Listen carefully to these words from Matthew, chapter 24:
36 ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. . . . 42Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Pansy and I were in the North Carolina mountains a while back. It was summertime, and we found temporary relief from the oppressive heat that was gripping our part of the world. In a little town near Boone, we went into a cheese shop. They had cheddar and Swiss and American and Pepperjack and I don't know what all. And, there, among the various cheeses, I saw a box of CDs, with a sign indicating they were free. The CDs were a recording of a sermon by a preacher in a church not far away from the town with the cheese shop. The sermon title was “The Coming of the Lord.” I was interested to see what this preacher had to say about the Lord’s return. So I took one of the CDs and listened while we were in the mountains that week.
The sermon lasted two minutes short of an hour. During the course of his sermon, the preacher said again and again and again, “The Lord is coming soon.” I didn’t try to count, but he must have said that fifteen or twenty times. Just every few minutes: “The Lord is coming soon.” He quoted a verse: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.
But then, the preacher said this: “You can’t know the day or the hour, but you can know the season.”
By the way, that warning is from a book published in 1886, written by a seminary professor named John A. Broadus. It’s been in print over a hundred twenty-five years, but it could have been written yesterday to counter ideas such as the preacher in North Carolina. As Dr. Broadus pointed out, “in every age many have been eagerly seeking to determine” the day and the hour of Christ’s return. You may remember the predictions by Harold Camping out in California last year which got wide media coverage.
(John A. Broadus, “Matthew,” A Commentary on the New Testament, Volume I. Philadelphia: The American Baptist Publication Society, 1886.)
ABC Television News ran a story three or four years ago about a man in Belgium who had already quit his job with a French oil company because of this prophecy. He'd saved up just enough money he thought will last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway. This man started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks, vegetable seeds and other supplies.
The Belgian isn’t the only one expecting terrible things in December. A projects manager at Home Depot out in Phoenix came up with a special 2012 website to sell gas masks, knife kits, bullet-proof vests and more. This man is a savvy marketing rep with Home Depot. He admits he doesn’t necessarily believe in the Mayan calamity, but his website urges customers to “be smart, be ready.” He’s sold lots of emergency medical supplies and water purifiers.
A sociology professor said predicting the end often reflects much larger nervousness about the state of our society. He cited “Terrorism, 9/11, ecological disasters, floods and earthquakes." He said, "[There is] a sense that modern civilization has had its run. Those kinds of anxieties are much more widely shared than simply among people who believe in the exact date" ((Christine Brouwer, “Will the World End in 2012?” ABC News, July 3, 2008.
We've seen sad examples in the past of those who do believe in exact dates:
In 1992 about twenty thousand people in a sect in Korea were so convinced Christ would return on October 20th that year, they sold their homes, quit their jobs, and left their families. Some women had abortions in anticipation of going to heaven. (Richard Kyle, The Last Days are Here Again. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books,1998, p. 139).
Two years later, 1994, forty-eight people committed suicide in Switzerland because they felt doomsday was coming soon (Kyle 139).
A cult in Japan in 1995 set off nerve gas in a Tokyo subway to sparkl a final world war (Kyle 139).
Anyone who believes what the Bible teaches should be reminded of this Commandment from Matthew 24:42---Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. And, as we’ve noted, we shouldn’t try to wiggle out of that by saying, “You can’t know the day or the hour, but you can know the season.” Lots of seasons have come and gone, leaving disappointed people who thought they at least knew the season of the Lord’s return.
Our key verse has two parts: a commandment and a warning. We’ve been emphasizing the warning: you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But let’s also notice the Commandment: Two words: Watch therefore. With the warning which follows, we could paraphrase the verse: “Watch for the return of the Lord, but don’t get hung-up on trying to set the date for it.”
Because we really can’t accurately set the date, we should give attention to the first part of the verse: Watch therefore.
This command verse is set in the context of two rather lengthy chapters, Matthew 24 and 25. Jesus makes this point of watchfulness in a whole string of ways.
In the verses for today, that point of watchfulness is made in three different ways:
First, the coming of the Son of man will be much like the days of Noah: [38] For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, [39] and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man.
Jesus says, people in Noah’s day were eating and drinking and getting married, just going about the routines of life. A general lack of watchfulness.
Second, Jesus gives examples of two men at work and then two women at work. In both cases, one in each pair is prepared for the Lord’s coming, the other is not:
[40] Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. [41] Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left. [42] Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
Some people believe this describes the Rapture: one man will be in the Rapture, the other won’t; likewise, one woman will be and the other not. But this neglects the whole series of alerts Jesus gives--all illustrating the lack of watchfulness. The example of Noah’s time just before this and a third example right after this about a thief’s breaking into someone’s home:
[43] But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. [44] Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
So three examples: negligence in the time of Noah; negligence of men and women going about their work; and the futility of predicting when a thief might break into your house.
In the rest of chapter 24 and all through chapter 25, we have four more examples of the call to Watch therefore. A total of seven illustrations. You may recall, seven in the Bible is the perfect or complete number. So we have a complete number of calls to be ready for the Lord’s return.
If you have your Bible, you can follow along as I summarize these four stories:
The end of chapter 24, verses 45-51, Jesus tells of a servant left in charge of the master’s household while the master is away. The man has been faithful, looking after the rest of the household. But because his master is delayed in returning, this man beats his fellow servants and is gluttonous and drunken. In the midst of this, the master comes back, and he sends the disobedient servant to a place where men will weep and gnash their teeth.
