Awake and Ready

Because God has saved us by his grace through Jesus, and brought us into his family, he wants us to serve him with eagerness and readiness while wait for Jesus’ return.

[00:00:01] Well, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we are entering the part of the Gospel of Luke where Jesus starts to teach more about final judgment and eternal destinies. At the beginning of chapter 12, Jesus warned that we should be afraid of entering eternity and facing the Lord without our sins covered by Jesus. He contrasted this with fearing people. Jesus said, don’t fear those who can kill the body, but have nothing more they can do to you. Fear the one who, after he kills, has authority to cast into hell. He’s telling us to think with an eternal perspective. Basically, don’t be afraid of people because people can’t do anything to you. They have no impact on your eternal destiny. Recognize that this short life, this 70, 80 years that God gives to us are just the prelude to eternity. And it’s the Lord who determines whether you spend eternity with him forever, or if you live forever under the punishment in hell. That was three weeks ago. Then we moved away from judgment for a few weeks and so you may have thought that that was all that Luke had to say, was all there was to say. But as I said, this is the focus throughout this section of Luke, and today we return to it. The next three weeks are going to be rather heavy and difficult, both theologically and emotionally. Next week’s sermon I’ve known for about a year now, is going to be one of the most difficult topics that you find anywhere in Scripture. It’s on how the gospel divides families, and there’s probably not a family represented in this room here that isn’t divided in some way by the gospel. When you combine that with judgment and condemnation, you have some very emotionally difficult truth to wrestle through, but it won’t do to simply skip it or to explain it away. We need to meet God’s Word to us head on, letting it both inform and conform us to God’s will. And so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do that today, too. Jesus is going to teach us how we need to live awake and ready for his return and the consequences, waiting for those who don’t. And this is going to be difficult, because a lot of what he has to say is focused on people in the church. You’d think if Jesus was handing out warnings, it would only be to the people who have nothing to do with him and want nothing to do with him. But his warnings today are also for those who know the gospel, who know the truth of God’s Word, but have either chosen to reject it or ignore it. Jesus is also going to speak to the question that I have encountered many times as a pastor. What about people who have never heard the gospel? What happens to them? And so as we head through these heavy topics, I don’t want us to lose focus on the reason that Jesus teaches this way. [00:03:16] It’s a call to God’s grace and to his hope, because God has saved us by his grace through Jesus and has brought us into his family. He wants us to serve him with eagerness and readiness while we wait for his return. That’s the point of the warnings that we’re about to read. The purpose of these warnings is positive. The purpose, by the way, of all warnings, is positive. All warnings are there for our benefit. They put up the stop signs because they want you to stop your car so they don’t crash and die, right? They didn’t just put up the stop sign to slow you down and get in your way today or, you know, waste your time or something like that. They put it up because they want you to stay safe. All warnings are positive and the same is with Jesus. His warnings are for our benefit. God is good and he is gracious, but he is not safe to treat just however we like. And Jesus shows us how to enter into eternity with no fear in standing before the Lord. So if you have your Bible, you can open it to Luke chapter 12. We’re going to be in verse 35 today. It will also be on the screen. Our passage can be divided into two parts, with a question from Peter in the center of the two parts.

