Cursed (Deuteronomy 21.22-23 and Galatians 3.7-14)

 

Introduction

 

Back in 1994, as civil war was wreaking havoc in Burundi, a nurse walked into the hospital lavatories and spotted something in one of the toilets. It was moving. It was a newborn and premature baby girl who had been left abandoned, but miraculously, she was still alive. The only reason she didn’t drown is that her neck was caught in the U-bend of the toilet bowl.

 

The nurse fished her out, cleaned her up, and contacted a woman called Chrissie Chapman, who was the only person in Bujumbura taking in abandoned babies or orphans at the time. Chrissie took this baby in when she was five days old and gave her the most beautiful name, the only name to adequately capture what her little life embodied: Grace.

 

This precious baby girl, just 5 lbs in weight, was put on antibiotics as a preventative measure because her severed umbilical cord had been in contact with the toilet water. We will never know, but it seems likely that these antibiotics, due to their high dose, were what led to Grace losing any sense of hearing. 

 

Months later, a specialist diagnosed her with profound deafness, and there was nothing that could be done. Can you imagine a more cursed start to life? Thrown away down a toilet and with a life-defining disability... 

 

I’ll come back to that story later because it has a remarkable twist. But our world is both rich in blessings and blighted by curses, and that is what I’m going to be talking about today.

 

So far in this Before the Cross series we have seen four prophetic pictures of Christ’s afflictions for us from the first four books of the Old Testament. The fifth book in the Bible is Deuteronomy, where we find yet another prefiguring of the cross.

 

If you’ve ever read the Bible through, first of all, well done for getting past Leviticus; it’s not an easy read as we noted two weeks ago. But secondly, you may have noticed that when you get to Deuteronomy, it often duplicates, sometimes almost word-for-word, what you’ve already just read in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. 

 

And you may have asked yourself why? Why does God repeat himself in this way? To answer that question, we need to travel back in time to the world in which Deuteronomy was written. We would have to set our Time Machine to somewhere around the year 1250 B.C. If we could do that, what would we see? 

 

We would see that for four decades, God’s people have been going nowhere, round and round in circles in the Sinai desert. It’s nothing to do with the fact that the men didn’t ask for directions either. The Bible tells us that the reason it has taken the Israelites 40 years to complete a 12-day journey is stubborn unbelief. Unbelief literally gets you nowhere. 

 

But now, finally, at the end of those 40 years, God’s people are camped on the plains of Moab, on the east bank of the River Jordan, beyond which lies the land flowing with milk and honey that God has promised to give them. Only three people who experienced the dramatic and miraculous escape from Egypt through the Red Sea 40 years earlier are still alive; Moses, Joshua and Caleb. 

 

Everyone else who fled from Pharaoh at the first Passover has since died in the wilderness. So we’re looking at an almost entirely new nation. And Moses, a very old man now, knows that soon, in a matter of a few days, this young generation will, at last, take possession of this promised land - and he, Moses, is not going to be one of them. God has revealed to him that he has about a week to live. 

 

So Moses spends the last days of his life writing down and explaining God’s word all over again for this new generation. This is what we call Deuteronomy. Deutero meaning “second”, and nomos meaning “law,” it’s the second law. Because it's a repeat of all that stuff in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers – except that this time it is for an entirely new audience. And that explains why you have a sense of deja vu when you read it immediately after what comes before. 

 

The key message of Deuteronomy therefore is this; every generation has to discover God for itself. The faith of those who lived before us is not sufficient to get us through. It is not enough to say, “well, my dad was a deacon in the Baptist Church.” Or, “my grandmother was on the flower rota at Saint Hilda’s.” Or “our family is staunch Methodist going back three generations.” Listen, you are truly blessed if you come from a Christian family; that’s the best start in life anyone can have. But at the end of the day, you cannot inherit someone else’s relationship with God; it has to be your own. 

 

If you’re a parent, the most valuable gift you can give to your children is to model and live out an authentic relationship with God through Jesus Christ. They see that. They see that your faith is fake, when doesn’t seem important to you. They see when it does, when it is real. Pray that your children will know and love the Lord for themselves. Show them a life of faith that they will want to emulate. This legacy is more precious than anything you can leave in your will. But, remember, in the end, you can only hand on your faith so far. They have to embrace it for themselves.  

 

Blessings and Curses

 

I started by mentioning blessings and curses, because this is one the main themes of Deuteronomy. Obedience leads to a blessed life. And disobedience leads to a cursed life. But God is always more eager to bless than to curse; the word, “curse”, appears 31 times in Deuteronomy. But the word “bless” appears 44 times. God is a God who delights to bless. His plan and purpose are that we flourish under his blessing.

 

The very first words spoken over Adam and Eve after God gives them life and breath are words of blessing. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number’.” 

