Synoptics - Matthew 25

We are back in the synoptic, if some would like to distribute the few that we have had for how many years now? Since 98. September of 98. Not a math major there, I do. September of 98, are you sure? I thought we were at 9 years, not 14.

Excessive. That seems really excessive to me. I mean 98, that was a different millennium. O2? That's still talking a decade. Alright, well, but I'm not here all that much. And then we do other things.

We just did Romans 1. I don't know. I don't know, I feel judged. I'm feeling judged here. Anyway, we're in section 299, which is Matthew chapter 25, if you don't have a synoptic. We're getting into the last sections.

I mean, if we're in Matthew 25, there's only 28 chapters of Matthew. And we're getting to the end. It can't go forever. But as I've said many, many times, we're getting into the toughest materials. So it is a challenge to be sure.

The Parable of the Talents and Faithfulness in Small Things

Last time we read through the parable of the talents. Please remember a talent is a certain amount of money. I've actually heard entire sermons where it took the modern English meaning of talents.

Don't waste your piano playing.

It's really not exactly, you know, you can make a connection, I suppose. But I just got the feeling that someone had sort of misunderstood what was going on. But we had looked at the fact that there was a little bit of derisory, Matthew and Luke, as to the specifics.

But it will be as when a man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them and made five talents more. Obviously, he wasn't in the stock market in 2008. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more.

But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time, the master of the servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents.

Here I have made five talents more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Now notice in the parallel in Luke, you have different numbers.

It could have been a different time in the telling of the story, of course. But because you have been faithful in very little, you shall have authority over ten cities. And so there is a setting of these people and great authority based upon their faithfulness in small things.

And he who had the two talents came forward, saying, Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here I have made two talents more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little.

I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And in Luke, that becomes five cities. And then you have the man who received one talent. And he says, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not winnow.

So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. But his master answered him, You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I have not winnowed?

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And in my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents.

For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. There men will weep and gnash their teeth.

Now once again, there's an interesting difference when you look at the Lucan version, which again, we've actually looked at this section before briefly. That's why I'm going through it very quickly. It's back in section 266.

It seems to be a different point in time in Jesus' ministry. So it seems to be a theme, and these are two different versions of the telling of the story. And in Luke, you have it, they heard these things.

He proceeded to tell a parable because he was near to Jerusalem, because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. And he said, therefore, a noble went into a far country. So at the end then, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me. Now just in passing, I should note that Luke 19 .27 is frequently cited in our culture today by people who wish to throw you a loop to cause you to try to have to answer a tough question in a public setting.

So if you're one of those people, you're in a classroom, and you dare to put your hand up and say, I would like to say something, and you give a Christian witness or something like that, Luke 19 .27 is one of the texts that might be thrown back at you in the sense of seeking to force you to answer what seems to be a difficulty without a lot of context, without much in the way of preparation.

And I have often heard atheists saying, well look, if you think the Bible is some great moral guide, Christopher Hitchens for example, I don't think it's a moral guide at all, and I don't think Jesus is a moral teacher.

To be honest with you, I can be a little bit more respectful towards someone who just really doesn't like Jesus and is honest about it than the many, many people who pretend that they do, but they really don't.

Or the Jesus that they come up with doesn't exist, never did exist, and that the Jesus of history would have really disliked as well. But the idea is, here Jesus presents himself as this Lord, and he wants his enemies to be brought before him and slayed before him.

So this is your loving Jesus? Now, most of them have not bothered to read the story in context, I don't know what the point is, but there are pictures in the New Testament in Jesus' own teaching of judgment, retribution, wrath, and why is it that people would think that to quote Matthew 19 .27 is going to trip us up, other than the fact that they have become so accustomed to the wimpy Jesus presentation that is so common in evangelical churches today.

And the only reason that Christians get embarrassed is because we have bought into the wimpy Jesus perspective, where Jesus is just this, you know, omnibenevolent, never any questions about wrath, never any questions about sin, never any questions about judgment.

The only way you can come up with a Jesus like that is by very, very, very selective reading of his words, obviously. I often think of the very last presentation of Jesus that we have in the book of Revelation.

The resurrected Lord, when he appears to John, what does he appear as? Even the Lamb standing as a slain in heaven is worshipped by all of creation. And when Jesus appears to John, there is a sword coming forth from his mouth, which is his word, and he rules the nations with a rod of iron.

