The Son of Man is Coming!

Our sermon for today, we have the title, The Son of Man is Coming. The Son of Man is coming. I hope you feel today the weight of that phrase, as we now are going to turn our attention onto full preparation for our observance of the great day of Trumpets, pointing us to none other than the return of Jesus Christ Himself. So, in our preparation, let's open our Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 12. Luke chapter 12. We're going to read verses 35 through 40.

And here in Luke 12, we actually find these stirring words, the Son of Man is coming. And we also find within this passage what is a striking command and an authoritative warning for us. For God's people specifically, we will see, given to us by Jesus Christ in anticipation of His return. Here it is, Luke 12. Let's pick it up in verse 35 here. This is Jesus Christ speaking. Luke 12 verse 35. He says, Let your waste be girded and your lamps burning, and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. Verse 37. Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assurely I say to you that he, the master, will gird himself and have them sit down and eat, and he will come and serve them. And if he should come in the second watch or come in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Let's stop there. Well, with that, I would like to bring you your attention to the fact that here, once again, we find the fact that history and the future of humanity is not cyclical. I wonder if you ever thought about that. The future, the history and the future of mankind, is not cyclical, even though the Greeks actually believed that very thing. The Greeks proposed that men and women of themselves were on a kind of treadmill, kind of a treadmill of life. You could, on this treadmill of life, you could walk or you could rush on this treadmill. But one thing's for certain, that it was essentially leading nowhere with no end in sight, where they believed that as you went through your days, you were simply just going round and round, routinely experiencing similar events over and over again. History repeating itself, where life as it is will simply continue as it always has, forever. This is cyclical thinking, circular thinking, if you will.

And we know that this perception, this notion, is not unique to the Greeks, of course. This is a modern cultural type of thinking, this idea that the world is just going to continue with no interruption in sight. Round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows.

But it's thinking like that, which really emphasizes the fact that men and women have no connection with the Bible. No connection with the Bible. So, having no connection with the truth of the beginning of the world, they therefore have no connection with the truth of the end of the world. Men and women, unhinged from the knowledge of how it all began, are also therefore then disengaged from the reality of how it all will end. This is the society in which we live today. But here in this passage we have the one Jesus Christ, who was there at the very beginning, who now turns to his followers and speaks to them of his return. And he says he will come to usher in the end of the world as we know it. Now you have that song in your head. You're welcome.

So, in contrast to the notion that our history and our future is cyclical, the Bible actually describes history and the future as linear. There was a definite beginning, and Jesus Christ now stands and says there is definitely coming an end. An end. Where one day this is all coming to an end. And so when men and women, when they pick up their daily planner and they consider what they have in front of them in the days, the weeks, the years ahead, each of them must realize that there is coming a day, a future event, which will be written across, that should be written across every daily planner of every man and woman. Where the coming of Jesus Christ is written into every time schedule. The return of Jesus Christ will be an event in history, an appointment, in which we all will meet.

And every one of us here this afternoon, whether we acknowledge it, whether we push it to the back of our mind, regardless, everyone is moving toward that end time appointment with Jesus Christ. And so it is profitable for us to give ourselves to this striking warning, this authoritative command, because the Son of Man is coming. He is coming. Exactly when? We don't know. But more important than when, when is a secondary issue?

Second to our readiness for it. And that's what is coming forth, quite strikingly here from this passage. Look again at verse 40. Therefore, verse 40, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. So we have this picture painted for us here. This would have been a very familiar picture to those initial listeners. That of a master, verse 36, returning from the wedding, coming home in the context in which the servants are waiting for him. You know, they have their noses pressed against the window, if you will. And great anticipation. And instead of the master's absence becoming an occasion for laziness or neglect, the good servants, the good servants, will be watching and waiting, and they will be ready to open the door. In the middle of verse 36, they can immediately open the door for him, it says. When he comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately. It's almost this picture as if he reaches up to knock and the doors open. That's how quickly they're able to respond. How are they able to do this? Well, they're watching for him. He didn't have to ring the door. He didn't have to go around knocking on the windows. Are you in there? Not at all. He didn't have to get their attention. They hadn't fallen asleep in his absence. They were ready, ready for action. They must have been telling one another, as we should. You know, he's coming back soon. Do we have everything in order here? And just to be clear, this is Jesus speaking to the fact that this is a picture of how my servants should be in anticipation of my return. And we're given this somewhat archaic language there in verse 35. Let your waist be girded. That is a very archaic language. I don't know if we use that phrase today, but it's the Old Testament picture here. We won't turn there, but of course this harkens back to Exodus 12. The instructions given to the Israelites who were to eat the Passover before their rescue in such a way they were to eat with their belts on, sandals on their feet, staff in their hand, and anticipation for the one who was coming to rescue them.

