What Is This World Coming To? Part 4: Wheat and Tares

Started out the service this morning by reading from passage in Matthew 16. Christ is with his disciples in Caesarea, Philippi. It's up in Northern Galilee just off the slopes of Mount Hermon. There's springs there called the Springs Of Banias. They they feed they're the main water feed into the Jordan River.

As majority of the water for the Jordan River comes off of Mount Hermon in Northern Galilee and they are there with Christ and Christ asked them, his disciples, who do you say that I am? And in verse Pete, verse 16, which we just read, Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ. Now, the word Christ, when you see Christ in the Old Testament, the New Testament, think Messiah. It means the same thing. Christ means appointed one, the Messiah of the Old Testament.

Thou art the Christ. You are the Messiah, the promised one. Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus is was not less than God. He is God.

He is God, the son in human flesh. G cry, Peter said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus answered, verse 17 and said unto him, blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my father which is in heaven. Flesh and blood, the the intellect, and reasoning of man did not reveal this to you. Truth comes from who?

It comes from God and this was revealed to you by my father in heaven and then he said unto Peter, thou art Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now, some would have you to believe that Christ built his church on Peter But that doesn't make any sense. The church isn't built on Peter. The church is built on Christ. It is his church.

Christ wasn't saying here that he was going to build his church on Peter. He was saying he was going to build his church on the truth of who he really is. That Peter just uttered, that his father in heaven revealed unto Peter, that Christ is, that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and that he will build his church, his called out assembly. On this Earth. To bring glory to his name.

Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we thank you Lord for all that you've done for us. For dying on the cross for our sins, from rising again from the dead, ascending back the father where you intercede in our behalf. Lord, we thank you for the salvation we have in Christ. We thank you Lord for this church that you have ordained and established to bring glory to your name.

Lord, we thank you. One day, we will all who know Christ as savior. Praise you in heaven. And see you as you are. Lord, we thank you for what you have done for us and what you are doing and what you will do.

And Lord, we pray that you would be honored today. And we pray that Christ's name would be exalted. We pray Lord that you would draw those to you today that may not know you as savior. That they might be saved, that they might put their faith and trust in you. And become part of your church, part of your family.

Become children of the king of kings and Lord of lords. Guide us Lord today as we look into your word. Guide my words. Lord, help us in our understanding by your spirit, we pray. In Jesus name, amen.

As I mentioned earlier, we start a series back a few weeks ago on what is this world coming to and we started with the big picture, okay? That was that was my first sermon, the big picture. The big picture is started with creation and ends with Christ's kingdom, eternal kingdom. God has a plan for this world before the foundation of the world. God knew what was going to happen in the garden.

God already had it all planned out. How he was going to redeem mankind unto himself, how he was going to establish his kingdom and glorify himself and his son. And so we saw the big picture. And then we narrowed it down in the book of Daniel as we looked at the image in Daniel two that Nebuchadnezzar saw and that Daniel interpreted for him as part of that dream that he had. The head of gold on the statue at the top was Nebuchadnezzar and Kingdom of Babylon.

The chest and arms of silver was the Medo Persian Empire that followed. The bronze of his waist and thighs was the kingdom of Greece and then followed the legs of iron, which is the Roman Empire and then the feet of part iron and part clay, which represents the renewed or revived Roman Empire that is partly together and partly divided, that will be here on this earth at the time of Christ's return that he will destroy is that stone came out of the mountain and hit the feet of the image and it turned into dust and blew away like the chaff from the threshing floor and became a great mountain. Now, I know if you haven't been here the last few weeks, that's a mouthful to understand, okay? But we're just reviewing here a little bit this morning and hopefully, you'll get a clearer picture as we go along. So, we have the big picture from creation to Christ's kingdom and then we move up in time a little bit and we come to the time of Babylon in the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw that tells us of the kingdoms of this world and of the day when Christ, the stone cut out of the mountain will come and destroy the kingdoms of this world, the Gentiles, and establish his kingdom forever.

And then we moved up a little bit further to the time when Cyrus, the king of Persia, sent the children of Israel back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, the walls, and the temple. And from that time, there were seventy weeks. Remember that? The the seventy weeks prophecy we looked at a couple of weeks ago? From the time of the going forth of that command command of Cyrus, king of Persia, to send the Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild it until the time of Jesus Christ was to be sixty nine weeks.

Now, once again, let me explain. Not weeks or sets of seven days but sets of seven what? Years, okay? Think of a dozen, okay? If I told you I have a dozen, you would say a dozen what?

Okay? It might be a dozen eggs. It could be a dozen of something else, okay? You might naturally, the first thing you would think of is what Steve said, a dozen eggs but you can have a dozen of many different things, right? It just gives us a number, okay?

The set, the seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel nine is not 70 sets of seven days but 70 sets of seven years and the first sixty nine sets or four hundred and eighty three years began with the proclamation declaration sending the Jews back to Jerusalem until the day that Jesus Christ entered into Jerusalem. What we call Palm Sunday. And after that, he died on the cross according to the scriptures as Daniel foretold. He was cut off not for himself but for the people. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 8070 as prophesied as part of that prophecy but there is one week left.

There's one set of seven years left and that set of seven years we call the what? The tribulation and at the end of the tribulation, what will Christ do? Christ will return and at the end of the tribulation, Christ will return and he will destroy and utterly do away with the kingdoms of the Gentiles of this world and he will rule and reign with a rod of iron for a thousand years and then for all eternity. He will establish his kingdom. The devil will be cast out and that is the picture we looked at a couple of weeks ago.

So, we start with creation to the kingdom, we move from Babylon to the kingdom, we move from the time that Cyrus told Israel to go back until the day Christ returns and now we're going to narrow it down some more. We're going to jump ahead a few hundred years today to the time of Jesus Christ, okay? We're going to look at the time period a little more and what's going to happen at the end of that time period again today that exist between the sixty ninth week and the seventieth week, okay? Between the time of Christ coming into Jerusalem and the time of Christ's second return and the tribulation leading up to that is a time period that Paul calls a mystery. It is not clearly revealed in the Old Testament and it's the day in which you and I live.

We call it the church age. Everything in the Old Testament was all about Israel or about Israel in contrast to the unsaved Gentile world. What we've been looking at so far, Israel has been the focus of it but what we're gonna look at this morning is focused more on this time period on the church and not on the nation of Israel. When Christ did come as foretold by the prophets of Israel, however, he did come as foretold but he was what? He was rejected.

He came unto his own and his own what? Received him not as their king. Instead, they crucified him on a cross just as God said would happen. Didn't catch God by surprise. It was all a part of God's why?

It's all part of God's plan. He foretold us about this in Isaiah fifty three six. He said, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord hath laid on him. That's Jesus, the iniquity of us all.

It says, he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and his sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgement, and who shall declare his generation, for he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people was he stricken. Isaiah tells us the coming of Christ and of his death on the cross for he was cut off or killed or crucified not for his sins but for what? But for ours.

But it continues and he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death because he had done no violence neither was any deceit in his mouth. In other words, he was not a sinner. He did not deserve to be punished. We did. Verse 10, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him who hath put him to grief.

When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. It was foretold by Isaiah, he would come, he would die not for his sins but for ours and he would, God would prolong his days. What does that mean?

That would mean he would rise again which is exactly what Jesus did. All part of the plan of God not just to redeem Israel but to redeem all of those, all of mankind who would come to him in faith. Through the death of Jesus Christ. His son on the cross for our sins. And although he died at the hands of them that day, he did not remain so.

For he rose again from the dead, offering salvation himself and by his ambassadors to the world. Not just the Jews but also to the Gentiles who would come to him by faith. Romans one sixteen, Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God and the salvation to everyone the what? Believe it to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In John 111 says, he came unto his own, his own received him not but in verse 12, it says, but as many as received him, to them gave you power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name.

Both Jew and Gentile. When we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, we become the children of God. We become the subjects of his kingdom both now and for all eternity. We are kept by the power of God. Through faith under salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

God has saved us redeemed us unto himself, justified us sanctified us in his spirit sealed us by his spirit, and he's going to come back someday. Take us to be with him. This parable, the one we're going to read here in just a moment from Matthew 13. Depicts this form of the kingdom. Not its final form during this time, we call the church age.

