Good Without Knowing It

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

[0:00] and our reading for this Sunday for the sermon is from Matthew 25, 31 through 46. And this is, as Victoria said, this is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Today is Christ the King Sunday. So this is kind of like, this is like New Year's Eve for the church calendar. This is the end of the liturgical year. The liturgical year begins anew next Sunday on the first Sunday of Advent. So it's been a good year and we're going to cap it off with another great parable from Matthew. And again, this is happening during Passion Week. Jesus is telling this parable right before he dies. He's telling it to his disciples. He's trying to prepare them for him going and then also him coming back again and what the future looks like. And so Jesus is not pulling any punches at this stage in his life. He doesn't have time for pleasantries. He's going to die in just a few short hours. And so he needs to get all of this out of his system. And it's stark.

[0:56] Harsh language sometimes, as we'll see. But there's a word of hope in it that I want us to find at the end. So I want us to kind of think about that as you hear this parable. And today, as I said, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and just as a word of introduction, in general, like sheep are great animals and goats are great animals. They're great animals. They make for great food. You know, goats are great if you want to trim some trees. They'll just eat anything. And if you've got some weeds, they'll just, they'll take care of it. And in the Bible, of course, people kept sheep and goats. Sheeps, it's plural. They kept sheep and goats. And they ate both. And they didn't think that goats were inherently evil because they ate them. It was not, it was still a kosher food. But they would separate them when they were in the pen because goats are a little more wild than sheep and goats can get kind of cantankerous. If you've met a goat, you know that and they'll headbutt. They'll just, they just run into things. They just do it on purpose. They kind of have this sort of hierarchy scheme. And so the goats will beat up the sheep and then the sheep are injured. And so a shepherd, when he brings all these animals back from pastures, assuming he has a mixed, a hybrid flock, but not all did, then he would bring them back and he would have two pens, one for the sheep and one for the goat. So this was an agricultural practice that people knew and Jesus taps into it when he tells this parable about separating the sheep from the goats. Okay? So that's a little background on that. Let's go to our reading. It's from Matthew 25, starting with verse 31.

[2:25] And Jesus says, He says this, He says this, He says this, He says this, He says this, He says this, He says this, time all right first one we'll see is a mural I'm not a mural a mosaic from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and there you see Jesus in the middle sheep on his right hand and the goats are on his left notice how the sheep are kind of taller than the goats and then there's his angels are on either side of him that's a very nice mosaic all right let's go to the next one another Dutch Bible illustration love the Dutch there they are so there's that Jesus is actually higher up he's right at the top and then there's an angel kind of helping him judge it seems and so then we have the sheep on his right and the goats are on his left so you had the goats have curly horns and sometimes a curly horn is kind of seems like it's a bit evil but we'll go on to the next one and this is called this is the Cathedral at Strasburg who wants to go to Strasburg now and see all this statue statuary I know let's go to Strasburg and this is called the tympanum which is this area above the door on the Western facade that just has scenes from all the Bible and we're going to focus in on oh I'm gonna oh that's that one part there

[6:35] and so uh you know five dollars whoever can guess who that is who's that you gotta think about it for a second who what Judas very good Dwayne got it in one Judas is hanging himself from a tree and the goat is right there next to him because the goat is trying to climb the tree I don't know get him down hang himself with him I don't know it doesn't really explain it but so the goat is kind of seen as evil in this in this kind of uh so there's Judas so the goat is associated with evil at least in this tympanum this anyway so that we're done with the art for now thank thank you Nathan is on top of it big time so let's go um let's go to the parable all right um and I think this one is almost barely a parable why because Jesus actually tells us who's who kind of at the beginning right he's like there's uh you know the king the son of man like he doesn't even say some guy or so the the son of man and the king are equated in the very beginning that's Jesus I'm not going to even quiz you guys because it's going to be way too easy and all the people of the Earth ethne is kind of the word that you'll find there that's just a generic Greek word for just all the different people in the world they're all going to come before can you

