↓ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
↓ Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
Matthew 25:31-46 HERE COMES THE JUDGE
[CREED 2ND-ARTICLE] “And He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead, whose Kingdom will have no end.”
WE BELIEVE AND CONFESS THIS. We believe and confess that Jesus
Christ, Whom we do not now see, who reigns over all thing at the right hand
of the Father, will reappear on the Last Day in great glory to judge the living
and the dead. The Last Day is a day of Judgment.
“THE END” We have come to the end of the church
year. The 2ND-Last Sunday. In two weeks, Jesus will not appear in glory, we
will start it all over again with Advent and the preparations for Christmas
and Epiphany. But today, we focus on Judgment. And a little surprise. That
involves Resurrection. The Last Day is, first of all, a day of Life. If Jesus is
to judge the living and the dead, He must raise the dead and the change
the living so that the mortal would put on the immortal. You can’t have a
Judgment with a Resurrection.
ALL WILL RISE What may surprise you about the
Resurrection is that all rise. Not just a chosen few or an elect fewer but all.
Every last one. You could think about the Last Day as a Sunday where no
one sleeps in, but every last person who ever lived rises to greet the
coming Lord at the sound of the trumpet call of God. That includes the
unbelieving dead, the agnostic dead, the atheist dead and every other
sort of dead. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
And what a surprise that will be! Surprising to those who thought this Jesus
thing was a bunch of fairy tale nonsense. Now they stand before Him will
newly resurrected bodies, all in the power of Jesus’ Resurrection. The Lord
gets the last laugh. Even those who have spent a lifetime refusing and
rejecting Him and encouraging others to do the same all rise from the dead.
JESUS = 2ND ADAM The Last Day brings to light Who Jesus
actually is – He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world. He’s not simply the Savior of some but the Savior of the world. He
is not simply the Good Shepherd of a select few but of the inclusive many.
In His flesh, He embodies all, just as Adam embodied all into disobedience
and death. When Adam fell, we all fell, and were born fallen in Adam’s
fall. But Christ in His humanity is the Second Adam, Adam set right before
God. In the first Adam, you die, in the Second Adam you live. In the first
Adam you are condemned, in the Second you are justified and forgiven.
WE ALL BENEFIT “Christ died for all, and therefore all died.” If
Jesus’ death on the Cross is really the death of all humanity [in One Man],
then it’s also the case with Jesus’ Resurrection. It is the Resurrection of
all humanity. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ ALL will be made
Alive.” Christ is the First Harvest of the Resurrection with the promise of
“more to come.” [<-What’s that?] the more to come is the harvest of the
Resurrection of all humanity on the Last Day. In this way everyone is the
beneficiary of Jesus’ Victory over sin and death, whether they believed
it or not, received it or not.
MILLION BUCK$ It’s like having a million dollars sitting in
the bank with your name on it. You can trust it and live accordingly, or you
can deny it and live in that denial. But on the Last Day, when the accounts
are opened, everyone gets to see the victory over death Jesus has won for
them in the Resurrection of their bodies.
SURPRISE #2 And then comes the Judgment and the
second surprise of the day. You expect the judgment to be about
works, the things you’ve done that you shouldn’t have done and the things
you should have done that you didn’t do. Sins of commission and sins of
omission. Sins of thought, word, and deed. Whenever anyone talks about
judgment, it’s always in those terms. “He’ll get his in the end.” All the ways
we have of saying that when the LORD comes to judge the living and the
dead, He’s going to judge us on the basis of what we’ve done.
LISTEN CAREFULLY Here we need to listen to the Parable of the
sheep and the goats carefully. First there is a sorting, a separation. Only
then is there a discussion of what they did. First the sheep and the goats
are separated. Sheep on the right, goats on the left. “During the day,” the
sheep and goats grazed together as one flock under One Shepherd. Now,
meaning in this world, the whole world grazes all together under the reign
of Good Shepherd Jesus, Who shepherds the world from God’s Right Hand.