And it will give way unto the eternal kingdom of Christ seen in Daniel's vision. Paul called this period of time as I mentioned earlier, a mystery. Turn if you would. I told you turn it to Ephesians chapter three. Ephesians three.

What was the focus of the prophecies in Daniel in the Old Testament? They were focused on the nation of Israel, okay? But in the New Testament, we're introduced to a new body, a new chosen people called the church. A mystery in that it wasn't clearly revealed in the Old Testament. It exist between the end of the sixty ninth week of Daniel's prophecy and the beginning of the seventieth week that we call the tribulation and that's where we are.

In Ephesians chapter three verse three, it says, how that by revelation he made known unto me the by following along, verse three, mystery. As I wrote a four in few words, whereby when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of man as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body and partakers in his promise in Christ by the gospel. Whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto unto me by the effectual working of his power. Paul said, I'm here to tell you about the mystery that wasn't clearly revealed in the Old Testament but now is revealed in you. Gentiles that had come to Jesus Christ and been grafted into the vine.

Receive the promises of redemption through Jesus Christ and the one be they be part of that kingdom that he had promised in the Old Testament. He says in Ephesians five thirty two, he says, this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the what? And the church. Christ and the church. In Romans chapter 11, if you'll turn back a few pages, yes, we'll get to Matthew 13.

I haven't forgot. In Romans chapter 11, In verse 25, it says this, for I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery. Lest you should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness is in part is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved as it is written, there shall come out of Zion, the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant unto them which I, when I shall take away their sins.

At this time, Israel, so to speak, as a nation, has been put on a shelf. And God is working not through Israel so much today. He is working through what? The church. We are called in first Peter chapter two, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood that we should show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We who are the church. Have you ever had something? You know, that tool for instance, at home and and and you use this tool, but the time passed for using that tool, and so you put the tool up on the what? Up on the shelf. You didn't get rid of the tool, but you just weren't going to be using it for a while, so the tool goes up on the shelf.

After a certain time, maybe, you go back to a certain job or a project and you need the what? You need the tools. So, you go over here and you get the tool off the shelf and you bring it over here and now you start using it again. God has put Israel so to speak on a what? On a shelf.

Is he done with them yet? No. God's not done with Israel yet. He is going to return to them in the seventieth week. He is going to return to them during the tribulation period.

He is going to bring them back to themselves. He is going to open their blind eyes and they as a people will look on him whom they have pierced and repent and trust in Jesus and will be saved and God will establish his throne where? In Jerusalem. His holy city in Zion. As he promised he will do.

But for now, Israel is on a what? Shelf and now God is working and glorifying himself through whom? Through the church. Mainly, not exclusively but mainly composed of believing Gentiles who have put their faith in Christ, who have been saved by his grace, who have been redeemed, who have become the children of God, and the subjects of his kingdom in this present age. We call this the church age.

And God is working through this called out group of people. He is called to himself through faith in his son. The church age. Matthew chapter 13, we're there, okay? Matthew chapter 13.

In Matthew 13, the parables that Christ tells in this chapter depict the kingdom in the current form we experience it today. Does God God have a kingdom? Yes. If you are saved by grace through faith in Christ, you are part of his kingdom. You are the subjects of his kingdom.

You are the children of your father in heaven and these parables depict that kingdom in its form today. Is Christ ruling in Jerusalem on a throne? The answer is no. Has Satan been banished to the bottomless pit? No.

Are we still dealing with sin? Yes. We are. I can't offer you today I can't tell you that if you trust Christ, you're never going to sin again. There will come a day when that will be true.

When we stand before him and we are complete in Jesus Christ but I can offer you this today. If you will come to Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead, the savior. He will forgive your sins and he will clothe you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He will declare you innocent before his father in heaven. And he will seal you by his spirit until the day of redemption.

When he takes you home. For now, we are part of this kingdom, the church in this world. Until the day Christ returns. And this is what these parables in Matthew 13 depict. It was a mystery to the Jews.

