Well, g'day. I think I'm the first pastor here to Harvest that came from Australia. And if you don't know me, I'm one of the ministers here at Harvest, but I've been dedicated to be a church planter down south in the Wayland or Moline area at Living Hope. And you wouldn't know it, but it's been on my bucket list to preach here at Harvest. I know people have, you know, those big dreams of like climbing Mount Everest, but Harvest has always been, you know, a church that I've always just felt a great affinity, a great love. My wife was a member here, and so I've just always loved Harvest. I've had a Good people I know here at Harvest, preaching like Dale, and some of you know a good friend of mine named Francis Van Delden. He's a crazy Canadian. The rest of you might not know him. You're not as blessed as I am to have known him. And then to also have known men like Greg. Pastor Adrian and Wayne and and Mark our intern here, so I'm just really honored Thank you for letting me come in to preach. I'm sorry I had to come under the circumstances with Dale getting sick, but I'll still take it so Well if you please open your Bibles to Matthew 25 Matthew 25 We'll be looking at verses 31 to 46. For those that are concerned that we're going to cover 15 verses, actually I'm not touching on every one, so don't worry about that. But please turn your Bibles to Matthew 25. We'll be reading from 31 to 46. Starting in Matthew 25, verse 31, when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the king who prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 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. Then the righteous will 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? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will 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. Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty, you gave me no drink. I was a stranger, you did not welcome me naked and you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison, you did not visit me. Then they 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 you will answer to them saying, truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Let us pray that the Lord would bless the reading and the preaching of his word. Oh, sovereign, majestic Lord, We are honored to have this appointment here now to sit under your word, to receive, as we listen to your voice, all the goodness, all the blessing, all the rich privilege we have found in you, Lord. We are honored that on this night As we close the chapter of our day here, we are excited that we can close it in the knowledge of our God, who is going to minister to us greatly tonight and this week. And so, Lord, I pray that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, that you transform our hearts and in that transform our lives, that we might follow you and more courageously follow you and to comfort others in the knowledge of your gospel. Bless us in this, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. A key tenant of the Reformation, as this is Reformation Day, is only Christ, Christ alone. Now, we love that idea, we love the solos, but as we think about that, we often miss and forget about what it really means for us to be in Christ alone. We get a passage like this, and we think, wow, this is like an exam, do I really believe I'm in Christ alone." We miss how much everything is just about Christ. We take a passage of judgment like this, and it's scary to us, and it should be. Yet Matthew 25 has comfort if you're a believer. Let me give you an example of something. When I was leaving Australia and I was saying goodbye to good friends and people we loved at our church, we really loved our church in Australia, and as we were coming to the U.S. and we were visiting friends and family and visiting churches, this passage just so happens that in the conversations I had kept coming up. As we were saying goodbye to people in Australia, people were talking about how they appreciated us, but they really didn't feel like they did much. I didn't really do much. Or as I come to America visiting friends and family, there's the same refrain. I look at my kids and they're like this or they're like that. I really don't think I've done much for the Lord. I'm not much. And this passage kept coming to my mind as I would talk with people. How does our king see our Christian service? When the Lord looks at, as we think about the mundane, the messy, the just ordinary bits of our days, how does our God look upon our work in those moments? Well, we can find comfort, we can find health before the judgment throne of Jesus, and we might not at this moment know that. At first blush, As we think about the uncomfortable reality of Judgment Day, the Judgment Day doesn't sound comforting. It doesn't sound comforting back then in the New Testament. It doesn't seem comforting right now. So how could this at all bring me comfort? Well, see, that's our first issue. That's the first problem in the text. Judgment Day on its own is a scary thought. The disciples in Matthew 24, if you want to just quickly look at chapter before, at the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus is leaving the temple. And he's walking by, and the disciples are marveling at the beauty of the temple. And Jesus says, not one stone will remain on top of the other at the end of time. that there will be not left one stone that will not be thrown down. Well, in their mind, this is a really big deal. The temple is the picture of Jerusalem. It is the place where God's throne is on earth. And you are telling me, Jesus, that there's going to be a time when the temple doesn't exist? That has got to be in the end of days if that were to happen. It'd be like saying the Sydney Opera House. is going to be destroyed, or the Eiffel Tower, these iconic pictures in our brain. It could only mean Judgment Day. And so they ask Jesus, when and how is this going to happen? Jesus doesn't answer that question. When is the Judgment Day? How's it going to come about? Rather, His answer is, I'm telling you these things, verse 4 of chapter 