[Note: Delivered 6 December 1981, Montreal. The sermon opens with an announcement that the following Sunday will have Communion at 1:15 followed by the exposition at 2:00 pm. Part B continues directly.]
Next Sunday I should mention that we will have Communion at 1:15 and then continue our exposition in the teaching of the Lord Jesus at the service at 2 o'clock. Today we continue in Matthew chapter 25 and the passage we studied last week, Matthew 25:31 to the end. We will not go through again in detail what we covered last week. Very briefly, we touched on three points: the fundamental presupposition that love in the church is not optional but a command; the need for a genuine transformation of character without which love is impossible; and the need to express that transformed character in visible love for one another, so that all men will know we are his disciples.
But there remains a question that we must go much more deeply into today. We saw that the goats in this passage are Christians, not non-Christians — both the sheep and the goats address the Lord as "Lord" with no distinction. And we saw that the goats are Christians whose transformation was real but incomplete, genuine but not deep enough. But before we can fully grasp this, we need to understand the full imagery the Lord is using, and for that we need to bring in one more animal. One of our sisters drew some very helpful pictures for us — a sheep, a goat, and a dog — that I intended to show on the overhead projector. Unfortunately we seem to have a problem with it today and cannot get the connection to work, so you will have to imagine these three pictures as I describe them.
The dog represents the picture of a non-Christian. We need to look at where scripture says this. Revelation 22:15: "Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." In the language of the Bible, the dog is outside the kingdom. And dogs in biblical Palestine were nothing like the pets we know today in the West — they were semi-wild, not approachable, not to be patted. You would badly cut your hand if you tried. Such dogs are much closer to the wolf. And the non-Christian is in fact compared to the wolf: "I send you as sheep among wolves," the Lord said to his disciples in Luke 10:3. The non-Christian is the wolf. The goat is no longer a wolf — he has moved some distance away, has been changed — but not enough. God's power has not been allowed to complete the transforming work.
This is most important to understand. Many people, instead of becoming a sheep, end up becoming a goat — something related to the sheep, in the sheep family, but not yet genuinely a sheep. This is not always through lack of wanting; often the problem is that they were not correctly taught what is necessary for a total commitment. If your spiritual father was a goat, you are hardly likely to become a sheep — goats give birth to goats. That is precisely what the Lord said to the Pharisees in Matthew 23: you are so enthusiastic in making converts, you go to land and sea to proselytize, but the result is that you make these people twice as worthy of hell as you are. The Pharisees, being themselves unspiritual, could only produce unspiritual offspring. The disciple does not rise above his master; if the master is a goat, his disciples will be goats too. Therefore, before rushing out to evangelize, ask yourself what you are in the first place.
Now let me illustrate this from a well-known example. John Wesley's father was a minister of the church, apparently a godly man, and his mother was a very godly woman. John himself went to Oxford, completed his studies, and became a minister of the Church of England. Even at Oxford he had the Holy Club, a group of young men seeking holiness — remarkable zeal even then. He was so zealous that he even went to preach in Georgia in the United States. He was completely sincere, completely earnest. And yet John Wesley himself was unconverted. He was a goat. He did not realize this until later, when at what we now call the Aldersgate experience, his heart was strangely warmed and something changed fundamentally. Only then did he become a sheep. He was a minister of the gospel, a preacher, the founder of what would become the Methodist church — and he had yet to be converted.
This happened to me as well, and I find this is very important to share. I became a Christian in China, and it was a very genuine conversion. I really tried to walk with God, to love him, to study his word every day, to pray every day. But I was losing my battle with the flesh constantly. I felt so defeated in my Christian life — I could not live it. I did not realize I was still a goat. I think I grew up in a church of goats also, so I did not know what it was to be a sheep. It was only when I saw people like Henry Toy that I realized that he had something different from me, and began to ask what it was. And it was not until I got to Hong Kong that one day, returning from church feeling utterly miserable in myself, I knelt down before the Lord and said: Lord, I cannot live the Christian life. I have tried my best and I cannot do it. I love you, Lord, but I do not want to dishonor your name. I would rather be a genuine non-Christian than a hypocritical Christian. And I knelt down as it were to say goodbye to him — still loving him, but feeling I could not go on.