[00:04:39] And the first part, Jesus teaches us how to live awake and ready for his return. And then Peter asks his question about who Jesus message is for. And Jesus responds by describing the eternal destinies of all people. So let’s begin with Jesus describing how awake and ready we need to be. Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning. And be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants. So Jesus starts with a parable about a master of a house who’s gone away for a wedding party, and he can return home from this party at any time. In Jesus day and culture, the parties didn’t run like our parties do. We tend to have a stop time to our parties. We have a set amount of time. A wedding feast in Jesus day could go on for days and there was no clear end point to it. It’s not the wedding itself in this that matters, okay? [00:06:03] The fact that the master has gone to a wedding feast is not what is important here. It’s just that he chose an event with an indeterminate amount of time. An indeterminate length. And the servants of the house, because it’s a wedding feast, they don’t know when the master of the house is coming home. So what are they supposed to do? They’re supposed to stay awake and be ready for action. The action here is to receive the master when he gets home. So when they see him coming, they can either jump up and run out there and meet him and guide him into the house. Or they can answer the door when he when he knocks on it, they’re dressed for action, meaning they’re not dressed for bed. It’s the middle of the night, but they’re not dressed for bed. Their lamps are lit so that they can see. And then they go out and they receive the master so they are ready and they’re also awake. They’re paying attention. They’re watching to see the master’s coming. See, he may come at the second or the third watch, meaning he can come at any time during the night. It’s all through the night. And he could come during any of those times. But when he does come, they’re going to be awake for it. And then did you notice what the master does when he gets home, he changes out of his wedding clothes, he puts on servant clothes, and then he goes and has the people sit down at the table,these faithful servants sit at the table and he serves them dinner. He takes care of them. They get rewarded. The master of this house serves his people who are awake and ready to receive him. So they’re  reclining at the dinner table together. They’re having their own feast. It didn’t feel like a feast before. Okay. Understand that, it didn’t feel like a feast before, when the servants were watching intently, keeping their lamps lit and their ready for action, their fighting back sleep right. It’s all night long. Didn’t feel like a feast before. But when the master comes, then it’s a feast. This is one of those stories when you read it in Scripture, you can almost hear God’s still small voice just saying to you, keep going, keep going. I know it’s hard, but keep going. I’m coming at the perfect time. Just keep going. You don’t know when that’s going to be, but stay sharp, stay focused and keep going. Following Jesus is a call to constant vigilance while we wait for his return. Now, this parable here doesn’t describe what we do with that time, okay? It doesn’t describe what we do when we’re being vigilant. Jesus is going to cover that in a minute. But the point of this image is that the Christian life is a ready life, one where we are constantly aware that Jesus is coming back because the rewards that we’re looking for are the ones that we receive when he comes. The reward is an eternity reunited with Christ. That reward is worth a life of vigilance. I will gladly trade 70 or 80 years of living in expectation if it means that I can spend eternity with my master, with my creator, in a new heavens and a new earth that is consistently described throughout Scripture using wedding feast imagery. It’s consistently described as a party. Twice Jesus says, the one who does that is blessed by God. Two times it’s said in here, blessed are those servants. Now in a minute Jesus is going to tell us what that awake and ready life looks like. But first he addresses the timing of his return. But know this that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left the house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Now, this is a little confusing the way Luke records it, because Jesus immediately switches to another parable about a master and a house, only he changes the reference on it. In this parable, the master of the house is us, and Jesus is the thief.

[00:10:22] Which is a little funny for a God who’s pretty clear we shouldn’t steal things from other people, but he’s a thief in this. That’s actually one of the Big Ten. We shouldn’t take things. But of course, this isn’t about actual thievery any more than the previous parable was about an actual wedding. The only part of the thief he’s using here is the part where no one has any idea if or when they’re going to get robbed? But Jesus point is, Christians do sort of okay, we do sort of. So okay. Follow this. Let’s say tonight or this afternoon, you get a call from a couple of friends of yours, and they say, hey, we’re all going out. You want to come? You probably would want to do that. You’d probably want to go on that. You’re probably not giving even a single thought to the safety of your home when you go out. I mean, you’re here right now. I suppose the heist could be going down at your place right at this moment. But you’re not worried about it, are you? You’re not really that concerned about it. You’re probably going to feel perfectly comfortable going out because we don’t sit around worried about thieves all the time. But what if. What if somehow, this afternoon, you also were told that tonight some local hooligans were coming to take your stuff. Okay, let’s say you got that information too? Now, are you going to go out? No, no, I’m not going out now. [00:11:49] Not if  I know that they’re coming tonight, then I’m not going to go out at all, right? You know the hour. Well, let me change the scenario one more time. What if all you heard was that at some point, some time in the future, the thieves were on their way to your place. They were coming to take your stuff. Now, would you go out? Well, you might, but not without a heightened sense of caution, right? A heightened sense of vigilance there. You’re with some security measures in place. Maybe you put up some cameras. You’re going to make sure that the place is secure so that you’re aware and you’re protected. That’s what Jesus is describing here. He’s saying that we should be on alert, like we know the hour of his return, without actually knowing the hour of his return. Do you see that tension? You see how it’s both in this passage? We know Jesus is returning. The whole world is is going to come to an close. The age of a broken world that we all live in that is going to end and eternity is going to begin. But we don’t know the exact moment or day or year even, that Jesus is going to return. And so we live within the tension of knowing some, but not all of God’s plans.

