The Gospel Of Mark | Be Ready (November 4th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, we'll get your Bibles open now to the Gospel of Mark chapter 13.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Now one of the kind of favorite things that my family just loves is small group night.

We love, we love, love, love small group.

It's where uh we have a bunch of these meetings in our church, and it's where we have about, I don't know, like a dozen or more uh people uh over to our place on an evening to really uh grow in what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

And we discuss things, we pray, we have accountability, uh, we eat a lot of food, we have a lot of laughs, we do all of that thing, and we uh truly love it.

It's one of the things that we look forward to big time, uh, but it's also uh a bit of a whirlwind just getting ready for it on a Tuesday night.

Right?

You got you ever had that?

You had people over to your uh your house before for something, you know, you had uh you're hospitable, you've got that uh going for you, and you've got some people coming, and and you know what it's like, just kind of preparing for that sometimes, right?

And for us, you know, we come home and it's you know after five, it starts at seven, and so it's kind of this mad scramble a little bit to um you know, to get the house tidied up a little bit.

Sometimes we run a vacuum through it or you know, clean the dishes, wash the dishes, try and dry those things and make the room, you know, or the room kind of nice for people.

The kids are doing homework.

Oh, yeah, we've got to eat too.

We're preparing for all of that.

And then usually I'm doing some reading and some study, kind of getting ready kind of last minute for some of those things uh as uh as well.

Now, so for us, there's this sort of mixture of this excitement and this you know eager longing for you know what the Lord is this expectation for what the Lord is going to do that night as his as his uh church gathers together, but but in the meantime, there's also this like there's work to do, right?

To to get ourselves prepared for that evening.

Okay, well, well, in Mark chapter 13, Jesus talks about the importance of being ready.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Being ready.

But it's not uh for something uh like small group or you know, getting ready for your exam and making sure that you're studying well, students, or for some project at work that has a deadline that you gotta get done.

It's not for those kinds of things.

Uh, it's about being ready for the end of the world.

Okay, that kind of seems like a big deal, right?

Don't you think?

Right?

Because Jesus is coming back, right?

Do we know this as the church?

Right?

The final judgment, and he's he's gonna deal with sin and he's gonna deal with Satan once and for all.

Bring it on, right?

And and he's gonna gather his elect, his followers uh together and renew the heavens and the earth.

Okay, and so and so for that day or or until that day, okay, you and I, we we gotta be prepared, right?

We gotta be, we gotta be ready for that day.

All right, I love that.

Now, you might be thinking, you know, well, what does that look like for us?

Well, we're gonna we're gonna unpack this and we're gonna get into this and we're gonna see, but but first of all, uh, I think we need to pray.

Right?

Let's pray and let's ask the Lord to make these things clear to us and to fire us up about these things and and for us to prepare our hearts.

So let's do that now.

Let's join me as we pray.

God, we um again pray that as we think about um as we think about the end of the world, Lord, this is a topic that um intimidates a lot of us, Lord.

It's a it's a topic that uh straight up terrifies a lot of us.

And you know, we think about this and we're not sure, we're unclear about so much of it, and so we can either, you know, you know, wring our hands in in fear and anxiety, or we can just kind of push it away and not even think about it.

And Lord, uh, in the meantime, Lord, you have a mission for us and you have directives for us to carry out and accomplish.

And and Lord, it's so easy.

We know because we've got a flesh and we struggle, we know it's so easy to kind of push all of that away and just give into what we want in our in our selfish flesh.

We know that we can waste so much time and we can be so ineffective and so unfruitful in how we live our lives.

And Lord, I pray that today as we open up your word and as we see what you would have for us, Lord, that we would in fact uh feel um feel the desire and and and be pushed towards getting ourselves ready now uh for your second coming, Lord.

And I pray uh that as we think about uh all of this, Lord, you would you would um again just give clarity, teach, instruct.

Lord, help us to know these things.

I pray that we would take these things uh seriously.

