Grantsdale Community Church
2026-09-13-Sheep, Goats and What We Noticed
  • INTRO
    Last week I told you to go dig something up, and I hope that at least one of you actually went looking for something you'd buried under a very reasonable-sounding excuse.
    That’s good. Keep digging. But before we get to today's parable, I owe you at least one more confession, since apparently this series has turned into a group therapy session for me.
    I ‘m, more often than I care to admit, a man who doesn’t notice things. I have walked past my own truck in a parking lot because somebody else's truck was the same color. I complimented my wife on a haircut she got almost a week earlier, with the confidence of a man who thought he was being observant.
    Noticing, it turns out, is a skill. And today Jesus tells us it might be the whole exam.
    We’re still on the Mount of Olives, still in the same conversation Jesus started back in Matthew 24, and this is the last parable He tells before the story stops being a sermon and starts being an arrest, a trial, and a cross.
    That should tell us something about how much weight is riding on it. Jesus doesn’t usually save His softest material for the closing argument. A couple weeks ago a servant faked being ready and got caught at the door. Last week another servant buried his fear in the ground rather than risk it in his Master's name.
    Today we’re going to be in Matthew 25:31-46 and the last parable Jesus tells on the Mount of Olives. I want to point out that the whole cast changes.
    There are, No servants. No bridesmaids. No moneybags. Just a King, a throne, and a very long line of people who are about to discover that the exam they thought they were studying for was never the one that got graded.

    THE KING COMES HOME FOR GOOD

    Look at verses 31-33 and see what happens when the King returns.
    Matthew 25:31–33 CSB
    31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left.
    Notice the verb tense finally changes. For two chapters Jesus has been talking about a master who is delayed, a bridegroom who is late, a Master who goes on a journey. Every parable up to now has had a gap in it, a stretch of waiting where faithfulness either grew or rotted.
    Not this one. This time He comes, and He sits down, and the waiting is simply over. Every nation. Not just the religious crowd, not just the people who owned a Bible. Everyone who ever lived stands in one line.
    And the sorting happens the way any shepherd in that region sorted his flock at day's end, sheep to one side for the warm barn, goats to the other because goats do better outdoors and let’s be honest, they don't play well with others.
    Jesus is using a picture every person on that hillside had seen a thousand times, and turns it into eternity's organizational chart.

    WHAT THE SHEEP NEVER NOTICED THEY WERE DOING

    Here is where the parable gets interesting, and where I think most of us assume we already know what’s coming.
    Matthew 25:34 CSB
    34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
    Matthew 25:35–36 CSB
    35 “ ‘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 took me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’
    Fair enough. Feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, visit the sick. If that were the whole scene, this would just be a good sermon about being nicer to people. But look at what the sheep say next, because this is the detail the whole parable hinges on.
    Matthew 25:37–39 CSB
    37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or without clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’
    They have no idea what He’s talking about. These aren’t people running a highlight reel of their charity, waiting for the King to notice. They’re genuinely confused, because as far as they can remember, they were just doing what they always do.
    They packed a lunch for the guy who is always outside the grocery store. They sat with somebody in a hospital room because nobody else showed up that week. They didn’t fill out a form, they didn’t make a big deal out of their presence. They just showed up.
    Matthew 25:40 CSB
    40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
    The sheep weren’t rewarded for noticing Jesus in disguise. They were rewarded because they had become the kind of people who noticed the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner without needing a theological reason to bother.
    Their eyes and hearts had already been trained by something, long before the King ever walked into the room and told them what it was. That training has a name in the rest of Scripture, and it didn’t start with Jesus telling this parable.
    Solomon had already written it down a thousand years earlier.
    Proverbs 19:17 CSB
    17 Kindness to the poor is a loan to the Lord, and he will give a reward to the lender.
    And Isaiah, watching Israel fast with “great sincerity” while stepping over people who actually needed food, was blunt about which one God was interested in.
    Isaiah 58:6–7 CSB
    6 Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood?
    "When you see him." That’s the phrase I want you to remember, because it is exactly the same test Jesus gives on the Mount of Olives, seven hundred years later, in a completely different setting.
    But it comes with the same expected answer. The sheep passed a test they didn't know they were taking, because somewhere along the way, seeing had already turned into doing, and nobody had to remind them twice.

    WHAT THE GOATS NEVER NOTICED AT ALL

    Now here comes the half of the parable we would rather skip. I’m not going to skip it nor am I going to soften it, because the King certainly doesn't.
    Matthew 25:41–43 CSB
    41 “Then he will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels! 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger and you didn’t take me in; I was naked and you didn’t clothe me, sick and in prison and you didn’t take care of me.’
    Read that list again next to the sheep's list. It is word for word identical. Same hungry person. Same stranger. Same prison. The goats are not condemned for a different set of sins.
    They’re condemned for the exact same missed moments the sheep walked right into and served without thinking twice. And look at how the goats respond, because their confusion is a mirror image of the sheep's confusion, and that ought to unsettle us more than usual.
    Matthew 25:44 CSB
    44 “Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or without clothes, or sick, or in prison, and not help you?’
    The goats aren’t saying "we knew it was You and refused." They’re saying "we had no idea any of this was happening." That’s a far more sobering defense than outright cruelty.
    Because the goats weren’t villains twirling a mustache at the hungry. They simply never saw them. The need was right in front of them the whole time, and it never registered as worth stopping for.
    Matthew 25:45–46 CSB
    45 “Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
    Here is the terrifying symmetry at the center of this parable. The sheep weren’t judged on Scripture they could recite. The goats weren’t condemned for Scripture they got wrong.
    Both groups are judged on what they noticed and what they did about it. "I didn't know" turns out to be a much weaker defense at that throne than most of us have been quietly counting on.