Next, the first thirteen verses of chapter 25 tell of ten young women who are invited to a wedding dinner. They are waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom. All ten women took their lamps, but five neglected to put any oil in their lamps. When the bridegroom arrives, word goes out that the women should meet him so they can go to the feast. The five women who filled their lamps lit them and met the bridegroom. The other five didn’t have enough oil to light the lamps. So they went to a merchant to buy oil. By the time they got the oil and came back, the doors to the banquet were shut, and they didn’t get in because they had not prepared. The story ends in verse 13 with these words we’ve heard before: Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
The next story, in verses 14-30, is about three servants. Their master entrusts each man with some of his money -- a different amount to each man, with each man expected to invest the money allotted to him and present the interest when the master returns. Two of the men double the amount in their charge. The third man didn’t even try to invest the money left to him. So, this is another example of someone who was not prepared when the master returned.
Our seventh and final story begins in verse 31 of chapter 25. In this case, Jesus looks ahead to the final judgment of humankind. The nations are gathered before the Son of man who sits on His glorious throne. Before the judgment begins, He separates the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, [33] and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.
In verse 34, the Son of man is now the King, who commends those on the right. They inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
The reason they receive this inheritance is because they have given Him food when He was hungry, drink when He was thirsty, welcomed Him when He was a stranger, clothed Him when He was naked, and went to see Him when He was sick and when He was in prison.
Those on the right are surprised. They have no memory of helping the King in any of these ways. Then He explains that they have reached out to people in need, and, in so doing, they have ministered to Him. These actions are their inheritance right.
After this, the King turns to those on His left and condemns them because they neglected Him in all those situations. Now, these on the left have no memory of neglecting the King.
So the King tells them that they had opportunities to help the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. But they neglected these needy people. In their neglect, they also turned their backs on the King. Then in verse 46, the King declares the future of both those on the left and on the right:
And [those on the left] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
We’ve seen how Jesus seven times over has stressed being prepared to answer to God at the end of life. Not once in these stories does Jesus project a date for the end of life. Most of these stories have to do with individual responsibility. The example of the way people lived in the time of Noah involves a broad swath of humanity. So does the final story of the division of the sheep and the goats. But the others all come down to individuals:
*Two men working side by side, one watchful, the other not
*Two women also working together, likewise one watchful, the other not
*The individual homeowner who needs to be watchful for possible burglary
*The supervisor who was kind and merciful to people in his charge but became vicious
*Ten young women anticipating the bridegroom’s arrival, watchful, the other five unprepared
*Three men with the master’s money, each individually accountable for his use or misuse
As we survey these seven stories, the central message, then, is Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
It’s futile to try to set the date. The central message is “Get prepared to meet the Lord. Watch therefore. Though we cannot know when we will meet God, we can make preparation for that moment, whenever it comes.
Some people are eager to go sailing through the air like a jet-powered hang-glider. I know people who full well expect to meet Jesus in the air and will be disappointed if they realize they are lying on their death beds rather than swooping off to meet Jesus in a grand dramatic fashion.
The important thing is not how you go, but how you get ready to go.
Jesus tells seven different stories about the need to Watch Therefore. Every story is about people much like those in Noah’s time. In every case, people are just going about their daily routines, like Irving Berlin’s old song, “Doin’ What Comes Naturally.”
In the last story, the climactic story, two different groups of people are called to account for what they have been doing in their daily lives. The first group were busy meeting human need: feeding people who were hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, giving clothes to people who were naked, taking care of sick folks, and visiting people in prison . By contrast, the other group neglected people who were hungry or thirsty or strangers or naked or sick or in prison.
Jesus commends the ones who reached out in love and compassion. They are the ones Jesus welcomes into His eternal blessings. These folks weren’t all caught up in trying to figure the season when Jesus is coming back. They, too, were caught up in the routine of daily life, but their daily life was filled with concern for others.
In the last week or two, I’ve gotten e-mails from some caring people in our First Baptist Church. One e-mail went out mainly to the fellows involved in the Men’s Ministry. A couple with a new baby didn’t have a crib and didn’t have money to buy one. So the writer of the e-mail asked whether anyone on his e-mail list had a crib or knew where to find one. In just a matter of hours, somebody offered the crib to the needy family.
Last Friday, another plea went out for two families on the ragged edge. One couple seeks custody of four children ranging from two years to twelve. They have one bunk bud set but need another set of bunks before the Department of Social Services will let them have charge of these four children.
The other couple with a four-month-old baby girl needs a two-ton heating and air window unit. They lived in an old house with no insulation. The dad works and pays the bills but doesn't have anything extra to buy a heat and air unit. They can't use kerosene heaters with the baby.
In asking help in finding this heating and air unit, the director of Threads of Hope said, “I know this sounds impossible, but we serve the God that says nothing is impossible.” She goes on, ask people to search and pray for them to find this unit. And she believes they can find one, as she says, “at a ridiculously low price.”I don’t know whether either of these two recent stories has a happy ending yet, but these are examples of Christians from our First Baptist Church who interrupt their own routines and help people in deep need. William Wordsworth called such actions “little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love,” “the best portion of a good man’s life” (William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/WordsworthTinternAbbey.htm.)
That’s the kind of people Jesus says will share in the blessings of His Father. They don’t get all caught up trying to figure when our Lord is coming back. They are watchful for occasions to love and help others.
We began by thinking of a sermon in which the preacher was absolutely sure the Lord is coming back very soon. Of course, that preacher doesn’t know that. We don’t know that. And we’ve tried to say, that’s not what matters. What does matter most of all is that we commit our lives to the Lord for however long or however short our remaining days may be. Commit yourself to love God and to live for others. Then you’ll be ready. So follow this Commandment:
Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
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