Lord, I pray that you would grow our church strong in the meantime, and Lord, we want to say this too.

We so eagerly long for you to return.

Lord, so many of us, we've already prayed it, but so many of us, just in the last couple of days, we've experienced the brokenness of a fallen world.

Lord, and and we are we are groaning, and and Lord, even some of us we don't even realize we're our our our heart's true desire is for our Savior, Lord, and to be to be with you.

And so, God, I pray that you would iron out the confusion that we have about these things, Lord.

I pray that uh we would uh trust you.

I pray that we would uh grow more deeply in love with you as we unpack your word.

Uh so Lord have mercy on us, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so you ready for uh for a little end times action today, right?

Uh chapter uh 13.

Okay, Jesus, uh Jesus, he plunges us right into this area, right into the area of eschatology.

That's really the fancy, fancy word for uh for end times.

Okay, and then we'll you know what is it what this means for disciples everywhere as we live with that anticipation and and the hope that, hey, Jesus is coming back, right?

And he's coming back soon.

We just sang about that.

Right now, the unmistakable thrust of this chapter as we're gonna look at this, uh this text, is how imperative it is that you and I be ready for that day.

Right, that we be ready.

Okay, so so hear me on this.

Okay, Jesus doesn't answer every single one of our burning questions that we have about the final days, right?

He doesn't do that, he just doesn't do that here.

Okay, we don't know exactly what all of these things will look like.

I think we really want to know.

And quite frankly, I think Christians get silly about this stuff.

We're like, oh, it's gonna look exactly like this, and you know, it's gonna happen on this day.

Right?

We don't know.

I mean, it tells us specifically, straight up again, you're not gonna know.

No one knows the hour other than and the father, uh, other than the father, right?

And so we don't know all of these things.

He just tells us, hey, I'm coming back.

Okay, so be on guard.

Be on guard.

You know, keep awake, stay awake.

These are the phrases repeated over and over again all through this chapter that we uh need to see here and need to need to understand because they are intended to capture our attention.

All right, and also uh direct our focus on how we live our lives now.

Okay, so Jesus is coming back, and I will be ready.

Okay, so here's the first thing trusting him as the world goes haywire.

All right, we're gonna trust him in this.

Okay, take a look at this.

Verse one now.

Follow along with me here.

Okay, it says this.

And as he came out of the temple, you remember last week we talked about uh the showdown that Jesus had with uh with the religious leaders and how he unearthed their pride, how he shone kind of the spotlight on their pride and shown that uh showed them and showed the Jews how wrong they were.

He had this showdown with them.

Well, you just finished all of that.

Okay, he comes out of the temple, it says, and one of his disciples said to him, Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings.

Okay, so one of the disciples here, he's obviously you know really you know quite impressed with uh the temple structure.

You know, they're coming out of this, and he's like, wow, this is this is pretty incredible, and truthfully it was.

Okay, Herod the Great had uh kind of expanded Solomon's temple to this like like enormous size.

It really was shocking.

You know that blocks have been found uh by archaeologists, blocks from the retaining wall alone that were just ridiculously huge.

Okay, they were each block, they were like 42 feet long.

Okay, let me make sure I get this right.

They were 11 feet high and 14 feet deep.

You know how much these things weighed?

One block, a million pounds.

Right?

That is that's impressive.

Right?

You can see now, when you understand this, why these guys would be like, wow, this is so, this is so amazing, uh, what this is.

Now, here's Jesus' response here, verse 2.

He kind of throws some cold water on it.

Look at this.

He says, Do you see these great buildings?

There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

It's like cold glass of water, right?

Right right on how he how fired up he was about that.

Right?

As wonderful as it all seems, Jesus says, Okay, it's all coming down, right?

It's all gonna tumble, it's all it's all gonna crash.

Now, what's he talking about?

Right?

Like what's he getting at here?

Well, listen, he's referring uh to an event that would happen at that point in the very near future, shortly after uh this.

He's talking about uh the destruction of the temple, uh the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman army under uh Titus, son of the emperor.

