Surely He Is Coming Soon

Luke 12:35-48 - Riley Boggs

The Bible tell us, with absolute certainty, that Jesus is going to return to Earth again. The Scriptures aren’t ambiguous about this fact, they are clear. What is not certain and not clear, however, is when Jesus’ second coming is going to happen. The Bible doesn’t tell us. In fact, the one thing that Jesus does say about when He will return again is this. “…Concerning that day and hour no one knows…” Despite this, ever since Jesus ascended to back to heaven, after His resurrection, people have been making guesses as to when He will return. People have spent years upon years trying to prove Jesus wrong when He said, “No one knows”. By the way, not a good way to spend your time. Trying to prove Jesus wrong has never been a fruitful endeavor.

There was one man by the name of William Miller who took on this useless task. William Miller was sure that after his careful and intentional study of the Scriptures, he did indeed know when Jesus was going to come again. He said that Jesus would return between the March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. In his writings titled, Miller's Works. Volume 2. Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the Year 1843, he said this, “Examine your Bibles, and see; weigh well the evidence; your eternal happiness, the salvation of your immortal souls, may depend on your decision. But what say you more? "We say, 'You were very unwise to fix on the year 1843, or sooner, for this day to come; for it will not come; and then you will be ashamed." And I hope I may be able, by the grace of God, to repent. But what if it does come? You cannot with any propriety way positively it will not come, for you make no pretense to divination. But I say, what if it does come? Where will you be? No space then for repentance. No, no--too late, too late; the harvest is over and past, the summer is gone, the door is shut, and your soul is not saved. Therefore it can do you no harm to hear, and believe, and do those things which God requires of you, and which you think you would do, if you knew he would appear.” (https://cdn.centrowhite.org.br/home/uploads/2022/12/Millers-Works.-Volume-2.-Evidence-from-Scripture-and-History-of-the-Second-Coming-of-Christ-about-the-Year-1843.pdf)

Well, eventually that time passed and what do you know, Jesus didn’t return. But that didn’t stop William Miller and his followers deemed The Millerites. No, they simply made a mistake. The date that Jesus was to return was October 22, 1844. So on that October evening tens of thousands of people gathered in New England, awaiting Jesus’ return. Apparently they wore white garments and even climbed the trees and hills to “speed up their ascension” (https://www.historyonthenet.com/william-miller-predicted-christs-return-in-1844-heres-what-happened-after-his-prophecy-failed). But as seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours, the truth became evident. Jesus was not returning on October 22, 1844. This event is now known was “The Great Disappointment”.

As a side note, William Miller refused to give in. He went on to say that Jesus did come on that day, but in a different way. Apparently Jesus had come and begun a new awakening amongst believers and that is what he had accurately predicted. And that is where the Seventh-day Adventist Church finds its roots.

Nonetheless, William Miller is one of many arrogant and foolish people to try and predict the return of our Lord. But the truth is, as Jesus Himself makes clear, the date is unknown. And as the good Baptists we are, we happily accept that. We don’t sit around trying to figure out something that the Lord has told us we won’t find. However, I do think that we are susceptible to a different temptation. Because Jesus’ return is unknown and because we accept that, we can be tempted to live like it is a very distant reality. That is, since we have no clue when He will come again, we push it to the distant part of our minds and make it seem like He couldn’t come in the next 5 minutes. We likely don’t drive to work thinking, “You know, Jesus could come to today.”

Of course we all confess and believe that, but the question that I want us to ask is this, do we live like it? Do you live like Jesus could return this afternoon? Or maybe another question could be, what does it look like to live like Jesus is actually returning and could return at any moment? Well the text before us, I think, answers these questions directly. Jesus teaches us how we are to live in light of this reality. So the way I want to break this text down is by first looking at the overall theme of the passage, then look at the first section in particular, verses 35-40, and then finally look at the last section, verses 41-48. And each point I draw out of the text will begin with this same phrase, so if you’re taking notes, you can write it down at the top and then put dot-dot-dot, and then each point will follow it. The first point, drawing from the overall theme of the passage is this…

Jesus could return at any moment, so we should…

1.) Anticipate it

Throughout our passage, Jesus is using this idea of a servants waiting on their master to return. He tells 2 parables, which we will look at in more detail, in order to show what faithful servants of the master look like and don’t look like. The correlation of course is one-to-one. Jesus is saying that we are His servants and that are to await the Master’s return, which is Jesus Himself. That’s important for us to take note of because Jesus is referring, rightly, to the master in the parable as someone else, but when applied to our situation, He is referring to Himself.

And it’s within these parables that Jesus is speaking with this clear theme anticipation. That is, there is a mood or tone of expectance and longing. Jesus never speaks with uncertainty about the reality of the master’s return. He says things like, “when he returns”, and “He is coming.” Over and over again that is the case. And because of this, because of this certain language, the anticipation for the return of the master is rich throughout.

