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Last Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, November 23, 2014


The King's Heart


Text: Matthew 25:31-46

Today is the last day of the Church year. We call it Christ the King Sunday. All our texts speak about Jesus as king. Kings, for the most part have a bad name in human history. That is because, a king has absolute power, and that can make him a great blessing or a horror. It all depends on the king’s heart. Today’s text from the Gospel of Matthew shows us the heart of King Jesus, and it is a heart of deep love. Alleluia!

It was Wednesday of Holy Week. Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives with His disciples. He was giving them last minute advice, instructions and encouragement. Two days later, He would be lifted up on a Roman cross to die for the sins of the world. On the third day after that, He would rise again triumphantly from the dead. They were five days away from the first climax of human history. And already, Jesus was pointing to the second. We call Matthew chapters 24 and 25 the “Olivet Discourse,” because of where it took place. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus addresses the disciples’ questions about the end times, and tells them of His Second Coming. Here in this passage we read this morning, Jesus is pointing to the judgment day, when He will return in glory with His holy angels as King of kings and Lord of lords. And He will sit on the throne in judgment over all the nations of the world.

The judgment day is a day that is predicted and anticipated, longed-for and dreaded, all through the Old Testament. For over 800 years, the prophets had foretold a day when God’s people would be vindicated. The enemies of Israel would be defeated. On that day, all that is prideful and lofty would be brought low, and justice would roll down like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24) The enemies of Israel were the enemies of God, and the day of Judgment would be God’s answer to the age-old question, “How long, O Lord, must I wait?” (See, e.g., Psalm 119:84)

In God’s plan, none of this could happen until Jesus came and died on the cross and rose again. And on this day, just two days away from Calvary, Jesus spoke of the Day of the Lord. Only this time, it was not a prophet who was telling how it would be. It was the King Himself. It was the Judge Himself.

This is not a text in which we should be mildly interested. This is a text to be taken very seriously by every believer. For this Word of God is one that has implications for every human being who ever lives. Over the years, there has been so much scholarly debate about this passage that a veil of confusion has been thrown over it.

• Scholars have disagreed over who is meant when Jesus says, “the nations.”

• They have disagreed over who He meant by “these, my brothers.”

• They have speculated over whether this is the final judgment, or the first of two judgments.

• They have argued over where this judgment fits in relation to the thousand year reign of Christ in Revelation 20:4.

• Some have argued over whether this text undermines the theology of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.

It seems to me that when Jesus sits down with His disciples two days before Calvary and talks about the Judgment Day, we should be listening with our hearts, not engaging in intellectual debates. He is not trying to confuse them. Nor does He intend for us to spill blood over such things. He is telling us three simple things that we, His disciples, need to know:

1. He is going to judge the world.

2. There is a heaven and there is a hell.

3. He takes personally how His beloved are treated.

Jesus, the King, is going to judge the world. He paints a very clear picture. The Son of Man, Jesus, will come in His glory with His angels. And He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations. And He will separate the righteous from the unrighteous, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Scholars can quibble over who gets judged when, and how many judgments there will be. But there is no escaping the plain truth that there will be a judgment, and Jesus is going to do the judging. And at some point, everyone in the world is going to be judged. “All the nations” is a totally inclusive expression. Nobody will escape the judgment of Jesus. He is the King of kings. And thank God He is the God of love. Thank God His mercy is great and His steadfast love endures forever.

Jesus is also telling us there is a heaven and a hell. As He says in verse 46, He will send the unrighteous away to eternal punishment, and He will send the righteous to eternal life. Modern folks like to think that there will be no judgment. They like to think God is too kind to punish anyone, and that there is no such thing as hell. In fact, many like to say that all pathways lead to God. Well, that is not what Jesus says. Here, He said He will send the unrighteous into “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41) We see that image again in the lake of fire in Revelation 20:15.

Our well-meaning friends think they are loving their neighbor by telling them it doesn’t matter what they believe or how they live or which gods they worship. But to truly love someone is to have the heart of Christ, and to want what He wants. He doesn’t want anyone to go into that lake of fire. But He demands that to be saved from it, we must repent of our wicked ways and turn to Him as Savior and Lord. To love someone is to share that critical information with them in as truthful and gentle a way as possible. You don’t love someone by encouraging them to stay on the road to destruction.

