Matthew 25:11-46
THE LORD has told us in Matthew 24:14 that the “gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” This will be after the Church has been caught up to heaven. Those who will carry this message to all the world will be the faithful servants of Christ from among the Jews. The gospel of the kingdom that they proclaim will not be the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which tells of an accomplished redemption. But it will announce to all the world that the King is coming to set up His kingdom, that He is about to crush the serpent’s head and to take His great power and reign.
We can see how contrary is the course of this world to the purposes of God with respect to His beloved Son. Satan, the Beast, and the men of this world, who want the earth for themselves, will be set to oppose any interference from God with their schemes. But “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision...” Psa. 2:4. Yet the tidings of the coming kingdom will bring upon the Lord’s messengers such fierce persecution, that those who dare to show them even the smallest ordinary kindnesses will do so at the risk of their lives.
Now in our chapter, from verse 31 to the end, we have the judgment of those living nations to whom this gospel of the kingdom has been sent.
“When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations.” Here it tells us that the holy angels will be with Christ when He sits in judgment, while elsewhere we learn that His saints shall also accompany Him when He comes from heaven (2 Thess. 1:10; 2:1). During this present interval of grace, the Lord is in heaven sitting upon the Father’s throne, but in that day He will sit upon His own throne, for all things in heaven and earth shall be put under Him.
The solemn judgment scene before us is on earth. The judgment of the wicked dead at the great white throne, one thousand years later, will be in heaven (Rev. 20:7-15). It is not a question of a general judgment, as many believe, but the living nations are judged according to how they treated the messengers of the gospel of the kingdom. It is of this only that they give an account to the judge.
There are three classes spoken of here — the sheep, those who received the messengers kindly; the goats, those who did not; and the brethren of the Judge, the messengers themselves. The sheep are set on the King’s right hand and He says to them: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” The sheep do not pretend to have shown any kindness to the King personally, but all that they had done to His messengers He takes as done to Himself. He credits them as having received Him.
The goats on the other hand, those who had rejected the messengers are set on the King’s left, and He tells them, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” They might only have shown indifference to the messengers or they might have rejected them outright, but the King takes it as having been done unto Himself. We can see from this that even now it is a solemn thing to hear the message of God’s love and grace and to turn from it.
ML-02/03/1963