Have you ever had anyone come up to you and say “haven’t I seen you somewhere before”? I’ve been told I have that kind of face. A familiar face.
I’ve been working before and someone tell me I have a twin in their home town. They’ll say to their buddy, hey look at this guy, he looks just like so and so. I usually tell people the reason I look so familiar is because they’ve seen me on America’s Most Wanted or they’ve seen my picture on the post office wall.
What is it that makes a face familiar? I mean what is it that causes us to recognize our friends and family? Why are we able to pick them out of a crowd? Or what about when you see someone you haven’t seen in a long time? Maybe it’s been years and they come up to you and call you by name and you get this uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach, because you have no idea who they are. And when they tell you who they are you say “I didn’t recognize you. You’re a lot fatter than you were in high school”. But what is it that triggers our memory and say “oh yeah, I remember you.” Is it their eyes? Their smile, their mannerisms or demeanor?
I think it’s all of the above. You see there has to be some rudimentary knowledge of the person that includes a portion of all their attributes that would make them memorable to you. The same way what makes a stranger a stranger is the fact that you have shared no experiences with them. You know nothing about them, and you’ve never spent any time to speak of with them. I want to ask you, what about Jesus? If He were to walk in to this room would you recognize Him? If you saw Him in the street or in a restaurant would you know it was Jesus? We always think of Jesus as the blond haired and blue eyed man depicted in many religious paintings.
But if we were to see Jesus, is that what He would look like?
Look at Matt. 25: 31-46
Here Jesus is teaching, and He’s talking about 2 groups of people who had encountered Him in their life’s journey, but didn’t recognize Him. So the purpose of this post is so that, if you encounter Jesus in your everyday life you will recognize Him. And so that you are informed of your responsibilities when it comes to recognizing Jesus. And finally, that you are warned of the consequences of not fulfilling those responsibilities.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
The first thing I want you to see t is that both groups thought they would enter in to their heavenly reward. Notice in v.44 where the goats answered Jesus and called Him Lord. You see, these people thought they recognized Jesus. They thought they knew Him. They thought their half hearted relationship was good enough. And many people today say they know Jesus as lord. But there are some evidences that must be present if you are going to make that claim. John wrote “If someone says they love God and hates his brother he is a liar.” He goes on to say “he who loves God must love his brother.”
But what does it mean to love your brother? Simply put, it means to do what our text says the faithful did. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, help the stranger, and clothe the naked. It boils down to the command of Jesus to love your neighbor. When Jesus was asked “who is my neighbor?” Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Where a priest and a Levite came upon the wounded naked man that had been robbed and left for dead, and they did nothing. You see the priest and the Levite in those days were the most religious, the closest to God. After all, the priest was the mediator between God and the common man, and the Levites were the people chosen by God in the Old Testament to be ministers to the temple. But they just passed by, traveling the road on the other side to put as much distance between themselves and this mans problems as they could. These are people you would be surprised not to see in heaven. In today’s context, these are the people you would see driving a car with a Jesus fish on it. They would be wearing a WWJD bracelet, wearing a t-shirt with a clever religious catch phrase on it, and they would be sitting right next to you in church every Sunday morning. And it was this kind of person that walked right past this wounded and helpless man. But who was it that stopped to help? A most unlikely candidate, a Samaritan. Who was probably the product of an unholy union between a Jew and a non-Jew. Who was thought of as unclean, filthy and immoral. A good comparison to a Samaritan in today’s culture would be someone with so many facial piercings they look like they were hit in the face with a tackle box. They would probably have tattoos covering both arms. The kind of person you would never expect to see in church, much less heaven. But I ask you the same question that Jesus asked, which one do you think was neighbor to him who fell among thieves?
You see the problem is, we do just as the priest and Levite did. We distance ourselves from the social concerns of those around us. We feel we have an obligation to help people, but only if they look like us, walk like us, and talk like us. You see, the Samaritan is some one who would never darken the door of this church. So how must we reach them? How can we love our neighbor when they never come where we are? When there are so many differences to overcome? The solution is simple really. Go where they are? And selflessly meet the needs of their circumstances just as they are. We need to stop making people feel like the have to behave and belong before they believe. We need to allow people to come to Jesus the way we did, just as we were.
Our text this morning is not a suggestion or an option, but a mandate to go into the world looking under every rock, seeking in all the dark places and say “is that you Jesus?” Because what you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to Him. We don’t think of Jesus as hungry, naked, sick or in prison.
But when you love your neighbor, then you automatically love God. A good example of this is how we often hear about awesome and amazing experiences that missionaries have in the mission field. Even people who go on short term mission trips come back saying that it changed their life. This is because they went seeking to feed the hungry mouths, clothe the naked bodies, to care for the sick people and visit the lonely prisoner. IF YOU MEET THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE, YOU MEET JESUS ALONG THE WAY! Yes, you bless those who need it, but what an awesome thing to know. That you gave blessings to Him that gave everything for you.
You see folks this is on of those places in the scriptures that our Lord draws a dividing line between the faithful and the unfaithful. And the line is very clear, but few who call themselves Christian are faithful in it. Few who say they recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior would recognize Him if they came across Him today. Because He would look like our neighbor from the story. We do a great job ministering to ourselves, but how far does the long arm of love reach outside of the walls of our churches? How far do we reach into our community? Into the lives of our neighbors?
Thanx
Pastor Dave