Okay, now that happened.

It already happened.

It happened in AD 70, that's when Jerusalem and the temple uh fell.

Okay, now Mark was written in the year 50, uh mid to late 50s, actually, and so this actually happened just around 15 years after uh this was written, the thing that Jesus uh is talking about here.

Okay, and the destruction of the temple is to be understood by us as God's judgment.

It's God's judgment on you know towards the the Israel's leaders and what they had allowed a temple worship to become.

We've talked a lot about that already in this series.

It had become corrupt, it had become incredibly unfruitful.

It had led people actually away from God, even though it gave this kind of thin veneer that wow, we're we're truly worshiping.

No, you're not.

Your hearts are wrong, you're far from me.

Okay, now verse 3, take a look at this, keep going.

It says, and as he sat, this is Jesus, as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, tell us, when will these things be?

And what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?

All right, so what do they want?

They want details, right?

We want the inside scoop.

Come on, Jesus, help us out here.

You said it's gonna come come down.

Why don't you give us the insiders kind of knowledge here?

But here's Jesus' response, verse 5.

He maybe answers them in a way that they weren't quite expecting.

He says, See that no one leads you astray.

Many will come in my name, saying, I am He, and they will lead many astray.

Claim to be God's Son, false teachers as well.

Keep going.

And when you hear of wars and and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.

Okay, this must take place, he says.

But the end, as in the end of the world, okay, is not yet.

For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

There will be earthquakes in in various places, there will be famines, but the uh these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

And then he says this, but be on your guard.

In other words, be ready.

Hey, for they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them.

And I love this.

And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations.

And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, look what it says again do not be anxious beforehand what you were to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour.

For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

So again, Jesus, what is he doing here?

He's foreshadowing, okay, the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of the temple and and and the wild events that are gonna take place, kind of leading up to that.

And in this, he corrects the disciples' sort of wrong assumption here that these things would signify that the end is happening now.

He says, no, in verse 7 he says, the end is not yet.

Okay, these things are but the beginning of birth pains, he says in verse 8.

He's explaining what'll happen soon and what will happen next, not what will happen at the final judgment.

I mean, if you think about it, the the book of Acts and I mean, just you know, history books, right?

It bears this out.

Okay, we know that that these things did in fact happen uh to these disciples.

It did.

There were earthquakes.

There were things that, like that, there were natural disasters that would happen.

There would be uprisings of uh of false teachers and false messiahs.

History records those uh for us who would lead people astray.

We know, and you again you read the book of Acts, you read you read that they were, you know, they were delivered over to councils and they were beaten in synagogues and they stood before governors and they were interrogated simply for following Christ.

Okay, and in the midst of that, what happened?

Right?

The gospel was proclaimed to the nations.

How cool is that?

God used them, his Holy Spirit used them to proclaim that.

They bore witness of the resurrection.

Okay, the persecution that happened in these days was was like the fertile soil that that allows spiritual fruit and mission success.

Okay, these were intense, intense days in human history.

But again, uh when he when he points to these things, he's pointing here, he's referring to the more you know immediate future, right?

The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

Okay, but next, okay, starting here in verse 14, take a look, he he shifts and and links this event, this kind of immediate future event, to through the ultimate or final future event, the second coming of Christ.

Again, verse 14, look at that.

It says, but when you see the the abomination of desolation, huh?

The abomination of desolation standing where he not ought to, let the reader understand.

Well, what's this?

What's this about?

Well, this appears to be a very clear reference to uh the man of lawlessness or the antichrist of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, right?

2 Thessalonians 2 · chapter mention

Who will come in in the last days, in the in the final days, to instigate a major epic rebellion against the Lord and this full court press against uh God's God's elect, against the against the church, which will precipitate the final return of Jesus Christ.

So now, Mark, Mark describes what what those days will be like.

Again, keep going, verse 14, part way down.

He says, Then let those who are in Judea flew to the uh flee to the mountains.

