Relationship

A few years ago, I read in the newspaper about a British man who lent 11 pounds equivalent to a cash strapped Australian backpacker travelling through Europe. And the amazing thing was that that loan was paid forty years later. Jim Webb, who was at that point 72, was in Belgium in April 1969 with a friend when he met a man called Gary Fenton, who asked him for a loan to pay for a ferry trip back to Britain. Mister Fenton promised to repay mister Webb and noted down his address when the trio landed in England. This article writes that last Sunday, mister Webb returned to his home in Sheffield to find a hand delivered package with 439 pounds in it.

11 pounds for each year that the loan had not been paid. And a note that read, "To Jim Webb, a good man, from Gary Fenton, a tardy payer of debts." I was quite emotional when I read it, mister Webb told the BBC. In this day and age, promises are made and promises are broken, and you lose your faith in human nature. Mister Webb said that mister Fenton, who now lives in Sydney, had explained in his note that he had come across the Britain's address while looking through some old papers and decided to repay the debt while on a visit to London.

What drives a person to do this? Gary Fenton was out of sight and probably or definitely out of mind for forty years. And those 11 pounds probably wasn't a lot to mister Webb. He could easily have forgotten about that, and the other guy would have gotten away with it. Why bother?

Why do these sorts of nice things in the first place? Well, I want us to focus a little bit this morning on a parable, a story of Jesus, a teaching of Jesus that is really challenging. It always challenges me when I read it. And we're going to turn to Matthew 25 to find it. Matthew 25 verses 31 to 46, entitled, in the NIV Bible at least, "The Sheep and the Goats."

Matthew 25 verse 31. Jesus said to his disciples, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goat. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation 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. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me.

I was in prison and you came to visit 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 needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The king will reply, 'I tell you the truth.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire 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.

I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth. Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." So far the reading. Now this is some pretty serious teaching, isn't it? It makes you uncomfortable just listening to it. And it may not be the first time that you hear this story, but I want us this morning to look at it again and particularly the big themes that Jesus is bringing out in this parable.

See, the first thing we notice is that Jesus is talking about stereotypes. He's talking about general groups of people, different divisions within our society. Certain people that all find themselves in some sort of need. But before we jump into the practical things, which we often do when we read this, let's have a look at what Jesus is highlighting here. And the thing that Jesus is really pushing is the importance of relationship.

The importance of relationship. First of all, relationship to our neighbours, but which in turn reflects upon our relationship with the king. Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. The first thing I want us to see is that the kind of intimate relationship we have with each other mirrors the kind of intimate relationship we have with Jesus the king. Jesus commands to feed the hungry, to give something to drink to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, to visit the prisoner, to clothe the naked, all of which are interestingly a direct quote from the prophet Isaiah. It's all in fact about how we relate to others.

How we relate and interact with other people. More importantly, it's about connecting not only with those who we find easy to help and easy to love, but with the least of these. The least. The ignored groups. The people that you don't really want to see perhaps.

Those who are not so easy to look at. The little people. Those who we might think are lazy, who deserve to be in that position. Those who we are uncomfortable with because they are different, because they are old, because they are angry, because they're weird. Has anyone here watched the movie Napoleon Dynamite?

Okay. So all the young people might put up their hand for that. Actually, Zeb did. It's worth a watch. It's a bit artsy.

It's a bit weird. Watch it at least twice and you'll actually understand it, and I think enjoy it. But anyway, I watched it again last night. Now this is a story of a Midwest town, and there's the main character Napoleon Dynamite, weird name, I know, who is just the most awkward guy. Like, he probably would clinically be diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

He just cannot interact with other people, and he's just awkward. And he's got a friend Pedro who is just as awkward. Now, the story goes how they go from high school, you know, rejects to the heroes of the high school. And you go through this movie and you think the whole way through, it's: I would never treat this guy Napoleon Dynamite like this because he's in essence so cool. He's so true to himself.