 

When God calls Abraham - a pivotal moment in salvation history - he says, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 

 

When God establishes the priesthood, foreshadowing Jesus as the perfect bridge between God and us, he says to the priests, “This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.” 

 

The first Psalm begins with blessing. “Blessed is the one… whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on it day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.” 

 

The first recorded public teaching in Jesus’ ministry is the Sermon on the Mount - and the very first word on his lips is, “blessed.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus went on to say, “bless those who curse you…” 

 

On and on it goes; this golden thread of blessing throughout the Bible continues until the very last chapter of the very last book which says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city [of God].” 

 

You need to know that God is for you, he wants you to thrive. He is eager to bless you. This is his plan. But the whole truth is that God does not only bless, because the entry of sin into the world in Genesis 3 resulted in his curse.

 

Back in the nineteen-seventies, there was a church in West London, which displayed posters on its public billboard to attract the attention of passers-by. One notice carried the following message: Are you tired of sin? Then come inside. But regrettably, there was too much blank space on the poster and underneath someone had scribbled, “If not, call Raunchy Rick on 337269.”

 

The devil loves us to think that sin is great, and that hell is where all the fun is. It’s a lie. Sin alienates us from God. It never satisfies. It messes up your life. It’s addictive, and wearying, and controlling, and energy-sapping. Sin is slow death by strangulation. It brings you under a curse that you feel you can’t get free from.

 

One of the curses in Deuteronomy comes in chapter 27 and it says this; Cursed is anyone who does not uphold all the words of this law [that is the law of Moses, summarised in the Ten Commandments] by carrying them out.”

That’s a problem, because James 2.10 says, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” 

 

Imagine keeping all God’s law, all your life, except just one time you covet someone’s dress, or you take a pen home from work, or you tell a little lie – it’s the same as if you’ve broken all the commandments. Does that seem unfair? 

 

Here’s how it works: imagine you buy a beautiful white carpet for your living room, and on the first day, someone spills a bottle of ink on it. They might say, “oh, what’s one small ink stain? Get over it. 99% of the carpet is fine.”

But all you can see when you walk into your living room is that ugly ink mark on your beautiful, expensive carpet. When you try and clean it, it just makes the splodge worse. The carpet is ruined. 

 

Or imagine someone serves you an omelette made with 6 eggs, one of which was left out in the sun for a week. But the other five were fine! “And look, what’s one tiny dose of salmonella or e-coli? It’s microscopic, it’s no big deal.” Yes, it is a big deal, you’ve got food poisoning! Your whole body feels terrible!” 

 

If I pull just one pearl off a necklace, all the other beads fall to the floor. And in exactly the same way, just one sin in my life breaks friendship with God, and it shuts the door to heaven, and it puts me under a curse. It’s a big problem and it needs a big solution. Thankfully, there is one and curiously it comes in the form of another curse in Deuteronomy. Chapter 21, verses 22-23. Here’s what it says:

 

“If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.”

 

Primitive societies used to expose the bodies of anyone guilty for a capital offence after their death; it was the strongest expression of reproach and disgrace to convey the shame of the crime committed. It was designed to dissuade the living from repeating offences like murder and rape themselves. 

But this scripture shows how God preserved the dignity of even the worst criminals by insisting that their corpses be removed from public disgrace and buried before nightfall.

 

It’s a very obscure law, for a very different kind of society to our own. But even as recently as the French Revolution people used to display severed heads on spikes. They still do such things in places like Syria today. 3,500 years earlier, God mandated respect for the dead and dignified burial customs. 

 

This strange law might well have got forgotten in one of the least read, least obviously relevant parts of the Bible, were it not for the fact that the Apostle Paul picks it up in his letter to the Galatians many years later. As always with Paul, his logic is very tightly packed together, so you need to concentrate, but here’s the passage:

 

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” 

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

 

So in other words, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying, “No one ever manages to go through the whole of their life with a perfect record.” Let me try and illustrate that… 

 

There are two men sitting next to each other on an airplane, let’s call them Bill and Ben. Eventually, they ask each other what they do for a living. Bill says he is a businessman. Ben says he is a pastor. As soon Ben says that, Bill squirms uncomfortably in his seat. 

 

But then Bill says, “Well, as it happens, I’m a Christian too!” Ben says “Well, that’s great. What church do you go to?” “Oh,” says Bill, “errr, my wife goes to… what’s it called… well, she goes there every week and I go with her at Christmas and Remembrance. I am a patriotic and law-abiding, good person. When it comes to my professional life, I have a reputation of being honest.” 

 

In fact, Bill thinks he is an upstanding citizen and an excellent role model. In his mind, can barely put a cigarette paper between his moral goodness and God himself. So pastor Ben says, “That’s fascinating. Tell me, would you be interested in me explaining to you what the Bible says about all this?” and Bill says “Yes, that would be great.” 

