Matt 24:36–25:13 — Awake And Ready

No One Knows the Day

So we are in the fifth major block of the teaching of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew. This is the fifth and final block of teaching. And this is also called the Olivet Discourse because of its location. This teaching was given to the disciples as he sat on the Mount of Olives back in 24 verse 3. So it is called the Olivet Discourse to indicate that that is the place where he gave this teaching. It is also important to note the time when he gave this teaching, and that is, this is during Holy Week, right before he is about to go to the cross.

The very next chapter, Matthew chapter 26, begins the passion narrative of the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the trial and arrest of Jesus, his crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection. So he is giving this teaching to his disciples on the eve of his death, on the eve of his final work of atoning for the sins of his people. And he is teaching about the future. He is teaching about what is going to happen after he goes.

There is going to be a time, a period of time in which the gospel will be preached to all the nations, and there will also be a time of great tribulation and difficulty, and then he will return in the clouds of heaven. He describes that in Matthew 24, and verse 30. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. with power and great glory.

Now there are some who hold to what is called the preterist interpretation, at least of this section of the first half of Matthew chapter 24 up to verse 35. who hold to what is called a preterist interpretation, and we referred to this and described it when I last preached on this two weeks ago. Preterist is simply the word for past. So they are saying that everything that is described here in this first section in Matthew chapter 24, up until verse 35, through verse 35, is past. It already happened.

And that means that they take the Great Tribulation and the abomination of desolation as referring to events that took place in that time, in the lifetime of his audience, referring specifically to the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in A.D. 70. And what that means is because they take everything as past, they have to interpret the verse I just read, verse 30, which we would take as describing the second coming of Christ, they have to interpret that as not referring to the second coming of Christ, but to a coming of Christ in judgment. Not his second return, but a time of judgment on Israel. And so all the reference there to the sign of the Son of Man appearing in heaven and to the stars falling from heaven and the powers of the heavens being shaken are taken metaphorically, not literally, as referring to simply judgment upon national Israel, which occurred in A.D. 70.

The problem with that interpretation is that Jesus explicitly said, right there in verse 27, he says, as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. It is going to be an unmistakable, visible thing. It is not just going to be, well, Christ quote unquote came in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. It is going to be something obvious and public for all the world to see. And so I do not think that the Preterist interpretation is quite correct, although I do recognize that Jesus does have as one angle of interpretation, one side fulfillment of what he is talking about, the literal destruction of Jerusalem.

He mentions that, for example, in Matthew chapter 22 and verse 36. Sorry, Matthew 23, verse 36, where he says, truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. So Jesus has already mentioned the fact that there is going to be judgment upon national Israel. And he says upon this generation, that is to those to whom he is speaking within their lifetimes.

And that is probably the strongest point in favor of the Preterist interpretation. And we see this very clearly in verses 32 to 35, the paragraph just before the one where I started reading today. We did not get to it two weeks ago, but in verses 32 to 35, we have this reference again to this generation. 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. So also, when you see all these things, 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. And the Preterists say, look, every time Jesus uses this phrase, this generation, he is referring to this generation, literally, to the people to whom he is speaking. We already saw that in Matthew 22, verse 36. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. But it occurs several other times in the Gospel of Matthew as well. And so they say, clearly then, this is talking about something that happened in that time. And of course, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 happened about 40 years after Jesus spoke these words. And so that would fit the explanation for what Jesus is referring to.

How do we respond to that as those who are not preterists? As those who are not preterists, we would say that this particular paragraph here, verses 32 to 35, is dyschronologized. That is just a big word for saying that Jesus is going back and referring to something earlier in the narrative, okay? He is not referring to what he had just spoken of. In the paragraph just before that, you have the coming of Christ? Verse 30, then will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of Man.

And so you might think that, because that is the immediately previous paragraph, you might think that when Jesus says, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, that he is referring to that thing that he had just previously talked about, the second coming.

And so if you take it in chronological order, then that would make sense. But I believe that this paragraph here, the one about, truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, is dischronologized. That is, this is a common thing? If you are telling a story to somebody, this happens all the time. You are telling a story, and as you go along, the story naturally leads you to the next thing, but you somewhat jump ahead, right, because you got to tell the story, but then you got to go, let me go back a few steps and fill in some details about some earlier parts of the story? And so even though you are saying those earlier parts of the story after you’d already gotten to the conclusion, you are dischronologizing your story. You are going back over again something earlier.

