About this sermon
Isaiah 24 foresees the Lord laying waste the earth and then reigning in glory on Mount Zion, and in Matthew 24 Jesus speaks of the signs of the end and of his coming. The signs are ordinary as well as spectacular, they cannot be used to date his return, and they show the continuing struggle between the kingdom of God and the powers of evil. Believers live in faithful readiness, like the wise servant whom the master finds at work when he comes.
Sermon transcript
commence. The reign of righteousness has already begun through the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus. Hallelujah. But two texts that deal with that awesome day. The first is Isaiah 24, the second is Matthew 24. So two, 24 texts. And the first text then from the Old Testament, Isaiah This particular chapter is the climax of a whole series of oracles against the foreign nations, beginning with the great denunciation of Babylon in chapter 13 of Isaiah. So 11 chapters of text against the tyrannies of the pagan nations that have oppressed the people of God. And then chapter 24 is the climax of that stroke.
Let’s hear, then, the Word of God. See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it. He will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants. It will be the same for priest as for people, for master as for servant, for mistress as for maid, for seller as for buyer, for borrower as for lender, for debtor as for creditor. The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word.
The earth dries up and withers. The world languishes and withers. The exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its people. They have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse consumes the earth. Its people must bear their guilt. Therefore, earth’s inhabitants are burned up. Very few are left. The new wine dries up, the vine withers.
All the merry-makers groan. The gaiety of the tambourines is still. The noise of the revelers has stopped. The joyful harp is silent. No longer do they drink wine with a song. The beer is bitter to its drinkers. The ruined city lies desolate. The entrance to every house is barred. In the streets they cry out for wine. All joy turns to gloom. All gaiety banished from the earth. The city left in ruins, its gate battered to pieces. So will it be on the earth and among the nations.
As when an olive tree is beaten or when one’s, when gleanings are left after the grape harvest, they raise their voices. They shout for joy from the West. They acclaim the Lord’s majesty. Therefore, in the East, give glory to the Lord, exalt the name of the Lord, the God of Israel in the islands of the sea. From the ends of the earth, we hear singing glory to the righteous one. But I said, I waste away. I waste away, woe to me.
The treacherous betray with treachery, the treacherous betray terror and pit and snare await you, O peoples of the earth. Whoever flees at the sound of terror will fall into a pit. Whoever climbs out of the pit will be caught by a snare. The floodgates of the heavens are open. The foundations of the earth shake. The earth is broken up. The earth is split asunder. The earth thoroughly shaken. The earth reels like a drunkard. It sways like a hut in the wind.
So heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls, never to rise again. In that day, The Lord will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below. They’ll be herded together like prisoners bound for the dungeon. They’ll be shut up in prison, punished after many days. The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed. For the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before its elders gloriously.
So far, the reading of God’s own word from the Old Testament. And then from the New, a companion chapter, Matthew 24. In the scholarly labeling of these passages, Isaiah 24 is part of what’s called the Little Apocalypse of Isaiah. And in the scholarly labeling of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 24 is the little apocalypse of Jesus. So two apocalyptic texts, texts of final judgment, final salvation. Let us then hear Matthew 24 from the lips of Jesus.
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came to him to call his attention to its buildings. Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left upon another. Every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. “‘Tell us,’ they said, “‘when will this happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ Jesus answered, “‘Watch out that no one deceives you.
For many will come in my name claiming I am the Christ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginnings of the birth pangs.
Then you’ll be handed over to be persecuted and put to death. You will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.
But he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come. So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back and get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Pray that your flight not be on the Sabbath or in winter. For then there will be great distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened.
At that time, if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there He is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if this were possible. See, I’ve told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you there he is out of the desert, do not go out. Or here he is in the inner rooms. Do not believe it.
For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there’s a carcass there, the vultures gather. Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be dark and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies shaking. At that time, the sign of the son of man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, then you know that it is near, right at the door.
