Sheep and the Goats

Introduction

Well today is certianly a cold one out there. I am glad that we are blessed enough to have a warm place to meet and talk about God. And its only going to get warmer in here becuase of what we are going to talk about. I normally don’t preach fire and brimstone but today, this is the day you get my fire and brimstone message. You guys know what I am talking about? When i think of fire and brimstone i think of southern baptist preachers and they get all animated and start to yell about how bad hell is going to be and how there is going to be torture and all this stuff and what they are doing is trying to scare you into believing. These messages can sometimes start off with telling us how bad we are and then it moves into the dangers of hell and what hell is going to be like and they do a really good job of painting this vivid picture, whether is that is a biblical picture of hell is up for debate, but they paint this picture of what hell is going to be like and it is designed to get you scared and worried. Perhaps one of the most famous fire and brimstone sermons was given by Jonathan Edwards, who was a minister in New England in the 1700’s. Let me read you a little passage from his sermon

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not got to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God provoking his pure eye by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

I mean come on, this is some scary stuff, it was said that when he delivered this message members of his congregation trembled in fear and begged for the mercy of God. Depending on what lens you look through I guess that could be considered a successfully delivered sermon. I mean people believed in Jesus after this so if we are measuring our success by how many people raised their hands on a given Sunday and pleged their life to Christ with a magical prayer they could chalk this up as a successful sermon. Now we don’t really have this preaching style here at MCC, I am not a fan of it myself and I rarely want to talk about who and who isn’t going to hell. It’s not that I want to dodge the subject, in fact I love having discussions about it, but i think our time could be better spent elsewhere. I am a big believer that we should be focusing our energy and time into how we can improve the kingdom of God in this life and not dwell too much on what is going to happen in the future, but to take comfort in the fact that whatever happens in the future is under God’s control. But like I said, today is going to be as close as I will probably ever get to my own hellfire and brimstone message.

By the way, before we move on, Jim recently gave me a book called Sinners in the Hands of a loving God, and I have only read a few chapters so far, but I am really enjoying it, but full disclosure, I haven’t gotten to the chapter that talks about what I am talking about today so I am eager to see what this author has to say about it. But so far, haven’t finished it yet, I would recommenced it.

Now before I really get into it, I want to throw out a few disclaimers. First of all, this isn’t going to be anything like sinners in the hands of an angry God. I am not going to sit up here and tell you that God abhors you and that is only by his grace that you aren’t burning in hell right now. That is not the point of what I am about to talk about. The second thing is, that this message is not aimed people who don't believe in God. Normally these types of sermons are designed to scare people who don’t believe in God into getting baptized or something like that. This is not the case today, this is aimed at people who already claim to be Christian. So if you are with us today for the first time or if you are still feeling out the whole Christian thing I want to emphasize one thing. This message is NOT directed at you. If you don’t consider yourself a Christian I encourage you to listen to what I have to say, because it still applies to you, but keep in mind that you aren’t the target audience for this.

So why is today the day that you get to hear my message on judgement day? Well the last few weeks we have been going over the parables of Jesus and last week Cody did the parable of the talents, however he read the parable from the Gospel of Luke. There is an identical story in the Gospel of Matthew in Chapter 25 and immediately following that parable is the parable of the sheep and the goats. This is perhaps one of the scariest parables to me. Normally when we think of the teachings of Jesus the first the that comes to mind isn’t fear, but loving others, or taking care of the needy. Like in the parable of the Good Samartine that we talked about a few weeks ago. Those are typically the stories that come to mind. But as Cody as said in the past, understanding WHO Jesus is talking to is incredibly important.