Let the one who is in the housetop not go down, nor nor enter his house to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.

And alas, for women who are pregnant and and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that it may not happen in winter.

For in those days there will be such tribulation, literally, that means grievous trouble.

Okay, such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now and never will be.

Right?

And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved.

But for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days.

Right, suggesting that it's gonna be so awful that it's not even physically survivable if it weren't for the fact that the Lord shortens it.

Okay, keep going and says, and then if anyone says to you, Look, here he is, the Christ, or or look, there he is, do not believe it.

For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect.

But be on guard, right?

Be ready.

He says, I have told you all things beforehand.

He's like, I'm giving you the heads up now, right?

I'm giving you advanced warning so that you can be you can be prepared, you can be ready, right?

That the world is gonna go absolutely bonkers, right?

It's gonna go, it's gonna go haywire in those last days.

Right?

There's gonna be this major persecution that's gonna come that that wouldn't even be humanly survivable apart from grace.

Okay, so so the impending destruction of the temple, which he refers to here in the first few verses, okay, it's gonna be bring immense, and it did, immensely difficult and trying times for for the disciples, and and all of that is going to be a sign, it's going to be a picture of the kind of tribulation that's gonna come at the end, which which appears to be even more intense and even more difficult than all of that.

Now, how does that make you feel?

Right?

You you read about that and and you start to kind of mine into that a little bit.

What's your gut reaction?

Like right now, how do you feel about that?

Does it cause you stress?

Does it kind of make you think, glad I'm older, because maybe I'll be gone before that?

Right?

Or like, right?

Does it make you feel like that?

Does it, is it like it's too intense, I don't even want to focus on it, I'm just gonna, you know, continue living my life however I want.

Right?

The point of this, the point of Jesus telling us all of this isn't to make us like sweat buckets and wring our hands and work us up into this lather, this this frenzy of fear and dread and and anxiety about it.

How do we know that?

Well, because he tells us a bunch of times here, do not be alarmed.

Right?

Do not be alarmed, verse 7.

Do not be anxious about this, verse 11.

Okay, so the clear command for us as disciples is to trust him.

Yeah, it's gonna be crazy, right?

It's gonna be nuts.

And it's really tough to know even like what all of this means specifically and exactly.

And I think again, sometimes Christians go way too far into trying to decipher all of this.

And again, we just we don't know all of the details.

Try and read Revelation.

You're like, how far do we push this literally versus you know how much of this is symbolic?

You know, it's tricky, and we don't know all of those details, but we're not called to fret, we're not called to freak out about this, right?

Christ's followers are to be ready, we're to be on guard through a deep abiding trust in Him.

That's it.

That's the plan.

Right as we consider all of these things, everything that's gonna happen later, all of these things that are gonna happen soon, and and all of these things that I believe are even happening now.

I believe in one very real sense that the last days, the end times, in a broad sense, have are upon us.

They've been happening to us ever since the incarnation, ever since uh the birth of Jesus Christ.

Right?

So how do we how do we trust God in this?

What do we do?

How do we like I'm not just talking about like a flimsy, I trust the Lord, verbal, you know, but really it's it's not down deep.

No, like how do we actually, in our in our fear about this, in a way where we're we're truly calm about about where this is all headed, how do we actually trust the Lord?

How do we grow in this knowing that the difficult days are ahead and and even upon us now?

I mean, let's be honest, just look at where the world is is going.

Okay, well, write these things down here.

How to build trust in God so that I'm ready for the last days.

Okay, we got four four things or four ways that we can do this.

Okay, the first one here, let God's word create a deep conviction in me.

You have to do this.

You want to trust the Lord, the most stable followers of Jesus Christ, the ones that are most convinced uh of his goodness, the ones that trust him deeply, or the ones that are convicted that God's word is true.

This drives me, this wakes me up, this creates a fire in my bones.

Listen, those who are not convinced of the truth of Scripture will be at the mercy of what sounds right.

