Expecting God to come back

Introduction

Read Matthew 24:36-51

Matthew 24:36–51 NIV

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Do you know what the worst day to work at a restaurant is?

Most of you know by now from my continuous restaurant illustrations that I waited tables in college. Near the end of my time working in this industry I flirted with the idea of management. Working as an hourly manager from time to time to fill in, etc. One of the most stressful times in our job was something that my shock you (or scare you) a little bit. This was dealing with the health inspectors. They would wait and come at the most random and inopportune times. We figured out that they would hit different restaurants at the same time. Chilis was one of our neighbors and most of the time if they hit them, then they would hit us (Before you go thinking we were gross all the time until they came in and pretending to be good…chill. You lose points for the wrong size tongs being in the sliced lemons). Anyways, you can only imagine…when we get that call from Chilis…it’s on! People start to scramble to get everything in line. to put tongs in the right places, to make sure all the date dots are filled out properly. It is a stressful time for management.

Now, one can quickly see the freedom is not waiting for the phone call from Chilis, right? In ensuring that these things are always being done so that there is no worry or fret about the health inspector coming.

What do we do with the expectation that Christ will return again? What does it mean for our faith and how we live now?

Well for the Christian advent or season as we prepare for the coming of Christ, we always start with a different advent. An advent that has not yet happened yet. Our expectations start this season each year anchoring ourselves to the hope we have in the return of Christ. The second coming, the judgment day, as Jesus points to in the text we just read....a day that will come like a thief in the night. Expectation of this kind of day has proven to be tricky for us. We don’t know what to do with it. We do some really unhealthy things with it or we ignore it altogether. What we do with this expectation is so important

The Text

This is the final of the 5 discourses of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. We have talked about these in different series this year so this should sound familiar. The gospel written, most likely, by a Jew for Jews to show that Jesus is the messiah....the one they had been looking for and yet different than they expected. He is also writing for the teaching and building up of believers....thus these discourses of teachings. 5 blocks of teaching from Jesus. Our text coming near the end following prophetic teaching on the fall of the temple and then here with His later return.

Watch and know

You know when little kids starting asking questions....and there is really not satisfying answer. Like they will start with wondering how Peanut Butter and Jelly ended up being paired together and before long you are answering questions about the creation of the world and whether Adam and eve had pb&j sandwiches. When I was a youth director and still when I direct church camp in the summer we have a term we use with the kids WAFO… wait and find out. We snicker at them but we are the same. So hard for us to not have answers. The disciples are right here. Jesus what happens then, then what, how do we go with you, what will it be like, etc.

Jesus’ response is not “wait and find out.”

Check out the imperatives in this text:

Matthew 24:42–43 NIV

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

Show graphic here:

This text often gets misinterpreted to mean, look for all the signs. That is not what the greek word is getting at nor the context of the passage.

The greek word for keep watch means, WAKE UP. It is even used in a military sense of troops staying alert in their duties.

The call is to get woke, as I think the kids are saying these days. This is about snapping out of our slumber, going through the motions, the monotony.

This warning anchored at the front end of this season in the liturgical year is intentional and important. I was joking with some this week that the hardest week of preaching is first week of advent…but listen this call is shake us out of our status quo:

John Wesley has a colorful sermon, titled, “Awake thou that sleepest.... in it he reminds us it is often the good ones that are the most asleep:

If this sleeper be not outwardly vicious, his sleep is usually the deepest of all: whether he be of the Laodicean spirit, "neither cold nor hot," but a quiet, rational, inoffensive, good-natured professor of the religion of his fathers; or whether he be zealous and orthodox, and, "after the most straitest sect of our religion," live "a Pharisee;" that is, according to the scriptural account, one that justifies himself; one that labours to establish his own righteousness, as the ground of his acceptance with God.