 

So Ben draws a ladder on a napkin. He says, “Let’s call this the Ladder of Goodness. We will put God on the top rung and that makes sense. He is a perfect God. He is a holy God. At the bottom of the ladder, you have axe murderers and terrorists.” He turns to Bill and says, “Where do you think you should put yourself on this ladder? Where do you think you fit? But before you commit yourself, let’s put some other names on the ladder.” Bill says, “OK then.” 

 

Ben says, “Who would be, to your mind, the holiest, best, most morally upright Christian in your entire lifetime?” Bill thinks for a minute and says, “Well, that would have to be Mother Teresa, hands down.” Ben says, “I wouldn’t disagree.” I think Mother Teresa was fantastic. But when you read her writings or listen to her interviews, you find surprisingly that she did not speak highly of herself at all. She talked about how impatient she was, how angry she got, how hard she was on her colleagues. I think she would put herself about… here. Under halfway down!

 

They come up with a few other names. Billy Graham, Pope Francis, I don’t know - Cliff Richard, Jenny Coltman… But each time, Ben talks about what they have said about their own unworthiness. “Pope Francis, for example, when they approached him about becoming Pope, he said, Don’t pick me, I am a sinful man.” Billy Graham in his autobiography, talks about his many failings and weaknesses. So they put a few more crosses on the ladder.

 

Then Pastor Ben turns and says, “Now, where are you going to put yourself on that ladder? Mother Teresa is about halfway down and Billy is underneath her and I put myself right down here near the bottom. Where are you?” 

 

There it is, in visual form, the curse that falls upon everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law. Bill says, “I’m screwed.” Ben says, “That’s right! So am I! We all are. That’s the point. The Bible says, all have sinned and fall short. But God has bridged the gap between his infinitely beautiful moral perfections and our undeniable moral wretchedness by giving his Son.”

 

“Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Jesus took the full deadly curse of that huge gap upon himself on the cross.

 

John Stott says, “To the unbelieving Jew it was inconceivable that the Messiah should die ‘on a tree’, that is, under the curse of God. To the unbelieving Gentile it was ludicrous to suppose that a god, one of the immortals, should die.” 

 

The mangled body of a crucified man is still today a massive stumbling block for many. Some laugh. Others feel uncomfortable talking about it. Most people in the UK ignore it as irrelevant. 

 

Ending

 

But when Jesus died, he took upon himself the full weight of every ugly sin, of the world’s shame and fallenness, of generations and generations of ingrained wickedness and the curse it casts on every man, woman and child and he drank the cup of God’s justified wrath against sin until it was dry.

 

And because he did, he set in motion a cycle of grace to bring blessing on our cursed world. 

 

As I come towards the end, I invite you to marvel with me at how Christ becoming a curse for us, releases a tidal wave of blessing. I began by talking about a newborn little girl called Grace with her cursed start to life. Found barely alive, remember, thrown away down a toilet by her mother and left profoundly deaf. 

 

When Grace was 6 months old, a visiting pastor to her orphanage asked if he could pray over her. No one objected, I mean why would you? So he put oil on her ears to anoint her in the name of the Lord. And he prayed for her healing. For the next three days, if anything, it seemed to get worse. Grace screamed, non stop, every minute she was awake. Nobody knew what to do. 

 

It was only when someone accidentally slammed a door and Grace suddenly jolted that they realized her tears and screams were because she had been healed and could now hear everything was going on, which she found frightening because she wasn’t used to it.       

This is Grace today, telling her story on YouTube. Grace has matured into a fun-loving, intelligent and articulate young lady. She finished school with excellent grades and was awarded a university scholarship. She is now 31 and she is full of faith. She knows that God has big plans for her life. 

 

The power of her story has impacted many, many people, and she is playing a massive part in Burundi’s healing and transformation. This is what our God does; he takes rejected, afflicted, blighted, cursed humanity, left to die in filth and he restores, heals and beautifies it by becoming himself rejected, afflicted, blighted and cursed.

 

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

May the Lord sever the ties of curses and open up heaven's door to release his blessing as we respond to his word now…     

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 30 March 2025.

Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16.6-31)

Introduction
 
So far in this Before the Cross series, we’ve seen two stunning prophetic pictures from the Old Testament of Jesus and his sufferings. 
 
Two weeks ago, we saw in Genesis, the first book in the Bible, a loving father gives up his only son. And the last Sunday, we saw in Exodus, the second book in the Bible, the blood of an innocent lamb on crossed planks of wood turns away God’s wrath. Today, we come to the third volume of holy scripture. Hands up those of you whose favourite book in the Bible is Leviticus…
 
If you’ve read it, you’ll have struggled perhaps to see anything about Jesus there at all. If you’re not yet familiar with Leviticus, let me whet your appetite by telling you it’s packed full of instructions concerning sacrificial offerings, regulations about infectious diseases, directives about festivals, laws regulating ritual cleanliness and exhaustive lists of what you mustn’t eat and who (or what) you cannot have sex with. Leviticus is, for 21st Century Western minds, a pretty challenging read, let’s not pretend otherwise. 
 
