The Sheep & The Goats: A Sermon

Text: Matthew 25:31-46
Judgement



If asked, I guess most of us would say that we are still reeling from the terrible, evil events that happened in Paris on Friday night.  I must admit that I went to bed on Friday knowing nothing of the terrorist attacks in Paris and awoke to the horror of it all yesterday morning.

At first there was a feeling of unbelief, of incredulity that anybody could do anything so vile and evil.  I have never understood how one person can take the life of another, how they can hate somebody so much, or be so angry with them, that they can actually kill them.  It was bad enough on Wednesday and Thursday hearing the awfulness of the murder of Becky Watts, but to hear the news and see the images of the Paris attacks was even worse.

What many will find equally hard is that there may well be nobody to punish for the crimes that were committed, for the murder of over 120 people and the injuring of many more.  Those who attacked the people of Paris on Friday night were suicide bombers who, with one exception, took their own lives; believing that they would then go to heaven and spend eternity being pleasured by a multitude of virgins.  They are very mistaken in their belief, of course, but there is still a feeling amongst many people that by taking their own lives they have escaped the judgement due to them.

Judgement, as a concept, is important to us as human beings.  When somebody has done something wrong we believe that a judgement should be made about the wrongness of what they have done and the appropriate punishment meted out.  That is why many are frustrated that the Paris terrorists won't be judged, because they want them to suffer for what they have done and see their suicides as the easy way out.  We want to see those who have done wrong judged and punished!

Despite this call for judgement, we are not too keen on the idea of judgement when it comes to ourselves and our eternal destiny.  Judgement is not a subject thought about or preached about in by Christians very often in the 21st century.

A great preacher was in the middle of his sermon and noticed an old man in the congregation had fallen asleep.  The preachers suddenly shouted "Fire, fire.!"  The old man woke with a start, looked round in confusion and asked "Where?"  The great preached pointed a firm finger at him and intoned "In hell."

Preachers don't do this sort of thing anymore, at least not in the Methodist Church.  Today we talk very little about judgement, perhaps because we are worried about turning people away from church, perhaps because we ourselves don't like to think about judgement too much, perhaps because it frightens us.  Yet judgement is very much a part of the Christian message and it is something we must consider if we are to truly understand the gospel.

Our passage this morning is about judgement.  It is a vision of something that will happen when Jesus returns to Earth in glory.  It comes in Matthew's gospel after a series of warnings about the end times and parables from Jesus around his Second Coming.  It concerns the final judgement when Jesus decides who I'll receive the reward of eternal life in heaven, and who will receive eternal punishment, whatever that might mean.

This passage has much to affirm for us as Christian believers: it is a passage that speaks very directly to us and to our lives in the twenty first century, it is a passage that speaks very drectly to the situation in Paris and to various other appalling situations around our world.


"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all his angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne."


This passage gives us hope in what sometimes seems to be an increasingly violent and war filled world.  There will be a decisive end to it.  Jesus himself tells us that one day he will return to us in glory as King of all.


The set lectionary gospel passage from Mark's gospel also speaks of the Second Coming of Jesus and of the signs that will accompany it, including wars.  Jesus tells us not to be afraid because he is coming soon!


We are sickened, saddened and frightened by the sort of terrorist attack that happened in Paris on Friday.  Only a week earlier a Russian airliner was downed by terrorists with an even greater loss of life.  In those areas which Islamic State holds land thousands of our Christian sisters and brothers have been brutalised and murdered.  Paris was not an isolated incident, there is conflict and violence and death all over our world and all sane and sensible people long for an end to it.


Jesus promises us that there will be an end to it.  When he returns the violence and evil will come to a permanent end!  We are told in the book of Revelation, "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."


Jesus is coming back, we don't know when it will be, but we must be ready.  We are told elsewhere in Matthew's gospel that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.  We are warned to be ready, like the wise virgins who were ready for the coming of the bridegroom.  Jesus himself did not know when his return would be.  We must be ready.  Jesus could return whilst we are sitting here in Ashton Methodist Church this morning or it could be hundreds of years before he sets foot on earth again; we just don't know, but we must be ready in case Christ comes during our lifetime.


That is not to say that as Christian people we can just sit back and do nothing about the state of our world and wait for Jesus to put everything right.  The Parable of the Sheep and Goats makes that clear.  We will be judged by how we have responded to Christ and by how we have lived our lives.


