Sermon: Marked as God’s People

Scripture Text: Exodus 29:1-9 and Matthew 25:31-46

Quotes for Reflection

Martin Luther, Church Postil
We receive Christ not only as a gift by faith, but also as an example of love toward our neighbor, whom we are to serve as Christ serves us. Faith brings and gives Christ to you with all his possessions. Love gives you to your neighbor with all your possessions. These two things constitute a true and complete Christian life.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

Ross Doughout, Believe 
Life is short and death is certain, and what account will you give of yourself if the believers turn out to have been right all along? That you took pointlessness for granted in a world shot through with signs of meaning and design? That you defaulted to unbelief because that seemed like the price of being intellectually serious or culturally respectable? That you were too busy to be curious, too consumed with things you knew to be passing to cast a prayer up to whatever eternity awaits?

Application Questions

1. Why does the idea of final judgement often feel uncomfortable? How have you grown to appreciate this approaching reality in your journey of faith? 

2. Jesus seems to indicate that love for the least of these begins in the community of the church. Why is this the starting point? How have you seen love that begins in the church minister to the broader world? 

3. How can seeing Jesus in the face of another change how you love someone this week?