Luke 12:35-48
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke chapter 12. Our reading today is chapter
12, verses 35 to 48. Luke 12, 35 to 48, which can
be found in the Pew Bible on page 871. One of the blessings of preaching
through a book of the Bible is you let God’s providence bring
something up that needs to be said. And so today we think about
the end times, which I’m sure is on a lot of people’s minds.
Could we be in the end times? Well, we’re always in the end
times because Jesus told us that, right? But there are signs, there
are wonders, there are seasons that seem to indicate maybe the
end is near. And so today, Jesus will challenge
us to be ready, whether it’s today or tomorrow, or maybe the
Lord may tarry another 2,000 years. We don’t know, but our
task is to be ready. And so we hear God’s word now
from Luke’s gospel, chapter 12, beginning at verse 35. These
are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Stay dressed for action. 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. But know this, that if the master
of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he
would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must
be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not
expect. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, are
you telling this parable for us or for all? 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. 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, at an hour he does not know, and he will cut
him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. 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. 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. Let us pray together. Lord, we
ask that in this next moment, you might give us eyes that see
and ears that hear, give us hearts that perceive and understand,
but most of all, give us lives that are willing and ready to
walk from this place, to serve you, to serve our neighbor and
bring glory to your name. We ask for your help. We ask
for your blessing and we need your grace. We pray it in Christ’s
name. Amen. I bet you if you listen well,
you might hear a lot of modern day preachers say something like
this. The end times are here. And especially
in these last few weeks with our stock market declining some
20, 25% now coronavirus virus being declared a pandemic. There are wars and rumors of
war. There’s saber rattling across
the globe. There are all the things, all
the signs in heaven and natural phenomena. And people say, look,
look, look, look, look, the end times are here. We know that
the return of Jesus is a certain event. The scriptures speak of
it. Jesus will return. But it’s at an uncertain hour.
We may look at the signs of the times. We may speak of wars and
rumors of wars. We may look at viruses and pandemics
and stock market bears and bulls and all these sorts of things.
And we may say, oh, surely the time must be here. The return
of Jesus is a certain event. but it’s at an uncertain hour.
And as much as we look, as much as we interpret, as much as we
would like to think the time is now, don’t we need to stop
and remember it’s been 2000 years. Jesus has tarried. He has not
returned yet. And don’t you think there have
been bulls and bears and pandemics? You hear people say, uh, these
are unprecedented times. Well, how do you think the people
that live through the bubonic plague feel? or the yellow fever
or the Spanish flu. These are not unprecedented times,
friends. This is just a cycle in human history. There’s nothing
new under the sun as the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us. History is full of events. These
are not unprecedented events. This is just normal life. in
a fallen world. And we live in the midst of cycles
of war and bulls and bears and pandemics and epidemics and all
sorts of other evil things that could kill us and eat us. And we need not fear. But regarding
the return of Jesus, it is a certain event at an uncertain hour. Jesus
tells us in his gospels that we live in the last days. This
generation will see the coming of the Lord. Jesus will return. His return is imminent. His return
is soon. His return is at any moment. We just don’t know. Only the
Father knows. And I would imagine it’s something
like this, that when the hour comes, Jesus, who does not know
when his second coming will take place, will get the holy nudge. It’s time, the Father will say.
And Jesus will come. And he will make all things new.
He will send away all wars and pestilence. The stock market
will even out magically. And Jesus will come and take
his righteous home. He will judge the wicked. And
we will live happily ever after. That’s how all stories go. That’s
especially how the story of the gospel goes. But of this coming,
the second coming of Jesus, a certain event at an uncertain hour. Our
passage tells us Jesus coming will be sudden. He will come
like a thief in the night. He will come like a master of
the house returning from a wedding party. These are two events that
are uncertain. The thief. You know, he relies
on the element of surprise. You don’t know when he’s coming,
and so you don’t know when your house will be broken into. And
so he has success. But we never know when a party
will end. Will it end at 11? Will it end at 12? Will it end
at one? And these days, you didn’t know
if a party was gonna end on a Thursday or a Friday or a Saturday. And
so you begin to get the picture of what Jesus is saying. The
second coming is a certain event, but at an uncertain hour. I will
come again like a thief. I will come again like a party
goer who comes home when the event is over. And so our call
as Christians is not to read into the times. You know, so
many people in our day, they look at the headlines and they
see what’s going on in the world and they look at the prophecies
of the Bible and they say, surely if the headlines say this and
the Bible says that, it must be the time. Dear friends, that
hasn’t worked for 2,000 years. And it’s not gonna work for the
next 2,000 or 4,000 or 6,000 years. Only the Father knows. Books have been written. People have sent so much money
into TV preachers and this, that and the other because they believed
what they were hearing is true. But let us hear the voice of
the shepherd. The coming of the Lord Jesus
will be sudden, like a thief in the night. And Jesus simply
says to us in this passage, be ready. Be found faithful. Be found busy doing that which
you should be doing. There’s a couple of images the
Lord Jesus gives us. He says, stay dressed for action.