And we know that that is the case because of verse 33. So verse 34 said, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. And you might think, well, all these things? Sounds like he had just been talking about the coming of Christ, so it must be that. But look at verse 33, where he uses the same phrase, all these things. You could actually take a pen and underline that phrase.

All these things is used twice, once in verse 33, and again in verse 34. But in verse 33, it is clear that all these things does not include the parousia, parousia meaning the second coming. Because he says, so also when you see all these things, you know that he is near at the very gates. So clearly, all these things does not refer to the second coming of Christ, does not refer to the He is near, because all these things is the precursor to Christ’s return.

So all these things then, as defined in verse 33, is dischronologized and is leaping back to the previous section in Matthew 24, verses 4 to 28. which describes the time of tribulation. Jesus is describing the entire period between his first and second coming as a time of difficulty, as a time of tribulation.

There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be famines and earthquakes. There will be tribulation. The church will be persecuted. Many will fall away and betray one another. Many false prophets will arise. Many will claim to be the Messiah. All these tribulations will take place, and that is what is going to happen until Christ returns.

That is the all these things that Jesus is referring to in verse 33. So also when you see all these things, all these tribulations, 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. That is until all these things begin to take place.

D.A. Carson in his commentary on this verse says, all that verse 34 demands is that the distress of verses 4 to 28, including the fall of Jerusalem, happens within the lifetime of the generation then living. This does not mean that the distress must end within that time. So, Jesus is telling the truth. All these things will take place, including the destruction of Jerusalem, within the lifetime of the audience to whom he is speaking. And that is indeed what happened.

It does not mean that the time of tribulation will end in AD 70. It just means that it will occur within their time. as to the second coming itself, as to the parousia, the appearing of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, that is something that is unknown. And he says that very clearly in the very next verse, verse 36.

But concerning that day, an hour, no one knows. Not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Clearly, verse 36 has a very strong change of topic. But concerning that day, concerning the second coming, no one knows. All these things will take place within this generation. There is going to be a time of tribulation that will begin within the lifetime of this generation, including the destruction of Jerusalem. But it is going to continue after that, and how much longer it is going to continue after that, no one knows. No one knows the day or the hour.

Now, when we come to verse 36, we do have another difficulty that we have to wrestle with, and that is when Jesus says that even the sun does not know the day or the hour, does this detract from our belief in the deity of Christ. You could make a very simple, simplistic argument here against the deity of Christ and say that God knows all things. Jesus here says he does not know all things, at least one thing. He does not know the day or the hour of his coming. Therefore, Jesus is not God. You could make that syllogism.

But that is not what the rest of the Gospel of Matthew leads us to believe. The rest of the Gospel of Matthew clearly teaches the deity of Christ. Just think all the way back to the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 1. Remember where Matthew comments upon the name that was given to Jesus. He will be called Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins, and he’ll be born of a virgin to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, that behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a child, and his name will be called Emmanuel, which means God with us. The second person of the Trinity, when he was born of a virgin and became a man, is God with us, according to Matthew. And at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, you have the Great Commission where Jesus commands the apostles to baptize in the name, singular, not the names plural, but in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus says, and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, linking all the way back to Matthew chapter 1. He is God with us. He is God with us. I am with you always, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, clearly teaching the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God.

And within the person, within the one divine nature, there are three persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So unless Matthew or Jesus himself is contradicting themselves, clearly this verse should not be taken as a way that denies the deity of Christ. Rather, what it is referring to is the human nature of Christ, that as a man, He is the eternal Son of God, eternally divine.

He was there at creation. But as a man, he is subject to the will of the Father. And so his limitation of his knowledge has to do with his incarnation and the fact that as a man, he is subject to the Father’s will concerning the day and the hour of his second coming.

So we have looked at these two difficulties in the text. The first one is about this generation, and the second one is about this apparent teaching that seems to undermine the deity of Christ in this verse. But really we need to focus on what is the main thrust of what Jesus is trying to communicate to us here in this passage. The overall focus of this whole passage can be seen in verse 42. Verse 42 just summarizes for us the main point. There are a lot of other details in the passage, but in verse 42 he says, Jesus is calling his disciples to spiritual awareness, to spiritual alertness, so that they are not caught off guard when he comes. That also means that the nearness of Christ’s return, remember back in verse 33, when you see all these things, you know that he is near.

