Matthew 25:31-46 – Sheep and Goats 

Jim Thomas, Senior Pastor

The disciples asked about 3 things

1. When will these things be?
2. What will be the sign of Your coming?
3. What will be the signs of the end of the age?

Matthew 25:31-46

1. One day Christ will return as the sovereign judge.
2. Every person, without exception, will be gathered before the throne of Christ. 
3. Christ will separate the sheep from the goats.
4. “Sheep” will be surprised by the reach of sovereign grace but “goats” will be shocked by the failure of their attempts at self-salvation.
5. Be a sheep, not a goat. 

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.” 
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“It is a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our savior.” 
– John Stott 

“Faith must reveal itself in works, and such works are the fruit, the evidence, of a true faith. So the judgment about works is actually a judgment about faith, because the reality of faith is seen in the evidence of the works. The works are the mark, externally, of the inner reality of faith.” 
– David Jackman & William Philip, Teaching Matthew  

“God’s forgiving love to me in Christ is a sheer marvel that passes all comprehension. Only where we understand His wrath do we understand the might of His love. It is as we understand His love that we know that His wrath is just.”  
– Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble   

“The sentimental secularism of modern Western culture, with its exalted optimism about human nature, its shrunken idea of God, and its decay of conscience, makes it hard for Christians to take the reality of hell seriously.”
– J.I. Packer

“Next to the ministry of the Word, the most fruitful pastoral duty is to help all sorts of odd sheep to live together, and show them how to live in the world amongst goats without becoming goats.” 
– William Still, The Work of the Pastor

“For God to judge the world meant that He would, in the end, put it all to rights, straighten it out, producing not just a sigh of relief all around but shouting for joy from the trees and the fields, the seas and the floods.” 
– N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope