The Last Sunday of the Church Year - November 26, 2017 A+D
Matthew 25:31-46 The Final Judgement
+ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. +
In early 1875 Elisha Gray1 transmitted a few musical notes over a telegraph wire. He thought to himself, "If I can send music, perhaps I could send the human voice." The New York Times reported predictions of a "talking telegraph" and the public began to grow eager for it. A year later Elisha Gray believed he had the answer; voice chambers like tin cans connected by a wire in a liquid that could turn vibrations into signals. He believed he had finally invented something that would truly revolutionize everyday life. He had invented the telephone.
But inexplicably, he did not put his idea on paper for two more months. After finally making a sketch, he waited four more days before he went to the patent office. And on March 7, 1876, when Elisha Gray arrived, he was told that just two hours earlier a school teacher had come through that same door with his own sketch and had already applied for the patent. Elisha Gray, for all his cleverness, is not a household name.
Patent number 174465 was given to a man named Alexander Graham Bell. When you compared the sketches, the voice chamber’s design, and the wire in liquid you saw they were almost identical.
The reason we know the name Alexander Graham Bell and have never heard the name Elisha Gray is simply because one man seized the opportunity when he could while the other waited until it was too late.
When the final judgment comes – when Christ our King returns in His glory – it will be too late to act. If you rely on your own personal behavior, thinking that the good outweighs the bad and that gives you an “in” for eternal life: on that day the only thing you will be in for is a rude awakening. God sets the gold standard by which those people will be judged – Christ. A life lived to the last tittle and jot of God’s intent. He demands absolute perfection for those who make their own deeds the measure of their worthiness for heaven. As Jesus said in the sermon on the mount: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”2 However, Paul cautions us “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”3 as well as David: “If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?”4 On the last day, Jesus tells us, all the dead will be raised. Together with the living, they will stand before Christ the King in judgment. We will be called to answer for what we have done, both good and bad. Jesus calls this separating the sheep from the goats.5 That is a terrifying prospect, having to recount everything we have done to earn our place on the left with the goats!
Throughout the history of God’s people, we have been shown two paths – the path of the sheep and the path of the goats. The goat path goes back to Adam and stretches forward to each one of us. The goat path is the path of sin. But we also see God’s hand laying out the path of the sheep. The sheep’s path also begins with Adam but is lined with comforting promises all along the way to our own day. God promised to free His people from slavery in Egypt and raised up Moses.
Freed from slavery, Israel was still in bondage to sin. The book of Judges records that “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”6 God raised up the prophet Ezekiel to reclaim His people from false gods. Ezekiel proclaimed the Word of the Lord to the scattered people of Israel after the fall of Jerusalem.7 The Lord promised then to gather His people back together in one flock by His own hand. He also promised to raise up for them one shepherd to guard over them, lead them, and feed them physically and spiritually: David. King David would lead the people of Israel to reclaim the city of Jerusalem.
King David foreshadows our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Jesus said “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”8 We don’t see a lot of flocks of sheep being tended by shepherds in our area of the world. You might think that a shepherd walks behind the flock, corralling them together and pushing them from behind in the direction they need to go. As one traveler to the Holy Land noticed, the shepherd actually walks in front of the flock, and the sheep follow him.
That still leaves us with the goat problem. Which are we? Sheep? Or goats? If a sheep mates with a goat, the offspring are most often stillborn and the ones that survive are sterile and sickly. Genetic engineers have successfully intervened to cross-breed a sheep with a goat - you get a creature called a “geep”.9 It has both distinctly sheep-like features and goat-like features, and can produce offspring. If a laboratory geep mates with a goat or sheep it will, however, produce either a pure goat or a pure sheep. Sheep and goats do not belong together – certainly not in the same body! It is against the laws of nature.