The nearness of Christ’s return is not really a chronological nearness, but rather a spiritual and ethical nearness. Christ’s coming is near because we do not know when he is coming back. And therefore, because we do not know when he is coming back, we must be spiritually alert and ready for his coming.

Verse 42, therefore stay awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Verse 44, therefore you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. And then again in chapter 25, verse 13, after the parable of the 10 virgins, he says, watch therefore for you do not know, for you know neither the day nor the hour. All of this then shows us, these references in verse 42, 43, and then 25, 13, show us that this is the main theme, and it is all unpacking what he had said in verse 36. Concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only. And therefore, because you do not know, because we are ignorant, Since we do not know the day or the hour of Christ’s return, therefore we must be spiritually alert and ready and live our lives with the awareness that Christ’s coming is near. It is a spiritual nearness, not a chronological nearness. Now let us just go through the text and look at some of the things that Jesus says to illustrate this doctrine, this call to be awake and ready for his return.

As in the Days of Noah

In verses 37 to 44, he uses this analogy of as it was in the days of Noah. He says in verse 37, for as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, Until the day when Noah entered the ark and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the son of man. In the days of Noah, there was a division between believers and unbelievers.

The believers were a very small remnant. It was just Noah and his immediate family, his three sons and their wives. And they were the only ones that were ready and prepared. The rest of the world was completely ignorant, completely unaware of this coming flood. And when the flood came, they were caught off guard. And they were all swept away because they did not enter the ark.

They did not listen to the gospel preaching of Noah. We are told that in 2 Peter. that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and he was a herald calling the people to repentance. But they did not listen, and so they were caught unawares, and they were destroyed in the flood.

In verses 40 to 41, Jesus is using this analogy of the flood scenario, but applying it to how it will be at the time of his second coming. One will be taken and the other left. Two men will be in the field, two women will be grinding at the mill, but one will be taken and the other left.

Now this language of one will be taken has sometimes been interpreted by those who hold to the dispensational system of interpretation as referring to the rapture. They believe that there is going to be a secret coming of Christ seven years before the actual second coming, the visible public second coming. But seven years before that, there is going to be a secret coming of Christ in which he is going to take all Christians by a rapture into heaven. So they interpret this idea of one will be taken, the word taken, they take it as referring to the rapture.

And that is possible. In reaction though, some who do not hold to the dispensational view, And I would include myself among those who do not hold to that view. But in reaction against that, some people have said, maybe the word taken does not refer to something positive, being taken to be with the Lord, but rather refers to something negative, of being taken away in judgment. And therefore the one who is left is the believer who is left on earth to be with the Lord in the new creation. That could be, that is a possible interpretation as well.

Although I would say this, that our issue with dispensationalism or with the rapture idea is not the idea of a rapture per se, the idea of being taken up. into heaven. That is not our issue, because that idea of being taken up, being caught up to be with the Lord, is biblical? It is taught in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. That language, we will be caught up, that is where the word rapture comes from. Rapture is just simply the Latin translation of this word to be caught up, to be raptured, to be caught up into heaven.

So the Bible does teach this idea. Our concern with the dispensational version of it is rather with the timing, the idea that it is seven years before Christ comes back, and also with their distinction between Israel and the Church, saying that the Church is raptured out of the earth seven years before Christ comes back, then God’s program with national Israel kicks in for seven years, leading to the millennium. And that is a completely different program that has nothing to do with God’s purpose for the church, because the church has been raptured up out of the earth. And they would even argue that if you read in the Book of Revelation, where it talks about the church being on the earth in the first three chapters of Revelation, then beginning in Chapter 4 and on, the church is never mentioned again. And so therefore, everything that is going on in the Book of Revelation from Chapter 4 on is referring to God’s program for Israel.

That is the part where we disagree, is their timing of the rapture being before Christ’s return. Paul himself in 1 Thessalonians 4 clearly says that the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead and the rapture will happen at the same time, not seven years before. And then secondly, we disagree with their strong distinction between Israel and the church and using the rapture as their way of saying that is how God switches gears. from his purpose for the church, rapture, and then his purpose for Israel. So let us not be overreactive, and let us not say that therefore the word taken in our text could not be used in a positive sense.

