Gooding, David: 6 - The Return of Christ

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, sir, for those very kindly words, and thank you all for your interest in these past six weeks and the patience with which you have endured some extraordinarily and unconscionably long sessions. You haven't complained, well, I expect you have, but what I meant to say is that you didn't complain in the right quarters so that, uh, the complaints haven't come round to me, and that was very kind of you so to do. Next week onward, I remind you, there will be preaching people who will keep more respectably to the time. If it should be that tonight you find this building too warm for your liking and were in any danger of going to sleep halfway through, you are permitted, I remind you, by the rules, to raise your hand to indicate that you find it too warm, whereupon the stewards will see that the door is opened. With those things preliminary, let us now hear the word of God from the gospel by Matthew and chapter twenty four. The gospel by Matthew and chapter twenty four. And Jesus went out from the temple and was going on his way. And his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said unto them, See you not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat on the mountain of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and shall lead many astray. And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not troubled. For these things must needs come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places, but all these things are the beginning of travail. Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation and shall kill you, and you shall be hated of all the nations for my name's sake. And then shall many stumble and shall deliver up one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall arise and shall lead many astray. And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations, and then shall the end come. When therefore you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth understand. Then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains. Let him that is on the housetop not go down to take out the things that are in his house. And let him that is in the field not return back to take his cloak. But woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days. And pray you that your flight be not in the winter, neither on a Sabbath, for then shall be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world, even until now, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved. But for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened. Then if any man shall say unto you, lo, here is the Christ, or here, believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. If therefore they shall say unto you, behold, he is in the wilderness, go not forth. Behold, he is in the inner chambers. Believe it not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east and is seen even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. But immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to another. Verse forty four: Therefore, be you also ready, for in an hour that you think not, the Son of Man, come. Thus far, the word of God. In this short series of studies on the Gospel of Matthew, we have been considering together the witness of the early church to our Lord Jesus. In past weeks, we have considered their witness to his person, as they told- tell us in Matthew's gospel exactly who Jesus is. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And they tell us, moreover, how they came to make that tremendous discovery that Jesus was God incarnate. Last week, we were listening to their testimony as to the work of the Lord Jesus. How that his death at Calvary was not simply a martyr's death, but it was that atoning death that atones for the sins of mankind. And we listened to them talking of the resurrection of our Lord that gives validity to that atoning death. Now, in this final week, we are to listen again to the testimony, testimony of the early church, this time not to his work nor to his person, but to his second coming, to his return. For clearly stated and many times repeated and illustrated by a whole series of parables. The Gospel of Matthew tells us time and time again that it is an integral part of the Christian gospel that Jesus Christ is coming again. Oh, I know that in decades past, among theologians and others, there has been a tendency to regard the doctrine of the Second Coming as a doctrine on the lunatic fringe of Christianity. And all sorts of exciting and excitable books are written, prophecy mongering, sensational, full of predictions of dates and so forth, that have brought the matter altogether into disrepute. And as I say, there have been many that would say, yes, we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Yes, we believe in his atoning death at Calvary. Yes, we believe that he can give us forgiveness of sins, but this matter of his second coming, perhaps that was a little bit of extravagance on the part of the early Christians, and is a something we can afford ourselves to neglect. