Last night, as we spoke upon these parables of the kingdom of the heavens from Matthew 24 and 25, we spoke about the importance of the church being those in whom the Lord can see the waiting factor. We read a number of Scriptures declaring that the early church and the new believers, in their newfound faith, had that waiting factor along with everything else. They would never claim total fullness, total satisfaction. They always claimed they were waiting for the One to return and fulfil all things.
It is a great joy to me when we get together and break bread together. It is a waiting factor, especially when we do that in the truth of our hearts. Having done all things, and especially as many of us delight to gather every Lord’s Day and break the bread, we are saying, “Lord, we love You. We want You to return.”
We put that ahead of preaching the Word. We put that ahead of singing a lot of songs. We put that ahead of evangelism and other things—not to say that we should neglect any of those wonderful aspects of our church life together. But we need to be waiting. We need to have that heart that says, “Lord, with all that You have given us, we are not satisfied until You come back and we see You face to face.”
So I am very glad to be together with saints who know that we are waiting for the Lord.
We want to turn again to Matthew 25 tonight and read the last of the four parables in this section. Some people would say it is not a parable, and you will see why as it is read: it does not say it is a parable. But it is actually a statement of fact, if you want to put it that way.
In Matthew 25, we begin in verse 31, with that which is many times called the parable of the sheep and the goats.
But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
And He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 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 something to drink?
When did we see You a stranger, and invite You in; or naked, and clothe You?
When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?”
And the King will answer and say to them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.”
Then He will also say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.”
Then they themselves also will answer, “Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?”
Then He will answer them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”
These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Just another word of prayer.
Lord, we are so thankful for Your Word, so thankful for what it instructs us about. Even as we sit here, as it were, by faith with the disciples on the Mount of Olives, and You speak to us out of Your prophetic wisdom, help us to take Your words to heart and to live by them.
There is no surer prophet who ever spoke. All others spoke in portions and in diverse manners, but when You speak, it is the final word. Give us hearts to understand, and even quicken and refresh our bodies tonight as we are together in Your presence.
We depend upon the Holy Spirit, the true Teacher, who would bring us into all the truth concerning the gospel of the Lord Jesus. We pray in the name of our Lord. Amen.
We have been studying this Olivet Discourse, chapters 24 and 25. We have seen the Lord’s burden as He gathers His disciples together to impart to them a prophetic wisdom—not so much to know the events of the end times, but to impart to them a prophetic wisdom that would enable them to stand faithful and be ready for His return.
With that in mind, He took them down through the halls of history and pointed out some markers along the way. They asked Him about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and He mentioned various markers, the devastation that would come when Rome would destroy the temple and Jerusalem, and the great tribulation the Jews were about to go through.
Having done all that, He said, as it were, “Please, dear disciples, do not look at the outward agonies of the nation of Israel or at these markers in themselves. Look beyond them. See My hand of discipline. Watch for the day that the fig tree suddenly comes to life, because when that happens, you will know that I am at the doors.”
“I do not want you disciples simply to watch for historical markers. I want you to watch for Me to return. I want your eyes to be upon Me and not the outward circumstances of prophecy.”
The Lord is trying to teach them how to watch and be ready. In the midst of Matthew 24, as we have rehearsed already several times, both in verses 42 and 44, He says:
Therefore, watch. Be on the alert. You do not know which day your Lord is coming.
For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
Having told them various markers regarding history, He actually said to them this: “The conclusion is, dear brothers, nobody knows when I am coming back except the Father. Your responsibility is to watch and be ready for My coming. In between My first and My second coming, there is going to be some delay. During that time, I want you to be watchers and ready, because I am going to come at a time when you do not expect.”
He is also sharing with them about their service to Him and the rewards that were to come. In Matthew 10, when He was speaking to the disciples before sending them out two by two, we see that wonderful section where He teaches them. If I could put it in my own words, He said, “You will receive your reward if, when you go out, others see Jesus in you.”