Two men will be in the field, one will be taken, one will be raptured, and the other will be left to be judged. In keeping with the Noahic flood context of what Jesus is teaching here, I think that it is very likely that the one who is left is the unbeliever, because he says the flood came and swept them all away. The ones who were left were swept away in the flood of judgment. And in addition, the word taken in our text, verses 40 and 41, is very likely harking back to verse 31, where Jesus says that he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect. from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. The gathering of the elect, they are being taken to be with the Lord. However, if you personally think that it is the other way around, that the taken is the negative one and the being left is the positive one, that is also a possibility, and there would be no harm in taking it that way in the text. Most of the commentators, though, take it the other way, that taken is synonymous with the gathering of God’s elect, and the one who is left is the unbeliever who is swept away in the flood.

So Jesus here is using this analogy, this historical reference back to the flood as a way of picturing and understanding and thinking about the way it will be at the day of his return. All the unbelievers will be just preoccupied with their daily lives with eating and drinking and marrying and so on. and completely unaware of Christ’s return. And the elect will be gathered to be with the Lord forever, but the unbelievers will be swept away in the flood of God’s judgment. So therefore, let us not be like the unbelievers who are completely unaware and pursuing their own worldly things. Let us be like the servants of Christ who are awake and ready. Verse 42, therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. just a little reference there, just note that phrase, you do not know what day your Lord is coming.

Is not that an interesting phrase in the text? It is the only time that phrase is used in the Gospel of Matthew, your Lord. And we are going to return to that later because it is such an important thought, but it focuses on this personal relationship with Christ that we ought to have. But know this, verse 43, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

A little mini parable it is sometimes called. One verse long, a mini parable where Jesus describes himself as a thief. That is somewhat odd, is not it? A thief is a bad thing? But he describes himself as a thief only in this one sense, that his coming will be a surprise. and that therefore we must stay awake and not be taken off guard.

Verse 44, therefore you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Note that in verse 44, he changes the term from being awake to being ready. The title of my sermon is Awake and Ready, and I think that those two terms are helpfully somewhat shedding light on one another. What does it mean to be awake? It means to be ready. It means to be ready for Christ’s return, to not be taken off guard, but to be prepared for Christ’s return. And then in verses 45 to 51, we have another parable, if you will, another way of describing this idea that the coming of Christ is near, and that we do not know the day or the hour, and therefore we must be spiritually alert and ready.

The Faithful and Wise Servant

He says, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? And then he contrasts that with the wicked servant in verse 48, who says to himself, my master is delayed. And so he begins to treat his fellow servants badly. Now this is making the same point as the previous parable about the flood. and the time of Noah, but now it is a little bit different in this sense that rather than the contrast being between believers and unbelievers, it is between professing believers who are wise and faithful servants and professing believers who are wicked servants and who end up proving that they are not genuine Christians because they are going to be cast into hell at the end. So it is the same exhortation, the same call to be awake and ready for Christ’s return, because we do not know the day or the hour, but now it is focusing on a different application, which is, even within the visible church, there can be those who are wicked servants, who claim the name of Christ, who claim to be followers of Christ, but they demonstrate by the way they act in this time between the first and second coming of Christ, acting selfishly, acting sinfully, getting drunk, and eating and drinking with drunkards, and living a dissolute life, and not serving the Lord, they prove by their behavior that they are not genuine followers of Christ. the faithful and wise servant versus the wicked servant.

Now, some commentators have thought maybe this particular exhortation here is directed specifically to the leadership of the church, because it somewhat sounds like that at first? When it talks about the good servant who is set over the household to give the household its food in its proper time. It somewhat sounds a little bit like a pastor whose job is to give spiritual food to God’s people. And so some have thought that this paragraph here is only a critique of church leaders and pastors and ministers and warning them to be careful not to abuse God’s people.

But I am not sure that that is quite correct. I think that that may be an example of taking a parable too far into the allegorical details? We see this all the time. I have mentioned this multiple times as I have been preaching through Matthew, that the parables of Jesus have to be very carefully interpreted, and you have to figure out what is the main point versus what are some of the details that only belong to the story but do not apply, do not have an allegorical application. And I think that that may be the case here.