He just does what he likes. That's who he is, but he gets bullied because he's so weird in this high school. And it's so easy to think that he's so darn sweet and cute. I would never do that to him. But the truth is, if I look at my life, I teased the people that were like him at high school.

Or at the very least, I did nothing to stop their bullying. Because I know some Napoleon Dynamites back in school. And it is the absence of a loving relationship in this picture that Jesus is painting that in fact becomes the outward expression of evil. It's the lack of this loving relationship which is the expression of evil, so that the king judges the goats, the wicked. In fact, when the king judges some people as being goats, he casts them out of his kingdom.

He doesn't judge them, in fact, on their direct oppression. Notice this. Not on their direct oppression, causing people to be hungry, throwing people in prison. No. The reason he judges them is because they didn't feed the hungry.

They didn't visit them in prison. And so the problem here is the complacency. It's the complacency. At the moment, our church is able to help families that are in need. That's a great thing about what's happening, and I just wanted to mention that our mercy ministry, headed up by our deacon Donnie, is doing fantastic work.

And the great news is that we are able as a church to be helping struggling people. But there's a huge demand at the moment because jobs are low. People are out of work, and we're helping people within our church and outside the church community. The great thing is that we're able to do this, and I wanna thank you guys for your tithing because a percentage of every dollar you give is going towards our mercy ministry. And in many ways, we're able to do exactly this that Jesus commanded us, but I want us to be challenged again this morning if you can.

If you can dig deeper. We really need it. We really need it. There are people that we have to say no to because our money is running out. At the same time, I want to tell you that you're doing a great job, and I want to thank you for that.

Karl Barth, a prominent theologian of the early to mid nineteen hundreds, a controversial theologian in some ways, but he had an amazingly novel way of describing evil about sin. And he said it's not about breaking a list of commands. The essence of sinning is a relational problem. The essence of sinning is a relational problem. He calls evil nothingness.

It is the absence of goodness. Now sometimes we can think sin is just ticking the boxes or not ticking the boxes. It's an absence of goodness. In other words, sin is breaking a relationship. It's breaking a relationship between us and God.

It's breaking a relationship between us and other people. And so when we sin, we lose our relationship with God. We become subject to the gravitational pull towards this nothingness, which is evil. We get drawn into this dark black hole, which is evil. And it sucks out all the goodness and leaves us with nothing but negativity and despair.

To quote him, this is what he says: "God knows this nothingness. He knows that which he did not elect or will as the creator. He knows chaos and its terror. He knows its power over his creatures. Yet he is the Lord over that which imperils his creature.

Against God, the nothingness has no power of its own. And he, who is God, has sworn faithfulness to his threatened creature, that's us. He intervenes in the struggle between nothingness and the creature as if he were not God but himself, a weak and threatened and vulnerable creature." This is how God Himself comes on the scene as Jesus. This brokenness that we see in Matthew 25 that disturbs us when we read it because it's so without hope.

This nothingness is dispelled by God. How? By reaching out to rebuild a relationship. The amazing thing is, friends, that God wants to change goats into sheep. That's why Jesus told this story.

He wants to change goats into sheep. If he was happy with how it was gonna pan out, he would have just said nothing. He loves humanity. He desires for relationships to be mended. God overcomes evil, in other words, by restoring a broken relationship with him and with one another.

On the flip side, we want to be good sheep, don't we? We don't want to be stubborn goats. We want to draw towards the power of our creator. We want to seek His face. That's what we've just been singing about.

We don't want to be drawn into that dark black hole. We understand that worship of God, our relationship with God is our goal. That's the purpose of humanity. But sometimes it seems so far beyond our grasp. And so this is why the instructions that Jesus gives here is so important.

He says that we take a giant step towards God by taking the small step towards loving our neighbour. We take the giant step towards God by taking a small step towards our neighbour. By seeing God in those fellow human beings who are created in the image of God just as much as we are. By loving them as we love ourselves, we come closer to God. If we can do this, then we have nothing to fear on the day of judgment.