So it might help a little to take a look at the outline of this strange book. It’s actually a seven-layer sandwich. 
 
The first section corresponds to the last section; before Jesus came, how did people have to deal with sin and what are sin’s consequences? 
 
The second section relates to the sixth section; before Jesus came, how was worship to be led and by whom? 
 
The third section is echoed by the fifth; before Jesus came, how could what is unclean be purified to become clean before God, and how could what is common be consecrated to be made holy?
 
It’s very carefully constructed but, as you can see here, the pivotal section and central focus of the book is chapter 16. 
 
Everything before builds up to it, and everything after flows out from it. This is the most hallowed day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, or in English, the Day of Atonement. Some rabbis simply refer to it as “The Day.”
 
This is the chapter we’re going to look at this morning, because it points ahead to Jesus and his sufferings in the most vivid way.
 
We’re not going to read all of it because it’s quite long and a bit repetitive. So I’ll read selected verses, starting at v6.
 
Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household. Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.
 
On to v15:
He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull’s blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the tent of meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness.
 
On to v20:
When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.
 
Then v29:
This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work - whether native-born or a foreigner residing among you - because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.
 
The Problem of Sin
 
All the way through our passage, and I highlighted it for you, is this repeated word “sin.” But more and more in our God-rejecting, self-exalting culture, this word is going out of fashion. 
 
People feel less and less comfortable speaking about good and evil, preferring words like appropriate and inappropriate. But that’s not the language God uses; he tells us the uncomfortable truth about our human nature, spoiled by the fall.
 
There are three words in Leviticus 16 that show how serious a problem sin is for us. 
 
The first word, and it comes in v16, is “uncleanness.” Our behaviour, our thoughts, our words bring a kind of spiritual pollution into our lives. So, when the New Testament speaks of the blood of Christ cleansing us from the stain of sin it means God loves us and wants to wipe away everything that’s dirty and impure from our conscience.
 
The second word, and it appears in v21 is “wickedness.” This word carries the idea that there is a perversion wired into our human nature. We have, from birth, an inclination to treasure idols over finding our spiritual satisfaction in the perfections of Christ. 
 
The Anglican Book of Common Prayer, published in 1662, had a very keen sense of this. Every Sunday, the congregation would pray the following words on their knees:
 
“Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.”
 
And this wasn’t a special service for crooks and thugs and chainsaw murderers. This was genteel spinsters and upright gentlemen at Evensong in country churches! That liturgy was written by proper theologians who knew from scripture that of us have fallen short of the glory of God and are, by nature, unless restrained by grace, predisposed to spiritual decay. 
 
The third word, and it also appears here in v21 is “rebellion.” Sin is not just a little slip up here and there, sin is rebellion against God. We all, at times knowingly and willfully, choose paths that are the wrong ones. But the New Testament speaks of peace with God through Christ, meaning God is turning that hard, rebellious heart of mine into a softened, willing heart.
 
Derek Tidball in his book The Message of the Cross calls sin “a catch-all word” for any offence, “serious or trivial, deliberate or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, visible or invisible, an act or a disposition, consisting of commission or omission.”
 
All that to say we have to militate against our culture’s apathy and scepticism towards this deadly reality the Bible calls sin. Sin opens up a chasm, a seemingly unbridgeable gulf, between us and God. It’s usually the root cause of why people say, “God seems so far away from me at the moment.” That’s because sin distances us from God. 
 
That’s the problem then. Sin. And it’s massive. We badly need a solution. And the Day of Atonement points forward to what that solution is. Atonement is all about the solution to the problem of sin. It’s about how our offences are forgiven and forgotten by God. 
 
Guilt and Shame
 
To sum up what we read a few moments ago, Aaron the priest first has to take a young bull, and this innocent life will die. Why? Its blood will be shed and it will breathe its last to remind Aaron in graphic detail how deadly serious his own sin is before he can presume to minister on behalf of the entire nation.
 
Once purified from his own personal sin, Aaron must then take two goats. Why two? Why is one not enough? It’s because our sin has two terrible consequences, guilt and shame, and this goes right back to the Garden of Eden.
 
Remember back to Adam and Eve, firstly they brought guilt on themselves by tasting the forbidden fruit, and secondly, they hid from God, embarrassed by their nakedness, because of the shame they felt.
 
Every time we sin, or are sinned against, we follow the exact same pattern; we become aware of our guilt and we become troubled by our shame.
 
So, on the Day of Atonement, the first goat is all about the guilt we carry, and the second is all about the shame we feel.
 