I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field. One will be taken. The other left. Two women will be grinding at the millstone. One will be taken, the other left.
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this, if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So also you must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at a time when you do not expect him. Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time?
It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, my master is staying away a long time. And he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour when he is not aware of, and he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where they’ll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” So far the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God. I want to tell you about Harry Truman, 1944. I wasn’t around then. Were you? Look, I was born 10 years later,
54. But in 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to his third term as president of the United States.
That was unprecedented. Congress had to change the law. The Democrats were in power. OK, the Democratic president. the war hero, the one who’d done great things for the country as was widely believed, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, secretly in very ill health, elected to a third term. And one day, Harry Truman got the shocking news that FDR, as he was fondly known, had died at his desk. Who’s Harry Truman? Vice President.
Well, no longer on that day. sworn in amid his shock that he was now the president of the United States. Not long after that, they told him about the Manhattan Project, the building of the atomic bomb. He knew nothing about it. Okay, all this shock, all this awe, and suddenly a man is president who does not expect to be. If he had been conversing closely with Eleanor Roosevelt, he might have seen the signs of the times. But he did not know.
Four years later, at last, Harry Truman was up for election. And various polling places had polled the country, and they predicted the firm victory of Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the Republican governor of New York. In fact, the New York newspaper, I think it was the New York Times, published a headline, Thomas Dewey wins. There’s a famous photograph of Harry Truman holding that newspaper. Because a few hours after that paper came out, the election results were more fully in and Harry Truman had won the election against the signs of the times. Apparently the pollsters had used the telephone to poll people across the country and it was the wealthier people who were the Republicans who answered the poll. And the Democrats won that election in 1948. And against all news reports, all predictions, Harry Truman was the president duly elected. All right, the signs of the times misread. Our topic today, the signs of the times.
This is, of course, a topic of immense speculation and often ungodly speculation. And these texts are maybe more commonly read in churches where that speculation is loved. It may be you’ve never heard all of Matthew 24 read in a single church service. It’s not one of our favorite passages. All right, we’re kind of all millennial, right? Or maybe we’re post-mill, and these are not the favorite passages.
But it is absolutely true that Jesus Christ is coming back. The signs of the times are indicated within these two texts that I’ve read. The signs themselves, however, are deeply ambiguous. And all that speculation that’s out there in the Christian world, you know, on the air and on the internet and on the radio and on Christian television, you know, a vast amount of it is just wrong and silly. But it fills the airways, and it gives the non-Christian world the sense of the idiocy of the Christians, who have all sorts of stupid speculations about when the end comes, and especially its imminence.
Okay, it’s right around the corner. Well, it might be. But what does Jesus say in this text? That day is not known to the angels, nor even to the sun. but to the father alone. The disciples have asked the question, you know, tell us when these things will be, what will be the sign of your coming? After all, they’ve been sightseeing on the mall in Washington, D.C. and they’re looking at all the monuments, Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, you know, there’s the White House, Supreme Court, I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong city.
Okay, it’s Jerusalem, it’s the temple. It’s the most glorious building in the world. Herod’s Temple, that outshone even the greatest temples of Rome and Athens. Look at all these buildings, Lord. Isn’t this wonderful? It was the most marvelous urban setting in all the world. And it was the temple of the Lord. Look, Lord, how wonderful the city is, how beautiful, how high the temple, how vast, joded with gold, gleaming in the sun, white limestone like marble, glistening.
And then Jesus gives them the shocking news, I tell you not one stone will be left upon another. All will be torn down. And in excavations in 1968, in newly conquered West Jerusalem, just after the year after the Six Day War, archaeologists found the stones of the toppled walls of Herod’s Temple. Some were reset in reconstructions of the ancient city. But a whole ancient street of them was left untouched as testament to how Rome had destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Some of you have walked that street and have seen the vast toppled stones, some of them two tons, cracked limestone from the crest of the great wall of Herod’s temple. Not one stone left upon another, all shall be torn.