Why? Because we are recognised as the sheep of the shepherd. We are recognised. We read in Matthew seven this morning, "Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name? Didn't we drive out demons in your name?"

And Jesus will say, "I did not know you. I don't recognise you. Who are you?" As reformed people, yes, we believe faith is all we need to be saved, but faith, at the same time, without works is dead. Because true faith empowers and motivates action.

And that is the truth. Faith without works is dead because faith empowers and motivates our actions. You know one of the things I love about us Aussies is that we don't accept phony baloney. We want fair dinkum. We want fair dinkum.

And I think the phrase "practice what you preach" is one of the key phrases about the Aussie mentality. But the oldest record, you'll be surprised to know, the oldest record we have of this phrase is actually found in the Bible, actually found on the lips of Jesus. Matthew 23: Jesus, speaking about the religious leaders, the Pharisees of those times, warned his disciples not to follow the example of these leaders because they don't practice what they preach. The records we have of Jesus show that he absolutely hated hypocrisy. In fact, he would rather be associated with the so called sinners, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, than to sit with the leaders who said one thing but did the other.

He would rather have a question mark over his name, about his character and his integrity, than be associated with these people. But even today, we live in a world that is absolutely rife with hypocrisy. Absolutely rife with it. The whole world is covered in stereotypes, with plastic surgery, with materialism, and you can see that everywhere on the Gold Coast. It's the best microcosm to create a study on hypocrisy because it tells us who the ideal you should be.

We have ads blasting into our heads twenty four seven, telling us what real happiness looks like. But you know what? This message of Jesus finds real relevance again for us in this day because we find the simplicity in its instructions. Why? Because it cuts through the crap.

It did so in the time of the religious hypocrisy, which is what Jesus was speaking about here. Good worship of God, enough sacrifices, tithing, offerings, all that stuff, but people were still going hungry. People were still lonely. The English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon said this: "A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint." A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

Jesus preferred to be associated with the bad people who were fair dinkum enough to admit that they weren't perfect. Who knew they weren't perfect. And if I was to ask us this morning, "Are you perfect?" we'd probably say, "No, of course not." But sometimes we might just catch ourselves thinking, "Oh, I'm a little bit better than that person.

I'm really not as bad as this." Jesus talks about stereotypes here and he challenges us today with this. If you believe what the Bible says, that it's good to be treated kindly, make sure you do it to others. If you don't like to be pushed to the sidelines and be marginalised, don't do it to others. If you don't like being judged for being awkward like Napoleon Dynamite, don't do it to others.

Ladies, I have to make a mention of this. Of late, I've been noticing on all sorts of talk show or that morning show sort of stuff. I'm not gonna mention which ones. Of female presenters, on the one hand, having this real gripe about body image and media pressure on judging other females in particular, but in five minutes time, they can be gossiping about what Julia Gillard wore as our prime minister or the fabulous wedding ring that one celebrity got for their wedding. That is hypocrisy right there.

Jesus' words challenge us today that we should be careful not to fall into the trap of saying one thing with our lips but doing something else. That's ultimately what we see when we look at Matthew 25 today. Jesus warns us of the dangers of hypocrisy that leads to the breaking of relationships. And the terrible and terrifying thing, it's not through direct actions, but by complacency. That's the dangerous part. That's the terrifying thing.

And the result is that we damage our relationship with the king by doing that. Do you notice the surprise in both the sheep and the goats when they realised that God's been watching them. They didn't even notice it. It's as if Jesus drops a pop quiz on them and they've been caught without having studied. Jesus wants to highlight integrity here.

Why? Because Jesus obviously values it, and he wants us to live with integrity. Now, what does integrity mean? This is a great quote. Write this down.