AT THE “END OF THE DAY” …As the sun is setting, the Shepherd sorts
the sheep and the goats into their respective pens. Sheep to the honorable
right; goats to the dishonorable left. And, it’s not what they did or didn’t
do, but what they are. What they did or didn’t do merely reflects what they
are. “Make a good tree, and the fruit produced will be good,” Jesus said.
SAVER RICHARD My dad is, [always has been] quite the saver
and quite the sorter. In the basement of our house growing up he had
many, many plastic ice cream pails with many miscellaneous items [he just
couldn’t let go of] including e.g. a bucket labelled “miscellaneous plastic
parts” which included the empty cores of Scotch tape rolls. “Sometime that
could come in handy and be used for something.” [he’d say.] Eventually,
you have to start the sorting process. Sort screws, bolts, washers, etc. And
at some point, the sorting becomes binary. Keep or throw away. Two
buckets. On the right the keepers, on the left the tossers. The choice
between the two doesn’t depend on what the screw or bolt was once used
for. They were all useful in their own way at one time or another. Is it a
screw, bolt or washer? Keep it. Is it some plastic fastener or nail? Toss it.
NOT WHAT U DO BUT WHO U ARE Sheep and goats. They/We
grow up together. They pasture together. They’re even interchangeable in
Old Testament sacrifices. They have the Same Shepherd. But the sheep go
to an Eternal Kingdom prepared for them from before the foundations of the
world. And the goats to an eternal fire prepared not for them[!] but for the
devil and his angels. And it’s NOT on account of what they DID or DID
NOT do, but on account of what they ARE.
FAITH vs. UNBELIEF The sheep are the “righteous,” that is, the
justified, those who are accounted righteous by grace through faith
for Christ’s sake. The difference between “sheep” and “goat” is the
difference between FAITH and UNBELIEF. Without faith it is impossible
to please God, no matter how much good you do. The faithful receive what
has always been theirs since the foundation of the world – the Kingdom.
They are blessed by the Father.
SURPRISE PRAISE And their works are praised. “I was hungry
and you gave me something to eat; thirsty and you gave me something to
drink. A stranger and you welcomed me. Sick and you visited me.
Imprisoned and you came to me.” They are surprised. The surprise is not
that they did these things. What surprises is that these things were done
TO Jesus. You saw only a poor man, a lonely woman, the least, the lost,
the lowly, the despised. But hidden “in, with, and under” the least of
these, is the LORD of all. And that’s the great surprise.
HE’S THE NEEDY He is the broken man in the ditch who fell
among the thieves. He is the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the poor, the
imprisoned, the persecuted, the sick. He is all these things and He
endured all these things to save you.
IF THEY ONLY KNEW… The goats, the UNbelieving, are also
surprised. “I was hungry and you gave me no food; thirsty and you gave me
no drink; a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you didn’t
clothe me, sick and you didn’t visit me, imprisoned and you didn’t come
me.” “When[?]” they ask, seeking to justify themselves. When did we see
you hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick and did not serve you? Oh, you
can be sure that they would have waited on Jesus hand and foot had they
known it was Jesus. It doesn’t take any faith to do that. If you see Jesus
walking down the street, and you know for a fact that it’s Jesus, and He
asks you for a dollar, you wouldn’t hesitate to give Him a dollar! In fact,
you’d give Him the entire contents of your wallet, …IF YOU ONLY KNEW
IT WAS JESUS.
HIDDEN IN SIMPLE THINGS Christ will always be hidden in this world.
The glorious LORD of all, the Shepherd of the world enthroned at the Right
Hand of the Father is always hidden in this world. He is “hidden” in things
like the Word, in the water of Baptism, in the Supper. And He is hidden
there to save you, to rescue you from your sin and death. And He is hidden
in your “neighbor,” whoever that may be, in the least and lost and lowly and
despised of this world. And you helping them does not to save you but you
are here and they are there to serve. Only faith can see that.
COME [QUICKLY] JESUS Our LORD says in Revelation, “Surely I am
coming quickly.” So, we say with all the saints who have gone before us,
”Amen. Even so, Come,
LORD Jesus!” [Revelation 22:20] IJ’N, Amen.