[8:01] imagine all eight billion plus all the people who have lived before all those people are going to somehow I don't know how long this is going to take but there's a lot of bandwidth in in God's world and and they will be divided as and using this agricultural sort of illustration is kind of what makes it a parable is that the sheep and the goats will be divided and there's also this sort of parabolic like here are these sort of imaginary somewhat imaginary things tests that you were given you were given a test that you saw somebody in need did you help them or not and and kind of that beautiful thing that we see that Victoria talked about is that Jesus doesn't show up looking like Jesus or whatever we think Jesus looks like because we have these very sort of culturally ingrained ideas what Jesus looks like and he might be able to do that but he's not going to be able to do that because he's not going to be able to do that because he's not going to be able to do that because he might look he might look entirely different from what we think he looks like in actuality but he's actually those people that are in need that we either help or ignore and that's really powerful and so there are some themes in scripture that kind of tap into this this idea that people can entertain angels not

[9:08] being aware of it so that there's these times when God comes to us and Jesus comes into our lives and and we don't quite know it for good or for ill right and so there's that that aspect makes it work like a parable in some ways and we get what the parable is telling us to do right the parable is saying I I came to you even though you didn't know it was me I came to you and you either helped me or you didn't help me and the ones of you it's pretty simple right the ones of you that helped me are going away into the kingdom which I love this phrase has been prepared for you before the foundation of the world so that's just something to think about like this idea that there's this place this kingdom that's being prepared for us that has is even yet now being prepared or has started to be prepared even before the world was started this is place where we can be with God so there's this long awaited sort of homecoming that is waiting for those who do the right thing in this parable on the other side there's sort of this mirror image of the kingdom is this place where the devil and all his angels are and we and the people who don't do what they're supposed to be doing will end up there and that's the harsh thing right because Jesus like I said

[10:26] he's he's not mincing words right now he's not into niceness he's just kind of like I have to tell you what it is because I really want to warn you about what you need to do okay so now this is a good place to tell you that the way we understand is as far as I've said it so far this is an excellent what what Kenneth Bailey who's a New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey would call this an excellent Muslim parable did I get your attention now you're like wait wait wait what yes this is an excellent Muslim parable and he uses that phrase to describe the parable of the prodigal son right because the prodigal son goes away and does something wrong but the father forgives him right after he repents but that's just the surface of the parable of the prodigal son there's a whole lot more to it if you get more into it you'll find out that the older son is just as bad as the as the younger son because he disrespects his father and there's a lot more things going on incarnationally in that parable we'll say that for another time but if you look just at the surface it looks like this parable is about you do something wrong you repent and God accepts you again right so you you do something wrong you you figure that out then you do something right and now you're

[11:40] in God's good graces again and this one is very similar if you look at it just at the surface the people who did the right thing go to heaven and the people who do the wrong thing go to the Lord the devil and all his angels go so that's very simple right that's a very good and you could say that's just a very straight up and down parable but so or you could say this is a very law-oriented parable you have to do the right thing if you don't do the right thing you know you're gonna you're gonna it's not gonna go well for you it's kind of like the uh the Santa Claus thing he knows when you're sleeping he knows when you're awake he knows when you've been bad or good so it'll be good for goodness sake because you better watch out you better not all this stuff because you're going to go to the toothpicks if you're not doing the right thing okay that's the law but how can Jesus just tell the law so there's one piece missing and I this again maybe quiz time what's the one piece missing that redeems this peripheral from just being a law parable or a Muslim parable as Kenneth Bailey would say they didn't know thank you Pam Pam Pam you should stop we have to we have to put a ban on this she's she's a pastor's wife she knows all the answers but you would have known all the answers

