Matthew 25: 14-30
One day the Master will return and He will settle accounts
As we come to the last two weeks in the Church’s calendar,
before the 1st Sunday of Advent and a new Church Year,
the Bible readings always about the End Times.
They remind us that we will have a personal End Time
when we will die and face the Lord,
from whom no secrets are hid
and all desires known.
And they remind us of the ultimate End Time
when the Parousia, or 2nd Coming, will take place
and, as we recite every week in the Creed,
Jesus will return to judge both the living and the dead;
the sheep, those who have accepted God’s grace, forgiveness and salvation,
will be placed on His right hand and will enjoy His presence for all eternity,
while the goats,
those who did not receive what God freely offered to all through faith in Jesus Christ,
will be placed on His left hand and will suffer eternal damnation.
Our Introit psalm today was Psalm 90:1-12.
In the Lutheran Study Bible which Glen Zweck gave me at Westfield House before he retired
and moved to a Nursing Home in Australia,
it says:
Psalm 90 is a prayer to the everlasting God to have compassion on His servants,
who live their melancholy lives
under the rod of divine wrath.
It is a plea that God will yet show them His love
and give them cause for joy
and bless their labours with enduring worth.
That prayer could be answered in this life, or in the next.
If anyone here feels they are leading a melancholy life
and they are suffering under the rod of God’s wrath,
I pray that God will hear your prayer
and make things better.
I pray that we will all experience God’s love
and have cause for joy,
in eternity, if not in this life,
and that however we labour in His vineyard
He will bless our labours,
when, like the Master in the Parable,
He comes to judge.
Our Old Testament lesson was Zephaniah 1:7-16
and here again we are reminded that God will return to judge.
Those who have sinned and have never repented;
those who have mocked God and taken His name in vain,
will crying and wail.
Everything that they have put their trust in,
possessions and positions, status and bank balances;
will all be wiped out; ruined; demolished.
No one knows when that Day will happen;
only fools try to calculate the date and time,
and only great fools make announcements that they know when it will happen,
for even Jesus said He did not know,
but only the Father in heaven.
However, as Zephaniah put it in chapter 1 verse 14
‘The great day of the Lord is near,
and is coming’ although maybe not as quickly as he thought.
When it does come, however, it will be ‘a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish,
a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness’
for some, for many,
but not for those who have put their trust in Jesus,
as I hope all of us here have.
In today’s Epistle reading, 1 Thess 5:1-11, Paul, correctly,
does not try to work out when the Day of the Lord will occur;
he knew that would be a waste of time;
but he warns non-Christians that ‘destruction will come on them suddenly’
and no one will escape,
but he encourages us, and exhorts us to encourage one another,
that when ‘the Day of the Lord’ does come
it will not be our lot to ‘suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ’
who died for us,
taking the punishment we deserve for our sins.
These readings from the Old Testament and the Epistles provide the context
for us to look at Jesus’ Parable of the Master and the Tenants in Matthew 25:14-30,
which, coupled with his Parable of the Ten Virgins in verses 1-13,
and his Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in verses 31 – 46,
are all about the rewards God’s good and faithful servants can look forward to,
and which those who have given God no time in their lives, will not benefit from,
but will suffer His wrath for eternity.
Before we get proud about what we DO for God and His church,
or get a guilty conscience about HOW LITTLE we do,
it is important, absolutely fundamental,
to remember that salvation, forgiveness of sins, eternal life,
are the believer’s because of God’s grace, which we receive through faith.
These things cannot be earned, merited, worked for or deserved, only received
(Ephes 2 v. 8-9),
because all our righteousness, good works, etc. are of the same value or worth as ‘filthy rags’ (Isaiah 64 v. 6).
A warning:
When thinking about the ‘rewards’ (Greek: misthos’) we can look forward,
we must be careful, because the Bible is not clear.
The only thing that is clear is that eternal life with God and the angels and the saints
is going to be fantastically better than the alternative.