24, see that no one leads you astray. He's rather interested in preparing them, and protecting them, and helping them. He's not worried about when, but he wants them to be prepared for when he comes again. And he wants them to be serving in love. So he gets two parables. Before we get to our text, he's giving two parables. The first parable is the virgins who are getting ready for the wedding feast. And they're supposed to trim their wicks. Now, some of them were ready, some of them were not. And the point of that parable is to say everybody is responsible before the king. Children are not responsible for the decisions of their parents. Parents are not responsible for their kids. When people stand before Jesus on Judgment Day, they are responsible for themselves. The second parable right after that is the parable of the talents, those whose servants are given talents and they use them. And then there's one evil or wicked servant that just buries the talents in the ground and he does nothing with them. Why doesn't he do anything with them? Because he doesn't have a love. He doesn't have a care for his master. The point is who's ready and who's not for the King to come. Now the question for you right now is if you are saying, are you prepared? Are you serving the Lord and are you loving the Lord, the master? Are you ready for Jesus to come? What's your answer as you sit right there right now? Well, no, I'm not. I don't see how I'm serving the Lord. I don't see I'm loving the Lord. Our first problem is judgment seems scary for us right now. Second problem is judgment day as we come to our text here in Matthew 25. Judgment day is a reckoning of my works. The tension heightens as Jesus comes to this prophecy at the end of times about the king. The tension is building. Now this is not a parable. We had two parables, now we come to a prophecy. This is a real event that's really going to happen at the end of time. This is history, right there and then. The King of Glory is going to come, he's going to sit on his throne, sitting on that throne is going to be a throne of judgment, and he's going to judge people on the evidence of their works, and he's going to reckon them according to their works. The tension is building in our heart right now. We feel even less sad and comfort right now. He's going to separate, in verse 33, the sheep from the goats. The sheep are going to go on his right hand. The goats are going to go on his left. Then verse 34, he's going to render a decision. He says, to those on the right, come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. He goes on, because you fed me, because you gave me something to drink, you welcomed me as a stranger, you clothed me when I was naked, you visited me when I was sick, you came to me when I was in prison. He says, sheep, come, inherit, because you You love the least of these, my brothers and sisters." Not everybody. When he says brothers and sisters, he's not meaning everybody in the world. He means his people, my precious little ones. You cared for them. But then in verse 41, what does he say to the goats? Instead of come, come in, he says go, depart, get out of here. Go to the place that is reserved for the devil and his angels. You see, what he's saying is, for those who don't believe, go to the place that is reserved for the devil and the demons. That means that originally, what is hell all about? Hell was not with humans in mind. It was a place of punishment for those who rebelled against the king in glory. And then creation happened with Adam and Eve, and then man rebelled against God. And for those who rebel against the Lord and do not believe in him, now that place has become the place that people go who have rejected the king. First problem is Judgment Day is scary. Second problem is Judgment Day is a reckoning of works. And then we come to an odd third problem. Look at what the verse 37 to 39, when Jesus ushers the sheep in and says, come inherit you blessed of my father, because you did all of these things to the least of my brothers. Look at what he says, the sheep say in verse 37, then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, you nailed it. We did so much for you. Is that what it says? You're right, we tried hard, we worked hard for you, and thank you for recognizing that. Is that what the sheep say? Look at 37, it says this. The righteous will answer and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 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 sheep don't see it. They're talking to the king on his judgment. He's made a judgment. He said, look at the works you have done. I'm honoring you. Come, come into heaven. Come into the splendor of the glorious kingdom that has been prepared by the father. They don't see it because they don't see that they've ever directly helped the king. Listen, if the president were to come to you and they were to say, hey, can you do me a favor? Can you help me do this project? Well, if you're doing a project for the president, I must be a pretty big deal. You know, the president and I, he's got my cell phone number. He knows me. I'm on this project for the president or the prime minister of Australia. Listen, Scott Morrison and I, we know each other. ScoMo, you know, that's what he gets. He lets me call him ScoMo, right? I'm a big deal. Look at what I get to do for the king, right? But that's not what they said. They don't see it. Lord, we'd never helped you. We would have been honored. What a prestigious thing. We would get to do a project, something for the king. But we never saw you hungry and fed you. We never saw you poor and cared for you. We never saw you all alone and visited and cared for you. They judge themselves before the true judge. They look at themselves, and as the king is rendering his judgment, and declaring what is true, the sheep are pushing back a little bit. And before the judge, they're dealing with the judge of their own heart, their inner lawyer, and they think of themselves as too small. You know, we say things like this. You visit someone in the hospital, or you provide food for