Keep your lamps burning. Be like men who are waiting for
their master to come home. The way I want us to walk through
this passage today is I want us to see the three commands
of Jesus for us as we wait on Jesus coming. I want us to see,
in addition to these three commands, the blessing that Jesus promises,
but also a third thing. Notice in this passage, there
is a curse to those who are not faithful to God. You must be
ready for the son of man, and he is coming at an hour that
you do not expect. So first, stay dressed for action. I was thinking about This whole
idea of being dressed for action. I thought about the Revolutionary
War. You know, they make us learn history for a reason. It teaches
us things that are helpful to understand how things have happened
in the past and how people have gotten through difficult times.
In the Revolutionary War period, they didn’t like the king, the
crown, ruling over them and taxing them without representation.
And so during the Revolutionary War, men and women and boys and
girls prepared to rebel against the crown. And so they raised
up a regiment. They raised up soldiers. But
they also had, in addition to the regular army, minutemen. And these minutemen militia could
be ready in a minute’s time to fight. You’ve probably seen it
in film. You’ve read of it in history
books. They could have their clothes on. They could have their
musket in hand, their bag with provisions. Their families, their
towns, their villages were ready to have their men, their minute
men, young boys and men of all ages, ready to go to war against
the crown for freedom for what would become America. These men
were ready for action. But I want to say to you, we’ve
got to be more ready than the minute men. We might call ourselves
the in the moment men and women. We stay dressed. You know, these
minute men, they went to bed. Maybe their musket was nearby,
their uniform close at hand. But they still had to get up
and get dressed. They had a minute to do it. The name. But God calls
us to stay dressed for action. Usually when you fall asleep
in your clothes and you wake up the next day, you know, some
monumental event has taken place. Sometimes ill or bad things. But sometimes you’re just tired
and you don’t feel like getting up and putting on your pajamas
and going to bed. But it’s normal, isn’t it, for
us to change our clothes. We wear our bedclothes, our pajamas.
You know, we wear our old ratty t-shirts and our old gym shorts
or whatever Whatever we wear we put on something for bed and
Jesus is saying no sleep in your clothes Stay dressed for action,
or as the image here teaches us, gird up your loins, keep
your robe tucked up and tied up so that you may run, you may
fight, you may be ready in the moment for action. Keep your
loins girded. This image echoes back as we
looked a few moments ago in Exodus 12 to the people of Israel, ready
to go from Egypt in a moment’s time. And dear brothers and sisters,
we should be ready for Christ’s second coming any moment. The
trumpet shall sound. The dead in Christ shall rise.
Those who are alive will be caught up in the air and we will be
with Jesus forever. But we’ve got to be ready. Stay
dressed for action. This passage teaches us. Jesus
says, you must be ready for the Son of Man is coming in an hour.
You do not expect. Stay dressed for action. But
he also says, keep your lamps burning. Every one of us, I’m
sure, has electricity. It’s been 100 plus years or so
since electricity is basically gone from every city to every
rural area. We all flip a switch. The lights
come on. We go to Lowe’s and we invest in General Electric
and Philips and all these companies. They make these light bulbs.
We are never without light. The sun rises at 730 in the morning
these days. It goes down about 730. But we
can stay lighted up all night long if we like. We have light
bulbs. We have electricity. But back
in this day, people had to work hard to keep light at night.
Most went to bed with the sun. with the sunset and they rose
when it came up as well and they worked. It was an agrarian centered
culture. They had no electricity. They
had no light bulbs. And so in order to have light
in the night, they had to keep their wicks trimmed. They had
to keep their oil supply up. They had to keep their lamps
ready to provide light. And Jesus here is giving a spiritual
metaphor. It hasn’t been that many verses
ago where Jesus has taught his disciples and he’s taught us
that if you have light in your life, you can live wisely. You can live with the knowledge
of the gospel and the knowledge of the will and ways of God.