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Even New Testament scholarship has, of this last decade or so, come to perceive that, come at it how you will, the records of the Gospels depict to us a Jesus Christ, at the heart of whose message was his promise and claim that when he went away, he would come again. And a moment's thought will show us how the second coming of Christ is and must be a central part of the gospel of our Lord Jesus. For Jesus did claim, did he not, to be the Jewish Messiah. And if you will read in the Old Testament what the Old Testament said about the Messiah, you will find it predict quite clearly that when the Messiah came, he would execute the judgment of God upon this evil world. He would put down sinful men. He would command all wars to stop. He would relieve oppression. The widow should no longer be oppressed, the orphan no longer cheated. Evil men should no longer be in control, but righteousness should reign, and peace should be universal. Thus did the Old Testament predict what would happen when Jesus Christ came again, preaching sternly the judgments of God upon sin, preaching with delight those lovely promises that the day would indeed come when men should beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they should learn war no more. Creation herself be delivered from her bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. And the plain fact is, is it not, that when Jesus came the first time, he did not do those things. There is no good hiding our face from it, for the record is quite deliberate. He did not judge the wicked. He did not execute the sinful. He did not break oppressive governments. He did not stop corruption in business. He did not stop oppression in politics, and left this world largely as he found it, with evil rampant and quite unrepentant. And far from stopping evil men, the plain fact is that Jesus Christ himself was cruelly tortured, slandered at his trial, unjustly condemned, and wickedly crucified. And you may understand the Jew who today will argue against us Christians and say, your Jesus cannot be the the Messiah because he did not put down evil. Some of us who are old enough to remember the last war with all its horrors, remember how frequently unbelievers, atheists and agnostics used to taunt us. Say, there you are, you Christians. If your Jesus is the Son of God, why doesn't he stop this war? The problem is a real problem. And to Jesus Christ, who had no answer, no program at all as to what he was going to do about the evil of this world, could not possibly be regarded as the Messiah that would fulfill the promises of the Old Testament. And what good as a savior would he be? And as we perceive that our topic tonight lies at the very heart of Christianity, it tells us that the Jesus Christ who came first not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved, and suffered for our sins at Calvary, not only rose again and ascended to heaven, but as sure as day follows night, will come again. Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him, they also which pierced him, and all nations of the earth shall mourn because of him. We are to expect one of these days, the sign of the Son of Man coming in heaven, amidst cosmic disturbance, sun and moon shaken and sackcloth across their light. The universe is convulsed. Then it's on to the next stage of this evolving universe at the second coming of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You will perhaps say to me, if you are not a Christian, that all this kind of thing is perhaps the invention of the early church. That the early church believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but then when he got crucified and was buried, they felt exceedingly disappointed, and to cover their disappointment, invented the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. But that is demonstrably false. For it wasn't the Christians that wrote the Old Testament, nor in particular the Psalms. Way back in the Psalms, one psalm in particular had for centuries prophesied what the program would be for Messiah when he came. And it said like this, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. And the verse will bear some investigation. The Lord said unto my Lord, prophesied King David. The Lord said to the Messiah, if you will, sit at my right hand. Now, there was no point in bidding Messiah to sit at the right hand of God if Messiah had always been sitting there. You don't say to a friend that has come and sit in your, uh, is now sitting on your settee, friend, sit down, for he is seated down. And had Messiah been always seated at the right hand of God, never would God have addressed him on occasion and said, sit at my right hand. The very command itself, sit at my right hand, implies that there was a time when Messiah was not seated at the right hand. Then where was he? Why come in all humility of the incarnation to walk our world and here to suffer for our sins, to bear our sins in his body on the tree. That great atoning sacrifice finished, then the decree went forth as God Almighty charged the Messiah and invited him, sit at my right hand. The Messiah rose and ascended to heaven and has since been seated at the right hand of God. But the Psalm had another part of the program to enunciate. Sit