Now, is that not wonderful? If we just go out as lights of the world and others can see Jesus in us, then there is a reward for that kind of service. He said, “It is enough for a servant to be as his master.” If others see Jesus in you, you are a servant who will gain a reward.
But now, here in Matthew 24 and 25, He says, “I want you to understand that there is another reward as well.” The first was: if others see Jesus in you, there is a reward. But now there is a further reward, or greater reward, for those who, in between My first and My second coming, see Jesus in whatever lot I place them in.
When you are in the household of God—the church—do not think this is just a gathering of people. See Me. Serve Me. Love Me. When you serve your brothers and sisters, your fellow servants, serve them as if it were Me. There is great reward.
When you meet the Holy Spirit, as He graciously provides you oil to live, every time He squeezes you for more oil, every time there is a transaction of the Holy Spirit whereby He fills us with grace upon grace, love and be devoted to that Spirit of God as if He were Me.
I want you not only to love brothers and sisters in the household of God; I want you to love God. This is manifested in our communion with the Holy Spirit. There is great reward for people who love the Spirit as if He were Jesus. There is something behind that, but I will not go there.
Then He says, “When you are in the marketplace, I want you not just to be in the marketplace. I want you to see Me leading you in the marketplace.”
It is not enough for you to live in that kind of duality of soul and spirit, where you hate the world and your job, and all that is just worldly, while you love to be at home with your Bible and your kitty cat on your lap.
God has made us to be men and women of the marketplace, that we might invest that which He has given us for the sake of the kingdom of God. So when we go into the marketplace, go into the marketplace as if He were there. There is a reward.
Do you see what I am saying? Whatever your lot—remember that wonderful song, It Is Well with My Soul: “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say”—change the word—“You are here. You are here.”
Whatever my lot, whatever the school, whatever the job, wherever I live, Thou hast taught me to say, “You are here. You are here.” And I invest.
Now we come to the fourth parable, which speaks along this same line. We see from all these four parables on the matter of being ready that the secret is really getting to know Jesus more and more personally.
It is the way to overcome in the church life. How many of you have experienced that the church life is not always a bed of roses? But you and I can overcome if we see the One who is unseen in the midst.
When the Holy Spirit is squeezing us and producing reserves of oil, it is not always a comfortable squeeze. The Holy Spirit is often disciplining us in some kind of way, and we are going, “Ouch.” But if you realise it is the Lord, you will overcome.
In the marketplace, especially when things are grim and difficult, when people are difficult, and the world is immoral and unclean, yet you can overcome because you know He has put you there. Do you believe the Lord has put you there? Can you stand on that ground regarding your marriage? “Yes, this is the wife the Lord has for me.” Do you say that by faith?
Whatever my lot—the key to overcoming through all these adventures is knowing the Lord.
Now, I want to share three wonderful things from this final parable: one concerning rewards, a second concerning the secret of this absent Lord, and a third concerning some final word regarding the awesome aspects of His judgments.
But first, this last parable gives us a chance to consider a problem. We can look at a parable, or whatever, and get so caught up in the doctrine and the interpretation of it that it obscures its very simple and precious meaning.
Here is a prime example in the parable of the sheep and goats. You cannot believe the controversy among Bible scholars and everybody about what this parable is all about. I will quickly review three of the most simplistic and popular approaches, just so you can see where we are at.
There are some people who interpret this parable as being a parable of the final judgment. There is some reason for it. Notice Matthew 25:31:
When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all His angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
These people do not know what the white throne of judgment is, but they say this is the throne that Jesus sits on for the final judgment. Further proof, they say, is the destiny of those who are judged. The sheep hear, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” The goats hear, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire,” and again, “These will go away into eternal punishment.”
They say, “This is the final assize. This is the great judgment before the glorious throne.” That is what group one says. I must tell you, this is the most popular view.
