Daily Manna · Day 88 · March 29
Prepared for You
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:”
Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 25 while He sat on the Mount of Olives, only two days before the Passover, when He would be betrayed and crucified. In Matthew's Gospel it is the last long teaching He gave before His arrest.
That is worth knowing, because it tells you this is His closing word, and much more than a general talk about kindness. He has just told two stories about waiting: the ten virgins, and the man who handed out talents to his servants. Then He sets the stories aside and describes the real event: all nations gathered before Him, the King on His throne, and the people divided. The last words of a teacher's public ministry are usually the ones he most wants remembered, and these are the words of Christ.
The verse has two halves that people find hard to hold together. The King says, "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." It was prepared before anything existed, before any of these people had done anything at all. That is the language of an inheritance, which is the opposite of wages, because nobody earns a place that was made ready before they were born. And yet the evidence the King gives is completely practical: "I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat," "I was a stranger, and ye took me in," "I was sick, and ye visited me." The blessed are surprised by it. They ask, "Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?" They were not building a case for themselves. They did not know they were doing it to Him.
So hold both halves at once, even though it is uncomfortable, because both are true. Your place in the kingdom is not payment for the meals you served. If it were, the blessed would have been keeping count, and they were not. Still, the King recognizes His own by those meals. Grace is the ground you stand on, and the plate you hand to someone hungry is how that grace shows.
Think of the empty chair at the end of the table, the one nobody takes. It was prepared, even for guests who are unsure they were invited. And somebody hungry within a mile of you does not know that yet, so go and tell them with a meal.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 88 is Then He Sat Down (Hebrews 1:3).