someone who's a shut-in, or you sit with somebody who is struggling, you put your arm around them, and they're crying, and you sit with them. And what do we say? Say that someone says, thank you. Hey, thank you for bringing over that mail. It's not a big deal. No. Don't worry about it. It was nothing. It was nothing. I really, it's fine. It's nothing. It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. We do this. It's not glamorous work, right? We say, OK, you know, I helped mow your lawn. Not a big deal. Glad to do it. Don't stress about it. Don't worry about it, right? It's not a big deal. It's nothing. It's nothing, right? No one saw me. It's not a big deal. The king didn't see it. It's not glamorous. It's just what we do, right? I have a good buddy of mine. We'll call him Jay, because if you were to ever watch this, he'd get embarrassed. He's a humble man. But he was in high school, and he had a friend who was a non-believer. And as friends do, you talk, and they talked about his Christian faith. And the friend got upset. He was just like, that's not right. That upsets me. So he'd get in the huff and he'd walk away and then they'd have these repeated cycles where invariably they talk about the church or something in the Bible and the friend would just get upset and walk away. And so they kind of lost touch at the end of the high school and they went to college. And then one time he's seeing his buddy, his buddy had come to his same college and he's walking towards him and he's like, oh no, what's going to happen now? And the guy comes up and gives my friend Jay a really big hug. He says, I want to thank you. And my friend's like, okay, what's going on? He says, you know, when you were talking to me about your faith, it really upset me. It really frustrated me. It stuck with me. It stuck with me. And then when I came to college here, I met, I ran into another guy and it just, he talked to me about Christ. It clicked. And I just want to thank you for how often you would share with me your faith and how much it irritated me, because that's what brought me to the saving knowledge of the Lord. You know, my friend, he did not think he was kicking coals for Jesus, right? If the way we measure things, we would look at that experience, we would say to ourselves, not only am I not doing a good work for the Lord, I'm getting in the way of the Lord. That's what we do. We say this, and my friend all along, as he was sharing his faith and irritating his friend, was doing something great. Great for the Lord, and then my friend did not see it. He was surprised that anything he did mattered for the final conclusion. The sheep are like that, but what are the goats like in verse 42 to 44? They have an attitude of this. When didn't we do this for you? Hey, if you only asked us, we would have definitely done it. The goat's view is, not only would we have done it, you just needed to ask me. It's a lot like people who are in a job they're not happy with. There's a low morale there. So when you're at a job with low morale, you need someone to ask you to tell you to do. You do the bare minimum. You don't really think strategically about what's best for the job or how to finish that project in the best way. You're just waiting to get through the moment. And you'll just do what you're told. You're not going to do anything more than that. Because there's not a love there. These goats don't have a love for the king, but they know he's a king. When you're standing there before the king and he's telling you what to do, you know he's the king, but they need him to tell them what to do because they don't have a love for the king. Didn't we do this? And Jesus' point is, when you didn't do it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, my precious babies, you didn't do it to me. You see, there's an uncomfortable reality of judgment. There is a problem in the way we view the judgment day. There's a problem when we look at our works, and that's really the problem here, is the relationship between Christ and good works. Doesn't that sound like something in the Reformation? and good works, the relationship, and Christ recalibrates the way we look at good works, the way we view ourself. What was done for these sheep is unearned. Let's look back at 34. The king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you for the foundation of the earth, for I was hungry. Now we look at verse 35, we see that for and we think because. Because you did these things, that's why you're getting to go into the kingdom, and therefore we think it means it's earned. It doesn't mean because. It's for you did show forth. As an example, you evidenced what you are by these things. It's not because you've earned it, but because that you've showed forth. You in these ways have proven what you really are. The favor and the kindness and the love of the Lord is not something these sheep are earning for themselves. Rather, look at what he says. Before they ever, he talks to them about the good that they have done. The king says this, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared beforehand. That's the judgment that's made before he ever talks about their works. You see, they are on his right hand. Before the throne, the right hand, what's the right hand? It's the place of honor. It's the place of privilege. Before they utter anything, before he ever talks about their good works, where are they? They're already in his good books. They're on the right hand. They're on the right hand. They're already in the place of privilege, on the right hand of the father. And what's interesting is that's the place of the royal emissaries, the counselors, the honored people. And he says, come you who are blessed by my father. Blessings, do we earn blessings? How do we get blessings? Because we have a good father who is rich in mercy and kindness, and he blesses us. Not because of anything we do, it's because despite all the things we do, we are blessed because we are loved in the Father. He has loved us before the foundations of the earth. And he says that, come you who are blessed by