, you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are suffering. God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day that he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you because you believed our testimony.”
Notice here Paul repeats once again the glorious comfort that is ours at the return of Jesus. But he also warns here that those who persecute the church, those who reject the one that came to offer salvation, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, those who reject him will suffer the eternal judgment of God and Jesus.
In his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7, he expands upon the meaning of the Ten Commandments. You know, it’s easy for us to think we have everything right because on the outside we’ve never murdered anybody or we’ve never cheated on our wife or you know what, we’ve never really broken a promise. But Jesus dives into the heart of the human being and he changes all of that because it says it’s not only the outward appearance, but it’s the heart that matters.
We all have idols of the heart. We have all broken God’s law, even if we were perfect on the outside, we all have idols within the hearts. And those who refuse to repent will stand before the scales of God’s justice. They will be weighed according to God’s holiness and his righteousness and they will be found wanting and they will be sent to eternal judgment.
It says that in Matthew multiple times, it’s that place of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the old King James. This truth should strike terror into the hearts of those who reject the good news of salvation and that terror should drive those people to the cross to seek salvation through Jesus and the offer of God’s free grace.
But Ike, you might ask, why does God give an eternity of punishment for 70, maybe 80 years of sin? Have you ever had a friend who confided in you, who told you a secret and then made you swear that you would never tell another soul? Well, you just couldn’t handle this juicy tidbit of information, so you went to another best friend and you said, “Hey look, you have got to promise me that you will not tell a soul, but guess what so and so told me?”
Now your hope was that that friend was more trustworthy than you were, but you found out the hard way that they were just as untrustworthy as you are. When your friend came to you and said, “Why did you tell somebody what I told you in confidence?” what happened in that moment? You lost a friend or maybe you kept the friend but there was a long period of time where that trust had to be rebuilt before the relationship was exactly where it should have been.
Well, let’s ramp this up just a little bit. 10 or so years ago, Edward Snowden was given a bunch of secrets by the United States government, and he could not keep them to himself. Did he just break relationship with the United States government? Is he working on reestablishing the trust that was broken when he gave up those secrets? Absolutely not. He’s living in a country that does not have an extradition treaty with America because he knows that if he comes back, he has been found guilty and guilt for treason is death.
He couldn’t keep a secret any more than you do, but the consequences are far worse because his secret is against a sovereign nation, not just another human being.
Let’s ramp this up one more. The infinite, eternal, unchangeable, holy, just God of creation, sovereign over all things has entrusted you and you have broken his trust.
What do you as a human deserve in breaking the trust of the infinite, eternal, and sovereign God? Well, brothers and sisters, you deserve his infinite, eternal holiness, holy wrath, and justice. And that’s why we will suffer eternally for the sins of 70 to 80 years.
CONCLUSION
This line, “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead,” reminds us that there is a glorious hope for the people of God, but also a glorious judgment for those who reject the gospel.
So I’ll end where we began. Everyone has some belief about the end of the world, and this belief directs how they act in the world. As I mentioned, for the practitioners of Eastern and New Age religions, their view that everything will be reabsorbed into the cosmic nothingness leads them to detachment from the world.
If they can keep themselves from being happy at the happy things and keep themselves from being sad at the sad things, maintaining a neutral lack of care throughout all of their life, well, then they can appease the cosmic nothingness and shuffle off this mortal coil and be reabsorbed into that place of peace and emptiness. Honestly, I don’t really understand how it’s that much different from the atheistic view, but it is.
But brothers and sisters, this is a hard world to live in, and it brings us sadness at times. This is a great world to live in, and it brings us happiness at other times, and it’s okay for us to be sad at the sad things. It’s okay for us to be happy at the happy things because we know that Jesus is coming back to wipe away the tears for the sad things and to magnify the joy and the glory of the happy things. We don’t have to be detached from this world, brothers and sisters.
For the Muslim, the Jehovah’s Witness, the Latter-day Saints, oftentimes they view this world to be something that is to be escaped according to their own personal righteousness. They have a disposable view of this creation. Unfortunately, this disposable view of creation creeps into the church as well. As we think that everything’s just going to be utterly destroyed, God’s going to shuffle us on off to some spiritual realm in the sky and we’ll spend all of eternity playing harps.
The truth that Jesus will come back to judge includes the promise that Jesus will restore and allow us to see the true glory of this creation, and it is not done in our own righteousness. Jesus calls us to look at this world as the good, God-glorifying thing that it is, creation that it is, and to pursue the work of making this world more beautiful in the ways that God has given us.
And then for those poor atheists who are deluding themselves into thinking that what little bit of life they have has meaning in a world that is just going to blow up and disintegrate into nothing, well, the gospel, the truth that Jesus will return, gives them, shows them the joy of knowing that the things we pursue on earth are building up treasures in heaven. Our legacy of proclaiming the gospel to the next generation will last because Jesus will carry this world into eternity, and we need not worry that we have left the job undone because Jesus is coming to complete it.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus is returning. He will judge the living and the dead. My prayer is that this brings you great comfort, but if it brings you terror, talk to me, talk to one of the elders after the sermon, after the service, and make sure you understand.
Let’s pray.
To the great God above, bring us the comfort of knowing that your return is ready, that your return is imminent. Keep us always on the ready, keep us always faithful, and may we glorify you above all things. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we go this week, take this blessing with you.
“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his countenance to you and give you peace.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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