Jesus tells us He will return and judge the world. What does that really mean? Should we be afraid? As we wrap up “the Future is Here,” Pastor Tim will help us consider these questions.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you as we wrap up our series, The Future is Here. Tonight we come to the end of our series and also of Jesus’s sermon that we’ve been going through the last few weeks. We’ve thought a lot about his call to serve, the ways that plays out in our lives, how the Spirit works in our lives, how we should be anticipating him. And now we come to the conclusion, to judgment. I think that probably makes most of us nervous. It feels like it’s hard to see where we’re going. It feels like it’s kind of murky. It feels sort of like—I love smoke bombs, and one of the things that a smoke bomb does is it makes it hard to see for a little while. When you’re doing it for fun, it feels like you can’t really see much, like things have just disappeared, but it’s not so bad. It’s actually interesting. And of course, I love the smell of it as well, and so on. It’s wonderful. It’s part of Fourth of July. But when we’re talking about life, and it feels like there’s this giant smoke bomb of judgment ahead of us, and we feel like we can’t see through it, it’s not a fun thing. It’s a scary thing, an intimidating thing. But if we look at the progression that Jesus has taken us through in his sermon, we see that it’s not really so much a smoke bomb as a beautiful grand finale of fireworks. A challenging one, yes, but one that we can have hope in.
So let’s go ahead and open in prayer, ask for our God’s guidance, and then we’ll explore this subject of judgment. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and for your love. Thank you for being with us, for speaking your truth to us, for giving us hope even in a subject that is hard, like judgment. Lord, would you give us comfort tonight, when you turn our hearts all the more towards you. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
The subject of judgment is woven throughout Scripture. We might look at a passage like this, and some people do, they want to just yank it out because it feels like we’ve been talking about grace and God’s goodness, and here we are with judgment. It feels like, well, can’t we just forget that? But no, it’s an essential part of the progression that we find in Scripture. Take a look, for example, at Daniel chapter 12. Daniel said this that was reported to him, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
Take a look at what Paul says as well. He says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” So we find passages like this, passages that speak of God’s judgment and that challenge us to do good, and if we’ve been thinking about God’s grace as we should be, we may want to ask what happened? What happened to the God of gracious love that takes us even when we fail, even when we don’t do good? And how do we get to judgment? How do we connect those two? Should we connect those two? What about grace?
Let’s take a look at a quote from D.A. Carson. I think it’s helpful to kind of get us into the mold of this. Carson says, “Grace never condones irresponsibility, even those given less are obligated to use and develop what they have.” That’s what we’ve seen over these past few weeks. We saw it with the bridesmaids. We saw it with the servants given the talents. Again and again, we see examples of God’s grace and his call to be in relationship to him, but in that a call to responsibility. And as we think about judgment, it’s not a repudiation of God’s grace or somehow a softening of it and saying, well, there’s this grace, but there’s a huge catch to it. But rather, in a message like this one, Jesus is calling us to responsibility to live in the grace that he’s given us. But we can’t help but ask the question, if there’s going to be judgment, will I measure up? Will God just be angry at me? Can I look forward to judgment day or do I tremble about judgment day?
To understand these questions, we need to think about two things that we learned from the story that we’re about to look at. It’s not quite a parable. It’s the sheep and the goats. It’s somewhat familiar because we’re used to those terms being tossed around, but let’s really think about what Jesus says. Let’s start by looking at the things that he praises and condemns, and then we’ll go back to the beginning of the story.
Let’s go ahead and look first to verse 35 of Matthew 25. This is what Jesus says to those who are going to be praised, the sheep, as we learn later on. He says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.”
What are we told? The righteous then answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”
The king will say, will answer them, “Truly I say to you, as you did to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Later on, he condemns those who didn’t do these things. And he says it in the same language. Listen to this again. “For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me. Naked and you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
Then those who are condemned will answer saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you?”
