How do we love like Jesus? We’re going to talk about the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, how goats aren’t evil, and what it looks like to love the least of these in school and church.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
The Bible has a lot of sheep in it and goats too. We’ve already seen that Abraham has a ton of both of them. They were used mostly for their wool (which comes from sheep) and hair (which comes from goats) and milk (which comes from both) and babies. In the Bible, sheep and goats are what are being talked about when the word “flock” is used while herds are cattle and other large critters. Both sheep and goats are awesome to have and both were offered up to God in His Temple. That’s important to know because sometimes when the love story in Matthew 25 gets told, people get the idea that sheep are good and goats are somehow bad in general. But in parables, Jesus’s teaching stories, we can’t afford to take anything that seriously in that sort of way. Remember last week when we talked about the good Samaritan? Not all priests and Levites would cross to the other side of the road and probably most would actually stop and help because that’s what most Jews would have done. And not all Samaritans would have stopped to take care of the dying man either. Parables aren’t accurate historical stories but they are stories that tell us things that are true. Jesus wasn’t telling a story to make people think that priests and Levites were bad and Samaritans were good—they were just characters who made the story more memorable. The point was to teach the Jewish people who were listening about being a neighbor. Same thing with this week’s teaching story. Jesus is taking a situation they understood, separating the sheep in the flocks from the goats in the same flock into two different groups, to help people understand who really loves God and who doesn’t. Although the sheep are going to be the people who love God in this story, and the goats are going to be the people who didn’t love God, it has nothing to do with real sheep and real goats. The whole point of this story is: “What does it mean to know and love God and show it in real life?” Or, to put it another way, “What countries can say they follow God and which ones can’t?”
Today, we are going to read a story from Matthew 25, and it is kinda a long story so we’d better get started. But before we do, I want to talk about the name Jesus used for Himself—the Son of Man. In the Book of Daniel, it talks about a man who comes right into the throne room of God—or actually, someone who is “like a son of man” comes up to God’s throne. “Like a son of man” means like a human being, but not exactly the same. Of course, that’s a great way to describe Jesus because He was totally a human being but He was also totally God at the same time. And this man who was “like” a human being was made king of the earth and everyone and everything in it. Jesus used this name to describe himself a lot so when He did it, He was saying that He could go into the throne room of God and that one of the thrones in it was for Him. When Jesus said this, He was calling Himself not just the King of the Jews but the King of the world who had the right to sit next to God. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the story:
“When the Son of Man (the King of the world) comes in all of his glory and splendor and magnificence, and all the angels are with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne as King of the earth. All the nations of the earth will be gathered in front of His throne, and he will separate them from each other, just like a shepherd divides the sheep and the goats into two separate groups. He will put the sheep (one group of nations) on his right and the goats (the other group of nations) on the left. Then the King will say to the group of nations on his right, ‘Come here! My Father has blessed you! He has given you a whole kingdom that He has made for you from the very beginning of the world. Because when I was hungry, you gave me food to eat; When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink; When I came from another country, you welcomed me into your home; When I was naked, you gave me clothes to wear; When I was sick, you took care of me; When I was in jail, you visited me.’ Then the people who did what was right in God’s eyes will ask, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you as a foreigner from another country and take you in, or without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘I am telling you the truth, whatever you did for any of my brothers and sisters who were ashamed or having a hard time in their lives, you were actually doing it for me.’ Then he will also say to the ones on the left, ‘Get away from me! You are cursed! Go into the fire that burns forever and ever with the devil and his angels! Because I was hungry and you wouldn’t give me anything to eat; I was thirsty and you wouldn’t even give me a small cup of water; I came to you from far away and you didn’t welcome me or help me; I was naked and you didn’t make sure I had something to wear, or sick and in prison and you didn’t take care of me.’ Then they will say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or without clothes, or sick, or in prison, and not help you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘I am telling you the truth, whatever you didn’t do for even one of these people who needed help, you did not do for me.’ And they will go away to be punished forever, but the people who did what was right for those in need live forever with God.”