And so in Matthew 24 we see a coalescence of awesome events. And the coalescence is hard to pull apart and understand with vast clarity. We are not meant to, I think, in some ways, to understand it with vast clarity. As I mentioned last time in the Daniel 12 sermon, there is an intentional mystification of elements.
And so we had those strange numberings of days at the end of Daniel 12. What do the numbers mean? Well, seal up the book. It’s hidden till the end, says the angel to Daniel. And in Matthew 24, there are elements that are hidden from us amid the clear, clear warnings. What are the two elements that coalesce?
Well, the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 AD. And it is indeed true, as Jesus says in one of these sentences here in this chapter, this generation will live to see it all. A line spoken in 30-something A.D. and fulfilled 40 years later in 70, when Rome destroyed the city, burnt the temple, destroyed the place, and about a million Jews killed in the war, at least according to Josephus’ rough estimate. He was a general in that war. All right.
So an event in 70 AD that is part of the Matthew 24 story. But just as in Isaiah 24 we had a city’s destruction as the token of final judgment for the whole world, we have the same dynamic here in Matthew 24. A city’s destruction as token of what is coming. In the destruction of Jerusalem, the Christians of the city are warned. When you see the desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand.
Okay, flee from your housetop. Don’t pack your bags. If you’re in the field, don’t go home to get something. Flee. Flee at once. In Luke’s version of this little apocalypse, The text there says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, OK, flee. That’s the parallel account.
No doubt Jesus said both things. Both things were understood. And when in 70 AD, in the springtime of that year, Jerusalem was indeed surrounded by the Roman army, the Christians obeyed the word of the Lord and fled the city and crossed the Jordan River and took refuge in a place in what is now the kingdom of Jordan, a place called Pella. And there the Jerusalem church survived. They had obeyed the Lord. They had fled the city.
And Titus’ Roman troops soon set up their standards in the holy courts of the temple and sacrificed to the God images on the tops of their poles, each regiment with its own divine sign, and the troops sacrificed to those gods after victory. and before battle.
And so, pagan idolatry in the Holy Court. An abomination of desolations. Titus himself enters the Holy of Holies. Okay, an abomination that desolates. And so, half of our text, roughly, is Jerusalem’s destruction. The elect delivered. The elect not deceived. In fact, the text assures the elect that they cannot be deceived. And so as we live our faithful life, we live it in repentance and faith and in confidence that the end is good and not to be feared.
Notice that the end of Isaiah 24 rejoicing in the glory of the Lord in Zion, in the presence of the Holy Elves. That’s the conclusion that the people of God have survived the ordeal, the faithful have been delivered, and evil is vanquished, and God reigns supreme within His world. Isaiah 24, with all its awesome language of destruction, is not really about end of the world. It’s only about the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. That is, the people of God are saved by God, and in the midst of ordeal, sustained by God, so that they persevere.
Sustained, as Dan so wonderfully prayed last week, sustained by the prayers of Jesus before the throne of God. What a wonderful line, Dad. I’ve been contemplating it all week. Thank you. We are sustained by the prayers of Jesus in the perseverance and preservation of the saints. It is what Jesus principally prays for, I think, as he prays before the Father’s throne and ever makes intercession for us.
And so we have within our story signs of the times But the signs are signs for believers. There are no signs for unbelievers. That is, they will be heedless regardless. The elect, all right, in the preaching of the gospel to all the nations that the text promises, the elect will awaken and know and believe and repent. And the elect will not be deceived. Hallelujah. And the rebels, that is those who refuse the gracious invitation of gospel, what happens? Well, they’re marrying and giving in marriage. Okay. Very unlike what happened yesterday, where godly people joined in matrimony. Okay. Members of this congregation. I missed it. I’m sorry. I’m sure it was beautiful.
All right, it’s not a prohibition of marrying and giving in marriage. The people who founded Old Economy Village in 1829, not very far from this place, those people forbade marriage because they thought Matthew 24 meant that. Okay, marrying and giving in marriage, you know, and thoughtless at all until the day comes and takes them all away. All right. Those people thought that in preparation for the coming of Christ, they should refrain from marriage. They took the text wrong. What’s Matthew 24’s warning about marriage all about?