Then he will answer them saying, “Truly I say to you, as you did not do to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
So again, we jumped partway into the story. And that’s for a reason. We will come back to the beginning. I want us to start by focusing on how Jesus, in just these few words that we find in this story, repeats not once, not twice, not even three times, but four separate times the list of things that he praises if they’re done and condemns if they’re not.
And in those, we don’t necessarily see a condemnation of a bunch of wicked behavior. We don’t see those who are being called unrighteous being singled out for all the horrible things they did, where they beat up people, like some of the examples in the parables, or were thieves or anything like that. What do we see? They simply didn’t do these different acts of mercy and love and service.
Why is that so important? It’s because Jesus calls us to be a family, and notice here how he addresses those who are being served in these things. Yes, Jesus himself isn’t there in front of the righteous or the unrighteous and they’re intentionally giving Jesus a drink or food or clothing or visiting him in prison. But what does he say? If you do this to the least of my brethren, if you do this to one of the family, then you’ve done it for me.
And so what we see here, what distinguishes those who receive a positive judgment from a negative judgment, is a lack of family care. They’re looking at their fellow believers. And there’s been some debate: does he mean by brothers? Is he talking about sort of the global family of God or is he speaking specifically of the church of followers of Christ? And it seems clearly like the latter of the majority of people over the centuries have interpreted it that way.
Because when Jesus refers to brothers over and over again, and when we see that used throughout Scripture, it’s referring to those that Jesus has called together, the family that he invites us into in the church. What does he say about that family? Well, he says you need to treat them like family.
John Calvin goes so far as to say that those who don’t, those who ignore this, are actually sacrilegious; that they might as well just be blaspheming God if they’re going to treat other Christians as if they weren’t worthy of care. God’s challenge for us, this challenge as we’re told about judgment, is that we should be a people who, well, act like God’s people. And we should be a people who look to others who are God’s people and we care about them. And one of the ways we do that is we don’t show favoritism. And we don’t look at other people and think, can you offer a benefit to me?
Because here’s a temptation. If you think about someone in prison, what does that person have that he or she can do for us? A person starving, what can that person do for us? Often the answer is nothing, at least that we can see. Now if it’s a stranger, we’re tempted to start weighing those things. Is this going to make me feel really good because I helped this person? Is it going to be seen by others and they’re going to like me because I’ve helped this person? We might do those sorts of calculations. But what if it’s a family member, a beloved member of your family? What if it’s your brother or your sister? Well, you would just go and get them out of prison or you’d visit them. You’d provide them with food and clothing.
Why would we do that? Why do we do that for those who are closest to us, a really close friend? Why do we do that? Because we love them. Because we see value in them intrinsically, not because of what they can do for us. And that’s what Jesus says we should do to all the fellow believers in the church. Because we should see them not as people who can potentially benefit us or clearly have missed the mark and can’t benefit us. How should we see them? We should see them as those that Jesus died for, that he calls his own, and that because he’s adopted us into his family, we’re now related to his brothers and sisters. Not just a word we throw around, but something we should live.
Okay, so that’s what the idea is here. And then of course we can expand it further and say, well, if that’s good to do to our brothers and sisters in Christ, then yes, of course, it’s good to show mercy outside of the family as well. We should be people of mercy. And at its best, that’s what the church has done over the years.
But if that’s tied into judgment, doesn’t that mean salvation is by works, not by faith? If it requires showing these acts of charity, and if we don’t show them that we’re going to be thrown in with those unrighteous and say, when do we have these opportunities we missed out on? And Jesus is going to say, go and be separated from me for all eternity. Isn’t that works?
Let’s think about this for a moment. Let’s think about what we do. Again, we look at people, and we’re looking for their value. What does Jesus look for? Looks for people who are his. And in that we start to actually get an answer. It’s going to sound like I’m dodging the question for a moment, but as we go on and we start to pull together the rest of Jesus’s story and look at what he’s saying, it’s not actually what we might fear.
Let’s take a look at verse 31, because what we see there when we go on into verse 31 is that our actions are not who we are. Let’s take a look. Jesus says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on a glorious throne; before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another. The shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will place the sheep on his right, the goats on his left.”
Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
Then he will say again, we’re jumping to the end as he responds to the unrighteous, and he’ll say to those on his left, “Apart from me, you cursed into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
So we see those called into the blessedness of God’s presence. We see those sent off to eternal separation. You might say, Tim, I thought you were going to help pull us back around to grace. It sounds like it’s just getting worse. We’ve heard about how there are these works we should do. We should be loving towards other believers. And okay, maybe it’s not every person that Jesus is talking about here, but it seems like an awful lot of people I need to be kind to. And if I fail, I’m sent to eternal punishment in hell. This doesn’t sound like grace.
And indeed, Jesus wants us to wrestle with this. He doesn’t tell this story in a way that allows us just to toss it aside. He wants us to think about how are we valuing other people? Are we seeing other people as people who are of God, who are of great value to him? Are we discarding them like the perhaps very festive and beautiful paper plates and napkins that you used at the Fourth of July picnic? Only useful as long as they’re useful to us, and as soon as they’re not, they’re to be discarded. Is that how we’re living?
He wants us to be challenged in that, and so he does up the ante. But even as he does so, even as he describes this, he also shows grace, even if it is very subtly. And to understand that, we need to understand the setting that he’s describing.
By describing sheep and goats together, that’s an alien concept to us today, unless you’re a sheep and goat farmer, but it was a common sight in Palestine at the time. Oftentimes shepherds would have both sheep and goats, and during the day they would graze together. But at night they required different care, and so the shepherd would separate the sheep and the goats apart because they would need to be handled differently. Also, at different times it was worth separating them because they don’t produce the same things. While you could get something of value from both, sheep were more valuable because of the quality of the wool that you could get off of them. It was useful then, just as it is now. We appreciate things that are made of wool. And so you would separate the sheep and the goats, and look for the ones that could produce the wool.
Now, again, you may be saying, you just keep going, and we keep not seeing grace here. But consider this: why does Jesus pick this metaphor? Why does he use a metaphor of sheep and goats to talk about the righteous and unrighteous? And I think it boils down to this very important point. A goat doesn’t decide to become a goat. A sheep doesn’t decide to become a sheep. A goat can’t try harder and produce wool. Why does a sheep produce wool? Because he or she is a sheep. Because of how God made that sheep. Because God has given that sheep the ability to do so.
And what does that tell us about us? We can’t make ourselves, if we’re goats, sheep. And we can’t make ourselves sheep if we’re goats. We can’t go back and forth. No matter what we are, God enables us to be just like these sheep and goats. And that’s where we start to see the grace. You see, yes, there were sheep and goats, but why were they sheep and goats? Because God gave them the ability to be so. Why could the sheep produce that wool? Because in his glory, he enabled them to do so. Why can we do the acts of righteousness that he describes here? It’s only because he gives us that coat of wool that is of great value. Not because we’re doing it out of our own welled-up value that we build up.
And in understanding that, we start to understand the tone of the coming judgment. Because the judgment speaks to what God imbues in us as worth. And it comes down to in us, not a coat that’s sheared off, but a relationship to the Father. Throughout this parable, we see it drenched over and over again. He refers to the least brother. He’s thinking in familial terms. He’s thinking about our relationship to him and to the Father. That we should be focused on how we relate to our God.
And we’ve seen that not just in this parable, but throughout these stories. We’ve seen it with the bridesmaids and their relationship to the bridegroom. Were they concerned with being ready for him? And ultimately, those that weren’t, the bridegroom said he didn’t know. When we think about the master and his servants, again, it’s a relational thing. Those that produced more talents were those who took whatever was given to them, and they saw the value in it, and they saw the value in the master’s trust, and they wanted to do something with it. The wicked servant, his problem wasn’t they only had one talent. The wicked servant’s problem was that he didn’t see his relationship that he had from the master who had entrusted him with that talent. He didn’t have a relationship with the master.
And we see that over and over again in Scripture. Those who turn from God, those who don’t show the good fruit, are those who don’t actually have that relationship with our God. What makes us a sheep or a goat, ultimately, is being adopted into God’s family. That’s the key point. We are, in some sense, goats who God adopts, and because he’s the God of the universe, suddenly we become sheep that can produce wool. It’s all in God’s adopting.