Now, this whole notion of girding, some of you know this, but as just a reminder, a refresher, often long garments were worn there, and when you had these long garments, it definitely would impede you if you needed to respond quickly. So what they would do to be in a state of readiness, they would take these cloaks, gather them up, tuck them into the middle of their belt, thereby giving them the ability to be in this state of readiness here, ready to go. Whenever the time came, they were ready, and Jesus says, if you are in this state of readiness, spiritually girded, we would apply this to ourselves today. Verse 37, you will be blessed. There's a blessing that comes from this readiness. Verse 37, blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching, assuredly I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down and eat. The servants! Wow! And the master will come and serve them. That's amazing! What master does this? Well, of course, this is our master. This is pointing to the master, Jesus Christ himself. Again, this harkens us to the picture we won't turn there, but for your notes, it's going forward to Luke 22 in the context of his final meal that he's eating with the disciples before his crucifixion. It says, Jesus arises and girds himself. Why? So that he can kneel and serve them by washing their feet, bestow that blessing upon them. You know, the amazing thing, one of the amazing things about Jesus coming is he never asked us to do anything he wasn't willing to do first. He always led by example. What a beautiful example. So many times he wasn't the coach on the sideline, he was out there on the field saying, follow me, guys, let's go, you know. But blessed will be those servants, verse 37 again. Blessed will be those servants whom the master, when he comes, he will find them watching. And verse 38, there may be perseverance asked for. And even if he should come in the second watch or the third watch, he will find them so. Blessed are those servants. They, we, he will find us. We won't grow weary waiting. The side note, the Romans divided the hours of the night, the night watch into four watches. The Jews divided it into three watches. But this is really just to indicate a passage of time. What passage of time you and I are talking about is from the time when Jesus ascended back to his father until the future time in which he returns. This is our watch, if you will. Our span of time. So no matter kind of taking this symbolism, if he comes in the second watch or the third watch of the night, the master will be delighted by finding us still in a spirit of readiness, Jesus says. And so let's just take a moment. Let's consider, and you can add more to this, I just wanted to consider three pieces of symbolism here that were given by Jesus. The first symbolism is this, to consider this waste girded there, being girded, have your waste girded. In other words, the way I might put it is in this question, am I prepared to move forward with a sense of urgency for Jesus? Could I respond immediately to something Jesus has asked me to do?

Do I need to have a certain urgency? Do I need to be girded for a desire to reconcile with someone that I have a conflict with? Do I need to gird myself and be ready to move in action? Is there a sin that is impeding me? I won't have you raise your hand, but I almost, I could, and I will. Is there a sin that's impeding you from moving forward? Well, you need to think, maybe it'll help you to think in girding that up, removing that burden, that which causes you to trip continually, impeding your spiritual progress. What opportunities do you need to grab a hold of to serve God's people? Arrange your priorities so that you can respond to God. Another symbol here, maybe, to consider is this lamp's burning. Have our lamp burning. You may extract some symbolism from that and how we apply it today. The way I look at it is, am I spiritually alive? Am I even spiritually alive? When you think of having your lamp burning, this is, it's not like girding one's garments in a moment. It really speaks to this continuation of maintenance. Oil has to be replenished continually. The wick has to be trimmed to allow the flame to continue to burn here. So it's a picture of ongoing daily spiritual preparedness and consistent prayers. I fall into the occasional emergency prayer. I'm always just doing that fervent prayer and I have a risk of not having my lamp burning. Speaking to consistent prayer. What about study, daily study in Scripture? What about regular self-examination? Are you alive in this way? How is your spiritual vitality? How is your spiritual life? Is your lamp burning in the realm of worship? Are you too low spiritually and kind of dormant and low and not excited that the flame is low? Father, how can I, I want my, I want a big flame. I want to have my light, my lamp burning for you. What could bring to my mind what could help me in this way? Perhaps in worship. Perhaps the third and final symbol to look at is this symbol of watching. The way I put it, am I living with expectation? Right? Watching. Maybe this would translate to making choices based upon those things that are going to matter when the Master returns and deprioritizing the other things. I want to make sure I'm watching and so I have this life of expectancy. What's going to matter when he returns most? I need to make sure those things are priority. I don't, watching. I'm going to guard against spiritual compromise. I'm going to be alert and make sure nothing gets close to my household here. Would, would I be pleased for Christ to find me doing this or that? Would I be pleased if Christ found me doing this or that? Does this speak to the priority of being prepared for his return? So those are some of the action words and action symbols here. And really what was so convincing, convicting this week when I was in preparation for this is this question came to mind so I'm going to pose it to you. Have you spent one moment in the last week thinking about the reality of the Son of Man coming? Or do we think he delays his coming?

