Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25:31-46)


What is a Role Play
 
1. Unscripted play, a pretend situation. To play out the natural, instinctive reactions to situations.
2. Switching roles to understand each other's  hearts, and receive healing of their own problems.
3. Purpose is for the patients to fully see the cause of their problems, and move towards resolutions of the problems.
4. Two sides to role plays:
a. Patients who need to learn the lesson and receive healing - these are the
b. The others, the extras, who are there as instruments to help the patient in their learning and healing.
 
Believers have been called and chosen before the creation of the world.
 
Our lives are like a giant role play
 
1. When God created man, God made us in His image, with character and rationality, resembling God. Then there is something inevitable that happens as a result - the pride that comes from not knowing the root of one's existence and pride of mistaking oneself as God. Because we resemble God, and have a "self" with character and rationality like God.
2. Such pride is what the bible calls sin, and that is the problem that God wants to expose from within us, by using time (history) and space (universe).
3. Believers are the ones who have been chosen to be united with God and live with God for eternity.
4. To these believers, pride and disobedience is the worst stumbling block to that life of glory.
5. Believers have been given the role of sinners in this role play of time and space, to learn the ugliness, filthiness, hollowness and destructiveness of sin AND to fathom and understand the grace and heart of the Father God towards such sinners, then ultimately move on to eternal life with God.
 
So the believers are the main figures of history, of this role play.
 
And this is a temporary set up, a stage, for us to understand who we are, understand who God is, and learn about the absolutely necessity  of God's grace. Total dependence on God. God will continue to move His chosen people towards this knowledge and state of total dependence and take them home.
 
<<< Draw Home -> world -> Home >>>
 
We have our roles - it is the sinner. God is saying - "you are nothing, and there's nothing worthy inside of you".  But people don't want to play the role of the sinner that needs God's grace. People want the role of the righteous, of the powerful, of the successful, of the rich ….. They want to play the role of God.
 
Our role is not to do something great or worthy within the role play, our role is to LEARN!
 
JUST LIVE - just live the role you've been given. Live to learn. Live to keep finding out and keep realising more about God and about grace. Live to receive God's revelations to us. Fixed on Jesus. Just focus on Jesus.
 
Then if the purpose of this role play for God's chosen children is to understand sin, understand righteousness, understand judgment, understand grace, then ultimately move into the home that's already prepared for them - then does it matter greatly how many good works or good deeds they did while in this role play? It has no relevance whatsoever. Because the patient that has been thrust into the role play is not someone who contributes to the role play, or does something great within the role play, but learn the lesson and receive healing.
 
But if such prideful patient forget that they are sinners, and forget that they need healing, and they try their might to show themselves as healthy and righteous in that  role play, then that role play is COMPLETELY ruined. Defeats the purpose of the role play. That's the Pharisees.
 
 
Then in that context, in that truth, would it make sense to interpret today's passage as if God's saying to the patients and sinners in the role play,
 
"Okay, if you do lots of good work I will save you and if you don't I wont save you"
 
No, the role play itself is the purpose. God's intention is to teach us about Him, what happens to those who try to live without Him, that we need His grace, and how great His kingdom, our home is compared to this world. 
 
There are so many people in history who have done so much good and charitable works but did not have ANY knowledge of God and His Kingdom, and have never understood the absolute need for God's grace and then died. Do they go to heaven? If they don't go to heaven, then today's passage should never be interpreted like that.
 
Verse 34 and verse 41 <Read verse>
 
God's people have already been chosen and given eternal life before creation; and sent down as sheep in the role play. The others have been chosen for eternity in hell and sent down as goats, as extras for the role play. This is unconditional election.
 
Romans 9:10-24 <Read Verse>
 
• Word "prepared" is the same perfective verb that is used in Matthew 25 in the passage.
• Then the humanistic Christians (including myself) will not accept this - they say "Why does God whatever He wants without even consulting us!?" - this attack is coming from their misconception that they are and have been living beings but the truth of the matter is that we're all dead dust. He sends the dead to the place of death.
 
 
Then what about the actions of the sheep and goats in the passage?
 
<Read the symptoms first>
 
The symptoms here are all representations of death. Symbolising death. Jesus came to give life to the dead.
 
Who did all this???
 
1. Feeding the hungry and giving water to the thirsty--> John 6:33-35 (Jesus becomes the hungry and thirsty, and dies on the cross to become our bread)
2. Encourage the stranger --> We were to be strangers to God's kingdom. As sinners we are dead in our transgressions and belong in hell,  and we are foreigners to God's kingdom. But Jesus becomes the stranger, takes the foreigner status from us, and instead moves us to God's family, God's kingdom as His children. Ephesians 2:19
3. Clothing the naked --> Adam's shame for being Naked. This shame is revealed once again in Noah where Shem covers the shame of his father Noah - this is a foreshadow of Jesus. Jesus becomes the naked, becomes the shameful on the cross, to suck up our shame and die in our place, and clothe us in His righteousness. 
4. Looking after the sick --> Sickness is death. All his healing miracles tell us of his death to give us life. Matthew 8:16-17
5. Visiting the prisoner--> This world is prison. 1Peter3:18-19
 
Only person to have done this completely is Jesus.
 
Jesus fed the hungry…. Etc etc and is the true lamb of God.
 
So we don't become lambs by fulfilling the characteristics of lambs - there is not one who can do that. We become lambs because Jesus, the true lamb, comes into us and makes us into a lamb. I become one with Jesus, and then I am revealed as a lamb, as the sheep.
 
 
We are made lambs by grace, not of our own!!
 
 
 
Then how will the world view of people who have realised this change? Self Denial. Humility.
 
When you look at the hungry, the sick etc, would you judge them like the Pharisees did?
 
The person who realised the grace of the gospel, how would they think? They confess this within themselves every day!
 
Jinhee's testimony about me being exactly same as before….