at my right hand, said the divine command, until I make thine enemy the footstool of thy feet. It was never intended that the enemies be made the footstool of his feet the first time he came. That was never in the program. The program was explicit. He was to come. He was to ascend to heaven. There he was to sit and wait until the time of his second coming, and at his second coming, his enemies would be made the footstool of his feet. So then this doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord is no invention of the church. It was the early prophecy of the Old Testament, and in as much as the first part was fulfilled, and the Messiah came, suffered, was buried, rose again, and ascended, in as much as the first part was fulfilled, most assuredly the second part shall be. What will be the sign of his coming? Why, if we read the New Testament carefully, there are many indications given us of the sign of his coming again. Tonight I wish to take one of them. As I do so, let me issue the warning that our blessed Lord himself issued. For if there is one thing that brings the doctrine of the second coming into disrepute, it is all sorts of wild and unauthorized prophecies, saying that he would come in nineteen twenty six or forty five or fifty eight or eighty four or something of the sort, quite without any scriptural foundation. And of course, when the date goes by, the unbeliever simply mocks. Let no Christian have any part in predicting dates for the second coming of our blessed Lord. The indications of his coming rest on things much more profound. If I sow a seed of barley in the ground. One day I shall get barley growing from it as a harvest. It won't be immediately, maybe. Presently, however, I shall see the barley seed growing, and there's a little green shoot. As the months go by, the process will grow and increase, and presently there's a corn in the ear, and as yet it's green. But eventually and at length, by an inevitable law of nature, harvest will come. For what you sow, you reap. Warning of our blessed Lord is this, that the sign of his coming shall be, among other things, the coming to its harvest of human sin. God is no tyrant. If man will have his way and go his independent course, God will not immediately cut him off, for God is no tyrant. He will warn us if we are disobedient. He will plead with us if we remain unrepentant, but he will never compel us. When the great saga of human sin began, God did not intervene and destroy our planet forthwith, for he is no tyrant. His answer is to let Earth have her way. Then he warns us that what we sow, we reap. As the world sins in dependence of God, it will inevitably reap the harvest. And what should the harvest look like? How near is the heart? Our Lord, when he talked of these things, was talking to his own Jewish nation, and he reminded them of a time in their history, and then indicated that what happened at that long period in ancient history would one day happen again on a bigger scale in history to come. And when it happens on that bigger scale, it will be the sign of the beginning of the end. The phrase is a technical phrase, have mercy and tolerance with me while I explain it. Said our Lord, when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, let him that reads the prophecy of Daniel understand what it's meant. It's a trifle difficult. But then, then know you are moving towards the second coming of Messiah. The abomination of desolation, what can it be? It was a phrase used first some centuries ago, when the Jews had returned from exile and were in their land of Palestine. And there came an imperial ruler. He was the emperor of the Seleucids. And for all sorts of reasons, political, economic, and social, he banned the religion of the Jews in Jerusalem. He stopped their daily sacrifices to God. And he had an image of a pagan deity placed on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem. And he ordered pagan sacrifices to be offered to him. And he has himself described as Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus, God made manifest. That attack by man on God himself, that attempt of man to put himself in the very place of God. That is what scripture referred to in that far off day as the abomination of desolation. Here in our passage, our Lord indicates that what happened on a small scale in years gone by will yet happen again on a worldwide and universal scale. There will come a time when the Western world, if not the whole world, will revolt against the very idea of God. And attempting to throw out the idea that there is a God in heaven will deify mankind. You may sound that s- think that sounds fantastic. I remind you again. In the course of history, there have from time to time risen up political rulers, therefore political ends have sought to compel the populace to worship the state or worship the emperor. Alexander the Great began to claim divine honors as an emperor, but died before he could put the whole scheme very much into operation. After the terrible civil wars that ended the Roman Republic, the Roman empires began little by little, and then outright eventually, to introduce the worship of the emperor. It seemed such a very good idea. How