And the Day of Atonement points ahead to a Messiah, an innocent life, who will not only totally wipe away the guilt of sin from us for the wrongs done by us, but also forever lift from us the shame that results from the wrongs done to us. 
 
The blood of bulls and goats could never permanently take away sin, it never lasted long, but Christ made on the cross, once and for all, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.
 
So next time Satan points at you accusingly and mockingly and says, “Just look at your sin!” God, our defender, can talk back to him “Yes, but just look at my Son!”
 
I heard last year about a Christian young woman who sobbed as she described the night she had given her virginity to her boyfriend, instead of waiting for marriage. 
 
Although it happened years earlier, tears rolled down her face as she offloaded her story. She had been troubled for weeks by a sense of guilt. “I went into the bathroom and vomited all night,” she said. But she knew she could be forgiven. What had haunted her though and driven her away from God for, not weeks but years, was the shame. 
 
“I would be so mortified if any of my Christian friends found out,” she said. “I felt I couldn’t go back to church. I felt so uncomfortable because of the secret I hid away. So I have spent years away from God in a spiritual wilderness, paralysed by a suffocating blanket of shame.”
 
She was responsible for her sin - she never resisted her boyfriend’s advances - and then she felt guilty. But at the same time, her boyfriend sinned against her. He should have defended her purity, which is what deep down she really wanted - but he didn’t do that. Being sinned against is what brought that sense of shame; it was a defilement in her soul. 
 
We all experience guilt, and we all know what shame feels like.
 
The Goat for Guilt 
 
Once a year then, the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice a goat, the first of the two. It represented the life of the whole nation. When its blood was shed in the Most Holy Place, the sacred presence of God would symbolically bring cleansing and release from all that guilt. Aaron would then come out trembling from the Most Holy Place and declare to the people that their sin had been removed. 
 
Just like that first goat, but far more effectively, Jesus shed his innocent blood to atone for the guilt we feel. Pilate declared Jesus not guilty of any offence, and no one could find any fault in him, and yet he took the blame for all our offences, all our wrongdoing, all the sorry mess we make of our lives, all of it. By faith, we are made right with God, and our guilt is taken away forever.
 
The Book of Hebrews shows how much better Christ’s atonement is than anything we read about in Leviticus. The Day of Atonement, Hebrews says, “can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship” (10.1). “But Jesus entered the Most Holy Place once for all, [six times the inspired author uses that expression in Hebrews] once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal [not temporary, not provisional, not momentary] but eternalredemption” (9.12).
 
The Goat for Shame
 
Then, Aaron would place his hands on the second goat, again symbolising the sins of the entire nation. But this time, he would drive the poor animal away to die outside the city bearing the shame of the people’s sin.
 
In 1854, the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt painted a picture of this ill-fated beast. You can see it if ever you visit the Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool. 

Look at the scapegoat, (this where our English word comes from by the way, from Leviticus 16). Look at him, doomed down by the Dead Sea, surrounded by the bones of last year’s victim. Look at his sunken eyes, his panting mouth, dry and thirsty, as Jesus was on the cross. Look how his legs seem to be giving way; he is barely able to stand, such is the exhaustion of his being burdened by the weight of a whole nation’s sin. 
 
This innocent life died carrying away the people’s shame into the wilderness and in doing so it prefigures the Lord Jesus, who died, abandoned and exposed, outside the city walls. 
 
You are looking at a prophetic portrait of Christ.
 
There are over 40 verses in the NT that specifically emphasize how the death of Jesus is “for us,” in the place of us, as a substitute for us. 
 
Here are some of them:
While we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5.8)
Christ suffered for us (1 Peter 3.18)
Jesus was a means of propitiation for our sins (1 John 4.10)
This is my body/blood given for you (Luke 22.20)
Jesus died for us (Romans 14.15)
God made him who had no sin to become sin for us (2 Corinthians 5.21)
Christ became a curse for us (Galatians 3.13)
Christ Jesus who gave himself up as a ransom for all (1 Timothy 2.6)
Christ loved us and gave himself up for us (Ephesians 5.2)
By the grace of God he might taste death for us (Hebrews 2.9)
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2.2)
 
Ending
 
Atonement brings cleansing and forgiveness and healing and peace with God. It’s the most powerful force on Earth. 
 
In 2015 the BBC news website carried a news feature called “My 25 Years as a Prostitute.” It was about a woman called Brenda Myers-Powell who was just a child when she became a prostitute in the early 1970s. She grew up in Chicago. 
 
Her 16 year-old mother died when Brenda was six months old. Her grandmother, who drank heavily, took care of her. I say “take care of her,” in fact she did anything but. Brenda’s grandmother would bring drinking partners home from the bar and after she got intoxicated and passed out these men would do unspeakable things to Brenda as a little girl. 
 