That's not a problem at all for the church, is it, these days?

Right?

We kind of take the Bible and we're like I'm just gonna kind of go by what Christian authors say.

I'm gonna go by what pastors say.

I'm gonna go by, here's the most deadly one, by what I feel and think.

And we kind of push God's word away.

We do it very subtly.

But in that we just we kind of we glance over it.

We don't know it, we're not spending time in it, we're not inviting it to examine us, we're not laying down our will and our volition before it and asking God to do his thing in us.

Listen, if you just kind of pay lip service to God's word, you will be anchored to something else.

And what is the warning over and over and over again through the verses that we just read?

Do not go astray.

If you want to stand in those last days, if you don't want to be swept away like the rest of the world, you need to be deeply convicted of what God's word says and that it is true.

Right?

Without that, how can you possibly hope to stand?

Well, I think that you know I'll probably make the right choice when you know my government presses me and when my my freedoms are being stripped away, and when I when I can't just speak freely uh about the things of Jesus Christ when that day comes.

Guess what?

Those days are here, right?

But I think I think I'm still gonna make the right the right decision here.

You know you have an overconfidence in your own strength.

We are not strong.

Only those who believe God's word deeply will be able to stand.

You must let God's word create that deep conviction in you.

Commit to it.

Commit to it.

Bolster this up.

Recommit this week, today, now.

I'm gonna be in it all the time.

I'm gonna get help.

I'm gonna I'm gonna understand this.

All right, let's keep going.

Second one how to build trust in God so that I'm ready for the last days.

Establish a deep prayer life.

You got to establish a deep prayer life.

And I would say this, a lot of Christians, again, I, you know, I was that this is part, part of the reason why we would have a prayer night on the 13th.

Because we want, we want to teach, we want to, we want to equip you, we want to give you an opportunity to kind of you know get your legs strong in the area of of prayer.

And so so many of us we feel weak about these things, and we only come to the Lord when we've kind of exhausted every other man-made option.

And and when we come to the Lord, it's just it's just grocery lists of Lord, give me this, Lord, give me that, Lord, I want this, Lord, I want that.

We only come to him when it's really hard, I would say.

If you want to grow just kind of in small but profound ways this week, begin to bring the good things to the Lord too.

Bring to him your your joys, your your gratitude.

As you do that, this is gonna this is gonna strengthen, this is gonna expand your your relationship with him.

Because you're you're interacting with him more and you're praying and you're you're bringing these things before him.

You're gonna grow in your in your trust in the Lord.

Listen, you're gonna need that in the final days.

It's gonna get you ready for whatever whatever comes next.

Here's the third one.

Forge deep relationships with the church.

Okay, so for some of you, this is very, very hard.

And for some of you, it's like, well, I've been burned, I've been hurt at other churches.

And therefore, I I will never open up to somebody again.

Or for you, you're kind of you're a self-sufficient, self-made person, and so what do I need you know, people for?

Listen, you need to forge deep relationships with the church.

That's what the Lord has called us to.

Think about it.

In the end, when everything goes haywire and everything kind of goes crazy here, what's gonna matter most to us?

What's gonna be of utmost importance?

Listen, it's gonna it's gonna be this, it's gonna be knowing God's word, okay?

Knowing God's promises in his word.

It's gonna be prayer, right?

And coming to him and having that relationship and that connection strong, and it's gonna be the church.

It's gonna be the relationships that God is building here.

Think about the book of Acts, where we were we already have a picture of this.

And the Roman, the Roman government and the Jewish leaders were persecuting the church hard.

They would gather together and come licking their wounds, and they would bring these things to the Lord and ask for more boldness.

They had all things in common.

They they shared life together.

This was precious, precious for the church.

It's gonna be precious to us as well.

You've got to forge deep relationships with people here in the church.

I know that it's hard.

I know that we're terrible at it.

We are.

We're Canadians, we don't want to talk to each other, right?

We don't.

We want to come in here, we want to sing some songs, but not really sing, just stand there, right?