View number two says, “No, no, no. This is not about the final white throne of judgment at all. This is about the millennial throne that Jesus establishes when He comes back and sets up His kingdom on this earth. Then He brings all the nations before Him and judges the nations for their treatment of His—the Jews—the least of His brethren.”
Their proof is in verse 32:
All the nations will be gathered before Him.
They say, “This is not a personal judgment; this is a national judgment.” So, as you did to the least of these, you have done it unto Me. The good nations inherit what He prepared for them, and the bad nations go down into eternal fire. That is what they say it means.
A third group says, “No, no, no. That is not what it means. What are you, a knucklehead? Anybody can see that this is the judgment seat of Christ, where all the Christians gather before Him.”
They say the good Christians are the sheep and the bad Christians are the goats. They point to the promise:
Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
They say, “Do you not see? This is all about kingdom inheritance. We know that is what it is about. The type is in Joshua and Canaan land, and here is the reality. This is at the judgment seat of Christ, where God is distributing to both good and bad Christians their just deserts.”
Now, knowing some of you, you probably have a fourth view. But these are the three most popular. Let me briefly show you why all three have almost fatal errors within the story.
Those who say this is the great final judgment, where the bad are thrown into hell and the good are sent to heaven, have a problem. Where else does the Bible say that sinners and saints gather together before God at the judgment seat?
From what we can see, the white throne is reserved for those who are not saved. Those who have been saved by the grace of Christ never go before the white throne of judgment. So how can they all be standing before this same throne?
There is a second problem, a small problem—though it is a problem. The basis of their salvation is whether they fed needy people. It has nothing to do with being saved by grace. It is a matter of whether you took care of needy people, and now, number six, you are in a fix; number seven, you go to heaven.
That cannot be it. We do not believe it is. Why is it the most popular view? It is the popular view of much Protestant Christianity that believes you go to heaven or hell based on whether you are good or bad.
It is that old scale-of-justice thing. When you get to heaven, God puts the hunks of meat—the good deeds you have done—on one side of the scale, and all the bad hunks of rotten meat on the other. “Oh, look, you did more good than bad. Go to heaven.”
Does anybody believe that doctrine here? I hope not. But do you realise that much of Christianity is bound under such a belief? You say to them, “Are you going to heaven?” “Well, I do not know. It depends. I think I did more good than bad.”
So perhaps it must be about how He rewards the nations when they come together in the millennium, all to do with how they treated the people. But there are two questions that cause serious problems with that view.
You mean to tell me the nations have an inheritance in the kingdom prepared since the foundation of the world? “Denmark, you are rewarded with a strip of land that used to be California for eternity. It was prepared for you.” Then all of California will look like Solvang.
Are nations rewarded with an eternal inheritance? Let us look at the negative side. How about the goat nations? “All right, Sweden—the hell with the whole bunch of you.” Those who have been bad are going to be tossed into an eternal fire and burn forever. What kind of a nation is that? That is hotter than Florida.
If you take these words seriously, you say, “Wait a minute. Is this about the nations being rewarded?”
Then there is the judgment-seat-of-Christ view. It sounds nice at first, especially concerning the reward of inheriting the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. Surely that is a reward for those faithful in the kingdom.
But then the punishment for the others—is that they lose their salvation? Look again at verse 41:
Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.
If you want to maintain that they are still saved, then we are back to purgatory, I guess. That does not seem to work. Or verse 46:
These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
I thought all Christians had eternal life. Now the goats are going into eternal punishment. It seems that scenario does not work either.
Now, saints who feel that they must know all things will, of course, latch on to one of those views and fight for it to the death. Well, good luck.
But this has been my experience, and I share this as my own idea. Please, do not write notes about this.
I find that when the Scriptures speak about judgment, it is an awesome topic, and there is a mystery about it. I have not seen a clear-cut working out of the thing exactly in any way that just fits squeaky clean with any particular viewpoint along this line.
