Dear baptized children of God. The apostles and prophets and our Lord Jesus all direct us to consider the Day of Judgment. On that Day, there will be a multitude who are sent away to the eternal torments of Hell. Who are these damned people? They are the worthless people of the world. What makes them worthless? They won't lift a finger in help or comfort to another person. These goats never made an effort to help any of God's children and thereby they despised helping Christ. These are the people who live their lives for themselves. They don't want to serve Christ and the proof is that they don't serve their neighbor. Oh, they may have some religion, but they don't know anything about what the Lord wants them to do. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the ONLY reason for anyone to be a Christian is so that they may learn to serve their neighbor. The only purpose of our Lord redeeming us from sin and death is so that we might become something useful and a blessing to the people around us: our husbands and wives, our kids and parents, our workers and bosses, our family and friends and yes, even the people we don't like and don't get along with. But the goats don't want that! They don't even want to know it! And so Daniel records how the king will sit down to judge them. Our Lord Jesus declares that the King will pronounce the sentence of eternal death and hell. St. Peter writes that because of all this, the Lord has plans to burn, melt and destroy the heavens and the earth completely on that great and terrible day!
If that sounds like gloom and doom, it should! It's a warning! It's a call to repentance if we believe that we can have some sort of belief in God or Jesus going on while we live in such a way that we daily murder and kill those around us, if not with knives and guns then by our inaction and inattention to their needs. But you, dear baptized children of God: do not fear that day! Do not be afraid of the seating of the courts and the opening of the books and the burning of the world by fire and the separation of the sheep and goats! Don't be afraid because on that day, when you arrive, you will stand with the sheep! Notice something very important: you are NOT a sheep or a goat based on what good works you've done for Jesus through your neighbor. When the last day arrives, the sheep are already sheep and the goats are already goats! And you are sheep. Why? What makes you a sheep? St. Peter says to be holy and blameless until that Day. And you ARE holy and blameless. How? Why? Because you do good works? No. Because you are washed. Because you are absolved. Because you are fed. In short, it is the brilliant and shining Son of Man who has made you blameless. It is the Son of the Ancient of Days that has made you innocent in the sight of God. It is the Lamb of God who has clothed you with His own holiness so that now you are a sheep. Dear children of God, dear little lambs, let this picture of sheep and goats stir you up to faithful service of your Lord through serving your neighbor. But do NOT let it cause you to doubt and question your salvation! Let it be to you a call to do good works to the people whom the Lord has given you in your life. Yet let it be a comfort that your Father in heaven has indeed prepared a kingdom for you.
That's right. A kingdom. When you stand before the Lord on the last Day, you will be judged. NOT for your sins. Your judgment will consist of hearing the proclamation of your inheritance and eternal blessings: “Come, you who are blessed of my Father, come and inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world!” Brothers and sisters in Christ, do you have any idea how rock solid that is? Jesus is saying that the kingdom you will inherit on that day has been waiting for you since before the world was even made! Even before you were conceived and born in sin. Even before your life of sin and turning away from the Lord, that kingdom has been waiting for you. And how is it yours? Didn't we cast away that paradise the day our parents ate from the Tree of Knowledge? Yes. But our Lord Jesus came to get us that kingdom back. Blocked by the flaming sword of God's wrath and judgment against sin, the Son of God takes on flesh, becomes the Son of Man, and places Himself under God's judgment. What a terrible thing the Father's judgment is! That He will burn up this world and all the worthless people who don't love Him or their neighbor! It is that judgment that Jesus faces when He is nailed to the cross. There, neighbors whom He loves hate Him in return and crucify Him. There, the Father whom He obeys turns His back and allows the sins of the world to kill His only begotten Son. There on Calvary the spotless Lamb of God is kicked around like a worthless goat! For you. That's your salvation. That's your being made into a Lamb. That's the judgment against sin. The kingdom has always been there, always been prepared. And Jesus came and won it back for those who had thrown it away. It's YOURS again, for Jesus' sake.
Now there will be a great temptation by Satan and the religion of the world to measure yourself by how many good works you do. Are you a Christian? Are you really a sheep? Have you done good things for Jesus by doing good things for your brothers and sisters in Christ? If not, watch out! You're not really a child of God. Truth is, you love yourself more than Jesus or your neighbor. Beware of THAT whisper from the Evil One that says you aren't going to receive what the Father has for you! What does your Baptism say? It says you are a sheep. It says that you are what St. Peter calls you: holy and blameless, without sin in God's sight. What does your pastor's absolution tell you? Your sins are forgiven, as far as the East is from the West. No one in heaven or on earth can say otherwise! What does Jesus body and blood say? It is the blood of the Lamb of God. And you are what you eat: so you are a lamb too! God the Father has condemned your sin in Christ and when Jesus ascended to the Father's right hand, He was given a kingdom and dominion, as Daniel shows us. So also that kingdom and dominion are YOURS because you are in Christ. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Holy Gospel in water, word, body and blood declares you to be a child of the Father, a subject of the true King, a sheep on the Last Day. There's a kingdom waiting for you.
So then what about the good works? Whey do they come in? When Jesus tells the sheep all the good things they've done for Him, what do they say? “When did we ever do that stuff?” Jesus answers that to do it to the least of these, His brethren, is to do it to Him. To bring comfort and aid to our fellow Christians is to serve Jesus. But you don't count it! You don't measure it! You don't keep track of it! In fact, as sheep, you don't even know about it! What good works you have done to be praised on the Last Day is none of your business now! But you have your good works to do: the Ten Commandments instruct you in much detail how to love your neighbor: children, honor your parents; don't' hurt others but help them with their physical needs; husbands and wives love and honor each other; help your neighbor improve and protect his property; say only kind and helpful things about others; live a life of contentment so that you're not constantly sucking away your neighbor's happiness. It's all there in the Commandments. Will you do them perfectly? Of course not! But they are there for you to do, not because doing them gets you into heaven, but because that's what sheep do. They serve Christ in and through their brothers and sisters in Christ whom they serve. And on the Last Day, you will be amazed at all that you've accomplished for others and thereby for Christ. You will be astounded and humbled to hear your Lord praise you for all that you've given to Him when you didn't even know it! It's just the truth for those who are inheriting a kingdom!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, our Scripture Readings this morning give us a warning. They call us to repent of any so called “faith” that lives alongside hatred and despising of our neighbor. But the Lord is patient, and wants none to perish. So he warns us with His Word. But we cannot heed His warning and somehow turn our lives around. Therefore the Lord Himself rescues us from our selfish sin and death. He makes us His holy lambs and sheep. He washes, absolves and feeds us. His Spirit works in us to love and serve our neighbor with all kinds of good works and thereby serve our Lord Jesus. Jesus has won back the kingdom for us and now, protected in Christ from the day of burning fire, we are ready to inherit the kingdom of paradise prepared before the world was even made. Amen.