Ah, that's so convicting. There, it really is. And in considering the Son of Man is coming, how did that alter my life? How did that reality alter my life? Did it, did it catch my tongue when I was ready to spread some gossip? Did it cause me to count to ten instead of yelling or expressing anger? What did it do? What did the reality of the Son of Man coming, what change did that cause in me? And continuing here in verse 39, here Jesus continues, and this is a more striking verbiage here, but know this, verse 39, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief had come, he would have watched and not allowed the house to be broken into. So he points to the fact that if the master would have known that the thief was coming, of course the owner would have been ready to deal with him appearing. But it was the very unexpected nature of it that allowed for a stealing to take place. If we're living in an unexpected nature, what might be stolen from us?

Now this makes me think this verse of a crime I actually heard about a while back. This is actually a true story. It was reported that, I don't know when it was or where it was, but a couple routinely parked their car out on the curb. Hadn't had any problems, but one morning they awoke into the fact that their car had been stolen. They're very distraught because of that, but remarkably, a couple of days later, the car reappeared, and it was in perfect condition. And upon inspection, the keys were there, but there also was a note. And the thief had actually written them a note of apology for in thanking them for allowing them to have the car for the past couple of days. And to endeavor to make things right, he left them two theater tickets for that evening. Well, the couple took the theater tickets and went off gleefully, only to return and find out that the burglar returned and broke into their house.

So, if the husband and the wife, upon receiving the tickets, would have known what the person was up to, they, of course, would not have gone out, and they would have then not be taken by surprise. You see, very smart thief, I will say.

And that's the point that Jesus is making here. If the owner had known the hour the thief was coming, he could have been prepared and not allowed that stealing to take place. But the fact is that they did not know, and the fact is that you and I don't know when the Son of Man is returning. And the implication is the same. You got to be ready, because the Son of Man will come like a thief in the night, and he will come at an hour that you do not expect. Well, in response to that story, we have Peter coming into the narrative here in verse 41. Peter, verse 41, said to Jesus, Lord, do you speak this parable only to us or to all these people? That's the classic. Are you talking to me? You know, surely you're talking to them, right? Is this edification that we need to listen to? Or is it for them? Well, if you go back to the staying here in this chapter, chapter 12, but verse 1, you actually see that there was a large crowd there in the context in which Jesus was speaking these words, and an innumerable multitude of people had gathered around Christ. It even says they were kind of trampling one another. But despite this, we see that Jesus was, in fact, speaking to his disciples. Look at the middle of verse 1. He began, middle of verse 1, he says, he began, Jesus began to say to his disciples, first of all. Now, there would have been others that would have no doubt heard, and in this, in the following narrative, you do see the crowd responding to Jesus in various ways. But here, Jesus says, first and of all, first and foremost, Jesus was giving this warning and this command to his chosen, to his disciples. Likewise, these words are being spoken to you and I. So that's the context here, revealing who these, specifically who these warnings and commands are being given. So we can't wiggle out of this, you see. Now, this may be a good time to mention, as we're feeling the weight of this admonition, and it's only going to get worse here in a moment as we continue in the narrative. But as we consider this striking admonition here from Jesus Christ ourselves and we begin to feel the weight of it, I do want to point out the fact that whenever there is a striking command, there's always love and comfort attached to it. There's always grace and this is no exception because we find leading up to this striking admonition that the Son of Man is coming, we find verses 22 through 34. So verses 22 through 34 is where we find the the whole striking stories emerging from and this admonition to be ready for the Son, because the Son of Man is coming, actually emerges from Jesus first telling them, don't worry, don't worry. I don't know if you have headings in your Bible, but there at the beginning of verse 22, that's the heading I have in my new King James. Don't worry. And of course here, leading up to this striking admonition, we have some of the most beautiful, comforting passages in all the Bible, where from verse 22 through verse 34, Jesus is tenderly telling his disciples, don't let yourself worry about the things of this world that may consume you. He goes on to say, don't worry about what you eat or what you drink or what you'll wear. Verse 27, this comforting, one of the most comforting verses in all the Bible, consider the lilies, he says, and how they grow. They never toil or spin. And then going down to verse 29, do not, you don't have to feel like you have to seek what you eat or drink, nor have any anxious mind. So this is the passage in which our relative passage today emerges from here. And here lies the point of this whole study, I believe. It's about priority.

Jesus is expressing here, as you make the kingdom your priority, I will take care of you. Verse 31, seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. And then he gives them this beautiful reassurance. Verse 32, do not fear, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Okay. In other words, and here it is, focus on your priority and your preparation for my return. And as you do, as you put your focus on your priority and preparedness for my return, as you do, I, Jesus says, will gird myself and I'll take care of all of the matters of your life. You and I will never be able to achieve perfection.