I also believe that perhaps, in the nature of prophetic visions—as this is a prophetic vision of judgment—there is a seeing of several mountain peaks. Jesus, in His parable, may be incorporating a whole sense of the awesomeness of judgment: some parts of what will happen in the millennium and some parts of what will happen ultimately at the white throne.
In other words, this is not a precise teaching of one precise moment of judgment, but a kind of compilation of the awesomeness and tremendous consequences involved in judgment. That is the way I tend to see it right now.
I have to confess: I have held the other three opinions. The first opinion I held before I became a Christian. The second opinion, when I became a Baptist. The third opinion, when I became nothing. And now, in my other phase—whatever is beyond nothing—I am holding to all three with my fingers crossed.
I think God is saying there are great consequences for the things we do in this lifetime. At that point, it is clear. I think we have got the point.
Read some commentary on Matthew and go right to that part in chapter 25. See what happens when they hit this topic. Suddenly, everybody seems to go askew into some great thesis on their position. They have to eradicate, change words, and change the semantics. It gives you a headache.
But the point I want to make is this: this parable has a meaning that a simple child can understand. Jesus is making a basic point, hoping that we do not go clawing into all the details of a parable as if they were all specific details of something, and thereby miss the big point.
A ten-year-old child would already have understood this, though it may be a great bafflement to us. Here is exactly what He is saying by this parable, if I may make the point.
Do you want to be prepared and ready for My coming?
May your life not only serve the needs of your own family, home, and finances, but may your work in the marketplace also provide opportunity for Jesus to win friends for the kingdom through your opportunity.
It is a very simple parable, is it not? While we are going through our lives, are we showing compassion to the least? That is the question.
One reason this whole emergent-church dimension is happening among young people today is that evangelicals have been stone-cold-hearted for a generation. Young people are saying, “You know what? We have got to care about the poor in the world.”
They are dissatisfied with the church’s lack of response, its lack of real compassion—unless it has the effect of bringing somebody to the Lord. Evangelicals can be very selfish about that.
Do I have to convince us that Jesus’ ministry was an overflow of compassion? It brought tears to His eyes at times when He saw the sheep without a shepherd. He cared for the lowliest and the least of these.
I am not saying everybody is called to live on the wayside. It is a very tough thing. Our dear sister Joy and some of those folks have been down to some Central American countries. There are people who go and live in the squalor of cardboard cities and such places.
It is not that the Lord is calling all of us to that. But as we go through our lives—which involve our church life, our devotional life, and our business life—we go by the wayside.
Readiness is a heart of compassion, ready to help those who really need help. What a challenge in this day. What a challenge.
In New York City, you cannot walk very many blocks without seeing somebody who needs help. It is not that we have to go around with a lot of money, handing it out left and right, because half these people do it as a business.
Among everything else, these people need that magic that Jesus had when He could walk up to somebody who was down and out and treat them with respect. We have a way of disdaining people that is so un-Christlike.
Jesus always respected people, even in the lowliest byways. There is something of the test, between the first and second coming, that has to do with our compassion toward unlikable people.
How are we treating humanity itself? Do we see, in all humanity, as it were, Jesus caring and having compassion for them?
As we look at all four parables, it is really self-evident: this is a parable about compassion. Are these four parables saying, “I am gone; you are going to be tested”? I rather think they say, “While I am gone, here is how I am going to perfect My saints.”
In service in the household, in your devotional life and communion with the Holy Spirit, in what you see Me doing and transacting in the marketplace, and as you help and have compassion upon the needs of this world, you will be perfected.
What is the Lord waiting for before He comes back? What is the contour of the church for which He is waiting to return? When the bride has made herself ready, the Lord will come back. That is wonderful. But what has to happen for the bride to be ready?
Does she have to look better? Do we have to do her up better? Do we need better cosmetics? What exactly is necessary in the making ready?