[00:13:14] And by the way, if anybody ever tells you that they figured out when Jesus is coming back, just know that that person is one of three things. They are either delusional, bad at Bible study, or a con artist or some combination. Right? That’s all they are, because Scripture is very clear that we cannot know the timing of Jesus return, but we must live in light of it. That’s what Jesus is saying. I think our statement of faith here at Calvary captures this tension of Christ’s return very well. It comes from the Evangelical Free Church of America, which is our denomination. This is our statement on it. We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy. And as our blessed hope motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission. Constant expectancy, that’s the phrase I think it’s a great phrase constant expectancy. The Bible indicates that there are a number of things on God’s timeline prior to the coming of Christ. Things like the gospel has to go to all the people groups around the world, but the fact is, we don’t have God’s timeline to study. We don’t know exactly what’s going on. We have only the promise that Jesus is coming back and we don’t know when. And then there’s there’s stuff for us to do while we’re waiting. [00:14:45] Some things that we need to be awake and ready to be able to carry out in the meantime. So let’s turn to that.  Peter asks a question. Peter said, Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all? Peter wants to know who these parables are for. Now, there’s a little bit of ambiguity here in what Peter is asking. The US could be referring to the 12, or maybe even the 70 closest disciples to Jesus, while the all are the crowds that follow Jesus around. Or it might be that Peter means us as in all believers. And then the all is referring to everyone on earth, including the disciples. You can’t really tell from the question itself, but you can tell a little bit from Jesus answer. Now, Jesus isn’t going to answer this question directly but since his response includes every single human being on earth, that’s probably what Peter is asking. I think Peter is asking who needs to hear this Jesus?  Who needs to be ready? Who needs to be ready like they are in these parables. Who is going to be held accountable for being awake when you return? And there are different views in the world that limit Christianity to Christians. What I mean is they think that Christianity is just a cultural religion, not a not a set of truth claims for the entire world. And they would they would either see many paths to God and the gospel is just the Christian path, not the exclusive path. Or they would say that all religions are just unique expressions of spiritual ideas that are tied to cultures but they’re devoid of any absolute truth. Peter is asking something along this line. Jesus, who needs to live with this constant expectancy of your return? How wide is the scope on this? And here’s the answer. In a roundabout way, Jesus gets to it by talking about the eternal destinies of all people. And the Lord said, who then is the faithful and wise manager whom his master will set over his household to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. So Jesus builds on the household parables with one more. But this time the focus is not on being ready and awake. It’s on what we should do while we’re ready and awake. And what being ready and awake looks like. And this is so helpful for us because if all we had was that first parable, we might think that Jesus just wants us to sit still and wait and do nothing and hunker down and wait out our time on earth until Jesus returns. Sort of like Linus sitting in his very sincere pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, right? Just sit there, don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere, just sit there, shiver, wait.  And here’s the thing, church there are definitely some Christians who have fallen into the error of thinking that waiting diligently for Jesus means that this world doesn’t matter, and that there’s not really anything here for us to do. But that’s not how Jesus describes what we should be doing at all. That’s not what he says waiting looks like. His description of the faithful servant is one who is actively engaged in God’s mission, who is the faithful and wise manager, he says, who will give the master’s family their food at the proper time? There’s work to do in Jesus household. You see that? There’s work to be done while he’s away, and the faithful and wise manager is the one who manages that work according to the instructions that the master gives. This vision of feeding God’s people what they need and when they need it is almost certainly a picture of the great commission of  making disciples. It’s nourishing God’s family, right? It’s building into God’s family. And by extension, I would say that it can be applied to all the things that we’re called to do to carry out the work of the kingdom of God while we’re here on earth. The blessed servant is the one who is doing this work of fulfilling the mission of the Kingdom of God when Jesus returns. Theyre about the master’s business.