[12:56] even if you weren't married to a pastor or had been married to a pastor I think she would so they didn't know not only did the people who didn't do it not know and you would expect that right but the people who did do the right thing didn't know they didn't know they were doing the right thing that's what redeems this parable and makes it a gospel parable and not a law parable and the quick way of thinking about this is that these were people who just did the Right Thing without knowing it not because they were thinking oh I'm going to get rewards for this but it's because it was built into who they now were okay and the way we would think about this as Christians is they had given their life to Jesus and when they did that Jesus sent the spirit to indwell them and the spirit had this powerful effect on their life and they were open to the leading of the spirit so that when they met people that were in need they just naturally really helped them because the Spirit prompted them to. Has the Spirit ever prompted you to help somebody? Absolutely. The Spirit prompted me once to help somebody, and I didn't do it, and I still remember it. I still remember to this day driving past a man on the highway with a gas can in his

[14:06] hand, and it was on a Sunday, and I was coming home from church. I was a pastor at a church in South Dakota or in Iowa, but I lived in South Dakota, and I just thought to myself, I better stop for him, and then I thought, oh, well, somebody else will stop for him, I'm sure, and maybe they did. I have no way of knowing, but in my mind, that's still one of those times where I was like, I did not. The Spirit prompted me, and I did not stop, and I can't get that one back. You know, I'm not saying I'm going to hell for that. I'm not saying that at all, but what I'm saying is I remember. So you know when the Spirit prompts you, but also when the Spirit's active and alive in you, you kind of just remember. If the Spirit's in control, you kind of just do the right thing without even knowing it, and that's the best way of doing the right thing, is doing the right thing without knowing it. There's a concept for this back in Matthew 6, verse 3, same book, where Jesus talks about giving your alms for the poor, and what does he say? Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, which is impossible, but also it's like a mini parable. It's like an illusion, which is really powerful, because how can you, unless you have some weird, not weird, I'm sorry, some strange neurological disorder where there's a disconnect between your left and your right brain, and some people actually have this.

[15:31] Karen, tell me what the name of it is. No, I'm kidding. There's a name for it. It has to do with your corpus callopsum being damaged, that your left hand and your right hand can't quite communicate with each other, but what is he saying? When you give to the poor, you should do it in such a way that you don't have to do it again. You should do it in such a secret way, in such a way that you're not trying to get praise for it, that it's almost as if your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing, which is clearly impossible for us, but the idea is that it's so secret, and it's done only for the sake of doing the right thing, and not for the sake of praise that you do it that way. And so that's kind of playing into this here, too, is that the people who did the right thing didn't know they were doing the right thing. They were just doing the right thing. And in the same way, the people who didn't do the right thing, were not in touch with the Spirit at all, and they didn't know that they were not doing the right thing, so they didn't know what the right thing even was to do. It wasn't in their nature anymore. So that's how we kind of redeem this parable from being simply about the law into something more powerful, which is about the gospel.

[16:36] Now, it's time to apply the parable, and this could be fun, but this is the challenging part, because you could say, well, what are we supposed to do with this parable? And you'll find that it's not the right thing to do. But you'll find that some people see in this parable a list of things that we should do, right?

[16:53] We should help people who have no clothes. We should help the poor. We should visit the sick. We should go to the prison and help those. We should help the widow and the orphan and the stranger in the land. We should do all those things. So has this now become a new list of laws for us to do, right?

[17:11] And that's only half of it. Yes, of course we should do those things. But here's the really challenging part. The challenging thing about this parable. What this parable is actually telling us to do is you should do all those things and more without knowing it.

[17:25] Good luck. I mean, good luck with that. I'm going to say that again. The parable is telling us to do all the right things, but not know that we're doing them, which is impossible for us, right? Can I get you to just think about cognition for a second, right? Can I tell you to now forget what I just said?