my Father and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Before you ever did anything, before you first drew your breath, the Lord already had blessings. and His love upon you before you even would consider doing any good for Him. You were already the sheep, blessed, cared for, loved by the Father. You see, we don't work for blessings, we don't work for this love, but we've been loved. All the blessings. What does Ephesians 1 say with Paul? All the blessings of the Father are found in Jesus Christ. All the spiritual blessings of heaven, where do we get them? The axis point is Jesus. He doesn't just say that. He says, come and inherit this kingdom. Inheritance. How do you get an inheritance? How hard do you have to work to get an inheritance? You do no work. Actually, first of all, you have to be a child. Right? You have to be a child in that family. So he says, come and inherit. What does that mean about your relationship? It means you have to be a son or a daughter to the one who has died. Now, wait a second. I inherit blessing, but it comes at the death of someone who died. And I'm in the family, and I'm a son and a daughter died, and I get these blessings. If we think about that, we must be in the family of God before he ever says these things about us. To inherit, and what did you do to inherit these things? What did you do to be adopted into the family of God? It's the same amount of work you did to be blessed by your parents. The parents you have right now, what did you do to earn them? Or the grandparents, or the brothers and sisters, Whether you like your brother or sister or not, right? What did you do to get them as a blessing? Nothing! Nothing! You did nothing to be in the family of God. It's all because of the richness and the kindness of the Lord. And so he commands them to come and enjoy what has been already prepared for them out of the peace and the love that Christ has reserved for them before the foundations of the earth. Now, verse 37, the sheep push back. They say, no, Lord, that's not me. You didn't get me right. I didn't do these things. But look at what they're called. They're not called sheep in verse 37. Then the blank will answer him. What does it say in 37? The righteous. The righteous is a legal category. It means somebody in some court had to be declared innocent. They're righteous. Before the law, they are not criminals. They're righteous. They're in right standing before the government, before the kingdom, before they ever get to this judgment moment, They're already the righteous. They're already declared innocent. Now, wait a second. When did that happen? When did we become righteous? Because there's a previous courtroom scene to this moment. It was Jesus. Before we ever get to the judgment day, Jesus was on the cross. He took our filthy robes, our wicked robes of all the evil works we've ever done, And he put him on himself at the cross. He took off his perfect righteous robes and he placed him on us. He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God. Do you understand? The righteous are there in that situation because Jesus was already judged in their place. They're not earning anything. This is all the works of Jesus Christ. And it's not because of the way the sheep view themselves, but it's because Christ did this work on their behalf. Christ got low. Christ became humble. Christ became spiritually, physically poor. He came into a messy, unglamorous situation, and so when the sheep show forth this kind of love towards other brothers and sisters, it's not because of something they began, it's because of the work that God began in them. How do we know this? Because in 1 John 4 19, It says this, we love because he first loved us. This love that they're showing to other brothers and sisters is a reflection on the vertical of all that love that they have received, all of that mercy and that kindness and that grace that they have received, it's lived out to one another. The vertical leads to the horizontal. That is why they do it. and it reflects in how people treat others in a poor and messy situations. So what's the point? Here's my final point, and I'm going to land here. Where's the comfort? Well, let's draw some helpful conclusions from what we've just heard in this text. First of all, we need to know this. We judge wrongly. Jesus, the king, frames his decision on what he is doing. He says, come, enter. Why? It's because not of anything they've done, but because of what he has done. It's what he has done, evidenced in you. They don't see the good that they've done in themselves. And frankly, my friends, nowhere in the Bible does it say you need to know every good work you've ever done. Frankly, if I'm honest, If you knew how effective, how helpful you were for the kingdom, and every time it was good, do you know what you would do? You would do what I would do in that situation. I'd have a tendency to make it about me and take the credit. You see, we don't need to know every time we are effective. We judge wrongly. We even judge worldly. We look with pragmatic eyes and we look at the conclusion and we say, I talked to that person about the Lord. They didn't become a believer. I'm not effective. I'm giving up on evangelism. I'm not effective at this. I'm doing a bad job. I'm talking to this one person. I don't feel like they're comforted. I'm praying for that one person. My prayers aren't being answered. I'm not an effective person who prays. I'm not an effective evangelist. You know what we say to ourselves? We say other things. We put other names on ourselves along the way. We say, I'm fat, I'm dumb, I'm a bad father, I'm a bad mother, I'm a bad wife, I'm a bad husband. We load these things on ourselves because we have these worldly eyes. We remember the mistimes, the moments were ineffective. But God, in His record, in His perfect reckoning, is holding as treasures all the good works we do that he has worked in our lives. Not because they are generated from within us and we've done it by ourselves, but because he's worked these things in us. And he holds them like parents hold