would they keep their vast, far-flung empire with all sorts of different peoples and different religions? How would they weld them together into a peaceful whole? The Roman emperors decided that they would do it by requiring all their subjects, the world through, to worship the emperor. Hundreds of our fellow Christians paid the price of refusing to worship the state by being thrown to the lions or otherwise disposable. In more recent years, we have watched the rise of totalitarian states, where states, political states, have set themselves up as the final authority, even over religion and God itself. And Master Hitler claimed it. We have lived to see a vast proportion of this world living under communist ideology, which ideology is based on materialistic atheism. It denies there is a God out there. It demands that the state shall be the final and absolute decider in all matters, even religion. There are Christian churches that have been disposed to accept the authority of the state over the church. Those Christians that will not meet in secret and are fearfully close to. I am not talking imagination. I am not trying to deal with scaremongering. I am simply asking us to face big literal facts and open our eyes on what is happening in our world. A large part of our world is given over to materialistic atheism. You say, but we're better than that in the West. Are we? Some years ago, there was a nine-day wonder of a book published. It was published by a professedly Christian theologian. Its title was God is Dead. There is no God out there. The learned theologian who wrote it admitted that he never prays because there isn't a God out there to pray to. The The great great and famous Julian Huxley at one stage observed as follows, that what we should have to have in our modern world is a new religion. Pray, what kind of a religion? For the great and famous Julian Huxley, who as everybody knows, was an atheistic evolutionist. Why should we need a religion, and what kind of religion would we have anyway? Well, he said, you see, there is no God. But now people do need a something to believe, you know, a something to satisfy their emotion, to something to give them purpose and hope. There's very little hope in the test tube, isn't there? How could anybody get excited over a chemical formula? For a hope that would satisfy the human heart and hold out hope for the future of our world, and give man a reason why he should put up with his present suffering, why he shouldn't be cruel, why he shouldn't be selfish, why he should be altruistic and work together for the common good. To give him something to aim for, to hope for, to believe in. Said the great and famous scientist, we shall have to have a new religion. Because if we don't, then people believing utterly nothing, utter materialists. Will one day, some of them foolishly press the wrong button and blow the whole world up before we can reach our paradise. So we shall need a new religion. What kind of religion? If you were going to start to invent a new religion, what would you invent? I don't know what kind of religion the learned, uh, Huxley would have in- invented, but he did say this, that man must wake up to the fact that man is now God. Which means that there's no God out there. And we men and women have come onto this planet as an accident. The mindless forces of nature, without any purpose in their heads, by the colossal series of accident upon accident, or chance upon chance, have produced this planet and us on it. But now, hey presto, behold a miracle, though you mustn't call anything in evolution a miracle, surely. By some colossal great accident, uh, evolution has produced our brains. And we can think, and we can do what nature never could do. We can plan ahead. We don't need to go by chance. So let's put our heads together, says the learned scientist. And let's plan. Let's realize that we are God. And have the courage to come forth and control our planet and control our universe and act like the gods we are. For our future is in our hand and nobody else's hand. Man is God. Dear Duke of Edinburgh, God bless the dear man, re-echoed at one stage the sentiment. You must think, may think these are strange things, then I bid you open your eyes and ears and hear what's going on in the real world outside. Nor please dismiss these ideas as crazy, for if you don't believe in a God, the only hope for mankind is that man be God. With our planet so perilously poised, and some fool or other could push a button that blew our planet to smithereens forever. Why, if there's no God outside, men would hurry up, need to hurry up, wouldn't they, to be God? And try to hope that there might be a future for mankind. If there be no God, how will you weld the nations together? How will you ever bring them to the state where they can say, peace, peace? You give them, said the scientist, a new religion. What shall it be? Well, it won't be going back to worshipping caterpillars nor cows, will it? And if there'll be a new religion, it will be the worship of the highest thing that atheists know, and that is man. There will come such a day, and the dominant world ruler of the biggest imperialistic system, in order to produce peace