[17:46] Are you going to do that? Well, some of you are because you're not even listening in the first place. No, I'm kidding. Some of you are going to go home and have a big meal and you're going to take a nap and then you're like, what was that? No. But yeah, I can't. It doesn't work. You can't unknow something that you just heard. You can't unhear it. You want you may want to for sure, but you can't really unknow it and you can't decide to learn something and then unlearn it. Or you can't do something and not really know why you're doing it. Although in some ways that does happen. People aren't totally in touch. With why they're doing what they're doing. So the parable is telling us to do good things without knowing that we're doing good things. That's impossible for us. How does it become possible? As we said earlier, we open ourselves up to the work of the spirit in our lives. The spirit ends up taking some kind of control of our lives. Does that sound scary? Yes. Does that sound exhilarating? Yes. Does that sound wonderful? Absolutely. The spirit could control our lives and do the right thing at the right times. And it could become so habitual for us. Isn't this a nice thought? That we don't even really know that we did it.

[19:00] Right? Because we're just open to the spirit and what adventures the spirit has for us that day. And in that course of that day, we may end up helping all sorts of people and even a bigger list than this. And at the end of the day, somebody would say, Wow, I really noticed that you helped all those people today. And you would go, Oh, well I guess so. I just hadn't thought about it. I just didn't really realize it. I was just kind of doing what was in front of me. I was just kind of living in the moment. Is that how we want to live? Yeah. I mean, that's living without a care.

[19:36] If you want to really be a disciple, really be a Christian, you give your life entirely to Jesus. And you say, This is yours now. You do with it what you will. And the Lord will send the spirit and the spirit will begin to do these things in you. And it may mean sacrifice. It may mean hardship. But I don't think it's going to be that hard. Because we've been taken out of the worry of it. We're not going to sit there worrying, Have I done the right thing? Have I done the wrong thing? The other thing that the problem with the law is, If you keep track of the law and you know you're doing the law or not knowing that you're doing the law, All of a sudden the law becomes a pecking order between me and all my peers. And I can go, Oh, I've kept all these laws. Some of you haven't. I kind of see where, you know, This is like what the goats do. There's a hierarchy among them. You see? Isn't that interesting? The sheep and the goats. But that all goes out the window when the spirit leads us. Because there's no room for pride. There's no room for arrogance. There's no room for comparison. When the spirit leads us, we just do what the spirit leads us to do. And that's the thing.

[20:43] So, we can't know. We can't not know what we know. So actually the spirit is asking us to do something impossible. Do good works without knowing you're doing them. But what you can do is be the kind of person who's so open to the spirit that you kind of do. The spirit works through you in ways that you don't even really think about while you're doing that. It's just so automatic. The other thing you can do, though, The other thing, and this is the other thing the parable tells you to do, or to not do, is don't be a person who does the wrong thing and doesn't know it. I've got a lot of negatives in there, so I'm going to say it again. Don't be the person who doesn't do the right thing and doesn't know it. So what you actually need to be is be a person who knows what the wrong thing is. So that you know when you do the wrong thing. Do you get that? You need to be a person who knows what the wrong thing is, so that you know, when you do the wrong thing, or know when you don't do the right thing. Same idea. Have you all confused now? So, right. And how do you do that? Well, the Apostle Paul tells us this in Galatians and in Romans. He says, The law doesn't save us, but the law is a very powerful schoolmaster or teacher.

[22:00] The law shows us where we fall short. And so you can even use a list like this to say, Where have I fallen short? There's this great value in knowing why we fall short. Where you have fallen short and why.

[22:14] Because that drives you to the foot of the cross on your knees. And you say, Lord, save me because I can't do this on my own. And then you become that person that the Spirit works through. And so you could take this list and you could say, Have I helped the poor?