It’s the heedless life that really is in mind. Okay, they’re eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the floodwaters came and took them all away. It’s not a denunciation of the ordinary things of life, eating or drinking or marrying. It’s a denunciation of heedless life. Life without repentance. Life lived as if God does not reign. Like the fool who says in his heart, there is no God. That’s probably not a statement of atheism in the Old Testament, but a statement that God’s irrelevant. Don’t worry about him. The most high does not see. That’s the kind of life denounced in that text. And in the folly of so much of the Christian world, notice how they take the text. There they are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the flood came and took them all away.
What’s the next line? So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man, two men will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left. Now in that parallelism of the floodwaters taking the unheeding away while Noah and family are saved, and the coming of the Son of Man where people are taken and others left behind, what do you want to be? The floodwaters came and took them all away, that is the unbelievers, while Noah and family are safe in the ark. Noah and family are the ones who were left behind. So be it the coming of the Son of Man, two men in the field, one taken, one left behind, two have been grinding at the hand mill, one taken, the other left behind. In that text, Who gets saved? The ones who were left behind.
And half the Christian world is deceived on this text by idiocy in not paying attention to the text. Why is this? How is this possible? Because Christians are idiots. And we are too, in vast ways. So we need close attention. to the pious instruction of Jesus and the prophets and Moses and the apostles. And without our close attention to the scriptures, folly rules our lives. And a great deal of folly rules the Christian world, and the rest of the world laughs.
Now those rapturists out there, okay, they’ve got something right. Here’s what it is. Jesus is coming. That’s right. And it may be that those premillennialists and rapturists that are out there love that fact more than many other Christians do. We ought to love that fact richly. And so St. Paul tells us, writing to the Thessalonians, that we are looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, looking for the blessed hope. What is the coming of Christ for us? It’s the victory of Jesus over all the powers of evil and death. And in the ordeals that lead up to that, as the Bible so clearly teaches, the elect are protected. preserved and cannot be deceived. And so we ought to embrace those things not with fear, but with confidence.
When I was not a Christian, I had almost no fear of final judgment. I didn’t think about it at all. It was only after I became a Christian that I began to fear it. It’s odd. Okay, newly converted Christian begins to fear going to hell. That’s true of me, age 16, age 17. Why? Because, you know, Calvinism was not taught where I was. And the idea of the perseverance of the saints was disbelieved, actively disbelieved, and the constant warnings that Christ is coming at a time when you do not know. Okay, so maybe I sin horribly and three minutes later Jesus comes and to hell I’m bound. It’s a terrifying thought. Bad theology yields spiritual fear. And I was enslaved to horrible theology in the name of Jesus.
I’ll tell you, becoming Reformed was a vast, vast deliverance from fear, because at last I believed that my faith was not my own doing. that it was the gift of God, and that it could not perish, or wither, or fade away, as I’d read in 1 Peter, but scarcely believed. And instead of fear of hell, I began to anticipate with joy the second coming of Christ.
Well, I live to see it, I have no idea. In those circles, we were confident. We were sure Christ would come before 1988. Why that date? Because you see the fig tree, and when its twigs grow soft, OK, you know that summer is near. Matthew 24. And the fig tree was taken to be the symbol of Israel as the new nation, 1948.
And this generation will live to see it all, 40 years. So 1988, everything’s going to happen by 88. We were confident. Well, in 1988, somebody published a tract, 88 reasons why Christ is coming in 88. He was a NASA rocket scientist. It kind of takes rocket science to do this, I guess. OK. The following year, he published a revised tract, 89 reasons why Christ is coming in 1989. After that, he ran out of money. I’m glad. No more tracts. All right. Well, OK, mistaken notions. Folly, in the name of Christ.