But if you live in darkness, you are living the ways of the
world and sin. And so when Jesus says to his
disciples, keep your lamps burning, this light is a metaphor for
knowledge, spiritual knowledge. It’s a metaphor for spiritual
awareness. Just stop and think for a moment
about the times we are in. It’s a scary world outside these
doors, isn’t it? But we who know the Lord Jesus,
we who know God and have this Christian world and life view,
we can answer the big questions of the world. Is there a God? Yes. Why is there a world and
everything in it? Because our God created it. How
do we know what the meaning of human history is? Well, it’s
for God’s glory and our good. Is there good and evil? Is there
right and wrong? How do we know what’s the meaning
of it all? What happens to a person at death?
All these questions we have answers for in God’s word. And so when
Jesus tells us, keep our lamps burning, We read our scriptures. We live wisely. We make it through
bear markets and coronaviruses and SARS and H1N1 and bubonic
plagues and yellow fevers and Spanish flus and wars and rumors
of war. We live through these times because
we have a worldview that informs us that God is at the helm. And
it’s a worldview that reminds us of passages like Romans 8,
that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus, not a virus. Not a car crash, not a heart
attack, not a war, not a stray bullet, not a not a not a meteor
hitting our house or whatever you can dream up that that might
kill you or take your life. God is in complete control. And
so we keep our lamps burning. We live carefully. We know scriptures.
We be what we act wisely. We know the times we are living
in. That’s what Jesus means. So as
you trim your lamps, as you keep your oil supply up, you are living
a life of constant devotion to the Lord, living in light and
not in darkness. Jesus says to his disciples,
you must be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour you
do not expect. So stay dressed for action. Keep
your lamps burning. This third thing we want to learn
from the passage is something I’m going to just kind of make
up. You’ll see you’ll see what I’m getting at as we explain
it. But this third thing we should do in addition to staying dressed
for action and keeping our lamps burning is we should be faithful
and wise. This passage tells us that the
servant who is faithful, the servant who is prudent, the servant
who is wise is ready for the coming of Jesus. But this servant
stays busy. He stays busy doing the work
of the kingdom. He’s not like the servant who who is unwise, who beats the
servants, who drinks the wine and eats the food. Now, this
servant is ready and busy. He is a household steward. He is a master of the house and
he stewards the house well. A lot of times, find myself across
the table from a young man who’s trying to find his way in life.
And I try to make it simple for them. They’ve got all these ideas
that they want to be and do in life. And I’ll say, there’s just
a couple things. I’m gonna make it real easy that
you should be doing. You should be working. Don’t be lazy. Work. Make a living. Make a living. Work. Earn money. Give to the
church. Support yourself or your family
and help the poor. Work. Second thing you should
do is worship. A young man who’s not worshiping
God is worshiping other things. And that’s where he gets into
trouble. He’s doing all this, that and the other except following
God. But he should also be in a family. If he’s not married,
he ought to think about getting married. If he’s not going to
get married, he ought to stay close to a family because you
get outside of family, you get in a little bit of trouble. And
so you have a church family, you have an adopted family, you
stay close to mom and dad, but you work, you worship and you
get near the influence of a family. And that’s what God is saying
to us is just do the simple, basic things that keep you close
to me and doing my commands. But one of the great commandments
in this passage, and you don’t want to miss it, is he says, of food. And in this little parable,
in this little nugget that Jesus is giving his disciples, there’s
a there’s a word to ministers here. There’s a word to elders
here. There’s a word to parents here. There’s a word to every Christian
here, really. And that that word is this. Our
job, while it is still today in Jesus is tarrying, is to portion
out the food of the word of God to others. What should we be
busy doing while there’s a virus? What should we be busy doing
while there are wars and beer markets? What should we be doing
while the days are normal and the sun is shining and the grass
is growing? We should be portioning out the word of God to others. You know, the church has fallen
on interesting times in America. You ride by these churches not
too far from here, just a stone’s throw. Be the church. And under
be the church, it has all these action items that, quite frankly,
guess what, are not the church. Not a one of those action items
is something that Jesus commanded. Go into the world, make disciples,
teach all that I’ve commanded you. Their list really doesn’t
fall under. Jesus commands, maybe we should
get a banner that says, be the church, baptize, make disciples,
be the church, baptize, make disciples, and put that on every
single corner. Our marching orders, whatever
life circumstances are, are to portion out the word of God to
those who will hear it. Now, Peter, as he is wont to
do, ask a dumb question here. And what is his dumb question?