We are geeps. Which sounds like the last day will be very confusing – but it isn’t. Just as sheep do not belong with goats, the presence of sin within us goes against the natural order – God’s natural order, His original plan for us. The sheep will still be separated from the goats. We harbor both natures within us, the child of God and the child of the devil. For we who trust in the Lord’s promises, there is no need to fear the last day, because when we were reborn into Christ, our goatish nature was drowned. Paul explains:”For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”10 When Christ’s purity and perfection were placed onto us by His death and resurrection through our baptisms, the only product of this divine intervention by the lamb of God was to produce a pure sheep.
We will hear our Shepherd’s voice as He calls us by name on that great day He returns a King in His Glory. We will stand at His right hand and “[t]hen 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.”11
Jesus will say to us: “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.”12 And we will reply, “Lord, when did we ever do anything like that?!” When your old goat was drowned, and though he still clings to you like a coat of mangy fur, the Holy Spirit entered you. It is His good work that began that day in you, and it will be those deeds that the Lord will recall on the last day. Perhaps they will look something like this:
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are often moved to charitable giving. Those that have share some of that which God blesses them with the less fortunate. But it is not always the “haves” giving to the “have-nots.” Like the widow who gave all that she had to live on as her offering in the temple,13 sometimes acts of true selflessness come from where we may least expect.
One night about a month ago, a young woman, Kate McClure, ran out of a gas while driving into Philadelphia on southbound I-95.14 She pulled onto an exit ramp in a sketchy area where a homeless veteran named Johnny Bobbitt had been living. She saw him approach, telling her to lock her doors and that he would use his last twenty dollars to buy her gas a few blocks away.
“He said, ‘I’ll be back. Trust me,’” Kate said as she told the story. Ten minutes later, Johnny returned. Kate had no cash to repay Johnny then and there. She promised to come back and do so.
She and her boyfriend repaid him the next day and stopped by from time to time to give him some cash. Then they decided to start an online fundraising campaign, with the goal of raising ten-thousand dollars to help Johnny Bobbitt get the first and last month’s rent for an apartment, a vehicle, and expense money until he could find work. Their crowd-funding effort went viral and the response has far exceeded that, raising over three-hundred thousand dollars through the generosity of more than ten-thousand five-hundred strangers. Now, isn’t that something? But the story doesn’t end there!
What will Johnny Bobbitt be doing with all that money? “He plans on donating a large portion to causes that are close to his heart. Johnny said those causes include programs for “homeless vets and a few organizations that helped him the last year or two.” He also said he wants to help a woman who works at one of the organizations and who “always went above and beyond” her duties to help people.
With all of the tragedies we’re hearing about in the news, isn’t it absolutely refreshing and inspiring to hear about some people that are not only “paying it forward” but in all directions?
The questions were once asked, and they may be questions we have asked ourselves: “How many second chances is God going to give me?” and “How can I ever repay him for all the blessings He has given to me?” When we think about it, we have as many chances as we have breaths left to draw – and we will need them. As far as repaying God? We most certainly can’t. That is why Jesus was sent into the world the first time – ”… not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”15 so that we who have been served and ransomed can show other geeps that they have a Savior in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then, when He comes into the world that second and final time, we might hear Christ “the King… answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”16
+ Amen +
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
+ Amen +
κήρυξον τὸν λόγον
1The Elisha Grey – Alexander Graham Bell patent controversy is well documented, though it remains a controversy mired in murky and contentious correspondence. While there is still much debate over who really invented the telephone first, there is no dispute that Elisha Gray missed his opportunity.
2Matthew 5:48 (ESV).
3Romans 3:23 (ESV).
4Psalm 130:3 (NIV).
5Matthew 25:32.
6Judges 21:25 (ESV).
7Ezekiel 34:12.
8John 10:27-28 (ESV).
9http://messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-sheep-goat.htm cited under the GNU Free Documentation License.
101 Corinthians 15:21–22 (ESV).
11Matthew 25:24 (ESV).
12Matthew 25:35-36 (ESV).
13The Widow’s Offering: Luke 21:1-4.
14http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/philadelphia-homeless-man-reward-fund-johnny-bobbitt-20171124.html?mobi=true
15Mark 10:45 (ESV).
16Matthew 25:40 (ESV).