[00:19:40] And do you see what happens for that servant? He gets even more responsibility. Even more was given to him. Church, this means that the people who can expect a good reaction from Jesus and an invitation to his table for eternity are the ones who are living out that eternity right now. They’re living in light of the kingdom now. They’re doing the work now. There’s continuity between our motivation to serve the Lord now, and the joyful service to the Lord that we will have forever. And if you combine what Jesus says here with the eternal feast imagery of verse 37, you’ll get the sense that when we are with Christ in a new earth, it’ll be a place of joyous celebration and joyous work. Okay, we’ll be active and involved. Doing things, caring for the new Earth. Now, it’s hard to say exactly, because these are parables. So by definition, these are stories. We don’t get a lot of hard facts about what eternity will be like for those who trust in Jesus. But if you are picturing an eternity where you’re just floating on the clouds, strumming a harp, doing nothing but singing songs, you’re getting your views more from Warner Brothers cartoons than from the Bible. Jesus describes a new earth as a very active place, it’s a restored creation no longer infected with sin. [00:21:14] And so there’s going to be this joyous work and joyous celebration going on. And it’s  those who are striving to live out the new Earth values now, Kingdom values engaged in building up the church and declaring the gospel to the world now who will enter into and enjoy that eternity. But that’s not the only eternity. And this is where things get hard. But if that servant says to himself, my master is delayed in coming, and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and in an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. So the unfaithful servant is someone who decides that since the master of the house is not present, not right there in the house, to see and prevent anything from happening, he can do whatever he wants. He can mistreat other people. She can indulge in whatever she wants to do. He treats the master’s house as if it’s his own house. Ownership and instructions don’t matter to the unfaithful servant. He’s going to live as if he’s the one making all the decisions. And of course, those decisions are the opposite of the master’s instructions. That’s what sin is, really. That’s what sin is. Sin is calling God’s stuff our stuff. Calling God’s authority our authority. It’s living as if the Lord has no involvement in our actions, and there’s no consequences for our decisions. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. Now who is Jesus talking about here? Who is he talking about? I would say there is a primary group in mind, but that that it has implications that expand beyond that primary group. The primary group are  so-called servants in God’s household, who prove by their behavior that they’re not faithful to the Lord at all. That’s been the charge that Jesus has levied against the scribes and the Pharisees. I believe they’re the primary group. These religious leaders were charged with spiritual care for God’s people. But instead of doing that, they used their power to abuse the people and get from them what they wanted. They mismanaged the household of God. And this is a strong indictment of false teachers, of people in authority who abuse the authority. Just because somebody calls themselves a pastor or an elder, a leader, a spiritual mentor, a guide, a small group leader, whatever it is, just because they call themselves that, it doesn’t mean they have the right to do whatever they like in God’s name. The Lord is very clear that we are to watch out for non-believers masquerading as believers who are only interested in getting things for themselves. But because Jesus says that at his return he will cut to pieces these wolves and these false Christians and assign them with the unbelievers.