But we can achieve perfection in what we make our priority. Okay. And this is the point of this whole girding and watching and have your lamps burning. It's speaking to a priority. Preparation. Focus. Seek first the kingdom. Do that.

And while you're doing that, I will gird myself and I will take care of you. Going down to verse 41 again. Yes, Peter, I am speaking to you. Now, he doesn't actually say that.

Jesus, like he often does, just maybe starts another story, which he does here in verse 22, where beginning in verse 42 through 48, he describes another story. And this is a tough one. So I did want to emphasize where these stark admonitions are emerging from. Remember, as we go through this, don't worry. It's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. But we need to have some seriousness attached to our preparation for his return. So here's the other story. Let me just give you the overview of it. Again, this is a tough one. Directed to Jesus's disciples. Beginning in verse 42, Jesus tells another story of a master or a owner of an estate. He delegates oversight to a servant manager. So the owner of the state is leaving. He's delegating oversight to the estate, to the servant manager, who will then take care of responsibilities while he's gone. And Jesus says then, verse 42, verse 42, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom the master will make ruler over the household, to give them their portion of food in due season? Verse 43, Blessed is that servant whom his master will find him so doing when he comes. So if the master finds you and I in the spirit of readiness, we will be blessed again. In verse 44, he declares, verse 44, Truly I say to you that he, the master, will make him the ruler over all he has. So it's the same context here that Jesus is expressing. But, but in here we're going to get into some difficulty here. Jesus continues, and he says, however, on the other hand, verse 45 and 46, but let's receive this. But if that servant says in his heart, so the master's gone, he's left us over side of his household. But if that master says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming, and begins to beat male and female servants, and eat and drink and be drunk, the master of that servant will come on that day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him in his portion with the unbelievers. Let's stop there. Okay. You know, we could just let that sit right here. If you use the master's absence for self-indulging, acting unjustly, there's going to be severe punishment rather than a blessing. And in the end, verse 46 again, the master will cut him in two, verse 46, and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. That's a striking statement.

He who is faithful and wife-servant will be commended, but and given more responsibility at the master's return. But if he's the kind of servant who says his master's delaying and he takes advantage of the blessing of being in the household, he will cut him up and be thrown out, and he'll be given over to accompany of those who belong with him, and that is the unbelievers.

So, yes, judgment is upon us today. We feel the weight of this. I feel it. So in our days of being placed into the household of the master, our service or our denial will inevitably lead to an appointment with the master when he returns. And let me just tell you, life is not cyclical. Old people, young people, don't get caught up in circular thinking. It's particularly hard when you're younger. Life's just going to go on forever, you know. But there is... we need to be linear thinkers, linear believers. There was a beginning. Life started with the beginning, but make no doubt there will come an end.

And I want to tell you, if you understand, you will either be a faithful and wise servant, and more will be given to you, more blessings, but if not, he'll make your place with the unbelievers. Which servant are you? If that's not enough, let's let the weight come upon us a little bit more here. Jesus is going to continue and conclude here. With more, verse 47 and 48, verse 47 and 48, and that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given from him, much will be required. And to whom much has been committed of him, he will ask the more. Now, I think I've had that first part on a coffee cup before, but I don't know if I knew the weight of it. To him, who everyone much is given, much will be required. So now we know from which that phrase emerges from the context here. So in knowing and having revealed the master's will, it does come with this prospect of responsibility and a responsiveness here. It's a great privilege to be in the master's household. So we need to be ready for his return. And let me just tell you once again, again, perhaps the most important thing I will say this whole message. So I want to reiterate this. The master, Jesus Christ, is not looking for perfection. We can't achieve it. Only Jesus Christ lived this life in perfection. He's not looking for perfection. He's looking for priority. What is our priority? So reflect on the heaviness of this. But again, he's not looking for perfection. He's looking for our priority. What is our priority? He's looking for working toward perfection in our preparedness for his return. Those are things we can make progress in and achieve. We can achieve that which takes our priority. We can achieve that which a perfection toward our preparedness. All those things are achievable. And those things will lead to us becoming more and more like our perfect master. Yes. But we'll never reach perfection, but you can reach for a perfection of your priorities and a desire for preparation for his return. Well, we've come to the end of the section here, and so I want to end in a way which I think is biblically patterned, and I want to say don't worry. Don't worry. Yes, we want to hear Christ say, be ready. We want to be stirred by that command, but do not hear these words as merely a frightening warning. I want you to hear the hope behind it. Don't worry. The Father knows what you need. Rather, simply focus your priority and seek first the kingdom of God, because your Father wants to give it to you. And again, this is not perfection. This is preparedness. This is priority here. So, brethren, gird yourself in the upcoming days as we prepare for the great day of trumpets. Keep your light burning and all the daily maintenance that is going to be required. And keep watching. Keep watching, because one day our Master, the Son of Man, is coming.