And this was of great consolation to the persecuted church. I mean, these people were suffering. They were suffering at the hands of the most powerful nation on the earth, and it certainly had to be consolation to them to recognize that even the power of that nation was nothing in comparison to the power of their Lord, and that someday justice would be done.

And that gives people the strength to endure the kind of suffering that the Christian church has endured at the hands of the powerful for 2 ,000 years. To know that justice will be done. That there will be a day when the purpose of everything is revealed.

And so, you know, when someone throws Luke 19 .27 out, I think it's the best opportunity to expand upon it and say, well, you know, it doesn't just say that. But this King of kings and Lord of lords who holds you in his hand, he's your maker and your creator, from whom you are stealing every breath you take when you refuse to bow to him, will someday rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

Now, trust me, you'll have about 30 seconds before the shock wears off. Because they're, you know, they're accustomed to the Jesus, you know, standing at the noblest door with the lamb in his arms, you know, knocking, please let me in, type of a thing.

And you'll get about 30 seconds worth of shock before you go, that sounds like Islam, you know, and then you have to start dealing with all that kind of stuff. But you can't present a unidimensional Jesus and expect that to be blessed.

I mean, it's just not, it's not consistent. And there's plenty of people out there that will take you apart. So anyways, I just wanted to mention that. In passing, the point is that you have a servant.

And people want to look at this and they want to, you know, try to take it out or just not even think about what its context would be. Most people today don't even have a meaningful context in which to place this.

In the sense that we live, most Christians, and pretty much all non-Christians, when they open up this book, are not going to interpret it within the context in which it was written. They want to bring it into post-modern, super-wimpy America.

And when I say super-wimpy, what I mean by that is, a culture that can no longer call something evil is an emasculated, weakened, wimpy culture. I mean, we have seen evil this past week that is almost worse than anything I've ever even heard of.

We have seen evil this week that makes the Nazis blush. We start off the week, as I recall, with the Miami Cannibals. But did you hear almost anyone say anything about evil? Oh, it's just drug psychosis.

How about Legion?

You know, maybe...

No, no, no, it's just drug psychosis. That poor guy, if we had just gotten him help, he wouldn't be eating some other guy's face. It's all our fault. It's society's fault. And then up in Canada, we have...

Well, I can't really go into the details in a Sunday School class, but you may have read the news. And we got up in Canada doing stuff that... Well, if you really want to look it up, look it up. Otherwise, don't.

But, like I said, none of the Nazis ever even dreamed of that, of what this guy is doing. And he's still on the loose, by the way. So, we've seen some horrific evil. But our society can't even call it evil anymore.

Someone like this.

He's evil!

No, no, that's not an option anymore. We've decided that we're going to abandon that. Well, abandon that concept, and you've abandoned justice, you've abandoned worth, you've abandoned transcendent meaning, you've abandoned everything.

And that's where our society is going. That's where it's gone. Let's be honest with you, it's not just so much going, it's gone. So, you transplant these stories into that society, and then make that the matrix in which the story is interpreted.

And it's not going to make a lick of sense. But read it as it would have been understood initially. And there wasn't anyone standing there going, Oh, that's terrible. We've never heard of anything like that.

They would have been going, Oh man, that was a wicked servant. I wonder who he's referring to. Because there was a recognition that if you were entrusted with a trust, and you knew the character of your master, and that you bore that relationship of a servant to a master, which we go, Oh, that's bad.

Well, a lot of folks found that to be exactly what they want. They very much gave themselves in service, especially when a master would be one whom they could respect, or whom they could look up to. And so, you had this relationship, and you had the entrusting to this individual of some of the goods of that master, with the clear understanding that you were to do something with that.

And so, the slothful servant was just that, slothful. Does anyone ever hear anyone, did you know that's one of the medieval seven deadly sins?

Sloth.

Ever read Proverbs? Was it last week, or was it this morning? I knew it was in Proverbs. You know, sloth. The idea, and sorry, I really should stop this sermon right now, but we're looking at a society today where, I tweeted this this week, just looking at the news.

What an insane situation we're facing. It is your personal right that the government will protect to be able to engage in sex-based selective abortion, but you can't do it while drinking a big slurp.

We'll protect your rights, but you can't do it while having a slurpee, because we also have to take care of you from the womb to the tomb. We don't want you to be fat.

Hello?

Where did common sense go?