They didn't understand it. Here's what the Jews understood. Christ was going to come. Their Messiah was going to come and when their Messiah came, he was going to establish his kingdom and he was going to do away with the kingdoms and the power of the Gentiles and he was going to free them from the oppression of other nations in the day in which Jesus came, that nation was what? Rome.

And that's what they were looking for. They didn't understand first of all, that their greatest need was not political. Their greatest need was what? Spiritual. They were sinners in need of a savior.

Second of all, they didn't understand and they didn't realize and God had not clearly revealed in the Old Testament that there was a gap. Between the sixty ninth week and the seventieth week. That God was going to put Israel on a shelf and God was going to call to himself a people that we today call the church. Who worship in local churches that God established and ordained to bring glory to his name. They didn't see that.

Paul called that a mystery. Paul reveals it here in the Old Testament in New Testament and Christ depicts it here in his parables in Matthew 13. Look if you would in verse 24. Verse 24. We'll look at one of these parables this morning.

Another parable put he forth unto them saying, the kingdom of heaven is liken unto a man which sowed good seed in his field and while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way but when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So, the servants of the householder came and said unto him, sir, did not thou sow good seed in thy field from whence then hath it tears? He said unto them, an enemy hath done this. The servant said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, nay, lest while you go gather, while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest and in the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, gather you together the first tares, first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them but gather the wheat into my barn. So, Jesus told this parable. It's a story. It it it's an illustration, an object lesson from everyday life that they understood. They were very familiar with farming.

A matter of fact, up until the last one hundred years or maybe even fifty years, 80 some percent of people were farmers in the world. That was the most common labor, job, career was a farmer and of course, they would have understood this in Palestine in in Canaan, Israel in that day. Still today, if you go to Galilee which is in Northern Israel, you can stand on Mount Carmel and look over the Valley Of Jezreel and you see it looks like a little like a patchwork quilt sort of. There's all these little plots of land that are being what? Farmed.

That area is called the breadbasket of Israel. That's where almost all of their food in Israel that is produced domestically comes from is from that valley in Galilee. So, they would have understood farming maybe better than some of us today would. But this the story goes like this, there was a man, a landowner, a farmer, and he had he had his field and he planted wheat in it. And he went out and he planted the wheat and then he waited for the wheat to grow.

And but while he slept, an enemy came and he sowed weeds, tares among the wheat and went his way. These tears, this type of weed that he planted looked evidently very much like the weed itself and when they first began to grow, you couldn't tell the difference. He had difficult time telling the difference between the weed and the wheat but when they began to mature, it started to become obvious that some of them were not wheat. And they had been shown there by an enemy. Now, this wasn't an uncommon thing.

If an enemy wanted to cause trouble for his neighbor, after he planted the wheat, he might go in there and throw some weed seed in there and they come up and then that would do great harm to his neighbor and so this was done to this man and his servants when they realized that there were these weeds that were sown there, they came to him and they said, well, how did these get there? Well, the landowner didn't use bad seed. He used good seed and it produced good wheat, he said, but an enemy did this. He came in and sowed the weeds in my field and they said, so, you want us to go and rip out the weeds? Made sense.

Get rid of the weeds so the good stuff can grow right And he said, no. No, don't do that. Because while you're ripping out the weeds, you might actually injure and harm and and rip out some of the good weed along with it. So, he said, this is what you do. You you let it grow together for now and then at the time of the harvest, then, we'll go through and we'll take out the weeds and we'll burn them and then we'll harvest.

We'll harvest the wheat and and that's what we'll do and that'll work and The Jews that were staying around that day, they they understood the illustration They didn't understand what it applied to. Neither did his disciples for that matter. So, they came to lay later and said, what what is this? What does this mean? And so, Jesus explained to them what the parable meant beginning in verse 36.

Then, Jesus sent the multitude away and went into his house and his disciples came unto him saying, declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, he that soweth the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. Let's stop there for just a moment. The field is the what?