The heart of Jesus shows clearly in what He said on that day to the disciples walking with Him toward His date with the cross. He gives them a glimpse of the judgment day, and He shows them people gathered from all the nations. He separates the righteous from the unrighteous. To the righteous, the King will say,

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” [Matthew 25:34-36]

What Jesus is saying is that whenever you do something like this for one of His brothers, you are doing it for Him. He takes it personally. The righteous hear Him say they did all these things for Him, and they say, “I don’t remember that. When were you thirsty or hungry or sick or naked or in prison? When were you a stranger?” And He says, as you did it for one of the least of these my brothers, you did it for me.

In the same way, the unrighteous are confused. “I don’t remember that.”

And Jesus says, “You know all those sick people you ignored? Remember all those hungry and thirsty people right on your street and you did nothing to help them? Remember your cousin Robert who spent seven years in jail, and you didn’t care to visit him? Remember the time you slammed the door in the face of the St. Stephen’s community outreach team?”

And the unrighteous say, “Lord, I didn’t know it was you. I thought they were just no-account people who didn’t deserve my attention.”

And Jesus says, “Exactly my point. Those were my family. You were doing that to me.”

I was raised in a military family. We moved around the world with my father in his various assignments. We made a lot of friends, and military friends are especially close with each other.

When I left home in my teens, a pattern began in my life. Everywhere I would go, I would receive a call from someone who had been friends of my parents. They would invite me over for a meal. They would ask how I was doing. They would ask if they could do anything to help me. They hardly knew me. But they loved my parents, and they were doing it for my parents.

Why did Jesus tell us all this? For two reasons. First, He was showing us yet again what it means to love. His disciples. Jesus expects His disciples to be like Him. And He said that He had come—

to proclaim good news to the poor.... to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. [Luke 4:18-19]

And Jesus is also telling us is that this is how He demands that everyone treat us. We are His family. And that is a great encouragement to us. We don’t get our encouragement from taking His words as a promise that everyone is going to treat us well. The encouragement is in knowing that this is how much Jesus loves us. He loves us so much that it gladdens His heart when people treat us with love, and it breaks His heart when they do not treat us with love. It encourages us to be reminded that the King has a big heart, filled with love, and that we are the special object of His love.

When Jesus described the people in need in this discourse, He was describing the vast majority of the world’s Christians.

• Christians in most places live on pennies a day or less.

• They suffer all kinds of diseases from poor nutrition, and unclean water and poor medical treatment.

• They go to bed hungry.

• Water is scarce in many parts of the world.

• Many are in prison because of their faith.

• Christians are oppressed by Hindu and Muslim and Communist regimes.

Jesus is saying to Christians everywhere the same thing He said over and over to His chosen people in the Old Testament: The day of the Lord is coming, when all will be made right: and the righteous people of God will receive their reward, and those who have rejected God will receive their punishment. And Jesus will usher in a time of eternal blessing.

One of the memorable parts of this passage is the people’s surprise as they receive their judgment. Neither the righteous nor the unrighteous remembered being compassionate with Jesus in His hour of need. That is because, if you are righteous, you love Jesus, you trust Him, and you obey His commands. Being compassionate to those who are suffering is so much a part of who He is that it becomes part of our identity as well.

In the same way, those who reject Jesus are going to reject and mistreat His emissaries. The messengers come bearing a great gift. They come with the Good News. that “God loves you and has prepared a place for you in eternal life, if you will repent and turn to Him.” But instead of being overjoyed and thankful, some will reject Jesus. They will have no interest in Him or His message. They refuse to believe in Him. And that will show in how they kick the messengers out and spurn them and abuse them. That has been the sad reality throughout history. But Jesus loves us, and His triumph on Easter is our glory.

My friends, be blessed by the simple message Jesus is teaching us today. If we parse and pigeonhole and analyze and challenge this text, we will miss the simple and wonderful message. The message is that Jesus is King, and He has a heart as big as the universe. And you and I are the delight of His heart, the people who have become His family by accepting His grace and turning our lives over to Him. He takes it very personally when people love us, and when people do not. And on this last Sunday of the Church year, the message is that the day is coming when Jesus will set everything right. And those who love Him will receive the reward of eternal life.

© Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

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