And then we wanna maybe, maybe open a Bible if we remember to bring it, and then go home and do it all over again next week.

We don't want, I don't want to like get to know anybody.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna build relationships, I don't want to go deep, I don't want anyone to ask me a question about what's what's going on in my life.

I don't want to ask anybody else, I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable, right?

We're brutal at this, but we gotta do it.

We gotta do the hard work, we gotta pray, Lord, bind us together.

It's what makes us ready for the last days.

Here's the fourth one, last one.

We gotta wrestle through my deep areas of dark of doubt.

Not mine specifically.

You don't wrestle them through mine, you wrestle through your own.

You understand that?

We all have doubts.

We all do.

We wonder about things.

You know, some of us are are sitting here and you've been to church for decades and you're asking the question, is God real?

You're doing it.

Can I really trust God's word?

The world is saying this.

That sounds more right than what this ancient book says.

Right?

And you've got your doubts.

Do you know that God allows you to go through doubts?

So that you can wrestle with these things and so that he can go into a deeper, deeper area of your life, and so that he can lock down greater trust in him through all of this, so that your trust grows stronger.

The doubts that you have right now, don't ignore them.

Don't give in to them.

Just because you feel them doesn't mean you're right.

You shouldn't trust yourself.

The heart is deceitful, it leads us astray.

I've said this before: the whole follow your heart mantra that the world is giving into, the worst plan.

The worst.

It's leading them into greater and greater bondage and destruction.

Don't trust yourself, don't trust your doubts.

Trust God's word.

Work through that.

That's how God makes you stronger and will allow you to stand firm in the last days.

Because Jesus is coming back.

And I need to be ready.

And I will be ready.

Here's the second thing.

Okay, faithful to him as his plan unfolds.

You faithful to the Lord?

Verse 24, take a look at this.

And Jesus now, he's again, he's he's kind of shifting gears a little bit, and he's describing now the specific event of his second coming.

Okay, but he says, But in those days, after the tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Okay, so so pretty obvious some major cosmic events are going to occur here.

Then verse 26, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.

That sounds awesome.

Right?

And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heaven.

Okay, so believers have been strategically placed across all four corners of the globe, so to speak, to faithfully get God's message, the message of the gospel, out to the nations.

Remember, verse 10 talked about that.

Okay, that's God's plan for you and I now.

Okay, that's what we're to be doing.

That is the mission.

You know, verse 28, take a look at this.

This is where he he shifts back now.

He's kind of going back and forth.

He links the destruction of the temple and the second coming together.

He goes back into the destruction of the temple now, verse 28.

He says, From the fig tree learn its lesson.

You're like, fig tree.

I think we just talked about that a couple of times.

Well, it's actually a different illustration, different lesson that he gives here.

The last time he talked about the uh the fig tree, it was the the withering roots, right?

And the withering roots mirrored the withering spirituality of temple worship.

Right?

And this is actually a picture into your soul and into your heart and how you approach God.

That's not what he's talking about here, okay?

He uses a different kind of illustration here.

He's getting a lot of mileage out of these uh fig trees, right?

He says this.

He says, From the fig tree learn its lesson.

As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.

Right?

That makes sense.

It's a sign that summer's coming.

So also when you see these things taking place, he's talking about all the signs of verses 3 to 13, which we just walked through, like the persecutions, the false messiahs, the inquisitions from councils, all of that stuff.

He says, when you see all these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates.

Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

He's like, my plan, it cannot, will not be stopped.

Okay, this is what's gonna unfold.

That's what he's saying.

Now, verse 32.

But concerning that day, so again, he's speaking back to the second coming now, or or that hour, no one knows.

It's not gonna happen in like you know, 1957.

No! Right?

We don't know this.

When guys say that, but that's like an unfollow on Twitter, okay?

If a guy says that, just unfollow.

We don't listen.

Well, I still think it's good.

The scriptures are so clear.

We don't know what hour, what day.

No one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the father.

