Monday, October 11, 2021

The Reward of the Righteous

 This morning, we close our study in the doctrine of worship by looking again at Matt. 25:31-46. Last week, we saw that God will ultimately judge the wicked of this world by sending them to the eternal punishment that we call Hell. That punishment will come on all of those who have sought their own delights in this world and forsaken the worship of God. So, we need to answer the question of what the ultimate end will be for the righteous. In just one verse, this parable tells us a great deal about the final reward of God’s people. I want to dig into this passage by answering the same questions we had for Hell: What is the reward of the righteous? Why are the righteous rewarded in this way? And, who are the righteous?

Let’s work from verse 34 to answer each of these questions. First, what is the reward of the righteous? Verse 34 says that Jesus will look to his sheep and will declare “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” There are some key words that help us understand what this reward is. Notice first that Jesus says we will “inherit” this reward. And what does he say that we will inherit? The kingdom prepared for us. Now, I think our natural interpretation of this is to call this inherited kingdom “Heaven”. After all, we sing and talk a great deal about going to Heaven when we die, but heaven is not the final destination for God’s people. Humans were not made for Heaven, they were made for earth. Remember in Genesis 2, Jesus stoops down in the dirt and forms man out of the dust. The beauty of that story is lost in translation for us. In the original Hebrew, the word for “man” is “Adam”, and the word for “dirt” is “Adama”. So, when Genesis 2:7 says that God made man out of the dust of the ground, the Hebrew says God made Adam out of Adama. In God’s perfect creation, we were not made to live in heaven, but to reign on earth. And, the Garden of Eden was a temple garden where Heaven (God’s dwelling place) touched earth and his people walked with him. We find that too, a little later in the story, as God calls the people of Israel out of Egypt. He saves them from slavery, but he doesn’t take them up into Heaven. Instead, he marches them to a promised land. He marches them to a land with vineyards that they did not plant and fields that they did not sow. God had already prepared the land for them. And, God would give them a tabernacle so that he might dwell with them in this promised land.

So, the reward that the righteous will inherit is not a bodiless realm of clouds and rainbows. The reward of the righteous is a new earth. To see this most clearly, turn with me to the end of the story: Rev. 21:1-7. John reveals that the righteous will inherit a new heaven and earth. This is pictured as a great city that descends out of heaven onto the earth. The great hope of this new earth is found in verse 3: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man!” When Christ judges the world, he will make all things new, and we will inherit a world that is renewed. The vail between the spiritual world and the physical will be removed and we will see God face to face!

Second, we need to ask, why does God reward the righteous in this way? In this parable, Jesus uses another often-misunderstood phrase. In verse 46, he says that the righteous will go away into “eternal life.” The way we tend to understand this phrase is as a future life with God in Heaven. Yet, that is not how Jesus uses the term. Jesus defines what eternal life is in John 17:3: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The same word for “life” is used in John 14:6, when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” You see, brothers and sisters, eternal life is not a place. Eternal life is a person. Jesus, in his resurrection, unites us to him through His Spirit. We have eternal life right now as we live by the Spirit. John 10:10 says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” This is the reward that God will give those who believe because this is the reason for which he created humanity. We were created to find our delight in God. In this world, people despair because they have no direction in life, they feel purposeless. Yet, when we turn to Christ, he brings us to life. The whole of our lives is filled with his purpose and calling. We know where our true home is. And the ultimate realization of that is found when God will dwell with us in the new heavens and earth. God will reward us with himself, because we were made for him and will have our rest.

Lastly, we need to ask, who are the righteous that will inherit this reward? Jesus gives us this answer in three parts. First, he tells us in verse 33 that those who inherit eternal life are his sheep. As I explained in last week’s sermon, sheep are symbolic of those who are chosen by God. In the OT, the people of Israel were called the sheep of God. In the NT, the sheep are marked out as those who listen to and follow Christ. In John 10:27, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and the follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” So, those who will inherit eternal life are those who recognize the voice of Jesus and follow him.

Jesus also tells us who these righteous are in verse 34 when he turns to them and calls them “Blessed”. This word has great significance throughout Scripture. To be blessed by God is to be given life. In Genesis 1, God blesses his creation and that blessing enables them to be fruitful and multiply. In the promised land, when God blessed the people, the land would prosper. To be blessed is to have the life-giving favor of God. So who is it that has this favor? Gal. 3:7-9 says, “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham… So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” In other words, just as Abraham was blessed by God by trusting in his promises, so too we are blessed when we trust in the promises God has made through Jesus.

Finally, in verses 35-40, Jesus lists all of these good deeds that the righteous have done. We might make the mistake of thinking that this list of good deeds implies that we can somehow work our way into heaven. But notice, Jesus sets up these deeds as evidence of who his sheep are, not the grounds for their salvation. His sheep were already sheep through faith. And the outgrowth of their faith is seen in the way they care for the least. We know this is the case because, in verse 38, the righteous ask, “when did we do these things?” You see, the righteous are different from the wicked in this one way. The wicked thought they deserved the kingdom because they had all the outward signs of good works but none of the heart. The righteous, on the other hand, did the things of God without the first thought of what they were doing. They were motivated by a heart that delighted in God.

Friend, heaven cannot be gained by stacking up enough good works to earn it. The wicked, on the day of judgment, will think they have earned it and will be deeply disappointed. The righteous, on the other hand, will enter because they trusted in the promises of God and followed Christ. Won’t you trust in Christ today that you might enter the eternal life that God has prepared for you?

Brothers and sisters, the great hope of our reward is that we will see Jesus face to face. Our modern world has so distorted Heaven to the point that we might be tempted to set our hopes on lesser things. We might dream of our mansion instead of longing to be in the House of the Lord. We might hope for reunions with family and friends, rather than being joined together with loved ones in joyous praise to the God of the universe. May we learn to long for the day when we will see Jesus. May we live in light of the eternal life that he has given us. May we live to find our delight in God, and may we look forward to the full delight we will know in receiving the inheritance he has prepared for us.

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