It seems to me, if I could put it simply, that these four parables are about this: “I want you to be a little more perfected in love, and in love, and in love, and in love.”
When you are in the household of God and loving the saints, the Lord is saying, “They are perfected in love.” That does not mean perfect. But it means you love the saints, you love the Lord, you love the lost, and you love the needy. “That is My bride.”
I wonder if that is not the last thing He is waiting for: a perfection of love and reality, lived out as a testimony in His church.
I leave that to you regarding this parable. I want to finish by saying three postscripts—three wonderful things we see in this parable.
The first is the surprising nature of the rewards.
These people were so surprised. “Well now, Lord, when did we ever give You water? We did not even realise it.”
This is the secret of rewards. I do not know if you are still uncomfortable with rewards, but Paul was very comfortable with rewards. We should become comfortable with rewards if we understand the basis of them.
It is so unfair—for God. Here is what happens: He gives you grace, some gift to serve in the household, some precious word to hold onto and gain oil from. He gives you grace to witness to somebody in the marketplace. He gives you grace to have compassion on some needy person you have bumped into along the way.
He gives you grace, and you respond to that grace. Freely you have received, and freely you give. Then He comes around and says, “Reward time. Well done, good and faithful servant.”
You say, “Who?” He says, “You.” You say, “Well, no. It was not me; it was You.” See, that is the whole deal. It is Him. He gave you the gifts, enabled you to use the gift, blessed the gift, and then gives you the reward. Is that fair?
Grace seems so unfair when you think about it. What did you really do? What did you and I do?
Suppose somebody hears this message tonight and goes away and gains some oil from it. One day the Lord says, “Good job. Well done.” I say, “For what?” He says, “That message you gave out there in California.” I say, “Which message?” He tells me which one, and I do not even remember it.
I may have been going through a time when my mind was distracted, not even sure what I said, with so much going on in my mind and emotions. He says, “Yes, I know. But I gave you grace, and you used the grace.” I said, “Okay, here I am, Lord. Use me.” Then something came out, and He says, “Good job. Well done.”
We will be embarrassed by His rewards. You are going to be so surprised how much God appreciates simply having a vessel willing to take grace and use it.
I love that little verse in 2 Timothy 2:1, where Paul is instructing Timothy before he goes on to be with the Lord:
Strengthen yourself in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Our usual version says, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ.” It sounds a little more passive, but it is in a reflexive tense there in the Greek. It says, “Here is the grace. Now you need to strengthen yourself in the grace.”
I want you to exercise. Grab the grace barbell, and it will pull your arms up and down. But you have to grab the barbell, or nothing happens.
The Lord is trying to get men and women to exercise their free will because they have been born again. I exercise my free will and say, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, yes, Lord.”
He gives you grace, and you say, “Yes, Lord.” Then He uses the grace, and He says, “You are rewarded. What a wonderful job you did with My grace.” You say, “I did nothing.” He says, “Exactly.”
That is exactly what you and I were born to do. We were born to be vessels of God in His life. We have a treasure in these earthen vessels. He just wants an opportunity to crack a little crack in that vessel and let the glory come out. You get the reward.
It is so wonderful. You are going to be so surprised when you get rewarded.
The second thing we notice in this parable is a wonderful secret regarding the absent Lord.
In these four parables, they were all marked by an absent lord. There was the owner of the house who went away and left the servants in charge. There was the bridegroom delayed from coming to the feast. There was the man who gave three servants talents and went off to do business for a while. There was the Son of Man who was away and has now come back with His angels and established His throne.
There was this apparently absent Lord. Now we have to reveal the secret.
He was there all the time.
I know that, as Christians, we can still be so dumb that we sometimes think the Lord is not around. I do not know where we got that from.
Sometimes a kid says, “I got out of that great worship meeting. It is early yet. I can go down to the bar; I heard it is a great band. The Lord will never see me. He is still in the house of God where they are worshipping. I think I can get away with this one. It will just be a quickie. The Lord will not even see me.”