[22:29] Have I visited the sick? Have I gone to the prison? And going to prison isn't for everybody. So I wouldn't make this an exhaustive list or an exclusive list. It's not for everybody to go to the prison. But it could be. You could try it. Have I clothed the naked? Have I done all these things? But you could also do this with the Ten Commandments. Have I worshiped God and God alone? Have I kept good Sabbath? Have I honored my parents or other mentors in my life? Have I stolen or lied or killed or committed adultery or coveted what's not mine? You could make this list. There's a lot of lists. And if you're honest with yourself, then you could say, Well, I haven't killed anyone. I haven't committed adultery. Then you remember that Jesus, again in the Sermon on the Mount, always intensifies the law and says, You may not have killed, but if you've been angry at your brother or sister, it's like you've killed them. If you've lusted after a person in your heart, it's like you've committed adultery. So you can, the law is there. And Jesus intensifies the law, not to make it even harder to keep the law, He intensifies the law so that we are aware that we cannot and do not keep the law. It's impossible for us. And that drives us to Jesus.

[23:48] So the one thing that we can control in this is to know the wrong things that we do wrong. I can get so confused here. To know the wrong things that you get wrong. And you can, when we do communion, you can confess them or even at home, of course, you can confess them. You can read the law and you can go, I'm a fallen, broken sinner. There's nothing to redeem me at all. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. There was somebody who really understood, as a former slave trader, right? Who really understood what a wretched person he was. And thus he was ready to receive grace. Thus he was ready to receive what Jesus could give. And what does he give? He gives the Spirit. So that you become this kind of person that does the right thing even without knowing it. Finally, and we'll stop here pretty much, there's also some good news in here, and I think this is especially relevant for today, is that there's a promise, as challenging as it is, that the world will be judged someday. I'm going to say that again because I want you to hear that and I want you to live into this. The world will be judged someday.

[24:59] The sheep and the goats, I don't think this is just parabolic, okay? I think this is going to happen. I think Jesus is going to stand in judgment and the whole world, eight billion plus, all the people who have died before, are going to have to give an account for it. And the good news for the oppressed, at least, is all the atrocities and all the wars and all the vulnerable people who have been victimized, they will have justice that day. God will find the aggressors and unless they have Jesus on their side, unless they've repented, they will be dealt with. And that's both harsh, but also it's a good word. It's a reminder to us that God cares about justice in this world. And so all of the world will be judged and all the indifference and not knowing about the people that they should have been helping or the people that they should have been doing something for, that ignorance will also be judged, which is kind of terrifying, right? So the world will be separated like sheep are separated from goats. And the good news also is that we will be saved.

[26:03] And I know that sounds kind of crazy, to hear saying, well, at least we'll get saved, but the whole rest of the world, most of us are going to get judged. Hallelujah. That sounds kind of strange, right? You think, I don't like this. But this is what Jesus says. I'm not saying anything new to you here.

[26:20] The motivation for us now is to get as many goats as we can to become sheep. Right? Some people just don't know. Some people don't know yet. Some people need to know what the law is. Some people need to know that there's a Savior. Some people need to become the people that the Spirit works through so that the world is helped. Right? So that people see Jesus in the suffering people of this world and not just somebody that they hate. Okay? So there's good news that the world will be judged. There's good news that you will be saved. Those that believe in Jesus will be saved. But there's a massive imperative here. That this isn't ideal. This doesn't make God happy to judge all the world and send some on to His left. We want our goal. We can do it with even the people in this room. I'm serious. Even people from traveling. It doesn't matter if they were here or not. Although I hope you will come back if you're traveling or if you're watching from home. You're still with us. This group in its own spheres can work towards this goal of making more goats turn into sheep. By sharing the gospel with them. This good news that we have. So that's kind of our task. And what we do, how do we do that?

[27:41] You introduce them to the shepherd. Right? Introduce them to the king. Let them know who he is. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for this word. Thank you that you save us. Thank you that there's a place set aside and prepared for us since the foundation of the earth. Father, thank you that you come in justice through your son. Jesus Christ. Thank you that you send your spirit to work through us. Father, help us to be open to the leading of your spirit. And Father, if the spirit tells us to tap someone on the shoulder and help them to make that transition from death into life. Father, that we listen and we are open and we obey in that moment. In Jesus name. Amen.