The field is the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He is the owner of this world. He is the creator of this world. He created Adam and Eve and man that we might worship him, that we might glorify him, that we might commune with him, but all of that was marred by sin all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

But God is the creator. This is his field and the he is the owner of it and the sower of the seed is the son of man, Jesus Christ. He is the one who sowed the seed. We see that we see that also in the parable. If you look down, it mentions son of man specifically, specifically in verse 41, the son of man shall send forth his angels.

Who is the son of man? Well, that's that's Jesus Christ. Is Jesus Christ God? Oh, yes, he is. God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit.

So, the field is God's. It's the world. He is the owner of it and he sowed the good seed, the good seed of the children of God, the righteous. In John ten twenty seven and twenty eight, God said this, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. God said, I know those who are mine and those who are mine hear my voice and they what?

They respond. They respond in faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. Tells us in John one twelve, I I quoted earlier, as many as received him, to them gave you power to become the one. The sons of God even to them that believe on his name.

The children of the kingdom are those who are born again. Jesus said in John three three to Nicodemus, unless except a man be what? Born again. He cannot see. The kingdom of God.

So, we have the seed that is planted, the good seed which the children of the kingdom, the children of God, those who respond in faith and trust in Christ as savior, they are the wheat that grows in the field. But we're not done yet. Well, not only do we have the owner that planted the good seed who are the children of the kingdom but then we have the enemy. Who is the enemy? Well, continuing on verse verse 39 again.

We'll start there. The enemy that sowed them is the what? The devil. The enemy that sowed the the tares, the weed, the bad seed is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels.

There is an enemy and our enemy is not flesh and blood but the enemy of God and our enemy, the principalities and powers in high places. We have an enemy. He is called the devil. In the Garden of Eden, he'd already lost the battle with God in heaven but he came to Earth and he said, I can't I can't beat God in heaven so I'm going to beat God where? On earth.

He said, I'm going to steal away God's most precious treasure, man, mankind and so he deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden. He sought to set up his own kingdom in opposition to God's kingdom. To rob God of his precious treasure. Us. In so doing so, he planted, he sowed bad seed.

In God's field. Wasn't God who sowed the bad seed, it was who? It was Satan. God's enemy. The children not of God, the children not of the king, not the sheep that hear his voice, not the righteous in Jesus Christ, who have been born again, but those who are children of the devil.

The tares who when offered reject Jesus Christ In John eight forty four, Jesus said to the Pharisees and others that rejected him. He said, you are of your father, the devil, and the lust of your father you will do. He was a murderer from beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it. In this world in which we live today, in this time during the church aid, there are the wheat and there are the tares.

And there are those who are the children of God and the children of the kingdom and those that live right alongside who are the children of the wicked one. And the servants of the field said, well, why don't we go just rip out the tears so we can and God said, no. He says, what? Let them both grow together until the time of the what? Until the time of the harvest.

So, we see the owner's command concerning the tares. What does he tell his servants? Well, he tells them to leave them alone. He says, therefore, at the end of the harvest, that he will send forth his reapers, the angels, and they will gather the tares for the fire and so shall it be at the end of the world. The owner's command concerning the tares, let them grow together until the time of the harvest.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but his long suffering to us were not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. We are impatient. We don't see the big picture. Our lifespan on Earth is actually very what? Breathe.

It is as a vapor that is here for a moment and then then it's gone. But God sees the big picture and God sees every seed that his father has planted that will come to trust in Jesus Christ as savior. He knows them by name. And he isn't coming back until every last one has come to faith in Jesus Christ. He's not willing that anyone should perish.

But only those who put their faith and trust in Jesus can be redeemed. The Bible tells us in John three eighteen, he that believeth on him that is Jesus is not what? Condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not. Believe in the name of the only begotten. Son of God.

Lord is waiting for two thousand years. The Lord is waiting. He might wait for three thousand. I don't think so. It seems to me the time of his return is very near and I think as we continue in our series, we'll see more and more that the day of Christ return is near.

Maybe it'll be today. It could be. There's nothing standing in God's way. But God tells those that day, his servants, as he told his disciples, be patient. In Luke chapter nine, his disciples said this, and when his disciples, James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias or Elijah did but he turned and rebuked them and said, you know not what manner of spirit you are of, for the son of man is not come to destroy men's lives but to what?