Integrity is who you are when you think no one is watching. Integrity is who you are when you think no one is watching. Integrity goes far deeper than any of the outward appearances that we can put on. It goes far deeper than the mask we put on in various contexts. Because integrity comes from the heart.

But with an unchanged heart, with an unchanged heart, we cannot love the hungry. We cannot love the poor. It will be impossible for us to do that. We cannot love the downtrodden because really, with an unchanged heart, we cannot truly love. That's the message of the Gospel.

We need changed hearts. We need changed hearts to truly love. We need the Gospel of grace. The Gospel, the good news of love. Of a love that cost Jesus his life.

To actually love. The message is a message that changes hearts and it causes our relationships to be restored because it's all about relationships. That's the thing about Christianity. In relationship, people are loved. In relationship, people find their worth.

The great news is that God has overcome the nothingness of sin. That is great news again, friends. And he has done that by filling the darkness with love. That is how he's overcome it. He overcame the darkness by sending us the light of the world, who saved us from the black hole of despair.

And now as we enter into His kingdom, the invitation is: you can be involved in overcoming this darkness. You can be participants in this process. And how we do that is simple again. We do that through love. So talking practically, is there someone you know in need?

Is there someone you know in financial need? "See the hungry and feed them," Jesus says. Are there strangers here in this church or in your neighbourhood that you have actually said hello to? When last have you invited someone to your home for a dinner or to watch the footy? Have you ever gone to someone's home when you knew they were struggling to pray for them?

These are practical things, guys. "Lord, when did we ever see you hungry? When did we ever see you in need? When you saw these, the least of my brothers, you saw me." Be prepared to love people into the kingdom of God.

Let's prepare ourselves for that. Be ready to speak slowly, to judge slowly, but to act quickly. Be set to blaze a trail for God's light into the darkness of the Gold Coast's darkest corners. Be geared up for the penetrating power of God's irresistible love. And you'll be amazed.

I guarantee it. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your simplicity. Thank you that there's no pomp, there's no superfluous words, there's no baggage, there's no fluff to any of your teaching. It just cuts straight to the point.

And that, Lord, is real integrity. Lord, it's so easy to rock up week after week and to say thank you for which we really are thankful. But then to be stubborn and to be slow to action and to be blind to what is around us. Lord, help us to see what's in our hands, what you have given us to be a blessing with, for the gifts that we have, for the ability that we have, for the context we find ourselves in. Lord, help us to think deeply about these things, to really think about them, Lord.

Who are we? Where have you placed us? Who is in need and what is their need? Father, may we be a church that is just known and recognised as Christians who walk the walk, who practice what they preach. Father, I wanna pray for our mercy ministry and for the great work that they have started doing in just a short time that they've existed in our church.

Thank you, Lord, for each and every person here that tithes, that gives an offering, Lord, that helps us to be a light in very dark places. Lord, I pray that you will encourage these men and women to continue in this work. We support them, Lord. We encourage them. Thank you for our deacon, Donnie.

Thank you for pastor James and Erica that are involved in that as well. And Lord, we wanna also commit our finances, our time, our energy to making a real difference. Lord, and then at the end of that, us the humble pride to say, "Wow, Lord. This is amazing. We can be proud of what our little church is able to do.

Give us the eyes, Lord, to see changed lives, miracles that you do so we can thank you and praise you even more, so that we may rejoice and be glad in it, Lord. Thank you for the truth as well. While we were yet flawed, while we were yet goats, you came to save us and made us your sheep. Thank you, Lord, that we still wrestle with that on a daily basis, but, Lord, that ultimately we don't have to be stuck in our sin and pay that too much attention because, Lord, you are our king. You are our king.

You are our Saviour. And we wanna focus on that and we wanna be happy about that. We wanna rejoice and worship that. So Lord, we pray that you take our hearts, that you make it soft, that you make it pliable, mould us into the shape that you need us to be. We give our lives to you again this morning in Jesus' name. Amen.