    THE SAME BLIND SPOT, TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS

    I want you to notice something we have said almost every week in this series without realizing it was building toward this exact moment.
    The wise virgins weren’t rewarded for good theology about the bridegroom's timing. They were simply ready, oil and all, because readiness had become their habit.
    The wicked servant was punished not for getting the delay wrong, but for what the delay did to his heart.
    The buried talent was not stolen or wasted; it was simply never used, because fear convinced a servant that hiding was safer than risking.
    Every single parable on this hillside has quietly been building toward the same conclusion: the Master is not grading us on what we said we believed. He is grading us on what became of us because of our belief.
    And apparently what becomes of us while we wait shows up most clearly in whether we notice the person sitting next to us in the pews, or lying outside the grocery store, or sitting alone in a hospital room nobody else remembered to visit.
    I’m not talking about simple charity that give to the hungry and provides resources for the needy. I’m talking about a heart that cares and loves so much that it can’t turn away and is present even at great personal cost to themselves.
    This isn’t a brand new idea Jesus invented on a Tuesday afternoon in Jerusalem. Amos was already shouting about it centuries earlier to a nation that had turned worship into decoration.
    Amos 5:21 CSB
    21 I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies.
    Amos 5:24 CSB
    24 But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.
    An unfailing stream, not a seasonal one that shows up whenever it’s convenient. And Jesus tells another story, a parable we spent an entire Sunday on back in May, about a man who got noticed by absolutely nobody who should have noticed him, until a Samaritan, of all people, stopped.
    Luke 10:33–34 CSB
    33 But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. 34 He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
    "When he saw the man." Same phrase Isaiah used. Same test Jesus gives the sheep and the goats. Seeing is where obedience either begins or dies quietly on the side of the road, while two religious professionals walk past on the other side, presumably late for something important.
    James, writing to a church that talked a great deal about faith and did considerably less about it, said the quiet part out loud.
    James 2:15–17 CSB
    15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.
    Dead. Not weak. Not immature. Dead. And John, who spent three years watching Jesus notice exactly the people everybody else stepped over, drew the same conclusion in his old age, with none of the gentleness we usually assign to him.
    1 John 3:17–18 CSB
    17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
    “Let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.” Even the goats had given to charity, had helped the poor and the hungry at times. The missing ingredient is LOVE. Is it love that guides our actions or is there some other motive behind our deeds.
    The writer of Hebrews puts a lighter, almost mischievous spin on the same warning.
    Hebrews 13:2 CSB
    2 Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it.
    Which means somewhere out there, somebody has fed an angel a casserole and never found out. That’s not a bad summary of the entire sheep and goats parable.
    CONCLUSION
    So here’s the question this parable leaves sitting in the room with us, and it’s not "do I believe the right things about Jesus." Most of us already do. The question is simpler, and considerably harder to hide from: "What have I stopped noticing?"
    Maybe it’s the neighbor whose lights have been off every night this week, and you've told yourself it's none of your business.
    Maybe it is the coworker who eats lunch alone every day, and you've decided somebody else will eventually sit with him.
    Maybe it is your own kid, sitting two feet away at the dinner table, quietly needing something a phone screen keeps hiding from view.
    The sheep didn’t earn the kingdom by noticing Jesus. They received it because they had already become people who noticed anybody in need, and were lovingly present. Jesus simply told them who they had actually been serving the whole time.
    The goats didn’t lose the kingdom because they hated Jesus. They lost it because the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner had become background noise, and background noise never gets fed, clothed, or visited. The goats never helped without selfish motives.
    We’ve spent this whole series on a hillside with a Master who keeps leaving and coming back, a bridegroom who runs late, and a King who eventually sits down for good.
    Every parable has circled the same runway: staying awake was never primarily about guessing the timeline. It’s about what our eyes and our hands were doing while we wait.
    The wise virgins bought oil in advance. The faithful servant fed the household on an ordinary Tuesday. And today, the sheep simply noticed the person in front of them, without needing a King to point out the significance first.
    Next week we leave the Mount of Olives behind and this series closes for good. We’re heading into the book of Revelation, to a church in a city called Sardis that had, by every outward measure, a wonderful reputation.
    Everyone thought they were alive. Jesus is going to tell them otherwise, and we’re calling it "Sardis: The Church That Looked Alive."
    It turns out you can stay very busy looking awake while everything underneath has quietly gone still, and that is a warning worth carrying out of this room today.
    Until then, go notice somebody. Not somebody impressive, not somebody who will post about it later.
    Just somebody hungry, somebody lonely, somebody sitting in a hospital room or a jail cell, waiting to find out whether anybody is paying attention.
    According to the King on the throne, we may be feeding a great deal more than we think.

      • Matthew 25:31–33ESV

      • Matthew 25:34ESV

      • Matthew 25:35–36ESV

      • Matthew 25:37–39ESV

      • Matthew 25:40ESV

      • Proverbs 19:17ESV

      • Isaiah 58:6–7ESV

      • Matthew 25:41–43ESV

      • Matthew 25:44ESV

      • Matthew 25:45–46ESV

      • Amos 5:21ESV

      • Amos 5:24ESV

      • Luke 10:33–34ESV

      • James 2:15–17ESV

      • 1 John 3:17–18ESV

      • Hebrews 13:2ESV

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