It’s not that the sheep and goats are surprised that they’re sheep and goats. They’re surprised because suddenly the sheep are realizing, wait a second here, I was a goat and I’m producing wool. I’m a sheep now. I’m of greater value. I can produce something that will benefit more people. That’s why they’re surprised. They realize, I didn’t try to do anything special. I wasn’t trying to show kindness to Jesus when I gave water to that person or I visited a prison. I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just doing what I do. My wool was growing. It was just happening. Why? Because God adopted us.
The one-talent servant, his problem is that he’s not adopted into the family. When he looks at God, when he looks at the master, what does he see? He doesn’t see the one who entrusted him with hundreds of thousands of dollars in that one talent. He sees a hard and cruel master who’s looking to challenge him, looking to punish him. And in that, we see a picture of the goats too.
They’re not surprised that they’re being condemned. They just didn’t understand how it all played out. And that’s true of the one-talent servant. He isn’t surprised. He expects the master to condemn him. What he doesn’t realize is that his condemnation is coming because he had the opportunity to be related to the master, to see the master as one who would invite him into the joy of the master. And instead, he had this picture that he had formed of who the master was and held the master at arm’s length because he thought that punishment was coming. Indeed, it was, but not because it was inevitable, not because that punishment was coming from a cruel and horrible master, but because he discarded the relationship that he had the opportunity to have with the master.
And when we look at judgment in the Scriptures, it often seems like people will say, well, how can God be so cruel? How can a loving God do these things? But when we understand that God is inviting us into a relationship, he’s saying, you may be goats now, but in relationship to me, you’re a sheep. You’re producing wool. You’re going to show kindness because my Spirit is going to work in you and enable you to be a sheep.
Suddenly, it doesn’t sound like a horrible, cruel thing God’s doing. Yes, it should. It should. And it should bring us to him with fear and trembling because we see the holiness and the righteousness of our God and know he could do these things. But it should put us in a wonderful sense of awe because he could do these things. He does do these things, and yet he offers that we could be those brothers and sisters who instead rejoice in his joy.
We looked earlier at Paul speaking of that coming judgment in 2 Corinthians, and he goes on later in that chapter, and let’s take a look at what he says. He says, “For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all who all have died, and he died for all, those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
You see, our actions and the coming judgment are related, but not in the way that we think. They’re not related because they define who we are. They’re related because they come out of who we are. And when God makes us a sheep, when God declares us righteous, when we realize that we can have that relationship with the king, suddenly it changes how we live. And that’s what Paul says there.
There’s only one who died for us. We’re not going to earn our salvation. We’re not going to make ourselves righteous. But what happens when we recognize that? We start to live for him instead of for ourselves. Not perfectly. At the moment, we’re kind of this weird sheep-goat combination, but God’s already declared us sheep. We might be kind of weird looking right now with a bunch of wool up front and maybe a scrawny back, or our front looks like a goat’s head, but back in the back we’re kind of fluffy and it’s sort of, what is this? Yeah, at the moment, we really should be judged as those who are rejected, but God offers us something better, and he offers it in relationship to him.
It’s all about what’s happening inside. The one who has declared us righteous.
And note in that the beauty of what happens in verse 34. He says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Doesn’t say, come, you’re not really supposed to be here, but I’ll let you in the door. No, he says, the thing that’s been prepared from all eternity is meant for you. Come into it.
There we start to see the beauty and the joy of judgment because he looks at us and sees Jesus as the sheep, the only, the very Son of God, only Jesus himself could ever really be. He looks at us and sees that. The unrighteous, on the other hand, like the one-talent servant, are tossed away into eternal punishment, not because they somehow didn’t measure up in the way that the righteous did, but because they reject that relationship. They lived broken. They lived a broken relationship with God, and they go to a broken destination.