To save them. We live in a wonderful time, the age of grace, the church age. It is our privilege to be the servants of the king. It is not our prerogative to be the judge. That's whose job.

That's his job. It's our responsibility to tell others about Jesus. It's our responsibility to be a light. One day, when Jesus comes, he'll set everything straight. One day, when Jesus comes, he will do as he said here and he will divide the tares from the wheat.

Look if you would in Matthew chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25. Beginning in verse 31. Here, Jesus tells his disciples what's going to happen when he comes back. Among other things, he will judge the wheat from the tares, the righteous from the unrighteous.

Verse 31, when the son of man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divided his sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, that's the place of favor and the goats on the left, that's a place of rejection. Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, come you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was a hunger and you gave me meat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in naked and you clothed me.

I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer me him saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee or thirsty and gave thee drink, when when saw we thee a stranger and took thee in or naked and clothe thee or when saw we thee sick or in prison and came unto thee and the king shall answer and say unto them, verily, I say unto you, and as much as you have done it unto one of these, one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me. So, first, here in Matthew 25, Jesus will speak to the sheep, those on his right hand at his coming and he will say unto them, he will say, come you blessed verse 24 of my father and here at the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The kingdom that he has come.

To establish on earth the kingdom that really you became a part of the day that what? The day that you trusted Christ as your Lord and savior. You became children of the king. Children of the kingdom. You have a home, a kingdom awaiting you.

In Jesus Christ, the king of kings and Lord of lords. And they he said, blessed of my father and then he tells him, you because I was hungered and you gave me meat. I was thirsty. You gave me drink and they said, well, when did we do that? When did we see you in that condition?

No, he said, because you have done it done to these the least of my brethren and some people say, well, that that's that's by works. Well, the Bible clearly says we're not saved by what? Works. Works. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God. What? Not of works, lest any man should boast. Now, we're not saved by works but a save a saving faith does produce what? It does produce fruit in our life.

It does produce love for the brethren in our life. It does produce the fruit of the spirit. It does produce an individual whose heart desires to serve the Lord and to proclaim the gospel that others might come to him. And he welcomes them into his kingdom and then in verse 41, he says unto those on his left hand and then shall he say also to them on his left hand, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting fire. Prepared for the devil and his angels for I was a hunger and he gave me meat, no meat.

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you took me not in naked and you clothed me not sick and in prison and you visited me not, then shall they also answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hunger or thirsted or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did minister unto thee, didn't not minister unto thee, then shall he say unto them, answer them saying, verily I say unto you, and as much as you did it not to one of these, the least of these, one of the least of these, you did it not to me, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. The Bible is clear He that believeth on Jesus is what? Not condemned. He say, but he that believeth not is, condemned already because he hath not believed.

In the name of the only begotten son of God, this age, time that we live in will come to an end. The day of judgement will come. You say, well, pastor, what about the rapture? We're going to get to that. But that's still a couple weeks away.

But the day of judgement is coming. The Bible says, it is appointed man once to die but after this, the what? Judgment. We'll all stand before God and give an account. Where will you spend eternity?

Will you spend it with Christ? Are you the wheat? Or have you rejected him? The choice is yours. God is waiting.

He's long suffering to us. We're not willing that any should perish but what? That all should come to repentance. He's patient. But one day, judgement will come.

What will you do with Jesus? Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your word in this parable. We thank you Lord that one day you will come as you promised. We thank you Lord for the salvation that is in Jesus Christ.

We pray Lord if there's one here today that is yet to receive you as Lord and savior. Lord, that you would show them their need. They might come as we give this hymn of invitation. We might share with them from your word how they might be saved and know it. Lord, thank you for your patience.

Lord, thank you for your long suffering to us and your mercy. For Lord, none of us deserve a home in heaven. It is only by the grace of Jesus Christ, our savior, the truly righteous one, who has redeemed us by his grace. Lord, thank you for the privilege of serving you here. Lord, may others see Jesus in us.

And we thank you for your word today and what it has revealed to us. May we honor you in all that we do and Lord, I pray if there's something in our life that needs to change today, that we would deal with you with that also. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.