Lord, are you talking to us? Or is this for everybody? And
Jesus gives him a good answer. As long as it is today, a servant
of God’s household, parents, elders, ministers and Christians
need to stay dressed for action, keep their lamps burning and
portion out the word and the ways and the wisdom of Almighty
God. To those who will hear, you must
be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not
expect, says Jesus. Now to the beatitude. He’s given
us three things to do. Now to the beatitude. Blessed
is that servant who is found awake. Jesus says, blessed is
that servant who opens the door when the master comes in the
first, second, third, fourth watch of the night. Blessed is
that servant that before the second knock on the door is wrapped,
the door is open to the master. Welcome, master, to your home. Blessed is the one who is awake,
but also blessed is the one who is portioning out the word, the
wisdom and the ways of Almighty God. Their reward is you’ve been
entrusted with a little in this life and you’ve been faithful
with it. In heaven, you will be set over all the possessions
of Almighty God. We don’t think of this very often.
We don’t think of this very often, but when we get to heaven, we
will rule and reign with Jesus over all things. Isn’t that what
God told Adam and Eve to do? Hey, Adam and Eve, I’ve made
the world and everything in it. Name the animals, classify them,
plant plants. Here’s a garden. I want you to
subdue the earth. I want this garden to extend
over the whole ends of the earth. Then there’s chapter three of
Genesis, the serpent was more crafty and he came in and got
them off their marching orders by tempting them into a different
way of living. But God will restore what was
broken at the fall. But you who in this life have
been entrusted with a little and are faithful, God will reward
you by setting you over all his possessions. There’s another
interesting blessing in this passage, and I think it’s a wonderful
one. When the master comes home and he finds the servants of
the household being faithful, he’s going to serve them. Think
of that. When Jesus comes and he brings
us home into our heavenly reward where he will be our God, we’ll
be his people, he’ll wipe away pain and sorrow and tears will
be no more. No bear markets and epidemics
and flus and viruses and all these things. Jesus will roll
up his sleeves and he will serve you. Isn’t that something to
think about? We don’t think about this very
often, but Jesus can’t wait for us to get to heaven. We talk
about how we can’t wait to get there and enjoy the bliss of
it. But God can’t wait for us. to get there. There’s a passage
in the Old Testament where it says, God will shout over us. He will sing over us songs of
joy. He is a father who can’t wait
for his children to come home and for him to enjoy the fellowship
that he has been waiting for and working for all these years. So blessed is the servant who
is awake, who is found portioning out the word of God. Blessed
is the one for Jesus will serve them. But there are curses as
well. There are curses in this passage. The servant who is brutal,
the servant who is eating and drinking the master’s food and
wine, who is mismanaging that which he has been given stewardship
over. He is self-centered and self-satisfied. Jesus says, I will cut him up
and I will cast him with the unfaithful. And what of the one
who knows? What of the one who hears the
word of God, who hears the voice of Jesus, but puts it aside?
Or the one who just utterly ignores? Jesus is speaking here of eternal
punishment. There will be greater punishment
and lesser punishment, but nevertheless, everlasting punishment. And he
ends this passage with a little saying. He ends it with a little
saying that we know often, 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. So what do you think of the end
times? What do you think of what’s going on outside these walls
and these doors? Well, that’s one thing. But what
do you think of Jesus’ second coming, which has greater consequences
than a little virus? It has greater consequences than
a rise and fall in the market. It has greater consequences than
bullets and bombs whizzing by us or whatever life brings us.
What will you, as God’s children, be found doing? Jesus says you
must be ready for the Son of Man is coming in an hour you
do not expect. Are you dressed for action? Do
you keep your lamps burning? And are you wise? Are you faithful? Are you portioning out the word
of God to those under your influence? Let’s look to our God in prayer.
Our Lord, we come before you and we ask that you would show
us Show us what is the time, what is the hour. Show us that
it is the time to wake from our sleep for salvation is nearer
to us than when we first believed. Show us that the night is far
gone, that the day is at hand. Help us to cast off the works
of darkness and put on the armor of light so that we might walk
properly as in the daytime, not in drunkenness, not in immorality
and sensuality, not in quarreling and in jealousy. but that we
may put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the
flesh to gratify its desires. Help us to seek first your kingdom. Help us to be ready so that when
you come, you’ll find us faithful and busy working for the men
and women and boys and girls who are still lost and need to
hear of your grace and your glory. Help us and hear us as we make
our prayer in the name of Christ. Amen. We want to respond to God’s
word by singing number 377. Join all the glorious names.