Matthew: How to be a Sheep

Today Jesus wraps up His final discourse and we see the future of history, get a bit of theology and how eternity impacts living.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 25:31-46 - Anthony Garcia

“I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as another book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India already. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside of it” Badrinath, Hindu scholar

“If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers! - Mike Goheen

Deut 15:7-11 Leviticus 19:9-10 Zech 7:8-10 - Proverbs 19:17 -

From the beginning, Jesus teaches, world history has been structured with a split ending in view. History ends in either heaven or hell. This double issue is not peripheral to the Gospel of Matthew; it is not a survival of late-apocalyptic Judaism, an alien growth on the love teaching of Jesus. It is so inseparably a part of Jesus’ love teaching, as even here in one of Jesus’ most loving teachings, that one senses that Jesus’ urgency in mission flowed at least in part from a conviction that human life can be ruined. - Dale Bruner

If your roots are in Jesus, your fruit will be love. Fruit takes time to grow; it doesn’t appear overnight. We don’t have to beat ourselves up for not being perfect Jesus-followers the day after we’ve started walking in his dust. It took the disciples a long time too. But the longer we’re planted in God’s garden, the deeper our roots grow in his goodness, and the more generosity, joy, and selflessness begin to spring forth from our branches. - Joshua Ryan Butler

The book of Revelation offers us the vision of a city which is on the one hand the perfection of all human striving towards beauty, civilization and good order, and on the other hand is the place where every tear is dried and where every one of us knows God face to face, and knows that we are his and he is ours. That is the vision with which the Bible ends, and it is a vision that enables us to see the whole human story and each of our lives within that story as meaningful, and which therefore invites us through Jesus Christ to become responsible actors in history, not to seek to run away from the responsibilities and the agonies of human life in its public dimension. Each of us must be ready to take our share in all the struggles and the anguish of human history and yet with the confidence that what is committed to Christ will in the end find its place in his final kingdom.
That means that as I look forward I don’t see just an empty void, I don’t just see my own death, I don’t just see some future utopia in which I shall have no share. The horizon to which I look forward is that day when Jesus shall come, and his holy city will come down as a bride from heaven adorned for her husband. Lesslie Newbigin

1 Corinthians 15:57-58