Christ s Return: Judgment Day Matthew 25:31-33 March 18, 2018 Rev. Dave Benedict

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1 Christ s Return: Judgment Day Matthew 25:31-33 March 18, 2018 Rev. Dave Benedict You've heard the one about the guy who fell off the observation deck of a skyscraper? Halfway down, someone called to him from a window, "How's it going?", and he answered, "Not too bad, so far." That's a fair description of human history. Our world isn t too worried about its predicament. But, in the same way the man who fell from the skyscraper was headed for a moment of truth that would define his whole trip, so is human history. We're headed for a moment of truth. If we are building a list of future certainties from the Bible, we have to include Judgment Day on our list. It is a 100% certainty. The Day of Judgment. When Jesus Christ returns, every human being throughout history will stand before Him, ready or not, and be held accountable for the life they have lived. Like all of the other topics in this series, this is a huge topic. We could spend weeks on it. We won't, but we could. Instead, I want to cover the basics about judgment by answering five often-asked questions. Let's get right to it. Question # 1: Who will be judged, and what will it be like? Who will be judged? Or cutting to the chase do Christians still have to experience judgment, even though we've received salvation through Jesus? And the answer is simple. Yes. Every man, woman, and child who ever lived or ever will live on this earth will be judged by Jesus when He returns. Romans 14:10-12 puts it rather neatly, For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written, "As surely as I live," says the Lord, "Every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God." So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Ok. Let me take a quick temperature check. What is your reaction to this news; you will face the judgment of Christ. How does that make you feel? Does your pulse go up? Are you concerned about the certainty that you will face judgment for your life? Being a Christian doesn't excuse us from this judgment, but it does give us a way through judgment. Which we ll explore in some detail today. Well then, on what basis will we be judged?

2 Our text gives us the image of separating sheep and goats. One herd, but two destinations; sheep go to the right and eternal joy in the presence of God; goats to the left and eternity in hell. Until the Day of Judgment, the herd has lived together, but on that day, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will separate the herd for their final destination. But here is the heart of that image. By nature, all of us are goats. Under the unblinking eye of Jesus, from whom no secrets are hidden, all of us, even the best of us, are goats. If justice were the only criterion of judgment, there would be no separation. We would all go the left, to the eternal fire of hell. Sin is sin. But, thanks be to God, mercy is also part of God's judgment. He gives every person the opportunity to be among the sheep as a gift of grace. And if we have authentically received that gift, we will be among the sheep. "My hope," says each sheep, "is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. That solid rock I stand upon; all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground leaves me still a goat." Separating the sheep from the goats. That's one image of judgment. There are others throughout the New Testament. But do you know what stands out to me in all the judgment passages? Surprise. I'm constantly struck by how often the people in Christ's judgment stories are surprised by the judgment they receive. Like the virgins whose lamps went out. Or the steward who buried his talent. Or the goats who said, Lord, when did we see you in need? People who thought they were doing the right thing, only to discover, on Judgment Day, that they were not. According to Jesus, there are going to be a lot of goats who thought they would be sheep. Why is that? And why do almost all of the judgment passages refer to things we have done as the basis for our judgment? Like 2 Cor. 5:10, which tells us, "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one of us may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Could it be that our salvation is based on our works, after all? The answer to these questions come as we sort through some of our misunderstandings about the basis of our judgment. At the heart of it, most people believe that judgment is based on our behavior, that our judgment boils down to basic goodness. I am a good person. He is not. Some people, though, believe that our behavior plays no part in our judgment; all that matters is that we say we believe in Jesus. The truth is that both positions are mistakes.