It has flown out of the window. There is, it's just absolutely amazing to me, to just look around and see what's happening. Don't get me wrong. I fully understand.

There are people going, there's an epidemic of obesity. There is.

There's no question about that. But what does Proverbs say? If you're a man given to appetite, push yourself away from the table. In other words, it appeals to you to have responsibility and discipline in your own life.

You don't go, oh, I'm just going to let the government take care of me.

What do I need to wear?

What do I need to eat? So much for humanity. But it certainly works if you have a view of man as if he's just an animal that needs to be trained. It's horrific. So the point being, sorry to get off on that sermon, but the point being that it's easy to take these stories that had a perfectly understandable meaning when they were originally said, transport them into post-modern America, and wow, that looks silly.

And you might say, man, it's just so much work for us to have to explain that to people.

Yeah.

But that's what we're up against. That's, you know, we have to do the amount of work that is directly related to where God has placed us. We've got to look at where we are in history, where we are culturally.

And did our grandparents have to put out the kind of effort to contextualize scripture and the no scripture that we have to?

No.

What about the next generations down the road? They'll probably look back at us and think we had it easy. So we have to be aware of these things. And so when we look at what's going on here, Jesus is talking, obviously, in Matthew 25 about the coming judgment, and that there will be a judgment, and that God will take into account what we have done with our lives.

Now, this particular individual, has made some people feel that maybe what's being talked about here is the great benefits that have been given to the people of Israel, and something along those lines.

But the very next story is the last judgment, which also has its own little curve to it. And it's a difficult curve to deal with. And I think they sort of go together, so let's take a look at it in section 300.

The Son of Man, the Deity of Christ, and the Coming Judgment

The last judgment described in Matthew 25, 31 through 46 is, again, one of those, is it prescriptive or descriptive texts? Is it prescriptive or descriptive? Is it prescribing or is it describing? If you approach it thinking that salvation is something that is offered in some potentiality, here's a potential salvation, now here's what you do to get it, then you're going to look at it prescriptively, and you're going to say, okay, these are the things we need to do to get in with God.

If you recognize that salvation is a gracious gift of God, and that there is nothing that sinful man can do to obtain it or merit it, then you're going to see this as description, a description of what kinds of people do certain things, and what the righteous are like and what the unrighteous are like.

So when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and I just note that, for us it's easy to read that and go, oh, when Jesus comes in His glory, and just move on from there, not even think about what that means.

But remember in Mark chapter 14, when the Jewish leaders are going to abjure, going to place Jesus under legal demand to answer based upon the name of God. Are you the Son of the Blessed One? Jesus' answer is, I am, and you will see the Son of Man coming with the clouds of glory, going back to Daniel chapter 7.

And the immediate response of the Jews is to tear their clothes and say, you've heard the blasphemy. You've heard the blasphemy. They fully understand what He's saying. So this is just, and I know sometimes some of you who've been here for ever and a day, and even longer than I've been here, might get tired of me pounding on these things.

But we so often overlook the majority of the evidence of the deity of Christ because we already believe it.

It just clicks.

It's already there. We don't even think about it. And so when we're challenged on it, something like this doesn't come to mind. But in reality, it's right there. What prophet of Israel started off a story talking about himself, saying when the Son of Man comes in His glory?

When Isaiah, the Son of Man, comes in His heavenly glory? You know, we'd go, what? Isaiah's lost it. Abraham, David, any of them. If they had said anything like that, we would have gone, you've got to be kidding me.

But Jesus says it, and it's perfectly natural to us. We're accustomed to it. When the Son of Man comes in His glory, you know, I was just thinking. I looked back there and saw our police officer, man.

But we knew about vegetables and donuts. When you listen to two different people giving testimony, or you pull somebody apart, and you pull the people apart, you get their stories. You're listening for this kind of stuff.

You're listening for these little tidbits of information that tell you something that, in contrast to the other guy saying, that shows where the cracks are, but it also tells you about what this person thinks of themselves, who they really are.

It would seem to me that if we would just listen to the text with that kind of mindset, but we don't. We always let ourselves get on the defensive. And the people who deny the deity of Christ, or teach some other type of heresy, they always get to be on the offensive.

We're always on the defensive. When we should be looking at the text, and we should be demanding that they answer, who says things like this? Does the Mormon Jesus talk like this? Does Michael the Archangel, who's Jehovah's Witness Jesus, does he talk like this?