among the nations, shall ban the worship of a god out there in heaven and shall institute the worship of man. Man represented by himself. And when you see that abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, then know that the second coming of Christ draws near. I'm not saying that our Lord shall come in power and great glory tomorrow. I am saying that with anybody with any eyes to see how Eastern atheism goes, how modern West is virtually godless. I am pointing out to you that man's sin is coming to its ripening harvest. The final, there is no God. Man puts himself in the place of God and worships man. You say that's fantastic. You can't believe it would ever happen. Why, madam, sir. Might I speak to you personally? The world outside is very often much, much more than the individual heart multiplied millions of times. Let's take it on the smallest level, the level of the individual. In your heart, in mine, there is a temple. There is a shrine in our hearts. There is a part of the human personality that is sacred. And in that sacred shrine of the human personality, there is a throne. And on it tonight ought to be enthroned Jesus Christ our Lord. Tell me, friend, what's in front in your heart? What are you really worth? What do you bow down to? And what is your future state? What are you serving every day at the wheel? What's your ultimate goal? Ah, do you say to me, sir, I don't wear my heart on my sleeve. Of course I don't, but in my heart of hearts, if you must know, in that central shrine of my heart, there sits enthroned God and Jesus Christ, his son, who are not. Do I hear you say, no, I'm not a Christian. I don't really believe in God. I don't know whether there is a God. And on your heart's throne then, already Already their there sins. sits man. Man. You. Taking God's place. What shall happen when the king comes? Numbers of parables talk to us about these things. Very briefly, I want to take one or two of them. What will happen when the king comes? One parable tells us that there will be reward for the king's servants. And another parable tells us that when the king comes, there will be inspection for the guests. Another parable tells us that when the king comes, there will come the judgments of the nations. And what generous reward there shall be, for our Lord is on record as saying that all those that have trusted him and have worked for him and have lived for him and have sacrificed for him, when he comes again, they shall be rewarded. And the going rate of reward for sacrifice, says he, is ten thousand percent. A hundredfold, says he, shall all they receive who have sacrificed anything for him. And the king is coming. And you are working for him, loyally working for him, seeking to promote his interests and his kingdom and serving him. When he comes, there shall be reward. Let me just point out a thing that we could get easily confused. There are people who think, you know, that the way we get salvation is by doing our best and working for Christ. That is not so, of course. And I'm happy to remind you that scripture makes it very clear. We don't earn salvation by working for the Savior. Salvation, we are told, is utterly a gift. Indeed, says Romans chapter four and verse five, it is to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly. His faith is reckoned for salvation. You don't have to work for Christ to be saved. You could never work for him in all your life. Indeed, if thus far you've been hostile to him, yet if tonight you come in repentance and faith and you, you surrender to the Savior and receive him as Lord, that very moment he gives you eternal life, free and for nothing, and with it forgiveness of sins and the certain promise of heaven at last. All the gift who do not have to work for salvation. Then the other side of the story is that anybody that's got salvation and really got it would want to work for the Savior. That's how you can tell them, said our Lord in this parable. And anybody that constantly refused to work for the Savior would simply be demonstrating that he had never been saved at all. Oh come, friend, should we not listen very carefully a minute to what our Lord had to say to the religious people of his day? He said, you know, Pharisees, they were very religious people. He said, I have a little parable to tell. There was once a man, and he had two sons, and he said to the first son, go today and work in my vineyard. And he said, yes, sir, I will go. He didn't. He just didn't. The father said to his second son, my boy, today go work in my vineyard. And he said, I won't. But afterwards he repented. He went and worked. Said, our Lord, that's how it is with you, gentlemen, you Pharisees, up to your ears in religion and respectability, and thereby making a loud profession that you serve God. When it comes to working for the Savior, no, you're not prepared to do it. You're not even saved. How different with the harlots and the publicans, he said. When first they heard the command of God, go work in my vineyard, they said, certainly not. Work for Jesus, what a nonsensical notion. We're going to see life's pleasures and enjoy ours. Afterwards, having seen the seamy side of life, they were brought to repentance, and