The secret is that the Lord was never absent.
He was there in the servant of the household that you loved, even though you did not like them. Do you understand what I am saying? He was in that servant, the one you had to love even though you did not like them. He was there all the time.
He was there when the oil was being squeezed by the Holy Spirit. He was there all the time, waiting to see whether you would react and treasure what the Spirit was doing.
When you get to the marketplace and say, “Lord, how can I invest?” He has already been in that marketplace before you ever got there, preparing the heart of somebody to hear the gospel. There is more than gospel involved here, but you understand what I am saying.
Do not be so mechanical as to think you are going into a marketplace that is virgin territory and the Lord has not been there. He has already been working on hearts.
He says, “I am going to put Joe on this new job. If Joe is going to go on this new job, I am glad I have Martha and Zelda over there. They both need a lot of help. Let Me work on them, bring more conviction into their hearts, and get them ready to hear the gospel. Then Joe can just share the gospel. They will already be ready.”
Do you think the Holy Spirit does that? Absolutely. You get into the marketplace, and He has already been there. He is holding a cup of coffee for you. “Let us go to work.”
In those times when we are showing mercy to a nobody, guess what? We meet an angel unaware. We find out that the nobody is a somebody. We just did not know.
The secret is out: the Lord never departed. He has been here all the time.
This defines the waiting factor in our lives in a practical way. We are showing that we are waiting for the Lord when we are not so distracted that we fail to see the opportunities in the lot we are in.
With all your doing, be aware that the Lord is trying to do something there too. It is not all about you.
Wherever you are, if you are not too distracted by all the events of your life to hear the cry of the man on the side of the road, then you are waiting for the Lord.
I like that little Scripture. We will share three more Scriptures, to be exact. In Hebrews 11, that wonderful chapter of faith and of people who served so faithfully, we read this statement regarding Moses in Hebrews 11:26:
He considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.
That is exactly what I want to convey to us tonight. We need to see Him who is unseen in the household, in the devotional corner, in the marketplace, and on the wayside. Seeing Him who is invisible brings reward.
The final thing I want to say, wonderfully conveyed in this last parable, is the awesome dimension of judgment.
What is awesome about it? Think about it. There is one short lifetime, and the consequences of what we do in this short lifetime stretch out to eternity.
We as Christians like to get it over with. We love that aorist tense in the Greek: “We are saved.” We think that once we get saved, it is all over—no more worries. But even after we are saved, there are still great eternal consequences to what we do with our lives as Christians.
The Lord is after something more than a bunch of saved babies. He wants grace-filled servants waiting for Him.
These awesome judgments, however we interpret these tremendous passages, mean there is a lot that is going to happen. There is one short life with eternal consequences.
I do not want to scare you for more than thirty seconds, so I want to add the second corollary. There is one short life with eternal consequences, but it is the daily readiness and the daily affairs of your life that enable you to be rewarded and ready.
Just do what He has told you to do today. Wake up with the Lord. Talk to Him. Love Him. Get to the marketplace and be open to His leading.
It is not as if sparks go off every time and fireworks are breaking left and right. Many times our lives are filled with drudgery, but things are going on in our lives. Those eternal consequences are set up by daily obediences.
Daily obedience.
Are you listening to the Lord today? If you are, I would not worry too much about tomorrow.
The overcomer is just a normal Christian who has heard what the Spirit is saying, takes the grace of God to obey, and waits for the Lord to confirm. A regular person is overcoming because they are listening for the Lord’s voice.
I want to say a final word to the many fearful people. People are so fearful of the Lord’s coming. They are fearful of judgment, especially of being thrown out, disqualified, and thrown into eternal fire.
There are so many fearful Christians. It should be ninety percent faith Christians and only ten percent fear Christians. But I do not know what we have worked around wrong to get ninety percent fearful Christians and only ten percent with the guts to be faithful.