Does the Jesus of liberalism talk like this? I can't even define. That's the whole point of the Jesus of liberalism, is he can't define himself either. I mean, I unfortunately spent a few minutes watching a portion of the United Methodist General Conference this past week.

Now, I'm old enough to remember that when I was younger, my parents would talk about how in almost every denomination, and of course they weren't including Rome in this, but in almost every denomination there were gospel preaching people,.

Back when they were young.

And they included the Methodists, and the Presbyterians, and the Lutherans, and so on and so forth. When you look, especially at the United Methodists, it's so sad today, because they just had the General Conference, and hey, at least I can report this.

They did not choose to stop identifying homosexuality as a sin. I mean, let's applaud. I mean, you were expecting me to go, they changed that, right? Because that's pretty much how the news always is.

It's, you know, this denomination got together, that denomination got together, and they collapsed on this point, they collapsed on that point. Well, the whole reason this one was interesting to watch was the debate, and then the vote, and then the people who lost went outside saying, we're going to go in there and disrupt everything, because this isn't what United Methodists are all about.

And then they go in, and they do their little chanting thing, and they walk around with their candles and their multicolored little thingies that they're wearing, and everybody else sits around going, could we get on with this?

And it was interesting to watch. But it was sad to watch the denomination, where you still have some people left that just simply go, no, the Bible's pretty clear on this. And it's like, yay, but do you realize the reason you're fighting this is because, you know, like your primary graduate school, you could not get hired on at your primary graduate school if you actually told the people who were hiring you that you believe in the deity of Christ.

Maybe you might want to change that, you know, if you want to continue functioning along these lines. It's sad to see what has gone on in the various denominations, and rather quickly. But, you know, it's nice to see once in a while somebody stands up and says,.

I don't think so, authority, because everyone's their own authority.

That's one of the hardest things that we face today, is especially, look, it's the young generation, the 20-somethings today who will be making all the decisions in 20 years and determining the course of the nation, the culture, have not been taught but what to think.

And there's a difference.

And as a result, for example, the study's been done numerous times, and it just keeps coming up. And even some liberal sources are noticing this, but they keep doing polls. And in our society, a shockingly high number of people believe that a quarter of the population is gay.

A quarter of the population.

When they ask, how many self-identifying homosexuals do you percentage-wise? And a majority say over 25%. Now, where did that come from? It came from media. It came from movies. It came from rock stars.

It came from television. It came from the Internet. The reality is, at most, 3%. At most, 3%. And they know, the homosexuals know, that if that number is not inflated, then people are not going to be nearly as...

So we're doing all this stuff. We're actually redefining marriage for the sake of... Well, actually, it's not even 3%, because 90 of the 3 don't want this. So we're doing this for 0 .3 of the population.

Really?

That's what we're doing this for?

So they're happy to continue the stereotype that there's just... Because in Hollywood, it might be a quarter.

I mean, it's just...

Maybe in that context, it is. And that's where...

Well, yeah.

A certain part's California, anyways.

Most definitely.

But the younger generation struggles with the idea of connecting transcendent historical value with personal experience. Personal experience becomes the... That's why offense. Don't offend me. Though they don't realize that it's okay for them, evidently, to offend others.

But don't offend me. And don't offend my friends. And it's all based upon... Well, I know this person. I know that person. I have this experience. They have that experience. And very rarely do they have any idea where they are in the spectrum of history at all.

Don't know what the nation has stood for in the past.

Don't...

And it's impacting everything. And it impacts us and how we present the Gospel. Because churches that want to try to, quote-unquote, win them with the methodology, recognize that words like repentance and wrath and things like that, those don't work anymore.

You've got to pull all the emotional heart strings. And you've got to have the right music and so on and so forth. The problem is decisions made on the basis of pure emotion can be unmade on the basis of pure emotion just as quickly as they're made.

And really making decisions that found your life and ground your life, that's done on a completely different basis. But when I'm talking about being indefensive, I'm talking about the fact that very rarely do I find Christians demanding of the other side the same standard of biblical evidence that the other side demands of us.

We feel the need to give the biblical evidence. So we're looking for Bible passages, so on and so forth. But we rarely recognize that their argument needs to be analyzed in the same way. That's what I was talking about.

Right.

