Some people don't like watching baseball or golf because, they say, it's too slow. They prefer the rapid response of the hockey stick or the long bomb thrown into the end zone. Whatever your sports interest, huge crowds of fans gather in parks, stadiums, arenas, courses and courts because they like to watch the strategy and action of the game. For all their differences, however, all team sports have at least one thing in common. You don't know who will win until they have played the game.

 Unfortunately, most people think of Judgment Day in the same way. When asked, "Do you know for certain that, if you were to die tonight, you'd be with Christ in heaven?" most people answer, "Nobody can know that." Or they think the outcome depends, somehow, on how well you play the game of life. When it comes to considering the return of Christ, the Last Things, and the question of eternity, it is true that there are certain questions that do not have answers, such as "when" the Last Day and the coming of Christ will be. But though we don't know "when," Jesus has told us "what" will happen. And, more than that, he has told us who the winners and losers will be. As we consider the final discourse of our Lord's earthly ministry of preaching and teaching, he describes Judgment Day in a way so that you already know the verdict.

 First, he says that there is coming a day of judgment, an end to this life as we know it, that everyone who ever lived will be raised with their bodies, and they will then go to spend eternity in only one of two places.

 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne." During his earthly days of humiliation Jesus referred to himself as the "Son of Man." But the day is coming when this Son of Man who died on the cross, who rose again on the third day, who ascended to the right hand of Divine power, will return. His first coming was in humility-born in a poor stable, crucified as a common criminal, buried in a borrowed tomb. His second coming will be in glory. "Every eye will see him" (Rev. 1:7). And, as angels show up, in the Bible, at every major step forward in God's plan of salvation, this will be the final, major step as he returns surrounded by countless angels.

 "Before him will be gathered all the nations," that is, everyone who ever lived. Amid the mass of nameless faces the famous and the infamous will be there: Abraham and Moses, Peter and Paul, Emperor Charles the Fifth, Queen Elizabeth, all of the Presidents of the United States; Elvis Presley and Eminem; Adolf Hitler, Jack Nicholas and Jackie Robinson; you…and me…some with smiles of faith-fulfilled, others with jaws dropped in startled astonishment.

 "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." Which are you-a sheep or a goat? And on which side will you be placed-on his right or the left? This is the key to this text and to the question of your eternal destiny. For, you see, the judgment had already been made sometime before this. The Good Shepherd knows his own sheep and calls them by name. The Judge of all knows also all who have madly rejected his proffered gracious rule. Therefore the apostle Paul can say, "today is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2).

 The pronouncement of the verdict begins, blessedly, with the sheep on his right, saying those words we all long to hear, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." That you are a sheep of the Good Shepherd is not the result of a decision you made, nor as the result of the amount of good deeds accomplished during your life as if we spend our days as a sort of "qualifying round." You are a sheep of Christ's sheepfold solely as a blessing of the Father who predestined you to be one. "And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified" [Romans 8:30 (ESV)]. "Inherit the kingdom prepared for you," he says. An inheritance comes because you are named in the last will and testament of one who has died. The kingdom is yours as you have been included in the Lord's New Testament in his blood.

 We will even be saved from having to hear the words and witness the condemnation of the damned. We hear the word, "come." They hear the word, "depart from me, you cursed." But even in hearing these words today they contain good news. For their destination is "the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels," that is, hell was never prepared for people at all as "God so loved the [whole] world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). That any human being should end up there is the most ungodly tragedy. For God has not "predestined" anyone for hell. God "sends" no one to hell. People send themselves by their free rejection of God's free gift of forgiveness of sin, life and salvation.

 At first glance this text appears to our sin-bound nature to preach salvation by works. The sheep fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick and those in prison. Therefore they are welcomed into the kingdom. The goats did not and therefore are eternally separated from life with God in hopelessness. But these works are not what qualified or disqualified them. These works are sited in this eternal courtroom as evidence-evidence of whether one possessed saving faith or not. For faith is active in love-most of the time, actually, without our even knowing it. "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you…?" Unbelief knows not love-"Lord, if we would have known it was YOU, we certainly would have 'ministered' to you!" Even in the final courtroom they grasp at excuses for their refusal to repent and believe.

Contacts:

deblocascio.stmark@sbcglobal.net

Pastor: Rev. Allen D. Lunneberg
7979 Commerce Rd.      (1/4 mile east of Union Lake Rd.)
West Bloomfield, MI 48324
Phone: 248.363.0741
Fax: 248.363.4755