At that very moment, the Lord dealt with me and said: you have made a mistake. You have tried to live the Christian life in your own strength. You have not handed over the reins of government of your life to me. What you have done is this: you have written out the deeds of ownership of the car to me, but you have retained the driver's seat. You are still driving the car. The car is now in my name, it is true — you have given me the ownership papers. But I have no use of the car because you are still driving it. You decide to go wherever you want to go. So what meaning is left in your having given me the car? I cannot drive it, I cannot go anywhere with it, because you are still behind the wheel. And I know that so many Christians are exactly like that. We say: yes, Lord Jesus, the car is yours — look, it is in your name, right? But I will go wherever I want to go with it. What is Jesus going to do with that car?
On that day I realized my mistake. No wonder I was in constant spiritual trouble — I had handed over the ownership papers but retained the driver's seat. And on that day I said: Lord, now you have got the whole car and the driving wheel and everything. If you want me as a chauffeur, fine. If not, I will sit in the passenger seat, and you take me wherever you want to go. That resulted in a complete and fundamental change in my Christian life — as simple, and yet as profound, as that. The difference is this: that meant I had to go from dog to goat, and then from goat to sheep. Both were big transformations. And I find that many, many Christians are in exactly this same situation.
I recently saw this very thing happen with our sister May. She is in the training team — she has committed her life to the Lord. Many people said, if May hasn't committed herself to the Lord, then who has? But nobody knows herself as well as she knows herself. She could see what was inside, and she didn't like what she saw. She came to me and said: I am living in constant defeat. I have never won the battle with the flesh. I have never died to the flesh. Other people may think I am doing well — but I know that I am a goat. That is how I recognized her problem: because that is what I had gone through myself. Other people had thought I was a fine Christian, a leader in my church, a preacher. But I knew I was a goat. May knew the same thing, and she knew that something had to be done.
And so she lost a great deal of sleep, as many of you noticed — dark rings around her eyes through much of the training program. Many times people asked her what was happening, and she didn't know how to answer. But the step she eventually took was as big as the step from non-Christian to Christian. Sheep and goats in Palestine grazed together, fed together, mixed together, all under the same shepherd — but the difference came out only at the end of the day, when the shepherd separated them. The difference comes out only on the judgment day.
[Continues in Part B]
# Goat: A Detour in the Conversion — Matthew 25:31–46 (Part B) — Sister May; Brother Chris; Mark 8:22–26 Two-Stage Healing; Step from Goat to Sheep
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 25:31–46, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 6 December 1981, Montreal.]
Because this is the point the Lord is teaching here, and we find that it is something we constantly experience. Our sister May was baptized recently, much to the astonishment of many people. I mean, she is in the training team. She has committed her life to the Lord. As many said: if May hasn't committed her life to the Lord, then who has? We are all in trouble. But that is precisely the point — May realized that no matter what other people thought, nobody knows herself as well as she does. She could only see the outside; she saw what was inside. And she didn't like what she saw, and was deeply disturbed by it.
She came to me and said: I am living in constant defeat. Other people may seem to think I am good, but I am not. I am losing the battle with the flesh — in fact, I have never won the battle with the flesh. I have never died to the flesh. She recognized, in other words, that she was a goat. That is exactly how I knew her problem, because that is what I had gone through myself. Other people thought I was a very fine Christian — I was a leader in my church already as a young Christian, and many thought I could preach well. But I knew I was a goat. And many of you noticed the evidence: many times during the training program, May had dark rings around her eyes. Many times people asked her what was going on, and she didn't know how to answer. She knew that something had to be done, and the step she eventually took was just as big as the step from non-Christian to Christian.