Because what does Jesus say? The angels don’t know, not even the son in his earthly ministry knew. And when the apostles again ask the question at the beginning of the book of Acts, Lord, is it at this time that you’re going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
Acts 1. The reply is even clearer. It is not given for you. to know the times and seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. All right, that’s clear. Next sentence is the marching orders of the church. But as for you, you’ll be by witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. OK, so get working, guys. And don’t worry about that other thing. And so in the end of Matthew 24, what do you have? exhortations to watch, to labor, to be faithful, watching and waking and working in the commands that Jesus has given His church.
And we have the parable then of the steward, one who is wise, who cares for the household of the master until the master comes, and one who is foolish and beats the servants and drinks with the drunkards and wastes his master’s wealth. And then the master comes. Matthew 25 continues with parables like that, two-edged parables, sheep and goats, wise and foolish virgins. And in all of these we have a moment of divine judgment in which believers, faithful, are separated from unbelievers everlastingly.
It’s all very clear. It’s all very simple. We don’t need vastly detailed charts to figure out this stuff. Christ comes. St. Paul’s diction about it is very clear, that Christ, the first roots of the resurrection, then those who belong to Christ, that is coming, and that’s the end, when he delivers up the kingdom to his God and Father. One great theologian observed about 50 years ago that the most difficult thing about the New Testament’s teaching on the second coming is not its complexity, but its simplicity. It’s very simple. And so we’re called upon to live faithful life, to fulfill the commission of the master, to preach the gospel among all nations, to faithfully carry out our mandate as the Church of Jesus, and not worry about the time.
And the signs of the times are not such that we can make any firm prediction. OK, wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, these are but the beginnings, the birth pangs. You can’t predict based on that, can you? There are some negative signs, three of them. There are two great positive signs, But let me just enumerate briefly three wrong uses of the signs and then two right uses of the signs. And I see it’s 8 minutes after 12, so the signs of the times are also on my watch here, and I need to be a little careful. All right, wrong uses.
It is wrong to think of the signs of the times as referring exclusively to the end. That is not true. Jerusalem in 70 AD is one of the signs of the times, not for the time of the coming, but for the manner of the coming. Signs are not always about the time, but about the manner. And it’s one of the great mistakes of the church, of the evangelical church, to mistake the signs as time-bound rather than manner. And so Matthew 24 is full of the destruction of Jerusalem. Something that happened for us not quite 2,000 years ago. Second, the second error is to think of the signs only in terms of the abnormal and the spectacular and the catastrophic.
Remember what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels? The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. Nor will they say, oh, here it is or there. For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. Elsewhere we have a parable of a seed growing secretly. How does it grow? The farmer does not know. All right, so the secret growth of the kingdom, the quiet, the quiet life of the godly church, which never makes the headlines of the New York Times and shouldn’t.
That’s the majority of Christianity in the real world. It’s not the stuff that makes the headlines. Oh, no, no. The real church is obscure and hidden. and virtuous and faithful, and the ministry can be small and may be undistinguished, but it is graced by God. And that’s the vast majority of the Church in its times and seasons. Inconspicuous, but faithful. The third error is to think of the times as a way of dating the exact time of Christ’s return. Folly. Folly. Folly.
What are the right uses? The signs point to what God has indeed done in the past. And the greatest of all signs is this, the sign of Jonah. Remember the sign of Jonah? As Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days, the Son of Man, in the belly of the earth, three days. What’s the greatest sign of all?
The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which is the dividing point of history between what seems to be the victory of evil and what is absolutely the victory of God. And so death begins to end Easter Sunday morning, just before sunrise. And death is being rolled up and evil being vanquished. And then the end comes. Both kingdoms intensify to the end, and so of course the struggle between both kingdoms intensifies to the end. And so we speak of tribulation, and even great tribulation in the Bible, and even such things as Antichrist.
But the greatest sign is past. and the resurrection of Christ, Jesus Christ alive and well and transformed beyond all imagining, walking forth from the tomb just before sunrise, Easter Sunday, that is the sign of the future and the indication of who we will be. For when we see Him, we will be like Him.