It started when she was just four or five years old and it became a regular occurrence. “These were not relationships,” she said, “no-one's bringing me any flowers here, trust me on that - they're using my body like a toilet.” By the time she was 14, she'd already given birth to two baby girls.
 
Over 25 years, she was manipulated, raped, locked in a closet, trafficked, shot 5 times, stabbed 13 times, but couldn't go to the police because if she did she wouldn't be taken seriously. 
 
When she was nearly 40 years old, a customer threw her out of his car. Her dress got caught in the door and she was dragged six blocks along the ground, tearing the skin off her face and the side of her body. She went to hospital and they immediately took her to the emergency room. A police officer looked her over and said: “Oh I know her. She's just a hooker. She probably beat some guy and took his money and got what she deserved.” 
 
They pushed her out into the waiting room as if she was worth nothing. And it was at that moment, while she was waiting for the next shift to start and for a different hospital staff to attend to her injuries, that she looked up and said to God, “These people don't care about me. Could you please help me?”
 
And this is her testimony: “God worked real fast. A doctor came and took care of me and she asked me to go and see social services in the hospital. They admitted me to a place called Genesis House. It was a safe house, run by the Church. They told me to take my time and stay as long as I needed - and I stayed almost two years. My face healed, and then my soul healed.”
 
She started to do some volunteering in a ministry to sex workers and she helped a university researcher with her fieldwork. She told the girls, “That's who I was, that's where I was. This is who I am now. You can change too, you can heal too.” At the time of the article, 13 girls were either in University or had full scholarships. At 11, 12, 13 years old, they were totally damaged. And now they're reaching for the stars.
 
After three years, Brenda met a man who wooed her and loved her and married her. She says, “He didn't judge me for any of the things that had happened before we met. When he looked at me, he didn't even see those things - he says all he saw was a girl with a pretty smile that he wanted to be a part of his life.” They celebrated 20 years of marriage last year.
 
In 2012, she became the first woman in the state of Illinois to have her convictions for prostitution wiped from her record. Her two daughters, who were raised by her aunt, grew up to be, in her words, “awesome young ladies.” One is a doctor and one works in criminal justice. “So” she says, “I am here to tell you - there is life after so much damage, there is life after so much trauma. There is life after people have told you that you are nothing, that you are worthless and that you will never amount to anything. There is life - and I'm not just talking about a little bit of life. There is a lot of life.”
 
“The blood of Christ,” as Charles Wesley wrote, “makes the foulest clean.” And, brothers and sisters, there’s a lot of life because one innocent man, the most beautiful life ever lived, shed his blood, taking on himself all our guilt and all our shame and removing them – forever.

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 16 March 2025

The Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25.31-46)

Introduction

 

Today, we come to the end not just of Matthew 25, but to the end of our epic series in Matthew’s Gospel. You may remember we already covered chapters 26-28 in the run up to Easter last year, so this is the very last sermon in this series…a series that began on 2 July 2023. This is the 74th sermon, and by midday 14 different preachers will have covered every verse of all 28 chapters. I hope you’ve been blessed and encouraged and challenged over the last 20 months or so.

 

Starting next Sunday, in the run up to Easter, we’re going to be looking at seven prophetic pictures, foreshadowings if you like, of Christ’s sufferings in the Old Testament and we’re very much looking forward to that, but first, let’s turn to Matthew’s Gospel and finish the job. If you have a Bible, please turn to Matthew 25.31-46. If you don’t, the words will appear on the screen shortly.

 

The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon used to say, when training young preachers, that they should always match the content of their sermons with an appropriate facial expression. “When you speak of heaven,” he would say, “your face should be radiant, lit up with a celestial glow, and your eyes should shine, reflecting the sublime glory of the Lord. But when you speak of hell, well… then your usual face will do!” Today, I’m going to speak about both heaven and hell, and you’ll have to be the judge as to which reality my face fits best. 

 

As we’ve seen over the past four Sundays, this passage is part of a major section of predictions and warnings and parables about the end times, the return of the Lord, the final judgment, and our eternal destiny. Here’s what Jesus says to conclude his teaching about the last things:

 

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

 

Setting the Scene

So far, so good. Jesus will return in glory, as we saw in chapter 24. All the peoples of the earth, every nation, tribe and tongue, will have to stand before him, and Jesus will divide the entire human population into two groups. 

 

We’ve seen this already throughout Matthew’s Gospel. The wheat and the weeds where the wheat is stored in barns and the weeds are separated and burned. The net full of fish where the good fish are placed in baskets and the bad ones are thrown away. The ten virgins where those with oil are admitted to the wedding and those without are shut out. 

 

The talents, we saw last week, where those who make a return on their investment are rewarded and those who do nothing are cast out. Here again, there is a binary separation. There are no shades of grey. It’s black and white. Here, you’re either with the sheep or you’re with the goats.