Now goats are very often annoyed when you challenge them at this point. There was a person who refused to speak to me anymore, because I asked him once whether God really had control of his life. He kept saying: my house belongs to God, my car belongs to God, everything belongs to God. I said: really? Is that really the case? Look into your life. Or are you only giving him nominal ownership while you are still actually in charge of the whole business? He was so angry with me that he refused to talk to me anymore. I must have touched something real in his life. I hope you ask me that very question often. And if I am offended by it, you will know that I am a goat — because a sheep has nothing to be offended about.
I want to mention also our brother Chris, because I am sure he will not mind my saying this, since it is vital to life. He too was brought up in a very fine Christian family with very fine Christian parents. His father functions virtually as a missionary — a medical missionary, but a missionary all the same. Chris grew up in the constant teaching of scripture, and everyone thought of him as a Christian, and rightly so. He could correctly be called a Christian. And yet he knew that something was not right, that something had to be put straight. Otherwise he would live the rest of his life in defeat. And so he too sought to take this big step of baptism, opening his life totally to God, seeking that complete transformation, taking this step from goat to sheep.
This step is very difficult to take — and often it seems humiliating. Humiliating because people may say: hey, I thought of you as a Christian all along. What are you doing getting baptized? May had to face precisely this question, even from within the training team: we don't understand what you are doing, you are already in the training team, what is this about? It is not an easy step to take when you have so many questions to answer and so many objections to meet. Far better to go straight from dog to sheep, without having to make this long detour. Some people never even get around the detour; they are stuck in a cul-de-sac, remaining goats their whole lives. This is the whole key to understanding this part of the Lord's teaching.
Now, for those who find after searching their hearts that they are still a goat, this does not necessarily mean that you need to be baptized again. In my own case I did not. I simply yielded my life completely and unconditionally to the Lord. But for some — like May and like Chris — a decisive public step is necessary, one that is unmistakably clear in their own minds, a definite break with the past. If that is what is needed to make the step decisively clear, then by all means be baptized.
In closing I want to illustrate this from a miracle that the Lord performed, because the Lord's miracles are themselves parables — he did not do them to impress people but to teach spiritual lessons. It is in Mark chapter 8 verses 22 to 26. They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand, led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked: "Do you see anything?" And he looked up and said: "I see men, but they look like trees, walking." Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes, and he looked intently, and was restored and saw everything clearly. And Jesus sent him away to his home, saying: "Do not even enter the village."
Notice that this blind man was healed not in one stage, as in most other healings, but in two distinct stages. And that tells me a great deal about the similarity to what we have been discussing. The first stage: the Lord spits on his eyes and lays his hands on him. The spittle, coming from the mouth, is parabolically representative of the Word — it is the Word of God that opens our spiritual understanding. The laying on of hands represents the direct power of God coming upon us. So both the word of God and the power of God are at work. And there is a result: "I see men, but they look like trees, walking." That is better than total blindness — he now sees light, he now has some understanding. But it is very poor vision. Men looking like trees is barely better than being blind, and shows how incomplete the first stage was. This is the goat stage: you can truly say, "I was blind but now I see" — and yet your sight is still blurred, your life is still not totally yielded. It took another step.
In the second stage, the Lord laid his hands on him once more. But notice something important: the man himself did something. "He looked intently." He committed himself to the vision. He exercised his faith, concentrated his gaze, made a spiritual effort on his part — and this time he saw clearly, as truth really is. He had to go the whole way. In the same way, many Christians need to be touched the second time. The first time, God's word and God's power brought them to a genuine but incomplete change. The second time, God's power comes upon them again, and this time they exercise their faith completely — they hand over the whole car, the driving wheel, and everything — and then they see clearly.
Would to God that most of us do not have to be touched twice — that the first time would have been good enough, and we would go straight from dog to sheep. Yet many people have to go through this detour, and some never make the detour at all; they simply remain goats. As Paul says in Romans 5:5: "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." When you have taken that step, you begin to find that you are able to love. Not because it is in your nature to do so, but because his Spirit is moving you forward. You know that you have passed from death to life. This is the most important lesson of the Lord's teaching in this passage, and I beg of you to take it deeply to heart. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.