Now as I mentioned just a moment ago, I don’t think that most Christians anticipate the return of Jesus Christ. Rather, I think they do the opposite of anticipate it, they either dismiss it or dread it. They dismiss is by acting as if it couldn’t happen at any moment. It seems pretty unlikely that the Lord would return while they are sitting at home watching TV. That moment seems too normal and too mundane. It seems like if the Lord was returning there would be a bit more drama involved or something. I don’t know what the thought is, or if there is much thought at all, but regardless I think we are prone to that. The issue with this is that Jesus makes it so clear that to live like this is to live a lie. We should never write off the possibility of the Lord returning in a particular moment or time. The Lord is coming, with certainty, and He could come at any time. The way that the servants are to live is with this idea of anticipation, where they are never caught off guard by the masters return. They don’t dismiss any moment as unrealistic, but rather they are always anticipating a knock at the door.

The other thing that I mentioned Christians are tempted to do instead of this is to dread the return of Jesus. Now there are a lot of reasons for this, but I think there is one that is chief among them all, and that is a poor understanding of end times events. I won’t sit here and tell you I know the way it will all play out, because I don’t. I have a certain understanding of the book of Revelation that I am confident in, but the reason I don’t dread the return of Jesus’ return is not because of that. The reason that we shouldn’t dread the return of Jesus is because we know His character. Jesus loves His bride, His church. Jesus loves you all. So much in fact that He laid down His life for you. Why would we ever think that Jesus’ return would be anything but glorious for us? Why would we ever think that there is something to dread there?

When Jesus comes, He is coming to rescue once and for all. There is nothing to fear there. In verse 37 Jesus says, “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 the table, and he will come and serve them.” Does that sound like something we ought to dread? No, Jesus is saying that when He comes it is going to be far better than we could ever imagine. He is going to come and begin to serve us, to love us, to care for us. He is going to bring His bride, the one whom He died for, safely home. Don’t let silly movies or bad theology keep you from longing the return of the Lord. The book of Revelation is not supposed to scare Christians, it’s supposed to comfort them. If you are in Christ, only glory awaits you on that day.

Don’t dismiss His return. Don’t dread His return. Anticipate it. That means we think confidently expect it and patiently long for it. I think that is part of what Jesus is trying to teach here about the posture that His followers should have when He ascends to heaven and they, we, begin to wait.

The second thing point I want us to see is this…

Jesus could return at any moment, so we should…

2.) Stay ready

Staying ready and anticipating might seem similar, and in one sense they are. You do have to anticipate something in order to be ready for it. For example, if someone walks up to you and rears back to punch you in the stomach, what do you do? Well you anticipate a punch to your stomach and get ready for it by tightening your core. If you just anticipate it mentally, but don’t get ready, well it’s going to hurt a lot more.

Well consider that bad example and hopefully you’ll see what I am getting at here. Jesus is using this tone of eager anticipation throughout the passage, but in verses 35-40, He is saying that we ought to do this by staying ready. You can see it very clearly in verse 35 where He says, “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning.” This idea of staying dressed for action is exactly what you might think. God commanded this of Israel during Passover, telling them to have their belt fastened, sandals on, and staff in their hand. He wanted them ready to go. Ready for what was to come. That’s the same thing that Jesus is saying here concerning those waiting for His return. They are to be ready, as Jesus says, “like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast.”

The image that Jesus is painting here is of several servants waiting for their masters return. In Jewish tradition, the night would have been divided into 3 different watches, and you can see that reflected in the example. Jesus says that as they await their masters return, they are staying ready, always having someone who is ready to swing open the door at the sound of a knock. They never all wander off or fall asleep and assume that the master isn’t about to arrive home, but rather they stay ready at all times. And Jesus applies it directly to Himself in verse 40 and says, “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

The question is, what does this look like? What does it look like for us to stay ready? On one hand, everyone who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ is ready. There is nothing more you have to do in order to prepare for His coming. Jesus isn’t saying that in order to stay ready that means you must have not sinned 5 minutes before He breaks through the clouds. No, every sin, past-present-future, is forgiven. Rather, what I think Jesus is trying to convey here is that we want to be found doing what is pleasing to God when He returns. Not because that is the metric by which we will enter eternity with Him, but we want to obey the One who has saved us and is coming for us.

One of my previous pastors made a great point in explaining what is happening here. There is a sense in which the Kingdom of God is here and another sense in which it is still coming. On one hand, right now we are seeing the kingdom growing. Not by reclaiming physical ground, but by seeing those lost souls be saved. They are being transferred from the domain of darkness of the enemy, to the light of the kingdom of God. That was happening here in this passage, and it is still happening today.

On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is still to come. A day is coming, when Christ returns, where the spiritual kingdom will take on physical form. On that day there will be final judgment, the eradication of all evil, and the new earth will be filled with all of those who were a part of the spiritual kingdom. And there, we will dwell in a kingdom, with our Lord, for all eternity.

Now take those 2 realities and consider how we are to stay ready. We are to be seeking to build the kingdom here and now, in preparation for the kingdom to come. We are to be seeking personal obedience to Christ in all things, submitting ourselves to the King who is coming for us. We are to be sharing the Gospel with others and raising our children unto the Lord, so that the kingdom both here and then, might grow. We are to stay ready. We aren’t to be asleep in the barracks. We have a task before us. A task we have been prepared for. When Jesus returns, we want to be found actively seeking these things. We want to stay ready for His return.