3 First, there are people who understand themselves as Christian, maybe even very religious people, but people who have never placed their faith in Jesus. They go to church. They work on the committees. They put money in the offering. They live decent, moral lives and they done acts of ministry; but they have never placed their faith in Jesus. They have never owned the fact that they are a sinner, a goat, by nature, and so they've never found it necessary to cast themselves upon God for mercy. It's as if church membership, and not Christ's sacrifice, achieved their salvation. Those people will find themselves among the goats on Judgment Day. Goats with a good resume. Churches are full of people like this. Maybe even our church. And so, the certainty of an approaching Judgment Day should force us to ask ourselves this question; "Am I one of those people"? If the honest answer is yes, then we should immediately acknowledge our sin and humbly place our faith in Jesus, alone, for our salvation. The opposite mistake is to say that once we have professed a faith in Jesus, we're safe from judgment no matter what we do or don't do. And that mistake is just as deadly. We cannot escape the testimony of the New Testament, from the Apostles, and from Jesus, Himself, that a true conversion to Christianity produces fruit. It's not just about salvation; its about transformation. To profess faith in Christ and then show no corresponding change in our attitudes, our allegiances, or our behavior is an empty profession a counterfeit conversion. Jesus said, in Matthew 7:21, Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. It is all grace. Both our salvation and our transformation. But to presume upon that grace with no intention of also doing the will of God is folly. Many a goat, on Judgment Day, will be surprised. "Hey! I said I believed in Jesus. Why am I still a goat?" Will you be among them? Time for another pulse check. Have you ever considered that your obedience to God s will or lack of it does play a part in your judgment? Jesus makes it clear that it does. Good works are not a means of grace. Heaven forbid. They are a response to grace. And it is our works, in the end, that demonstrate whether our profession of faith in Jesus was real, or simply a selfish attempt to cover our bases. Believers don t presume on grace; they demonstrate the grace they ve received by living a new life.

4 Don't get me wrong. It's not about being perfect. It's about being earnest. And if you are earnest in your profession of faith, you will begin to live according to God s will. And you will be among the sheep on Judgment Day. Count on it. On the other hand, if you have no desire to live according to God s will, you really should question the authenticity of your faith. I said there were five questions, and we've only covered one. Let's move on. Question #2, Will Christians be punished for our sins in any way? In other words, I know I'm a Christian because I have earnestly placed my faith in Jesus, but still, I keep on sinning, so will I be punished, even though I am a sheep? Once we've settled the question of what constitutes a saving faith in Christ, this next question is easy. Punishment for sheep? No. Sheep do not get punished. Sheep enter into the presence of God as if they had never sinned, ever; washed clean by the blood of Christ. Romans, chapter 8 tells us, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. Ever. Period. My Christian brothers and sisters, put every thought of punishment, every fear of it, out of your mind. The end. Question #3. Will Christians be rewarded for faithfulness? Or, as the old Southern Gospel song asks, "Will there be any stars in my crown"? Will those among us who do mighty, or even quiet acts of faith be rewarded for them in heaven? Surely, there is an abundance of reward imagery in the Bible, like Ephesians 6:8, where Paul says, Serve wholeheartedly, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does. So, will some Christians receive medals of honor, or more status and privilege, or, at least, more recognition in heaven than others, because of their Kingdom achievements on earth? Well, obviously, in this, we enter into speculation. Are the rewards talked about in Scripture literal rewards as we understand them, like medals, or do they represent something else. And on this question, I've come to stand with the majority of evangelical commentators. The rewards we see mentioned in Scripture refer, not to special commendations for certain individuals, but to the unspeakable joy of eternity in our Father's presence. Heaven is our reward. And, though we have no way to even imagine it fully now, by all Biblical accounts, living in the presence of our God is all the reward we could ever ask or want. Now let's move to the last two questions; hard questions.

5 Number 4. Is there really a hell? And, if so, what is it like? Is there really a place called hell? Hell, even in the church, has gone out of fashion from the days when a Puritan like Jonathan Edwards could famously preach about the fiery pit, stoked and ready, mouth open, to swallow unrepentant sinners. Once science proved there is nothing below us but geology, the idea of a real hell seemed silly. Here is a cover on the magazine, U.S. News and World Report, a smiling devil in a flowered shirt and sandals serving cold drinks to a couple in bathing suits and sun glasses on lawn chairs in hell. No one wants to take hell very seriously. But is there really a hell? Absolutely. There is, indeed, a real hell. If we want to believe there really is a heaven, then, by the same Biblical evidence, we are obligated to believe there really is a hell. The New Testament refers to hell 23 times. Jesus taught there is a hell. And so, the next question. What is hell like? Could there possibly be a kinder gentler version than the place of fiery, eternal torment we've imagined from the Biblical references? A more palatable version of hell can't be gained just by wishing it so. Since hell is a Biblical concept, we must draw our understanding of it from the Bible, and not from our desire for it to be bearable. My study shows me that while there is a range of Biblical options for understanding what hell will be like, all of them are, necessarily, options that should make any sane person quake. Hell can only be hell. As we speculate on the nature of hell, we're left with the same dilemma we had last week in wondering about Christ's return; are the Biblical references to be understood literally, or metaphorically? In other words, is hell an actual lake of fire in which unredeemed creatures burn eternally without being consumed? Or is the Bible s fiery imagery symbolic of the spiritual torment of living eternally outside the presence of God? From the 14th century, when Dante wrote his epic poem, The Divine Comedy, with its description of hell as an inferno, we've had a way to imagine a fiery pit of torment, unending thirst, and worms that never die. But recently, thanks to writers like C. S. Lewis, we've been able to imagine a different kind of hell; a gloomy, eternally-overcast wasteland where utterly self-possessed residents are doomed to live in hopeless isolation from one another and from God,. A bleak eternal longing for a love lost forever. Eternal heartache.