Jesus in the previous context goes on a roll against the pharisees and the hypocrites of the time. woes:

Woe to you, who shuts the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces

woe to you, who values the gifts of God over God himself

woe to you, who gives a tenth of all of your spices and yet you neglect justice, mercy, and faithfulness

woe to you, who masters outward appearances but you do nothing for what is on the inside

Woe to you, who looks to the past in critique and yet you continue to live in the same way

Jesus is saying when I return there will be two people....those that are awake and those that are not.

Awake, not obsessed

Let me press into a tension here for a second. I have been around the church long enough to experience when these apocalyptic texts go the wrong direction. Jesus makes it clear and other NT writers say that those that are in Christ will know when things start to take place, there will be signs…but the force of these texts is never for you to starting counting stars or watching every move of the pope or sticking the title Satan over the most recent President…the force is always for us to prepare our own hearts. Too many people obsess over the signs and never work on their lives. If you are preparing, obsessing, then you have already missed this. And if you are thinking…yeah JW tell those wierdos to get rid of their bunker…listen if you are a doomsdayer about everything then you too have missed the hope of what today means for us.

So what do we do with this expectation? What does it look like to be awake?

Glad you asked. He gives us the answer in the text: You serve. look at verse 45:

Matthew 24:45 NIV

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time?

Craig Keener puts it this way:

“After Jesus exhorts the disciples to “keep watch,” to stay awake, he illustrates what he means. We stay alert not by artificially and perpetually stirring expectation that he will come at a given time, but by living in such a manner that we would have no cause for shame if he did come at any time, since he may in fact do so. Paul may echo the warning against living an unexpectant, self-serving life here.”

Michael Green says presses further into what it means to watch:

“Christians are to watch: not like astronomers through a telescope, or guards watching a CCTV screen, but like lovers who can’t wait for another glimpse of the beloved, or captives in a labour camp longing for the day that will allow them home. God can guide expectant Christians. They are open to direction, ready for the unexpected. But those devoid of expectancy are very hard to shift.”

We serve. We love. We work out our own salvation in allowing God to make us holy now. We watch for the ways in which we can live into the kingdom that is already here. That is the crashing of the two advents. The first advent is that God has already come in Christ and we live in this reality while waiting for the next advent.

Full of Hope

Friends, here is the deal I think we have misunderstood judgment. We read these texts and we get lost in the punishment…it sounds too harsh for our sensabilities. The crime is not what we would choose therefore we choose to throw out these texts altoegther. Please dont miss this…Jesus return is about hope and it is about completion and it is about finishing the work in us and in the world. Where sin, death, evil is gone for all time.

This hope is not pie in the sky. It is based fairly and squarely on the cross and resurrection of Jesus to which the Gospel story inexorably leads. That is the ground for Christian optimism. He took the full weight of evil, pain, and death, and it was not sufficient to hold him down. God has raised him from the dead, and there, at the mid-point in history, we see in Jesus crucified and risen the pledge of the final triumph. It is the trailer of the main film. Christian hope rides high, because the grave was not able to hold down the author of life.

Son of man

In this text Jesus refers to himself as the son of man. He is referring scandalously to the prophetic words of the prophet in Daniel 7. In Daniel 7 there is a crazy vision of this great struggle between good and evil and there comes the son of man coming on the clouds and he takes all authority, glory, and sovereign power, all nations and all peoples worship him. All dominion is his.

A lot of people think when Jesus calls himself son of God that he is being scandalous but it does not come close to when he uses this phrase. And remember in the trial with Pilate he references the same thing. I am going to be enthroned on the cross.

Full of hope again. Church we belong to the King. And this should fill us with hope. Should fill us with a beautiful expectation. We have been living like the health inspector is coming for a pass/fail grade. And listen that’s where the analogy falls apart. That is the whole point of the health inspection....just judgment. Jesus is coming to restore, to finish the job, to get the hell out of us and out of the world.

Wake Up Sleeper, rise from the dead

and Christ will shine on you.