trophies. You know, like when you go to soccer and you get that participation trophy, right? And you think to yourself, well, I didn't really kick any goals that year, so obviously that soccer trophy is worthless. But parents, what do they do? They hold on to all those coloring pages and all of those awards because they're gems, they're jewels. God has a way of reckoning our good works in ways that we don't even see. Just like my friend Jay, he never found himself to be all that effective as evangelist. He actually found himself to be effective at annoying people with the gospel. We're either a savoring aroma from those from life to life or the aroma of death. Do you know we're effective when we see people come to know the Lord? We're also effective when you really upset people with the gospel. That doesn't feel comforting. That doesn't feel comforting. We're effective. But God sees the good. And God is not flattering us. You know, someone has a new baby. By the way, there's a lot of young kids in here. So I get the idea that you understand babies, right? There's there's you look at a baby and we're kind we're generous people and we look at this baby in there Oh, look at that. Baby has the mom's eyes and Has the dad's strong chin. Look at that baby. It's so beautiful. We don't have the courage to say the baby looks like a raisin, right? We were so so like we're generous. We're kind right and And so we think that Jesus is just being generous or kind. But look at verse 40. Is Jesus being really kind? He says, truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. The Lord is saying what you've done. When he reads out and he is telling of their good works, he's saying you actually did this. You really did do it. The bad works we have done have already been judged at the cross. The only thing that is left is the good works. All that is left is the good. It is real. So if we're doing a work in Christ, if we're bringing the gospel, and it's kind of like a performance review at the end of time, we worry about performance reviews at our jobs, right? We get to that performance review. How's it going to go for us? Well, we toss and turn with performance reviews, but we already see how it's going to go. At the end of time, he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. God's not worried about the numbers. How many people are coming to this church? Listen, I don't know how many people are in here. It doesn't matter. How many programs does this one church have versus that other church? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He cares about how do you care for loving His people. So what this does is it frees us to be what we are. If we're not going to get smacked down at the end of time, and it's not about playing this movie of all the evil we've done, if it's not going to be like that, then this frees you to serve the Lord knowing that He will and does use you. that he is going to work with all authority and power. Jesus said this in Matthew 28. He says, all power and authority has been given to me, so therefore you go out into the world discipling, baptizing my name, right? Evangelizing and discipling. Why? Because all the authority, all the power, is in Jesus Christ. And so we're able to love people, we're able to share the gospel, because what we do matters. It matters when you have a crying child and you hold them, it matters. That's good work. When you're patient, you want to say that word to somebody, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your kid, and you hold back, and you're patient and you're kind, it matters. It matters when you're talking to that difficult friend who has the same problem again and again, and you listen. and your kind. These small moments, they matter. Now, you could be a goat, too. There might be goats here. If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, that matters, too. You see, the goats are worried about doing what is good, being a good person. And being a good person, and they've talked about the good here. Hey, look, I did good works. And Jesus' point, because you didn't do it for me, because you're not tied in faith. You see, there's all of this goodness that you hear about, it's all found in Jesus Christ. Nobody gets in heaven by being a good person. It's all about the work of Jesus Christ. The goats tried to be good, and it wasn't good enough. If you don't believe in Jesus, Now is the moment to learn of a generous, kind King who came on the earth, who suffered and bore the judgment, the hell you deserve, suffered and died, buried in the grave for three days and raised again. My encouragement is believe in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for the extravagances of your grace, of the goodness and the kindness that we find in you in Jesus Christ. So that judgment day is not something that scares us, but is a time of reward. Thank you that we find that. But Lord, for any of my friends here who don't know Jesus, who have not found that peace and that kindness, Lord, their hearts are struggling. They feel all alone, shipwrecked out at sea. Lord, please help them. by working faith in them. They don't even know how to ask for that faith. Lord, please give that faith to them. Give eyes and ears, give them sight to the blind, hearing for the deaf. Help them to know you, Lord. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, our final song is In Christ Alone. Would you stand with me as we sing In Christ Alone? This glorious song is sullen now, when through the fiercest drought and storm, Here in the love of Christ I stand. Oh God was satisfied, for every sin a name was laid, here in the death of Christ I live. There in the ground, his body laid, by the world, by darkness slain. And cursing all, he couldn't stay. Out from the grave he rose again, and as he sang, this is ♪ From life's first strides to final plan ♪ ♪ Jesus commands my destiny ♪ ♪ No power of hell, no scheme of man ♪ ♪ Can ever block me from His hand ♪ ♪ Till He returns or calls me home ♪ Receive the Lord's blessing upon your week. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.