 

Even today, Middle Eastern shepherds divide their sheep and goats at the end of every day. These two species have to be separated because goats, being weaker and frailer than sheep, need to send the night in a warmer, more sheltered environment. But Jesus goes on to say that he will separate the peoples, not at the end of the day, but at the end of time. And his triage will not be based on their hardiness or frailty, but on what they have done - or not done. Let’s read the rest of the chapter.

 

Rewards and Retributions

 

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

 

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

 

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

 

A child once asked me, shortly after the death of his cat, whether animals go to heaven. I can’t remember exactly what I said. But I could have told him that, according to the Bible, life after death is reserved exclusively for animals. For doesn’t Jesus clearly say here that only animals, in particular sheep and goats, will live forever?   

 

But I didn’t tell him this for three reasons:

1. I just didn’t think of it at the time.

2. It’s not true anyway.

3. The idea that heaven is inhabited exclusively by animals is not all that reassuring for a young human being.

 

We might smile. But the passage from God’s word this morning is a serious matter. The eternal destiny for some will be unspeakably and unimaginably breathtaking. The Bible says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him.” It is indescribably wonderful.

 

But the eternal fate of those who have rebelled against God and rejected the way of Christ is literally a fate worse than death. This is so serious and difficult a matter that we tend to avoid talking about it - even in church. I mean, not counting the last few weeks, how many sermons about hell and the final judgment have you ever heard?

 

But What About..?

 

And this parable of the sheep and the goats raises big questions. For example:

 

Question 1; “Take your inheritance… for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.” Does this mean that people can be saved by their good works, even if they have no real interest in God? Question 2; “Whatever you did for them you did for me.” In what way is Jesus the same as people in need around us? Question 3; “Depart from me into eternal fire… for I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” Does this really mean that if you never visit prisoners or call in on the sick you will end up in hell? 

 

Question 1 then: Can we be saved by doing good works? It seems, at first glance, that this is what the parable says, but that would contradict the whole sweep of scripture, which clearly teaches that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

 

Consider these for example: Ephesians 2.8: “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not… by… works, so that no one can boast.” Or Romans 10.9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Or John 5.24 where Jesus says: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”

 

There are many other verses I could have mentioned. There is no debate to be had; we can do nothing to save ourselves. But Matthew 25 says here that the peoples will be separated and judged according to what they have done. Not according to what they have believed. 

 

Throughout the Bible, judgment is about what we do or fail to do. For example, in Romans 2.6, Paul says: “When his righteous judgment will be revealed God will repay each person according to what they have done.” In 2 Corinthians 5:10, he says: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” And Revelation 20:12 says much the same thing: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened... The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”

 

The two things can be true, listen carefully now please; God saves people on the basis of their faith, but he judges people according to their works. When you and I face the judgement seat of Christ, we can expect to hear, again and again, a guilty verdict for the many things we have done wrong in our life. We will be judged according to what we have done. But, if you have faith in Christ, by the mercy of God you can expect to be acquitted on all counts. “No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine! His righteousness, his faultless record, his innocence, his obedience, his sinless perfections will be credited to your account, through faith, and you will walk free, your name cleared, and with an everlasting royal pardon that cannot be rescinded.

 

Question 2; In what way is Jesus the same as people desperately in need around us? 

 

As a child, my Catholic mother once told me the story of Saint Martin of Tours, a Roman army officer and young Christian. One cold winter's day in Amiens, northern France, he saw an old beggar. “Alms for a poor old man!” Martin had no money, but seeing this man dying from the cold, he cut his thick cloak in half, giving part to the beggar and keeping the other half for himself. Some of those around laughed, finding him ridiculous in his torn cloak. But that night, Martin dreamed that Jesus appeared wearing the other half of his cloak, saying to the angels surrounding him, “Look! Martin gave me his cloak!”

 

Mother Teresa used to say, “In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises. I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.” When activist and author Shane Claiborne said to her, “I wouldn’t do what you do for a million dollars” she smiled and said, “Me neither.” Literally, she did it for love.

 

But, surprisingly perhaps, this passage is not really about altruism or philanthropy or charity generally. We need to note a small but vital detail; it’s in v40. “Truly I tell you,” says Jesus, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Who are these brothers and sisters Jesus mentions here? 

Some say that Jesus is talking about the nation of Israel. And there is no doubt we should love the Jewish people. And point them to their Messiah. But Jesus never anywhere else in the Gospels called the nation of Israel his “brothers or sisters.”