6 So, which is it? Fiery torment or eternal heartache? We don t know; we re left to speculate. But whatever hell will be like, the prospect of it should disturb us, frighten us, motivate us to avoid it at all costs. And that leads us to the last question. What happens to unbelievers? What a horrible question. Which of us doesn't have someone we love deeply who simply will not put their faith in Christ? And so, we avoid this question and all of its implications. But it remains a crucial question. What happens to those people who choose not to accept the gift of grace God offers? Again, there is a range of answers that honest Christians have developed as they have grappled with the Biblical material. The most widely held position of the Church, over the years, is that people who die in their unbelief will spend their eternity in hell, either a literal fiery hell or an equally dismal relational hell. There is, also, the Roman Catholic concept of purgatory, in which people are given the opportunity to do penance for their sins. And there is another view a minority view, to be sure that, rather than spending eternity in the torment of hell, unrepentant souls are mercifully extinguished upon judgment. This view is called by the rather blunt name of annihilationism. Here again, the issue is not what we would like to happen to unbelievers, or what we think is just, or even what we can bear. The issue is that God will do what He will do. God will be just, even if, from our perspective, it seems otherwise. It has been helpful for me, even so, to eliminate the elements of vindictiveness or retribution from my view of judgment. Hell is not God s payback for our rebellion. Rather, hell is the just consequence of our rebellion, and it is choice we make. God, though He desires it for no one, allows us that choice as part of the dignity of our free will. It is the only ethical thing He can do. As evidenced by sending His own Son to die in our place, God has tried everything short of coercion to convince us to accept His grace. To coerce us into faith would violate every principle of freedom and love. And so, there is a hell. We can choose to enter it, or not. The message of an impending Judgment Day is not a message of condemnation. It is a message of grace and hope. There is a way to pass through the coming judgment, and there is still time to make the choice. Anyone can avoid the eternal despair of hell by earnestly putting their faith in Jesus.

7 What s more, we can still help others avoid it, too. In the words of a condemned criminal to his confessor, "If you really believed a man would spend eternity in such a place, you would spare no cost or effort until he knew it too." Sheep get this, and they actively work to help others know the truth of God s grace, too. So, there it is we can be certain there is judgment awaiting each of us, with an eternity in heaven or hell at stake. Heaven made heaven by the undiluted presence and love of God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or hell made hell by the complete absence of God s love. Heaven is for goats who have been transformed into sheep by God s gift of grace, free for the receiving. Sheep pass through judgment into heaven. Count on it. With that firmly in mind, let s finish by returning to our text, the whole passage this time, remembering the insistence of Jesus in connecting the identity of His sheep with behaviors that demonstrate their nature as His sheep. Sheep serve Jesus by caring for others, especially for those He calls the least of my brothers and sisters. Are you caring for them? Goats serve themselves. Does the evidence of your life reveal you to be among the sheep or the goats? This has to be asked. According to Jesus, Himself, authentic disciples serve Him by serving others, people with needs. The life of an authentic disciple is a My life for Yours kind of life So, I ll leave you with the question this passage requires us to answer. Is your faith authentic? Does it reveal itself as authentic by a lifestyle of serving Jesus by serving others? Don t wait until Judgment Day to find out. Do the will of your Father in Heaven. It is what sheep do.