And then he says this, see it?

Be on guard, keep awake, for you do not know when the time will come.

Just in case you weren't listening to the other five times I said it, you do not know.

Right?

It's like it's like a man going on a journey.

So he gives he gives this illustration.

When he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake, right?

That's his job.

He needs to be vigilant, he needs to need to watch.

He says, Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep, meaning neglecting your God-given responsibilities.

He says, and what I say to you, I say to all, stay awake.

And so the commandments here to be on guard and to keep awake and to stay awake, all of it, it's understand, it's far more than to say, be aware mentally that some of these things are happening.

Right?

Be cognizant that these things will take place at some point.

It's more than saying that.

It's to say, be faithful.

Be faithful in the tasks that God has given you as God's plan for creation unfolds, which we're seeing here in chapter 13.

He's telling us this is this is what's gonna happen.

Do the jobs, do the tasks that he has given to you to do as my as his followers.

Carry out the responsibilities that God's given us as a church, as people saved by grace and called to this incredible mission.

Now you might be thinking, well, what does this look like for us?

Like, how exactly do we stay awake?

Like, give me some specifics here.

What does this mean?

Well, we'll jot this down.

Okay, being faithful to the Lord means this, four things.

Okay, first one, first step, really, it's it's accepting that the hard reality that I will suffer.

Right?

To be faithful to the Lord means accepting what he says is true.

If you're like, no, I'm not gonna suffer, or I'm just gonna continue to do what I want, or we need to accept it.

The reality is life life is difficult.

We know that circumstances get difficult, but the mission of Jesus Christ is very difficult.

As you serve in the church, as you disciple your kids, as you as you just try and like open up the Bible for yourself.

Don't be surprised when that's just a grind.

Don't be surprised when that's you don't feel like it.

Don't be surprised when every excuse in the book comes up and I don't want to do it, or I'm not gonna show up, or I'm not gonna, whatever.

Right?

You're you're gonna suffer.

I'm convinced that I don't know, Christians, a lot of Christians have kind of heard and you know, or maybe kind of read about some of the things that we're talking about here today, but we haven't truly accepted it on a heart level.

Where we're like at peace with it.

Like, okay, all right, this is gonna happen.

Right?

Jesus gives us, he gives the disciples and us too, this the inside scoop here.

Why?

I think to wake up a sleeping church.

Right?

I mean big C church.

Right?

We're so kind of dull and and and sort of out of it, it seems, about some of these things.

But he tells us these things to allow us, to help us rise from our slumber about the mission and and be alert as to where what's really going on and and where this is all headed so that we can be faithful to the Lord in the midst of that suffering.

You got to accept it.

Are you willing to do that?

Or are you fighting against it?

Listen, our our hearts, our flesh, we we don't want to suffer.

We don't we don't want that at all.

We hate pain.

I get it, I do too.

But Lord, help us to understand that we need to accept this.

Because if we don't, we cannot be faithful.

So being faithful to the Lord means that, but it also means this.

Focusing on what we've been called to.

Do you realize that you can't do everything?

Have you learned that lesson yet in life?

Right?

So many of us, we want all the toys, right?

We want to have all the vacations, we want to have maybe a lot of kids.

We want them all to just behave well.

We want to have money in the bank, we want to be healthy, we want to have perfect relationships with people, we want to feel good, we wanna we want it all.

Right?

And and and we don't we don't get all of it.

Have you learned that?

We don't.

No one has this perfect life that everyone seems to show we have on Instagram, right?

We don't have it.

And and you can't do everything, you can't have everything.

So we've got to focus on what's what's most important.

Right?

We've we've we've got to do that.

We've got to make the most of the short time that God has given us here in this life.

Time just blinks, right?

It feels like just last year we were talking like Christmas offering, and you know, we're thinking about like plans for Christmas and you know, all of this stuff, and we're right back at it again.

Right, we gotta focus.

I would say if you want it just a general word to write down, what do we need to focus on?

Well, discipleship.