 

Others say that Jesus is referring to literally anyone in difficulty. Again, there is no doubt we should love and help everybody we know in material need. It is good and right for us to show mercy and compassion to everyone. Compassion for the poor and needy is in the DNA of the Church that Jesus is building. In 2019, the Cinnamon Trust published a study saying local churches in the UK operate 220,000 social action projects, serving an estimated 48 million people each year. Praise God! They will know we are Christians by our love. But Jesus never once, anywhere in the Gospels, called the people of the world his “brothers or sisters” either.

 

Here’s the key to understanding this parable: Jesus considers that only those who believe in him and belong to him are his brothers and sisters. This is a term he uses uniquely to refer to his disciples. “Who is my mother, who is my brother?” he asks in Matthew 12. “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, sister, and mother.” This parable teaches us that Jesus will separate people on the day of judgment on the basis of one thing: their attitude towards him, as expressed in their actions towards those he considers his brothers and sisters, the Body of Christ.

 

That doesn’t mean we have permission to watch the world suffer and not lift a finger. Galatians 6.9-10 puts it this way: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”

 

Who are we called to do good to? All people? Or the family of believers? Answer: yes. Jesus is urging us here to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, without neglecting the homeless person in the shop doorway, my neighbour down the road, my unbearable colleague at work… But Jesus is talking mainly here about the apple of his eye, those who love the Lord and are therefore shunned by the world. 

 

Christians were opposed and persecuted by the Jewish authorities from the very start. But by the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, probably around 65AD, they were starting to become persona non grata in the wider Roman world. Some Christians were losing their jobs and so were unable to feed their families. Others became sick because they could no longer pay for medical care. Some were having their property confiscated and had nowhere to stay. Still others were being imprisoned for their faith as persecution grew in intensity. The church was under attack, and it was being driven underground. 

 

Imagine you are alive at that time. To provide for your fellow Christians in need, to take them under your roof, or visit them behind bars is to blow your cover and be identified as one of them. You become a marked man or woman. So Jesus is saying here, when you care for the suffering Body of Christ, you care for me. When you stand by and watch the Body of Christ suffer and do nothing, you ignore me. That’s why after Saul persecuted the Church, Jesus met him on the Damascus Road and asked him not, “Why are you persecuting them,” but “Why are you persecuting me.”

 

Well, the goats, like the sheep, are stunned by what they hear. Verse 44; “But Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison, and did not help you?” In other words, “If we had known it was you, we would have acted differently!” They are willing to help the Lord when he is in difficulty, yes! But as far as they’re concerned, his desperately needy brothers and sisters, who they see every day, can get lost. I hope that increases your concern for a suffering world, and especially Christians in need.

 

Question 3; Does this parable really mean that if you never visit prisoners or call in on the sick you will go to hell? 

 

Matthew 24 and 25 focus on the final judgment and, as we’ve seen, they are full of grave warnings about hell. And who does Jesus address his teaching to in these two chapters? Not the uncommitted crowds. Not the hostile Pharisees. Jesus is speaking exclusively here to his twelve disciples. What a shock! They too could end up among the number of those separated from Christ. 

 

And we know that this was indeed the fate of one of them, Judas Iscariot, the one doomed to destruction, as Jesus calls him in John 17. He separated himself from the twelve and he hardened his heart against the Lord. 

 

Some people have the impression that the Old Testament is full of wrath, anger, hell fire and damnation and is replaced by the New where it is full of love, hugs and flowers. 

 

But Jesus, in the Gospels, speaks more about hell than anyone else in the Bible. In Matthew 22, he describes its darkness. In Luke 16, he depicts it as a place of suffering, separation, fire, and torment. In Matthew 10, he talks about loss and destruction. In Mark 9, he gives another image: that of worms that never die. Pieced together, it’s a vision of total ruin and corruption. And six times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, Jesus says that hell is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That speaks of bitter regret and unrepentant rage against God.

 

How many times did Jesus appeal to Judas; don’t do it, don’t go there, don’t harden your heart, don’t throw it all away.

 

This parable shows us that on the day of judgment, there will be great surprises. Many people will marvel to learn that by loving their brothers and sisters in Christ, they have served the Lord Himself. Others, confident and sure of themselves, will be astonished to see that in their selfishness, they have despised Jesus Christ their whole lives without even realizing it. 

 

Ending

 

Let me end where our parable begins; v31. “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him…” Jesus will come suddenly, unexpectedly, surprisingly. Jesus’ exact words in chapter 24 are, “at an hour when you do not expect him.”

 

Are you ready? If he returns in five years, I know I’ll be ready! But if he returns in his radiant glory this afternoon, while I’m cooking dinner, will I be ready then? What about you?

 

If he returns in ten minutes, and if he looks you in the eye, his eyes like blazing fire, his voice like the sound of rushing waters, and he asks you, “Have you loved my brothers, have you served my sisters...? What you did for them, you did for me.” How will you reply?

The kingdom of God is unshakable: let us therefore be thankful, and serve God in a way that is pleasing to Him, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 23 February 2025