Now hold on, some of you are, I am sure, thinking: that isn't the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ!  The whole basis of our Christian Faith is that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.  Jesus himself said, 'I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me."


Jesus also said, "No one wh puts his faith in the Son comes under judgement; but the unbeliever who has already been judged because he has not put his trust in God's only Son.  This is the judgement, the light has come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil.  Wrongdoers hate the light and avoid it, for fear their misdeeds should be exposed.  Those who live by the truth come to the light so that it can be clearly seen that God is in all they do."


We will all one day be judged on the basis of our faith in Jesus Christ.  If our faith is genuine we will be judged as sheep and receive the reward of eternal life.  If we do not have faith in Jesus, and faith a big as a mustard seed is sufficient, then we will go to eternal destruction.


So what has all this talk of having faith in Jesus as the basis of our judgement got to do with the parable if the sheep and goats where it's implied that it is by our action or inaction that we are judged?


It's actually quite simple.  If we have a genuine faith in Jesus, if Jesus is truly our Saviour and Lord, then we will be feeding the poor, we will be giving water to the thirsty, we will be giving clothes to those who need them and we will be looking after the sick.  This is not an exhaustive list.  If our faith in Christ is genuine then we will be doing all that we are capable of doing to help those in need when that need comes to our attention.



The attack in Paris on Friday night brought many accounts of horror, but it also brought accounts of hope, of people helping each other.  People opened their homes to strangers to give them shelter.   After the attacks, for example, Paris taxi drivers turned off their meters and just took people where ever they needed to go, without any charge.  In the midst of evil there was human charity and goodness.  We will never know how many of those taxi drivers were true disciples of Jesus, but what they did was very much in the Spirit of Christ.


Practically, in this situation, there isn't much that we can do as Chrustian believers in the UK, but we can pray.  We can pray for the families and friends of those who lost their lives, we can pray for healing for the injured and we can pray for those in power that they would seek a workable peaceful solution to the threat posed by Isis.


We can, as followers of Christ, help those whose lives are shattered by the conflict of dying the atrocity in Paris is one example.  Thousands of refugees are streaming across the Mediterranean and Europe, many of them sisters and brothers in Christ, fleeing the violence and war that had killed members of their families, demolished their homes and completely obliterated their way of life.We have a duty to help those people, to welcome them into our country and to give them every assistance we can.


We are going to be judged by Jesus.  Ever human being who has ever lived is going to be judge by Jesus, including the terrorists who attacked Paris on Friday, including each and every one of us.  We often wish that this was not the case, because we know somebody who has died who was apparently not a Christian.  I spoke to another Minister about it, Rev Malcolm Maymand, who suggested that we can never know for certain who is and isn't Christian, that deathbed conversions are possible and do happen.  It is not for us to judge others, that is for Jesus to do, and he is always perfectly fair and perfectly just.


Jesus will judge whether we are sheep or goats, and the image implies that the judgement isn't easy. In this country sheep and goats are easy to tell apart.  Sheep are round woolly things that lurk by the side of unfenced roads and jump out in front of cars, goats are skinny things that eat anything and everything.  In Israel sheep and goats look very much the same and are often mixed up in the same flock.  Only an expert shepherd can tell them apart.  So it is with the people who will come before Jesus for judgement, we cannot know for sure who is or isn't a follower of Jesus, only he knows for sure who has genuine faith in him.


Jesus will one day judge us, but it is a judgement we need not fear if we are his faithful genuine disciples.


I was sitting in this very church several years ago, attending the "Called to Serve" course run by David Wood.  We were discussing the parable of the sheep and goats and the lady sitting opposite me said, 'This passage really frightens me."


This was a group of sincere dedicated Christians trying to discover how they could better serve God and follow his will for their lives.  There were no new or inexperienced Christians and yet this lady said, "This passage really frightens me."


As a group we were able to reassure her that if Jesus Christ was her Lord and Saviour then she will certainly be judged a sheep.  I can say the same to anybody here today who had genuinely given their life to Jesus Christ.

In these days of incomprehensible violence, in these days of war and suffering, when we hear of terrible atrocities like the attack on Paris on Friday, it is good to know that these things will not go on for ever: that Christ will return, that "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all his angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left."

Jesus is coming and his coming will bring perfect judgement and everlasting peace.  The early Chrustians used to pray, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"  As we think of recent events in Paris and elsewhere let us too join in that prayer, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"