Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – 1 Kings 10-13
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 25:31-40
Jesus: When the Son of Man comes in all His majesty accompanied by throngs of heavenly messengers, His throne will be wondrous. All the nations will assemble before Him, and He will judge them, distinguishing them from one another as a shepherd isolates the sheep from the goats. He will put some, the sheep, at His right hand and some, the goats, at His left. Then the King will say to those to His right,
King: Come here, you beloved, you people whom My Father has blessed. Claim your inheritance, the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation. You shall be richly rewarded, for when I was hungry, you fed Me. And when I was thirsty, you gave Me something to drink. I was alone as a stranger, and you welcomed Me into your homes and into your lives. I was naked, and you gave Me clothes to wear; I was sick, and you tended to My needs; I was in prison, and you comforted Me.
Even then the righteous will not have achieved perfect understanding and will not recall these things.
Righteous: Master, when did we find You hungry and give You food? When did we find You thirsty and slake Your thirst? When did we find You a stranger and welcome You in, or find You naked and clothe You? When did we find You sick and nurse You to health? When did we visit You when You were in prison?
King: I tell you this: whenever you saw a brother or sister hungry or cold, whatever you did to the least of these, so you did to Me.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
We probably hear lots of sermons about judgment day and the separation of the sheep from the goats, the obedient from the disobedient, the good from the evil. Well, maybe we don’t hear many sermons about that any more, but we probably should. However, if you’ve been in the church very long and if you’ve read your Bible much at all, you know a judgment day is coming on which we will be held account for the lives we live in this present age.
Rewards and punishments will be meted out for every individual based on two things. The lives we lived, that is the good and bad we did to others. And second, whether we accepted Jesus as Lord of our life during our life now. If we accept Him as Lord, the sinful acts are forgiven and not remembered by God. That’s a pretty interesting twist to God’s omniscience. God chooses to forget our sins and never remember them again when we ask repentantly for His forgiveness. But that’s a different sermon for a different time.
What I really want us to see today in the words Jesus spoke is this sentence in the middle of His discourse. “Even then the righteous will not have achieved perfect understanding and will not recall these things.” That’s a pretty interesting thing for Jesus to say at the judgment, don’t you think?
I always pictured the judgment as this long line of people walking up to Jesus, sitting on His throne. Next to Him is this gigantic jumbo-screen, like you see in a basketball court, large enough for everyone in line to see. And as you stand there, your whole life plays out in front of you. Everything you did shows up on that screen. Everything! I mean everything! But for those whose sins have been forgiven, washed away by the cleansing power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, when those sinful acts start to play, instead of the act showing on the screen, there is this splash of blood red that covers the screen. Words scroll across the screen in big bold letters that read, “This portion of Richard’s life (or insert your name if you’re a child of God) is forgotten, covered by My blood.”
The video of your life continues. The whole of your life plays out. And as a child of God, saved by His grace, every sin committed shows up with that same crimson cover, “This portion of Richard’s life is forgotten, covered by My blood.” But the other interesting thing about that video for the righteous, is that I think we will see things we never realized happened. Words of encouragement we gave that we don’t remember. Acts of kindness we performed that slipped our mind. Giving gifts without any reason other than giving with the thought sharing God’s love at a particular moment in time, but never remembering the reason or the moment, or even the person we gave the gift.
I think for those who live under the direction of God’s Spirit in them, we will see dozens, hundreds of acts performed through our life that just happen every day because we feel compelled to do the right thing and that right thing serves God and others in ways we do not understand. At the judgment we will see how our lives impacted the world for good or evil. It will all be made clear. Until then, when God prompts you to do something, just do it. You’ll be surprised the joy it will bring to you and others when you do. Who knows, you might really be the star on a jumbo-screen one day.
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