I think the point is simply to talk about being a faithful and wise servant versus being a wicked servant. And that applies to all of us as God’s people, even those who are not pastors and teachers in the church. Each of you has a responsibility that God has given you. Whatever that responsibility is, based upon your upbringing, your position in life, your age, your calling, your gifts, whatever that responsibility is the Lord has given you, the Lord wants you to be a faithful and wise servant of that responsibility.

Of course, Jesus is going to flesh this out even more in the next section, which we are going to get to next week, on the parable of the talents. Remember where he gave five talents to one and he gave two talents to another and so on. And then he came back, the master came back and wanted to see what they had done with the money. Talents of course here does not refer to gifts, but it refers to literally money, an amount of money. And the servants who received the money were supposed to invest the money and get a return on their investment.

That is where Jesus is going to flesh out what he says here in this paragraph about the faithful and wise servant versus the wicked servant. So we will delay talking about that more until next week. But the main point is simply this, is that the one servant was wise and faithful, and he was doing the Lord’s will, and he was ready for the second coming of Christ, but the wicked servant said in his heart, my master is delayed. And so therefore, I can do what I want, and I do not need to be a faithful servant of Christ.

The Wise and Foolish Virgins

Let us then look at the parable of the 10 virgins. So we have the flood narrative, we have the faithful and wise servant versus the wicked servant, and now we have the five foolish virgins versus the five wise virgins. The 10 virgins are somewhat bridesmaids in our cultural context, not exactly the same, but something similar to that.

This is an interesting thing actually looking at all the commentaries and trying to figure out more about what do we know about ancient Jewish wedding ceremonies and rituals. Turns out we do not really know a whole lot. So it is somewhat hard to figure out exactly what is going on here in this story. But thankfully we do not need to know the cultural details because it is obvious what Jesus is saying by the application?

The bridegroom would come at an unexpected hour, often at night, to fetch the bride, and the bridesmaids would accompany the bride and wait for the bridegroom’s arrival. And the bridesmaids were expected to carry lamps or torches with them to light the way as part of the festive procession to the wedding banquet. This parable then is emphasizing, again, the importance of being awake and ready, a preparedness.

The five wise virgins brought extra oil for their lamps while the five foolish virgins did not. If we were to update this today, we would say the five wise ones brought extra batteries for their for their flashlight, while the five foolish ones did not, and their batteries ran out, and they did not have enough batteries to replace.

Now the question becomes, what is the meaning of the extra oil? The five wise virgins, it says that they brought oil with them in flasks. So they had their lamp, which was probably just a stick with some rags on the top? And then you dip the rags into the oil and you light it on fire, okay? The five foolish virgins, they did not take any extra oil with them in their flasks, but the wise virgins did.

They took extra oil. They had extra batteries. And when the bridegroom arrived unexpectedly, the wise virgins were ready and were able to join the wedding banquet. But the foolish virgins were left out because they had to go buy more oil. But what is the meaning of the oil?

And some commentators have tried to do another allegory and tried to figure out maybe this particular detail in the story has some somewhat parallel in the Christian life. Maybe it refers to doing good works. And I am not sure that is quite the right way of thinking about it. I think again this the point of this parable is simply to make the point as Jesus says there at the end of the parable in verse 13. Watch therefore for you do not know the day or the hour. The parable is a lesson about spiritual readiness.

Awake and Ready

The virgins represent believers, the bridegroom represents Christ, the wedding banquet symbolizes the kingdom of heaven, and the delay of the bridegroom reflects the fact that we just do not know when Christ will return, but we are called to be ready for his coming. So what can we take away from this whole passage from 24-36 all the way down to 25-13? There are three things we can take away from this passage. First of all, and this is really important, is notice this interesting combination of two seemingly contrary ideas throughout the passage. There is both the idea of the delay of Christ’s return and also the nearness or imminence of Christ’s return. The idea that Christ’s coming is delayed is implied several times in our passage.

In 24, verse 48, the wicked servant said, my master is delayed. And in the parable of the 10 virgins, in verse 5, it actually says that the bridegroom was delayed. So in verse 48, it is the wicked servant’s thought, my master is delayed. But in the parable of the 10 virgins, it is actually a fact that the bridegroom is delayed.