the before time rogues and vagabonds, jailbirds and swindlers, some of them got converted. Trusting the Savior, they went and worked in his vineyard. You say, I'm a very righteous man, I didn't ask you that. Are you involved in the work of Jesus Christ? Did you ever speak to anybody about his soul? Did you ever preach the gospel to anybody? Did you ever give a tract out? Did you ever do anything for Jesus Christ? You say, that's not my business. Oh, it is, sir. If you are a believer in him. Are you helping in any way the cause of the Savior? I ask you straight. You say, I come to church. I didn't ask that. I said, are you involved personally in positively doing something for the sake of Christ and the kingdom of God. So why are you so vehement, Mr. Preacher? For this reason, because if you're not involved in working for the Savior, it casts great doubt on whether you are saved at all. The king is coming. Ah, and I can think, and you can, of some notorious sinners, jailbirds and disreputable. They got converted, and to this day they're working up to their very eyes, emerged, immersed in the work of Christ. And we, so respectable and calm. Are we working in the Lord's vineyard? What are you doing? If I ask you this night, what are you doing for Christ, could you tell me what you're doing? Well, do, my good sir, when the Lord Jesus comes and you stand before him and he said, now, my good man, tell me, what have you been doing for me? And you say, well, what, what? And then you can't tell him. Or if we're not working for the same, pass the doubt on whether we've ever been converted, whether we are so. When the king comes, there will be reward for his servants. When the king comes, there will be inspection for the guests. Our Lord said that the kingdom of God is like a banquet which a king gave in honor of the wedding of his son. Oh, how delightful are our Lord's parables, and I'm sure they are not exaggerated or out of proportion. He was always saying that, that salvation is like a banquet. Heaven will be like a banquet that a king puts on for his son. I don't know when the, when the Prince of Wales got married the other year. I cannot now tell you how many millions it cost. When God's son gets married and the marriage supper of the Lamb takes place, I tell you, the whole universe will be hung with bunting. The whole universe will. Then shall there be a banquet that will satisfy and more every desire of the human heart that God himself has made. For he didn't make our desires in order to mock them. He gave us desires that he himself at last might fulfill them, which would be like a banquet that the king planned for his son. And our Lord said that when the banquet is held, the king came in to see the guests. He found there a man not having a wedding garment. Dear friend, how could you come in here not having a wedding garment? And the man was speech. He was cast. What does it tell us? Well, it tells us, friend, that it is here to be in that final banquet in God's heaven at last, we must be prepared for it. You just imagine the stupidity, you just imagine the cheek, you just imagine the impertinence and effrontery of a man who was invited to attend the wedding of the king's son and to attend the banquet, and he walks in in his old dungarees and his clothes just as he is. Never thinking in his head for a moment that you'll have to prepare for it. Would you do it, sir? Madam, because you're the leader of the women's WVS or something, you were issued with an invitation to attend the wedding of Prince Charles. And living near a palace, you said, yes, I shall be delighted to go. So the day. Now let me see, you said, said, o'clock in the morning, I think, or that might be, I don't know, about five o'clock after a minute, I think I'll be doing a garden today. But suddenly at 5 to five? Well, you said, I think it is, you know, that wedding thing. Well, you said, right, I'll just sit round with the mal on your boots, and your skirt all torn, and your jumper all filthy, and mal on your hands. You just walk into the palace. Oh, come. There are some people that think that you can get into God's heaven without any preparation. They don't know how. Ask them, are you saved? Are you going to God's heaven? Well, I hope so. Uh, uh, uh, uh, are you prepared? Well, I don't know. They seem to think that one of these days, how knows who, and who knows how, they should just walk into God's heaven, just like they are. All unprepared, never born again, never been saved, never been washed in the blood of Christ, never given the robe of righteousness from the Savior. They just imagine you can live and somehow enter heaven at last without any preparation. It shall not be done. The garment of salvation is free. None of us could prepare ourselves. If we want to be prepared, we must come to Christ. We must receive the garden of salva- garment of salvation and the robe of righteousness. But we need to come, we need to receive it. We need to prepare ourselves. We leave for this side. All friends, have you got your garment? Are you ready to enter the king's palace? And finally, when a king comes, we're told there shall be the judgment of the nations. They shall be gathered before