“Let Earth Receive Her King”
Matthew
25:31-46
When you noticed
that the sermon hymn was going to be “Joy to the World”, your first thought may
have been, “Oh no! First it’s the stores
that are pushing Christmas so early, then the radio stations have started
playing Christmas music already. Now the
Pastor has us singing Christmas songs before Advent. What next?”
Actually, I’m not jumping the gun by choosing this hymn this weekend. Earlier this year, my Sunday morning Bible
Class did a study of several hymns, looking at the background and taking a
close look at the words of the hymns.
“Joy to the World” was one of the hymns that we studied. In looking up the history of the hymn, I
found that Isaac Watts, who wrote a new hymn almost every Sunday to fit the
Scripture readings, actually wrote this hymn for the Last Sunday of the Church Year. It wasn’t intended to be a Christmas hymn at
all. Over the years, churches began to
use it as a Christmas hymn and now it is one of the favorites. It didn’t start out that way though. To sing it this weekend on the last Sunday of
the Church year is very appropriate. If
you look carefully at the words, it talks about receiving the King. It talks about a time when no more sins or
sorrows grow. It talks of a time when
the nations will be made to acknowledge glory of His righteousness. That all talks about things that will happen
when Jesus comes again. There will be
great rejoicing at that time for the people of God. For the believers it will be a time to repeat
the sounding joy.
The Gospel lesson
for today is another of the lessons that Jesus taught about the end times. Two weeks ago we heard about the wise and
foolish virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom to come. The lesson was that you need to keep your
faith strong. Have the fuel for your
lamp of faith as you waiting for Jesus’ return.
Last week we heard the next section from Matthew 25 about the talents
and the difference between those who saw the Master as loving and merciful and
the one who saw the Master as a hard and evil man. Today’s Gospel lesson explains what will
happen in the end when Jesus comes in all His glory. He reinforces that reality that He will be coming
again. There should be no doubt in the
minds of the faithful that Jesus will return.
Even when it seemed to the believers that He wasn’t coming because it
didn’t happen as soon as they hoped, they should not lose heart. He will come again. He spoke about it repeatedly and we know that
His Word is the truth. That is an
important lesson for you today as well.
It is now over two thousand years later and He hasn’t come yet. Should we despair and give up hope? Not at all.
God’s people had to wait centuries for the Messiah to come the first
time. It shouldn’t surprise us that we
are still waiting for Him to return. The
call to be prepared is still there.
The second thing
that is brought out as Jesus spoke to His disciples is that there will be a
separation of the people of the world when He comes. He used an image that was familiar to people
of that day. As a shepherd separates the
sheep from the goats, so He will separate people. Those who are on His right are those who will
have the place of honor and privilege.
Those on the left are condemned.
The last verse of the reading tells us that those on the left will go to
eternal punishment.
This reinforces
that teaching that there will be difference at the time of the final judgment. This is nothing new for those who had been
paying attention. Remember that this
section was the final portion of a lengthy discussion of the end times. It actually started near the beginning of
Chapter 24 and continued to the end of Chapter 25. The last three lessons that I mentioned
before all talked about the difference between the faithful and the
unfaithful. The foolish virgins were
left out of the marriage feast, a picture of heaven. The servant who buried his talent was cast
into utter darkness where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, a
picture of hell.
Now Jesus becomes
clearer in His description of the difference between the sheep, the faithful,
and the goats, the unfaithful. The
faithful gave evidence of their faith through acts of love and service to those
in need. The unfaithful demonstrated
their lack of faith by their lack of love and service to others. You have to be careful when you hear this
passage that you don’t jump to the conclusion that this passage teaches some
kind of works righteousness, in other words, the idea that you get to heaven
because you have done a lot of good works.
That would be inconsistent with all that Jesus taught and with all that
the other Scripture writers taught about salvation. Interpretation of the Scriptures must always
be consistent with the rest of what Scripture says. We know that we are justified, or declared
righteous, by God’s grace, His undeserved love for us, for Christ’s sake,
because His lived a perfect life for us and died on the cross as the punishment
for our sins, and the blessings of His work for us become ours through faith,
itself a gift worked in us by the Holy Spirit.
Recall Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you are saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.” By grace you have been saved from eternal
punishment because of your sins. Grace
is God’s undeserved love for you. The
salvation through Christ has come first.
Then come the good works that are a response to God’s great undeserved
love. When you truly appreciate the
blessings that you have been given by having your sins forgiven, you will
respond to that blessing with acts of love and mercy toward others. That is what Jesus was saying. The ones who were given the kingdom were
actually surprised because they didn’t think that they had done anything for
the King but His response was that when they did these things for the least of
these my brothers, you did it to me. Those works of mercy and kindness were
simply done because they reflected the love of God in their life, the love that
they had already received from God’s merciful hand.
Those on the
other side were also surprised when they were consigned to the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels.
Their response was, “What? We
didn’t do anything.” Jesus came back
with the condemnation. “You are
right. You didn’t do anything.” There was no response of faith because there
was no faith. When someone tries to base
a hope of salvation on works, there may be a great deal of self-satisfaction
but none of those works are enough to merit salvation before God. Because you thought that you could earn your
own salvation, there was no compassion for others. There was no real love and concern for those
in need. There was no response to God’s
great love because you figured that you don’t need it. You thought that you could do it on your own. You can see how all of what Jesus described
depends first on saving faith which trusts completely in Jesus as your Lord and
Savior. By grace you are saved through
faith in Jesus. It is a gift from
God.
That’s what it
means to be prepared for the coming of the Lord. That is what makes the coming of the Lord
such a joyful time for the believer.
That is what makes it possible for us to look forward to the coming of
the Lord with joy and not dread. We wait
with true faith in our hearts, a faith that responds to God’s love with a life
of love and mercy that reaches out to touch the lives of those who are hungry
and thirsty for the Gospel. We love
because God first loved us and gave up His only Son for us. He is the one who rules all things, especially
His church here on earth. He rules the
world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of His
righteousness and wonders of His love.
All nations will be gathered before Him.
He will separate the believers from the unbelievers like a shepherd
separates the sheep from the goats. It
is then that all will acknowledge the glory of His righteousness that stands in
our place and the wonder of His love that ushers the believers into eternal
life. For those on His left, it will be
too late. They will know what they
missed by their stubborn insistence that they don’t need anyone’s help. The believers, on the other hand, will
inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Together we shall sing the praises of our
King for all eternity. Amen.
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