What an amazing statement. That’s the future. And it’s 2,000 years in the past. The signs also point us to the end of our present frame of history. Okay, the end will come. Jesus says that three times in this chapter. Verse 14, verse 29, verse 30. Saint Paul says it, then comes the end. First Corinthians 15, verse 24.
The Bible does not say that the world comes to an end. The Bible says that the fallenness of the world, the present evil age, that comes to an end. And what we have in the aftermath is the renewal of all of heaven and earth, as if it’s a new heaven and earth, not new creation out of nothing, but the restoration and glorification and transfiguration of the present world based upon the resurrection, which is the dust and bones and flesh and muscles and sinews of the body of Jesus. And so the world is resurrected too. And that which is wicked is destroyed. And so the signs point to the end of our present frame of history. And something glorious then continues. And what will it be? Wonderful. Though we know not what. Wonderful. Third, the signs do indeed reveal the continuing struggle within our present history between the kingdom of God and the powers of evil.
So we have a faithful pastor named Andrew Brunson, falsely imprisoned in a Turkish prison for what, three years now? For some alleged crime, which never happened. Faithful missionary pastoring a Christian congregation in Islamic Turkey. And the man has been in solitary confinement for a great deal of that time. Now I think he’s in house arrest. He was allowed to go home about a month ago, wears a bracelet on his ankle, can’t leave the town, but can we get him back into his freedom? All right, so irrational persecutions. In the struggle between evil and God, can evil win? I don’t think so, Ed. Evil cannot win. And so the signs call for decision. And in our text, what do we find?
Persistently the call to keep watch, to be faithful, to labor for the kingdom, fulfilling the mandate of the church to live the life of faith and repentance and witness within a fallen world. The mandate is not to speculate on when it might all come to its grand conclusion. The mandate is to love the world and evangelize it, and live a faithful life of repentance, and do our work, whatever work we are called to do.
So the signs call for decision, to repent, to believe, to be saved, to enter the ark. And having repented and believed, the life of watchful obedience Verse 42, Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. There are two glorious signs. Matthew 24 says one of them, and I’ll focus there.
This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a witness among all nations. And then the end will come. What’s the sentence mean? The church will reach the whole world with the message of Jesus Christ. It will happen. It cannot fail. The church cannot fail. How about that? In our small numbers in this place, Yeah, we’re tempted to think the church will fail. Yeah, we are.
But the preachers of the gospel are not the angels of heaven. Oh, no, no, no. Not even Cornelius has an angel preached to him. Okay, go send for Peter, says the angel. We are the preachers of the church. We are the witness bearers. We are the faithful upon the world. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a testimony among all nations. It will happen. It cannot fail because Jesus cannot fail. That’s wonderful news.
And I think I’ll leave it at that. Maybe another Sunday for that other sign I haven’t mentioned. All right. So what do we have in our text? The certainty of the coming. It’s fact. the uncertainty of the time. That’s meant to be. And the certainty of the call. Repent. Believe. Be faithful until the Master comes. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with awe and wonder at your teaching in this text. We may be tempted to treat it with fear, with terror even, but reassure our hearts that in the faith that is your gift to us, we cannot fall. And even with the most arduous labors of the powers of evil, we will not be deceived. Thank you for that massively important confidence. And help us then to be faithful and to work faithfully for the callings to which we have, which you have given, whatever work and family life and Christian witness we may have.
Help us, Lord, to live that life of faithful wisdom, as in the parable that ends our text. And on that great and glorious day, Lord, receive us amid great joy with those wonderful words, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. May each of us in this place hear that sentence spoken to us on that last and great day. We pray it because you are faithful, Lord Jesus Christ. and you died and rose on our behalf that these things might all be true. Hear us, we pray. Amen. The hymn is one of the great old chorales from German Lutheran pietism, Wake, awake, for night is flying. A glorious
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