On the one hand we have the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-12)
which suggests that all believers receive the same ‘reward’
whether they died a martyrs death
or served the Lord for many years or were saved on their death beds.
On the other hand we have Jesus teaching on the importance of building up ‘treasure in heaven’ (Matthew 6:19)
and today’s Gospel reading where Jesus says those who have done much will receive much
and those who have done little will receive little.
Some argue that the Judgement of believers at the Great White Throne or Bema Seat
is to decide on the ‘reward’ appropriate to their Christian service,
but Revelation 20 verse12 does not go into detail.
The idea that each believer (saved by faith, but rewarded for service for the Lord)
will receive one or more ‘crowns’ comes from Paul in 1st Corinthians 9:24-27,
and this raises the question that if the ‘crown’ referred is eternal life,
is it possible for anyone to lose it,
because Paul suggests the possibility of being ‘disqualified for the prize’.
Paul talked about the crown of incorruption in 1st Corinthians 9:24-25,
and in 1st Corinthians 15 he goes into great detail about the resurrection body we will all one day have.
‘Going to heaven’ is not the ultimate reward;
heaven is only a resting place, a spiritual lay-by,
until the 2nd Coming when Jesus will renew the earth
and the heavenly Jerusalem will come down to earth
and we will live some sort of super-physical life
on an earth as it was before Adam and Eve sinned,
and will be again.
As it says in Romans 8 verse 22:
‘the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth;
he meant groaning to be back the way it was in the beginning,
and one of our rewards,
after the Master has settled accounts,
is to give us some sort of place in it.
Paul includes in the list of rewards Christians can look forward to,
the crown of righteousness in 2nd Timothy 4:8.
This means that all who have put their trust in this life in the righteousness of Christ,
as opposed to their own self-righteousness,
will have the righteousness of Christ for eternity.
On the other hand, I am sure we all know people who John wrote about in his 1st Letter
where we read in verse 8:
‘if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’
There are many people out there who are living a lie,
claiming to be ‘good’,
claiming they don’t need Christ or forgiveness,
because they are not ‘bad’;
but the Bible says: ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’.
One of the best rewards we can look forward to when the Master returns to settle accounts
is the crown of life, which James wrote about in 1:12.
The worst thing that can happen to any of us in this life is physical death,
although some argue that it might be better than the ordeal of suffering from a terminal illness.
Certainly, through Jesus Christ, all who have been saved by grace by faith
will have eternal life;
even life in abundance;
which means a totally blessed, healthy, happy and care-free life,
much better than any of us could ever imagine,
and it is ours through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Another reward we can look forward to is a crown of rejoicing,
mentioned by Paul in 1st Thessalonians 2:19.
We will all rejoice in the presence of God, Jesus, the angels and saints,
and it is such a shame that many of our friends, family and neighbours,
just don’t find this appealing or attractive,
when, for the believer, nothing could ever be better.
Believers will receive the crown of glory according to Peter in his 1st Letter, chapter 5 verse 4.
Will those who became Christians on the death beds receive the same crown
as Christians who spent many years in the service of the Lord?
Who knows,
except that Scripture, Genesis 18 verse 25, says ‘Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’
Whatever we receive, we will be grateful for,
and in heaven, or on the resurrected earth, there will be no petty jealousies,
only gratitude for whatever God in His mercy and because of his grace, gives us.
One other reward that we can look forward to is the crown of gold,
which is talked about in Revelation 4:4.
Other than these things, the Bible says little, and it is pointless to speculate about them.
The main thing that I hope we all believe and accept, however,
is that eternal life with God will be much better than anything we can imagine or hope for.
Finally, we remember that Luther taught, ‘we are justified by faith, not by works,
but good works are always good to do, and are pleasing to the Lord’,
so while we have time and opportunity,
let us labour for the Master in whatever Vineyard He has put us in,
to the best of our abilities,
assured that when the Master returns to settle accounts,
He will do so fairly and justly.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