I want to share two verses as we close, both from Luke. One is Luke 12. You all know these verses, but I want to remind you.
But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.
Do not fear, little flock. Let us have some more faith. The Father has gladly chosen to give you the kingdom.
Now let us hold that together with Acts 14:22, where Paul, at the end of his first missionary journey, makes this statement:
Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
That is to Christians. We are going to be squeezed because we are in between the first and second comings. We are in that zone where the Lord is turning us inside out and upside down, the kingdoms of this world are passing away, and His kingdom is coming into ascendancy.
There is so much strife on this earth, so much persecution and betrayal, and all this kind of stuff. Through much tribulation, we enter the kingdom of God. This is not just for those who lived in the Galatian province; it is for all Christians.
There is pressure. Thlipsis, this word for tribulation, is the word “pressure.” Through pressure, we enter the kingdom of God. Yet do not be afraid, little flock. The Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.
To those who are fearful, or even tempted to be fearful, I want to say a few final things. If you are fearful of the second coming of the Lord, I suggest that you need to know the Lord better in experience.
The more you know the Lord, the more you see His heart for mercy. You see the wideness of His mercy. You realise He is not a hard taskmaster who is going to hold you to some legalistic standard. He is a heart-looker.
You do not need to be afraid.
Paul, as you know, in several places confesses that he is not only ready to go, but he is looking forward to standing before the presence of Christ. It is because he knew Him so well.
Paul had no reason outside of grace or any hope before the judgment seat of Christ, but he was looking forward to it. May we become such people who know the Lord so well that we say, “Hey, I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward to it.”
Do you know what the main pressure is driving the closeness of His second coming? What is the main spiritual pressure behind His coming back? He is coming soon. What is the main pressure behind it?
It is His desire for you. That is why He wants to come back.
There are two great mysteries of the kingdom. I will say them, and you may say, “What?” Then I will close.
The first mystery, I know you know, but I will say it anyway: we have no idea how much the Lord loves us. No idea how much He knows you and loves you.
We say we do not know, and we do not. The Lord reveals that mystery to you a little bit as time goes along, but you can never fully know how much He loves you.
Now let me share the other side of the mystery. It is a kingdom mystery in between, so I share it with you and leave it with you to do as you will.
It is a mystery: you have no idea—no idea—how much you love the Lord.
You sell yourself so short. Your spirit is hot for the Lord, but your soul has provided a dampening blanket that has you wondering sometimes whether you even love the Lord.
You have no idea how much you love the Lord. It comes to the surface and pops out at times, then goes back into hiding.
But there is a reality in that mystery. Those two loves are going to meet one day. Oh, what a time that is going to be.
All I am suggesting is that you get in touch with that love for the Lord that you have.
You know how wicked I am when I am dealing with young people. Some of them come to me with various problems and say, “Oh, I cannot read my Bible. I hate my parents. Blah, blah, blah, blah.” They carry on with a whole litany of things.
I say to them, “You know what? You are rebellious on the surface, but I know something about you that you may not know.” They say, “What is that?” I say, “You have a heart for the Lord.” They say, “What?” I say, “That is right.”
Sometimes I say that, and the kid breaks down and starts crying, because it is true. They really have a heart for the Lord, but it has been messed up by the world, temptations, carnality, and all these things.
Sometimes they have to get back to square one. They got saved. God poured the love of God into their hearts.
Despite all the outward things, sometimes when I see kids who are the most rebellious, I say, “There is somebody God is going to grab.” Eventually, the heart of the Lord wins out over all that prodigal business.
May it be that we discover these mysteries. Our Lord Jesus shares these prophetic things with us not so that we can be wise in apocalyptic conferences and become speakers on the end times, but so that we can be ready.
Ready because we love, love, love, love.
And He comes and says, “Good job. Well done. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”
May the Lord help us.