[00:24:31] This means, by extension, that he’s describing the eternal judgment of everyone in the world who is not a faithful servant in God’s household. The punishment of hell and eternity of torment apart from the Lord, under the just wrath of God, is the final destination of everyone who does not put their trust in Christ and serve the Lord faithfully now before the return of Jesus. I once shared the gospel with a guy who said he believed in God. He knew the gospel. I shared it with him. He believed he needed to be saved. He believed all those things, but he had too much sinning that he still wanted to do. Those were his words. Too many things he still wanted to do in life. And so he was just going to trust Jesus later. Not today. What a fool. I mean that biblically. What a fool. None of us have any idea when we’re going to be standing in judgment before the Lord. No one has any idea. If you know that, but you live for yourself, jesus says it’s the fate of unbelievers that’s waiting for you. And to clarify that even further, Jesus answers a question about knowledge. And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. [00:26:11] Everyone to whom much was given of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much they will demand the more. Now a point of clarity here. Some scholars think that this is describing groups of people who are different than the unfaithful servant in the prior verses, and they get that from the difference in description of the punishment. So before it was cutting into pieces, now it’s a severe beating and a light beating. And I believe what we have here in verses 47 and 48 is actually just a breakdown of categories of unfaithfulness based on knowledge. So those who know God’s will and those who don’t. I don’t think there are three categories here. I think that there are only two, but it doesn’t matter too much whether there’s 3 or 2, because they all end up in the same place. Some unfaithful people know God’s will, they know it, but they don’t care. And so they don’t live faithfully waiting for Jesus. That’s like my friend I described. He knew God’s will, but he did his own will. That’s the will he cared about. People say my life doesn’t doesn’t belong to a master. It belongs to me. I don’t follow orders, I make orders. There are a lot of people in and around the church who give token adherence to the Lord, but they are actually living as their own masters. [00:27:39] They’re the ones in charge. You know the gospel. You’ve heard it a thousand times. You know the truth of God’s grace. But you also know that his call is to take up your cross and follow him and bring everything in your life under his reign. And so instead of trusting in the Lord, you tolerate the Lord. You’re near him, but you don’t know him. Jesus says the punishment for that sort of person will be severe. He will be accountable to the knowledge that he has. To have access to the gospel and then to push that away puts you in a more severe punishment than if you had no knowledge of Christ at all. And that’s the the second group here. Those who sin by doing what violates God’s will, but without knowledge of God’s will. This is talking about those people who don’t know the gospel at all. They have no knowledge of what the Lord requires of them. And so just like everybody, they sin against God, just without knowledge. This answers the question that that comes up in missions discussions quite a lot. What is the destiny of those who don’t know the gospel? Sometimes talked about as the destiny of the unevangelized. And I understand why this question is a struggle. It seems like if we say that those who never hear the gospel are condemned in God’s judgment, that God has somehow done something wrong.

[00:29:07] But the fact is, God is the creator and he can do with his creation whatever he wants. Scripture is clear that God is entirely sovereign over salvation, and at the same time we are entirely responsible for our sin. Our job is not to tell God what he ought to do with those who have never heard the gospel, but to listen and be motivated by what he does. Tell us about them, and what he tells us here is that those who don’t know his will are going to be punished in the judgment, albeit in a lighter way, than those who have heard the gospel. Now, it’s tough to tell with some of this parable imagery, but it appears there will be degrees of punishment in hell based on how much a person knows about Jesus. It is not based on the severity of their sin. It’s based on the knowledge of God’s will, his plan of salvation, and Christ’s call to live in the kingdom. How much of that do you know? And I don’t think we can fully understand what the difference will be between a severe and a light beating. But here’s what we do know. Both of those are awful eternities. They’re awful. Jesus didn’t give us this information, so we’d go, oh, hey, a light beating that seems better. Let’s not go. Let’s do less evangelism to save people from a more severe punishment. No, that’s not why he gave us, that information.[00:30:35] He clearly gave us this information as both a warning to lazy, wayward, negligent church attenders and as an encouragement to proclaim the gospel to everyone so that everyone can hear the will of the master and respond in faithfulness. Jesus is telling us in very vivid terms, with the same level of honesty that a good doctor would have for a dying patient. Live awake and ready for Christ, now under the reign of the Lord, or you will die. This is not a scare tactic. This is God telling us the reality of eternity. You can turn your eyes away from it. You can choose to ignore what Jesus says here, but it won’t make it any less real. We serve a God of justice. We serve a God of justice. What a terrible God he would be if he allowed sin to go unpunished. What sort of a God would look at all the human atrocity that we see in the world, and that we see in our own hearts, and just wave a hand and say, hey, it’s no big deal. It’s no big deal. That God would be a monster. We serve a God of justice, but we also serve a God of grace. God has provided a way through Christ that we can be restored to his family. We can serve in his household. But the question before you is, is he your master and are you his faithful servant, truly serving under the direction of his will? Is that the life you lead? Let’s pray.

Podcast (sermons): Play in new window | Download