We live in a very different world today than the people of Jesus’s day. In some ways, that is a good thing and in other ways it’s bad. I have told you before that Jesus changed the way the whole world thinks about a lot of things—even with the people who don’t believe in Him. The early Christians took what Jesus was saying very seriously. The Gospel of Matthew was written to a Jewish congregation who knew their Bibles much better than most of Jesus’s followers around the rest of the Roman Empire because they had been hearing it all their lives. Matthew wrote his Gospel book to be like the first five books of the Bible and wrote about Jesus to show people how much His life was like the life of Moses but in such a way that people saw that Jesus was way better than Moses or Abraham or anyone else who had ever lived. And better than the kings of Israel and Judah and the Temple of God too! And when Jesus taught about what the Bible means, He was better than any teacher who had ever lived or ever would live. Jesus often took what people thought the Bible meant and turned it upside down. He especially did this when He taught about what it means to love God and our neighbors. Last week, we saw that Bible expert who didn’t want just anyone to count as his neighbor because he only wanted to love and help the people he wanted to love and help. We call these differences of opinion on what the Bible means interpretations. We can all see the words written in the Bible, but we don’t always agree on what they mean. Sometimes we just don’t know for sure what they meant and we do our best to try to figure it out. And when that happens, even Bible experts can really disagree what the Bible means in certain places. That hasn’t ever changed. Jesus had a lot of talks with people who had the Bible memorized but couldn’t agree on what it meant. One of the questions they asked was, “What does it take to be a nation who does what is right in the eyes of God?”
Some Jews, the Sadducees, didn’t believe that we would come back from being dead to live with God forever here on earth. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of them. So, they didn’t really believe that anything they did mattered that much because they thought there wouldn’t be any consequences after they died. They thought they would just die and that was it, so they had to get what they wanted while they were alive no matter what it took. Yikes! Unfortunately, they were the ones who happened to be in charge of the Temple when Jesus was here. They were rich and greedy but saw no problem with that because they didn’t believe God would do anything about it after they died. They figured that if God was letting them be rich and powerful, then He must be okay with how they were doing things. That’s super messed up. That’s how they interpreted what they saw in the Bible because they only read the first five books. Kinda like the Samaritans but also not like them.
The Pharisees were another group that read the Bible very differently. They read the entire Bible. Everything from Genesis to Chronicles. They believed in angels and that they would live forever here with God. But even the Pharisees disagreed with each other—there were two different groups of Pharisees who read the Bible very differently in places. They had complicated rules set up to keep people far away from breaking God’s laws, but the problem is that you can do most everything the Bible says while being a total gooberhead who still hates people. You can make a ton of rules and even keep them without changing on the inside. The problem with that is we aren’t always very clear on what it means to hate others or even that it is wrong. As you grow up and read the Bible more and more, you will come to see that you can always find a verse or two that seems to let us do terrible stuff while thinking that God is totally cool with it. That’s a big reason why Jesus came to us as a teacher and not just as a king. Kings are judges who make sure the laws are being kept and that is good but we also need teachers to show us the difference between right and wrong and to guide us into doing what is right for the right reasons. Jesus is the greatest teacher of all time because He showed us who God is and how patient, loving, and merciful He is. God is all of those things and so He wants His people to be all those things too. In fact, that’s what Jesus was teaching in this story—who is interested in being like God and who isn’t.