Notice unlike the eternal joy of heaven that we read about in verse 34, when we turn to verse 41, he says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” He doesn’t say prepared for you. The eternity is broken, just like the relationship with God calls us.
He calls us to turn to him and to relate to him because what’s happening inside that matters.
I’ve already mentioned, I love fireworks and I have a couple of them here. This is a really nice fountain that produces beautiful sparks. It’s called the tricolor sprayer. It’s from Black Cat, which any fireworks fan knows makes the very best. And it’s beautiful. Another thing, you know, though, if you’ve shot off fireworks before, is that you’re going to get some that are fantastic and some that are duds. And looking at these two, I can’t tell which one is a dud and which one isn’t. The only way I can tell is by lighting them up and seeing what they produce.
But if I light them and the one fizzles out and the one doesn’t, is it the thing that’s being produced that ultimately makes it a dud or not? No, it’s not that. It’s what’s inside. It’s the combination of the fuse and the gunpowder and whatever else is in there that makes it work. Something is wrong with the one and not with the other.
It’s the same way when Jesus talks about the works we do. Those works are those sparks coming out, creating a beautiful display. And when we fail to do that, when we’re a dud, when we’re a goat, it’s not a matter that God is angry with us because we aren’t doing enough righteous works. It’s a problem that’s broken inside, and instead of a fuse or some missing gunpowder or a misaligned tube, it’s a misaligned relationship with the one who made us.
Jesus challenges us instead to refocus. The challenge here is to say, I want that relationship, and if we do, we won’t be surprised. He offers it to us. And then when he gives it to us, in those times that we’re still acting more goat-like, he’s challenging us: act like who you are. Live as the one I’ve made you to be. Yes, you still look a little bit like a goat on one part of your body. Yes, you’re still not producing beautiful wool, but I have declared you a sheep. So go and live like it. Love the church. Love the people in the church. And then love the world.
How? Just as he has loved you, he has loved me.
Is judgment intimidating? Yes, but judgment is a judgment of hope because we are those invited into relationship with him.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, it is intimidating to think about the day that we will be judged, and if we recognize how holy you are, we recognize how wholly short we are of you. And yet, Lord, would you help us to see ourselves as those whom you have called, see you as our loving Heavenly Father who invites us into relationship, that we would not look at you as the cruel taskmaster looking for one who will fail to show kindness to others, but instead that we would see you as the one who is transforming us, who invites us into relationship that we might produce the wool of righteousness.
Lord, if we’ve never trusted in you, would you nudge us with your Holy Spirit tonight that we might experience not your fearsomeness, not your anger, but even tonight for the first time your love. And for those of us who look and still feel like some weird mutant between a sheep and a goat, Lord, would you help us to see what you see us as, as sheep, made sheep because of the blood and the righteousness of your Son, our Savior Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Well, I hope this series has been helpful to you. As we’ve thought about the end times, we’ve seen how it relates to us today. And it’s so important to not just see it as some distant theoretical thing, but something that applies, because Jesus has given this to us to encourage us.
As we go into our new series next week, we’re beginning a brand new series. And this time, we’re going to continue that trend of thinking, well, how does this stuff apply to us? But we’re going to be thinking about Christian doctrine, the beliefs that we profess, in a brand new series called The Pieces of Faith.
We often see all these scattered doctrines around, and even the word doctrine maybe makes us nervous, and we think, boy, this sounds like heady stuff. Maybe it’s not for me. But we’re going to walk through the things that Christians have confessed, and think about why each one of them is important to us. And of course, we’re not going to cover every single doctrine out there, but we’re going to cover some big ones. And in that, we’re going to think about what Scripture says and how it applies to our lives, how it assures us of God’s grace, and how it calls us to live.
If you know anyone who has questions about what it means to be a Christian, or is trying to figure out if they are a Christian, consider inviting them next week to join us for that series at 7 pm. I hope that you’ll come as well, because whether you know the Christian faith really well or are just entering into it, all of us could benefit from studying it more and thinking about our God who is with us.
If there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen. I’d love to hear from you. Or leave a comment in the comments below. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I look forward to seeing you again next week.
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