Signs of the Times (35)

We have finished our discussion of Matthew 24:36-41. There is one more section in Matthew 24, verses 42-51, which I want to write about in this forum article. Jesus now turns His attention (and ours) to our calling to watch and pray. The calling to watch and pray is necessary because we do not know the day or the hour when the Lord does return. Our lack of knowledge of the time of our Lord’s return is hidden from us by God.

 

That is a good thing. Suppose for a moment that we did know. Suppose that God told us the date of our Lord’s return is on February 28, 2025. That’s more than ten years from now. What would you and I do? We would almost certainly say to ourselves: “Well, we do not have to worry about that for at least another nine years, so we can put it out of our minds for a while and concentrate on gaining for ourselves as much of the wealth and treasures of this world as we can, for there is still plenty of time to enjoy this world and its pleasures. So, let’s eat and drink and be merry.”

 

On the other hand, if the Lord would tell us that He is coming back on September 1, 2015, we would, because we are such foolish people, do all sorts of foolish things such as: quit our jobs and spend our time in church, or forget all about getting married, or sell everything we have and squander our money to get as much out of life as we can before the Lord comes back, or live in fear and shrink into a corner to sit and wait.

 

But now we do not know when the Lord is coming back. And so, the Lord teaches us to go about our daily life in the way we now do: working, raising our families if we are married, going to school, attending regularly our Bible Study meetings, witnessing to others around us, or whatever occupies our attention and performing what God calls us to do. If I am writing a book and I know I need another year to finish it, but I also know the Lord is coming back in five months, I should just keep on writing the book – even if I never finish it.

 

You might say, “But then you are wasting your time; your half-finished book will be burned up along with the world when God burns the world up.” I would answer, “Yes, but even writing the book was a blessing, for I learned more about the Bible and God’s will for us. And even if the unfinished book is burned, what is so bad about that? We may think we have really done something great when we survey our pile of books that we have written. But in the eyes of God they do not amount to anything at all, except a little pile that could just as well be a pile of garbage.”

 

So, because we do not know when Christ is coming back, we are called to continue to do our regular and daily work as long as we can. To use the language of verses 40 and 41, we are to go to our fields if we are farmers and we are to keep preparing meals if we are housewives – even if the wicked do these same things. Only (and here is the point), we must do them with the prayer in our hearts and on our lips, “Come, Lord Jesus, yea, come quickly.”

 

In verses 41-54 the Lord uses a couple of parables to underscore the calling that comes to us to “Watch!” The first parable is this. A man with a house where he and his family live is in an area that is threatened from time to time with thieves who break into houses and plunder all the worthwhile contents of the house. The man, knowing this was going to happen, would, of course, be concerned about the danger of thieves coming to his house. And if he knew the exact time the thieves had planned to break into his house, he would make preparations to foil the thieves’ efforts. He would call the police to be waiting in the house. He would arm himself with a weapon to ward off any attacks of the thieves. He would check all the locks on the windows and doors. He would, in other words, take what precautions he could to guard his house.

 

But if he did not know when the thieves would come, he would have to take such precautions as he could all the time. Every night he would check all the locks. He would alert the police to the possibility of a break-in and be sure the police would come if he needed to summon them. He would not be careless, leave doors open, put his valuables in full view of anyone entering, and take an indifferent attitude towards the real possibility that sooner or later the thieves would hit his house as well as others in the neighborhood.

 

So, Jesus says, we too must live our normal life, but always do so in anticipation that Christ may come at any time.

 

The second parable is this. A man who owns land and has many servants must go on a lengthy trip that takes him away from his home. Of his servants, he has one servant to whom he entrusts responsibility to see to it that the work is properly done and on time, that the servants do what they are supposed to do, and that the farm operates as it would if the owner himself was around. The date of his return is not known, not by the owner or by anyone else.

 

The question is: What are the servants going to do while their master is gone? If the servants love their master and are interested only in the good of their master, they will be diligent in the care of their master’s fields and other possessions. They want to be sure that the master finds everything just as he left it when he returns.

 

But if these servants are wicked and it seems to them that the master does not return when he was expected, they will decide to have a riotous time, ignoring their responsibilities and using their master’s possessions to get drunk and have one party after the other. Or if the servant appointed to be in charge misuses his authority and begins to beat the other servants, while he is making the most of his position by misusing his master’s possessions, he will leave his master’s fields and houses in a mess.

 

The meaning is clear. Christ is the “Great Landowner” for all the world is His. We sing this in our Psalters: “The earth and the fullness with which it is stored; the world and its dwellers belong to the Lord” (Psalter 57). Nothing in all this vast creation is ours. We do not possess one thin dime that we can call our own. We are the servants in the vast estate of our Master. But He is gone on a long journey to heaven where He will stay for an unknown period of time. He entrusts the care of His creation to us. We are to take care of it for Him so that He is benefited by it even though He is not here. We may never say, “This flat in which I live is mine; this car I drive is mine; these savings I have are mine; I am my own and I may do with myself what I please.” We may never say that because it is not true. As we sing in another Psalter; “All that I am, I owe to thee; thy wisdom, Lord, has fashioned me” (Psalter 383). I may never, never say, therefore, “I may use this money as I want to use it, for myself, for my pleasure. I have given the Lord what belongs to Him by putting money in the collection plate on Sunday. Now, what is left is mine – to do with as I please.” Nothing is ours; we may never use what belongs to Christ for ourselves.

 

But the “Great Landowner” will come again. He is going to claim it all as His own. And He will change it to be glorious and without sin in the heavenly creation.

 

And so we must live in this world, using everything that the Lord gives us of this world, in the hope and confidence of our Master’s return. If we do not, then our Master will, when He comes, cut us in pieces.

 

It is striking that the Lord speaks of hypocrites in verse 51. The wicked people in the world are not hypocrites. They openly claim the whole creation as their own to do with it as they please. And so they use it for their own pleasure, raping God’s world, grabbing remorselessly everything they can get their hands on, storing up the treasure of the creation for themselves. If you tell them that they are doing this to someone else’s belongings, they will laugh at you and tell you that you are a fool. They will say to you, “Have a life man. Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Life is short. You are here only for yourself. Live by the motto, ‘Me first, and the devil take the hindmost.’”

 

The child of God says, “All these things are not mine. Even I do not belong to myself for I belong to Christ. I have to be very careful how I use these things, for the “Great Landowner,” of whom I am only a servant, owns them all and will claim them for Himself when He returns from His far journey.

 

Hell awaits those who misuse God’s gifts. There is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. If you want to know about hell, then read Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon: “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” You can find it on the internet.

 

And do not forget: Christ’s return is not only at the end of the world, but Christ returns for each of us at any time – when we die. That’s the end of the world for us.

Prof. Hanko