As Jesus is making this point about staying ready, Peter has a question. You can see it in verse 41. He says, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” Jesus doesn’t directly answer this, but based off of what Jesus says in verse 48, I think the answer is that Jesus is telling this to everyone whom He is calling to follow Him, which is indeed everyone. But Jesus answers Peter by telling him another parable. He tells him the story of 2 different ways that a manager might act. Now for clarity, these managers would have been servants who were promoted to this position by the owners. They would be given some responsibility in order to prove themselves worthy of more responsibility.

So Jesus says that if a manager is tasked with simply providing food at the proper time, and he does this, then when the master returns and sees this, he will be put over all that the master has. He will be entrusted with all of his possessions, because he has proved himself in the small task. On the other hand, Jesus says that if the manager neglects do provide food at the proper time and instead abuses all that the master has, then he will be punished when the master returns and sees this. And then Jesus says that this is how this will play out in all situations, the more that the manager is given and neglects, the worse their punishment is.

And then, to apply it to our situation, Jesus says, in verse 48, “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.” 

The point that I want to make from this is, is this…

Jesus could return at any moment, so we should…

3.) Steward our time and resources

In college I had to write tons of papers, but there is one that will forever stick in my mind. I took a place on C.S. Lewis and at the very beginning of the year the professor gave the class a handful of end-of-year assignments they could do. They were these large assignments that were intended to be drawn out throughout the course of the semester, and he had given us a few different options to pick from. I wasn’t sure exactly which assignment I wanted to take on and sort of put it out of my mind until later in the semester. Well I did this until I was about ¾ of the way through the semester. But now, not only did I not have the full semester to work on an assignment, but I had also missed out on the opportunity to begin all but one of the assignments. See all the other ones required some in-person things after class, and I hadn’t done those. So the only assignment hat I had left was a 25-page paper written on a theological theme found in one of Lewis’ works. No problem I thought, I can easily do that by the end of the semester.

Well one day passed and another day passed until I had procrastinated doing this paper until one day before it was due. I know, not a smart decision. But in my defense, I had started dating this beautiful girl named Shelby and really didn’t want to do much else besides spend time with her. No matter the case, the day before the assignment was due I hid myself away in the library and wrote a 25-page, 15 source, paper on The Doctrine of Temptation found in The Screwtape Letters. It took all day and a ton of caffeine, but I did it. I actually went back to look at what it was on and found a typo in the very first sentence. So probably not a great paper.

But that’s what procrastination will do. When I sat there in that library frantically looking for sources and typing away, I had no excuse. I knew for an entire semester that I had assignment to do. It didn’t sneak up on me. It was as a result of procrastination and a lack of stewardship of my time and resources.

I think we can be tempted to the same thing when it comes to the return of our Lord. We know that He could come at any moment, and yet we procrastinate the things that will really matter when He does. We neglect to have that Gospel conversation with that family member who we see all the time. We hesitate to invite that coworker to church. We shuffle family worship to the bottom of the list of things to do. We do all of these things, and yet, if the Lord returned right now we might be tempted to think, “But Lord, can you give me a little bit more time?”  But see the issue is not the timing of the Lord’s return, it’s that we had not stewarded our time and resources well. We had wrongly assumed that He wouldn’t really come back now and procrastinated the very things that we have been commissioned to do.

Brothers and sisters, our days are not unlimited. The days of this Earth are not unlimited. There is a hard and fast cap at the end of this world we are living in. One day, when the Lord returns, that will be that. It will be over. That time is coming. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe 5,000 years from now. None of us know when, we only know that it is sure. The call of this text is to not waste your life, your time, on so many other things that you neglect to do the very things that will matter on that day.

The final chapter of John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life is a prayer. A prayer that is for those who have read the book. I want to read just the very end of it, because I think it is fitting for us here looking at this passage. He writes this, “Forbid that any, Lord, who read these words would have to say someday, ‘I’ve wasted it.’ But grant, by your almighty Spirit and your piercing Word, that we who name Christ as the Lord would treasure him above our lives, and feel, deep in our souls, that Christ is life, and death is gain. And so may we display his worth for all to see. And by our prizing him may he be praised in all the world. May he be magnified in life and death. May every neighborhood and nation see how joy in Jesus frees his people from the power of greed and fear.

Let love flow from your saints, and may it, Lord, be this: that even if it costs our lives, the people will be glad in God. ‘Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.’ Take your honored place, oh Christ, as the all-satisfying Treasure of the world. With trembling hands before the throne of God, and utterly dependent on your grace, we lift our voice and make this solemn vow: as God lives, and is all I ever need, I will not waste my life… through Jesus Christ, amen.”

That is my prayer for us this morning as well. King Jesus is coming. Let’s not waste our life, but rather let’s steward all that we have been entrusted for His kingdom and His glory. Let us hold our time and resources in our hands loosely, asking that God would do with it what He wants. Let us be a people who live as if the Lord is really coming, because He is. And when He does, such a glorious day that will be. Not because of what we have done, but because of what He has done for us and on our behalf. Amen.