In the ancient world, and we’ve learned this before, some people were thought well of and others weren’t. We call that honor and shame. People with honor were rich and powerful and educated and great athletes and warriors. People without honor were poor and vulnerable and hungry and thirsty and sick and in jail. Let me put it another way, the difference between the people with and without honor came down to who you would want to be seen with and who you would avoid because being with them would be too embarrassing or dangerous to your reputation. For example, no one would want to be visiting prisoners because it would make you seem like a criminal or a bad person. Being with sick people might make you sick and so you stayed away and if you didn’t, people might stay away from you. Being with poor people was fine if the only thing you were doing was throwing them some money but sticking around to find out what they needed or to be friends with them, oh no way. Too shameful. It would make you look bad. People might think you are the wrong sort of person and they wouldn’t want to do business with you or let their daughter marry your son. We still have some situations like this today, and we will talk about that later. So, it would have been normal even for the religious people who went to Jerusalem for all of the festivals and tithed and kept the Sabbath and didn’t lie or murder to stay far away from the people who actually needed help. Strangers from other countries were scary. Poor or sick people might need too much of your money. And people in jail were seen as just the wrong sort of people who didn’t deserve any love! But Jesus was saying that it just didn’t matter. Let’s go through the story again but I am going to make it easier to understand:
Jesus and His disciples were in Jerusalem for the Passover, so the city and the Temple Mount were filled with excited Jewish men, women and children who gathered to listen to the Bible scholars teach. Jesus had been talking to them about the coming of God and His Kingdom and although that was very important, He had one more thing to tell the crowds about who was and was not pleasing God and which nations would and would not be representing Him. He knew this would be a surprise to many of them because the people believed that all you had to do was be Jewish, specifically to be descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or be one of the outsiders who decided they would become Jews. They knew that even though there had been terrible times for their people and although their ancestors had done terribly evil things, God hadn’t ever abandoned them. They knew that they alone were special and unique in the world and even came to Jerusalem for the Passover. They weren’t like the Gentiles—idol worshippers and unclean and who weren’t allowed to get inside the soreg which surrounded the Temple buildings. This was the time of year that they celebrated being God’s special people—after all, God had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt and had trashed almost the whole country to get them out of there. They were the servants of the one true God. They were a righteous nation because they were the only ones with God’s Word to teach them.
But Jesus wanted to give them encouragement and also a warning. So, He told them one of His teaching stories, a parable. “When the King of the World to Come arrives, with all of the angels of Heaven, He will be more amazing than anything anyone has ever seen and He will sit on the most beautiful throne and He will have all power in Heaven and on Earth. The countries will come to Him, all the people groups of the world, and the King will divide them into two groups. You know, the way shepherds divide up their flocks into groups of sheep in one pasture and goats in another so they can be sheared or counted. He will put the first group, like sheep, over to the right and the second group, like goats, over to the left. He will look at the nations to His right and say, “Come to me! My Father wants to give you a blessing! He has been making a wonderful Kingdom just for you since the very beginning of the world, because when I was hungry you gave me food and when I was thirsty you gave me a drink. When I came to you from a country far away, you laid out the welcome mat. When I was cold and covered in rags, you gave me warm clothes to wear. When I was sick, you came to take care of me. When they put me in jail, you weren’t ashamed to come and visit me.” And the people on the right looked at each other and replied to the King, very confused, “When did any of this happen? Certainly we would remember taking care of you!” The King smiled, “When you did any of these things for even the most pathetic person alive, you were actually doing it for me. These people in need are my brothers and sisters and you can’t love me without loving them.”
The King turned His head to the group on His left side. “Get away from me—you are cursed! You can be on fire forever, for all I care. I was hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and taken to prison and none of you cared enough to lift a finger to help me.” The group on the left protested, “Wait a minute, my King, certainly we would remember turning you away and ignoring you in your hour of need!” The King shook His head and replied, “Honestly, despite my giving you enough for them and for yourself, you did wrong by them and when you ignored them, you were doing evil to me.” And the group on the left were cast from the King’s sight to be punished forever and those who had done right by the needy lived with Him forever.
If you guys are in school or maybe in Sunday School or youth group or whatever, then you have probably come across kids who don’t have it as good as you have it. Maybe they don’t always get enough to eat and drink. Maybe they get made fun of because their clothes aren’t as nice or new as everyone else’s. Maybe they have physical or mental disabilities. Maybe they are new to the area because they moved from far away or have trouble speaking English because they came here from another country that was dangerous to live in. Maybe they aren’t popular, or athletic, or good looking. If so, then they probably get made fun of—yeah, even at church that can happen. Let’s say that instead of whole nations, King Jesus was just talking to groups of kids on the playground or maybe whole classes or schools. You guys are kids and so you can’t do everything that adults can do but you can still do a lot.