Christ. He shall separate them like a shepherd separates the sheep and the goats. And it is a famous parable because it is much quoted nowadays in connection with things like Oxfam. And pray understand that I think that Oxfam is a very good thing. But people take that parable because therein our Lord says to the sheep, come and inherit the kingdom, because I was naked and you clothed me, and I was in prison and you visited me, and I was hungry and you gave me to to to to to eat, and thirsty and you gave me to dream. And people said, they were, if you want to get into heaven, that's what you have to do, you know. You have to give a bob to Oxfam now and again and feed the wretchedly hungry of the third world. And if you do that, you are feeding Christ and you'll get into heaven. I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that's a lie. Oh, of course you should be feeding the hungry in the third world. Of course we should. But suppose you're going to get into hungry simply by sending a pound contribution to Oxfam. That is a cruel deception. It is not so. The criterion of the king is this, in as much as you did it unto the least of these, my brethren, who are his brethren? Not all men are the brethren of Christ. We have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast our confession of faith firm to the end. They only are brethren of Christ, whom have been born of the same Father, have been born of God, and are God's sons by birth. They are Christ-breathed. What our Lord is saying is that when he comes, he will discern the attitude of heart towards him by what has been men's attitude of heart to Christ's pleasure. Let me give you an example. There was, uh, a group of Christians in the early days, and they were preaching in the temple, and they were preaching the name of Jesus, and upon came Saul Tusk, and he hurled them until his blood began to boil, and eventually he put his hands on them, and with the authority of the high priest, he hurled them into prison, and he tortured them and made them blaspheme. And you said to Saul of Tarsus, why are you doing that, Saul? Don't you know that these people, these Christians, are brothers of the Messiah? Paul would have been so flamingly angry, he would have tortured you as well. They brothers of Messiah? Of course they're not brothers of Messiah. I don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Do you believe Jesus is the Messiah? And says the king, you will show whether you believe I'm the Messiah or not by the way you treat those that have believed on me. Now, do you stand with the Messiah forever? You say, I can be a Christian without coming to church. I suppose you can. Very doubtful thing to try and do, isn't it? Because if we want to show Messiah that we belong to him, one of the ways we're expected to do it is to stand with his. So we end. As I end, I tell you a story. You see, the king is coming. Said the king himself. Make sure you're ready. Long centuries ago, King David of Israel suffered a rebellion at the hands of his son Absalom. And the rebellion was so fierce and so well supported by the people in general that the king had to flee from Jerusalem out into exile. Eventually, the usurper Absalom raised his armies to fight the king. And the king raised his armies, and there came a colossal battle, and the king won. And Absalom the usurper was defeated. And the news began to spread. And it came to the city, Jerusalem. And the city was in a panic. David had won. The king was coming. The people in the city had sided with the rebel. What should happen to them? Then there was debate and much embarrassment. What are we going to do? Brazen it out, said somebody. Don't be a fool, said the other. For if the king comes and finds us still on the side of the enemy, then it must be disaster. At last, one man hit upon a solution. Said he to the others, I tell you what, before the king gets here, why don't you speak a word about bringing back the king? Meaning? Why don't we send an embassy? Why don't we send a message? Why don't we send a messenger out to the king before he arrives and say, David, it was all a mistake. We were deceived. We supported the rebel. We were on his side, but oh, how fools we have been, and we repent of it. Know this, David, before you come back again, we've repented of it, and now we accept you as our king. Pray forgive us. That they did. And were ready for the king when he came. And he forgave. The king is coming. I speak to somebody here that's still on the side of the rails. You've never been saved. Never received Christ as Lord. And the king is coming. What are you going to do then if he arrives and you're still on the rebel side? Listen, tonight, before the king arrives, why don't you speak a word about bringing back the king. You say, what do you mean, preacher? I mean this, where you sit on that seat right now. As we close in prayer, why not lift your heart up to Jesus Christ, our son? Say, Lord, up to now I've lived my life for myself. Up till now I've been on the rebel side. All the Jesus Christ, I do repent. I want to come over to your side. I do receive you as king. Forgive me. And And say, send. O Kira, why speak you not a word about bringing back the king?