We're allowing them to apply one standard to us that we then do not demand that standard be applied to them as well. Unfortunately, a lot of folks today don't even realize that the use of different standards is a clear indication of an erroneous way of thought.

And that in and of itself is a shame. But that's the way it is. So anyway, all of that to take us then to the Last Judgment, which I started to read and immediately fell off track. 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 them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep at His right hand and the goats at the left.

Then the King will say to those at His right hand, Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 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, 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 brethren, you did it to me.

Then He will say to those at His left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, and the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me no food. I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink.

I was a stranger, and 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,.

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 He will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.

And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Now, this is a tough section. I say it's tough because we want to fit each of the elements into other biblical texts that address the final judgment in the book of Revelation.

We want to talk about how Paul deals with the judgment of believers in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. We want to try to harmonize everything. And it's very, very difficult to do, especially because there seems to be both a personal and national element to this story.

And you probably saw it. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Well, are we talking about nations here or individuals?

It would seem individuals. And so it seems like all of the nations will be gathered together. So this is the final judgment. But then it's not like, well, you put one nation over here and one nation over here.

You're drawing the individuals out from these particular nations. And you have the sheep and the goats. And it said, separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. So there is something about each one.

They may look to the untrained eye as if they're the same thing, but they're different. And as a good friend of mine used to say when he would answer the question about James 2 .20, faith that works is dead.

He said, you don't go baa baa to become a sheep. You go baa baa because you are a sheep. And that would normally get him about, again, about 30 seconds worth of shock to get a few more words in him. You don't go baa baa to become a sheep.

You go baa baa because you are a sheep. You can wrap yourself up in wool all you want, get down on all fours, crawl around going baa baa baa. It doesn't make you a sheep. It might get you a place on the news, but it's not going to make you a sheep.

Then again, these days, that probably wouldn't even get you on the news. You might throw up a YouTube video or something and get a few hits, but other than that. The point is that acting like something does not change the inner reality of who you are.

And this division of sheep and goats represents a fundamental difference between the righteous and the unrighteous. Now, if you think that righteousness is something that is a matter of your choice in the sense that you can make yourself either one without reference to God, his grace, and his spirit, then you're going to look at this, as I said, prescriptively, and you're going to look at what Jesus says and say, okay, I need to be involved in doing these things.

I need to feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty, and I need to be on the welcome wagon, and I need to distribute clothing, and I need to be involved in prison ministry and hospital ministry. And if I do all that, I've got it.

I'm there. But the king says to the sheep, come, O blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So we're immediately given the indication that their status is one of blessing.

Blessed of my father. Well, if their status is due to what they did, to how hard they worked, that wouldn't make much sense. But the very way in which they are greeted indicates an extension of grace from the Father, and that they are a part of a plan that was prepared from the foundation of the world.

This was not an afterthought. This was not, eh, it would be good if I provided for some rewards for people type of a thing. Instead, there is very clearly a divine plan, and those who will enter into life, they inherit the kingdom which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

Now, many would like to look at that and say, yeah, this is just a general thing. Heaven's just a general thing, and we decide whether we're going on the e-ticket ride or not. Of course, that's now too old for most of the young people to even remember what that has to do with anymore, so it's become a pretty little worthless illustration.

But believe it or not, back in the olden days at Disneyland, and I don't know if there was ever a Disney World, but at Disneyland, anyways, there were e-tickets, and then you had less tickets. So if you wanted to go on the little frog, whirly-whirly thing, that was a lesser ticket than if you wanted to go on Space Mountain.

Space Mountain has always been an e-ticket ride, and it will always be. And if they ever close Space Mountain, I'm not sure life would be worth living. I just think at that point, it may be apocalyptic.

In fact, I'm going to look for something in the Bible about that maybe.

I'm going to strike that out.

You're going to strike that from the notes? Yes, yes, the Nixon tapes and the end of that particular Sunday school class. Anyway, that's sort of a bad place to have to stop. We're out of time. We will pick up right with the description of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 -34.

You got that there? All right, so we'll pick up at that particular point. Let's close our time with the Word of God. Father, we do thank you once again for this freedom we continue to have to study your Word and consider your truth.

Lord, as we always ask, as we have opportunity to give testimony to your grace and mercy this week, that you would open our mouths, you would let us to speak with and be salt and light in this culture in which we live.

Be with us now as we go into worship. May we hear your Word and bring honor and glory to you. We pray in Christ's name.