So, if King Jesus was talking to you, He might say to the group of kids on the right, “I am so proud of you! God has a blessing for all of you and you will be with me forever! You didn’t know it, but when I didn’t have enough to eat, you shared your sandwich and your juice with me. When you saw me coming to school with a shirt that was too small for me with holes in it, you talked to your parents and gave me one of your brand new shirts so that no one would make fun of me anymore. When I had the chicken pox, you even brought my homework home for me so I wouldn’t get behind. I had detention once and you didn’t laugh at me but invited me over to play afterward. And when I was new to your country and had trouble speaking English, you were very patient with me while I learned. And the kids looked at each other in disbelief and said, “What are you talking about? We never saw you at school!” And the King laughed and said, “You did that for me whenever you did it for anyone who needed it. You loved me by loving them and you showed them what I am like when you did it.”
The King frowned at the second group, “I am very disappointed in you. You don’t seem to know me at all even though a lot of you go to church every week. If you guys don’t clean up your acts, you are going to end up being far away from me. I needed you guys to share your sandwich and juice with me, but you wouldn’t even sit at the same table with me. You laughed at my clothes and my accent and my wheelchair and my learning disabilities. You got me in trouble and then made fun of me when I got detention. You made my life miserable.” And the second group of kids said, “No I didn’t. I’ve never seen you before in my life and if I had known who you were, I totally would have helped you out.” The King frowned, “That’s the problem, you would be willing to help someone rich and powerful but you didn’t understand that I am on the side of the people who are poor and weak and sick. If I was popular and had a lot of money and was a great athlete, you would have wanted to be my friend, but everyone wants those kinds of friends. If you knew me and were like me, you would have been loving to the people who had nothing or at least very little. You were selfish and only thought of yourselves. You had better get this figured out and straighten up before I see you again.”
I changed the story a bit because no way are kids going to be judged by God the same as whole countries of adults would. God is the God of second, third, and fourth chances but when we don’t learn how to love the way He wants us to when we are young, it just gets harder and harder. I mean, I didn’t even try until I was twenty-nine years old and that’s over half my life still. God tells us all the way through the Bible what He expects, and what He expects is that we love the people who don’t have anyone else to love them. There are certain groups that God specifically mentions over and over again through Moses and the prophets—the people who need help because they don’t have the power to help themselves. This is what God said in Exodus 22 about whose side He is always on:
“You must not take advantage of a stranger who has come to live with you from far away or harm him, since that’s exactly what you were in the land of Egypt. “You must not treat any widow or orphan unfairly. If you do, they will definitely cry out to me, and I will absolutely hear them. I will be incredibly angry, and you won’t like it because I can make you just like them if I want to. If you lend money to my people, to any poor person, don’t act like a banker; you must not charge him interest so that he loses even more money. If you ever take your neighbor’s cloak to make sure he gives you your money back, return it to him before it gets late in the day, because it is all he has to keep him warm; it is his clothes. What else does he have to sleep in? And if he cries out to me, I will listen to him because I am merciful and loving and good.”
I love you. I am praying for you. Just because you grow up as a Christian in a Christian family doesn’t mean you are behaving like God toward the people who need your help. Just because I am a Bible teacher doesn’t mean I am always doing what is right when people need help either. Same with your pastor or rabbi. Being like Jesus, as we have seen, means hearing the people who are crying out for help and making sure they are okay. If we are greedy and selfish, we aren’t going to want to help them and we definitely won’t want to be friends with them. But the rich and popular people? They already have what they need and plenty of people wanting to be friends with them. To be like Jesus, we need to be loving to the people everyone else wants to forget and even be mean to.