That's what God calls us to.

Men, you gotta disciple your wives, you gotta disciple your kids.

Guess where that starts?

Discipling yourself.

You gotta do this is what matters.

You gotta focus on that.

You're not gonna have every other little thing that you that you want.

I like this.

I saw somebody wrote this down uh a while ago, and I saw that this and I loved it, and I think it really describes what our focus must be as the church.

Lost people saved, saved people matured, matured people multiplied, all to the glory of God.

That's it.

That's the focus.

We gotta be focused on what we've been called to.

How about this third one?

Letting go of what doesn't really matter.

Right?

Yeah, we gotta focus on the things that matter, but we also have to like let go of the things that don't.

Again, so many of us be like, I want this like amazing relationship with the Lord, but I don't actually want to give up any things that the scriptures call me to give up.

And so we we we want to hold on to everything, but we gotta let go of some things.

You wanna be faithful to the Lord?

We gotta do that.

We gotta be refuse to allow ourselves to be sidetracked on on unimportant things or or let the uh I'm gonna butcher this phrase because I didn't write it down.

The enemy of what's best.

You know, you know that phrase?

No?

Forget it.

I'll write it down and tweet it or something.

That's why you write things down, right?

But we gotta refuse to get sidetracked by these things, by these less important things, by these peripheral things.

They might be really good things, but they're the enemy of what's best.

Nailed it.

Redeemed.

Alright, here's the fourth thing.

Right?

Being faithful to the Lord means living life with eternity in mind.

You ever heard of an eternal perspective before?

Listen, we we just read some some pretty like heavy verses today, didn't we?

Like, woe to like a nursing mother.

Those who are pregnant.

Like it's gonna be so bad that God actually, in his mercy, cuts the days short because if it went an extra day longer, everyone would be wiped out.

But listen, don't be so sidetracked, distracted, I should say, by the tribulations to come that you forget the hope and that you forget the joy that Jesus is returning to bring us to glory.

Don't forget that.

You can't afford to forget that.

Live with that eternal perspective in mind.

Why?

Because that inspires us, that that helps us so much, church.

Do you know that?

When you're discouraged and you're kind of beat down by your flesh, and why do I not seem to be growing the way that I that I that I should be?

Why am I discouraged by the fact that, you know, I'm trying to build relationships here at this church and it feels like no one else wants to?

I'm discouraged by, you know, I thought our marriage would be better, but but it's just not quite.

And I still sense the Lord is, you know, somehow there, but man, it doesn't seem so good anymore.

And we think about the the future, and it's gonna get worse.

And we and we can kind of get into this deep almost depression about it, I think, a little bit.

Listen, don't forget, the Lord is returning.

He's coming to make all things new.

He is coming to glorify you, to give us our new bodies.

And in the difficult time, that it that inspires us.

And it remembers us, oh yeah, he's coming back.

And this is gonna be this is gonna be good, right?

It encourages us to keep our our hands to the plow and and and keep trudging forward in the middle of those trials and in the middle of those those persecutions and in the middle of those challenging times.

It's not about me.

It's about him and what he's accomplishing and what he is doing and what what he will yet do.

Jesus is coming back.

It could be today.

After I read that, I kind of hope it is.

It could be tomorrow, could be in a thousand years.

We don't know.

There will be immense hardship in those days leading up to it.

There's immense hardship now.

But as we you and I, as we absorb the reality of these things and what's gonna happen in the end, it also kind of snaps us to attention, right?

It kind of removes that fogginess, that that that cloud that's that's got us thinking about earthly things and and and you know the self-centered life pursuits that we've given ourselves over to.

And it like it refocuses us again on what matters most.

Growing in our in our trust, growing in our in our love for Him as disciples, and then faithfully carrying out the mission that He's given us to do in the meantime.

So listen, the question is this Will you be ready?

Will you will you make the most of these short days now?

Because your God is awesome, because He has commanded you to, and because He is gonna do something awesome with that and in

Yeah.