And this fits in with the fact that Jesus himself told us this. Jesus himself told us to expect it to be like that. Back in Matthew 24 and verse 14, he says, this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world. as a testimony to all nations and only then will the end come. Jesus has already been projecting this idea, even though he is also teaching the imminence and nearness and you got to be ready because you do not know the day or the hour, he is also been teaching that we should expect that there is going to be a period of time here. The gospel has to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. There is a period of time between the first and second coming of Christ that is more than just simply a few years. it is going to take time for all these things to develop. So much so that some people, even professing Christians in the church, might think that Christ’s coming has been delayed and they can just live how they please in the interim.

So this is the first takeaway from our text, is that although Jesus is strongly emphasizing the nearness of his coming, he also strongly emphasizes that there is a period of time and a delay that is going to be a source of temptation for us. Because of that delay, we might be tempted to grow weary. We might be tempted to be distracted and to get preoccupied with the things of this life. We might be tempted to think that he is never coming back and that we can just live as we please. That then shows us something important about the nearness of Christ’s coming, which is that the nearness is not, as I said earlier in the sermon, chronological, but rather spiritual. The nearness of Christ’s coming comes from the fact that we do not know the day or the hour. And since we do not know the day or the hour, we must live in that state of readiness and preparation our whole lives.

The second thing we can take away from this passage is that the point of this exhortation to be awake is not to be on high alert where you are just like waiting on pins and needles as if Christ could come back at any moment and you are just simply living on your tiptoes and on this state of high alert and you just are like anxious all the time.

That is not the point. Being prepared for Christ’s return is more like preparing for a wedding than staring at your phone waiting for a call. Have you ever done that, where you are just waiting for a call, and you cannot do anything because you are just staring at your phone, waiting for that call to come? But that is so intense? You cannot sustain that for too long. And we cannot sustain that for our whole lives as Christians. So it is more like preparing for a wedding, which means that we are looking forward to it. We are anticipating it.

Now, of course, the difference there is that usually you know the day when the wedding is going to be. In our case, we do not know the day when Christ is going to come back, but you still have this sense of anticipation and you are living your life in preparation for it. And you are getting ready for it. You are not just pretending that it is not going to happen and just going off and living your life as you please. You are like, no, I cannot wait for this day. The wedding day is going to be awesome.

And so you have a state of preparedness. That is why I believe when Jesus began the exhortation in verse 42 using this language of staying awake, he then transitioned to another term in verse 44. He says, therefore you must also be ready. So readiness is the meaning of being awake.

It means not assuming that your master’s absence means that you are free to do your own will and to disregard your master’s will. It means not being in a state of spiritual unawareness like all the people at the time of the flood who are just simply oblivious to what is about to happen and are just living their lives in complete disregard for God. It means not living in a state of spiritual unawareness and unthinking security.

That is easy for us. I think especially as fairly well-off Americans, right, you know, it can be easy to just focus on life, on work, and all the things of life, and entertainment, and you somewhat get lulled into unthinking security that everything is fine. Let us be aware of that. So the first thing we can draw from the text is this interesting combination of delay and imminence.

The second is that the point is not being on high alert, but rather being prepared for Christ’s return. And the third thing I want to take away from this is going back to that little phrase that we saw that I pointed out in verse 42. Therefore stay awake for you do not know on what day your Lord. is coming.

So the third thing I want to draw from this text is, what does it mean to be prepared? We said, okay, being awake and alert means being prepared. Well, what does it mean to be prepared? Or another way of thinking about it is, what does it mean to have enough extra oil on hand so that when you do, when Christ is coming, you are ready?

Well, I think it is focused on this very key idea of having a personal relationship with Christ, your Lord, your own personal Lord. Again, using the analogy that Jesus himself uses of the second coming of Christ being the day when the bridegroom comes so that we can be with him and enjoy the marriage feast with him forever. Looking forward to the marriage feast with Christ means that you are looking forward to an eternal relationship with Christ. But if that is your ultimate hope, then how can you not have that same expectation and hope now? That even now, you ought to be looking forward to the marriage feast with Christ. I think this is the meaning of having extra oil on hand. This is why it takes time. It cannot just be borrowed from somebody else. I cannot borrow your relationship with Christ and make it my own.

You have to cultivate that relationship with Christ yourself through prayer, through discipleship. The whole Gospel of Matthew is focused on discipleship, being a disciple of Christ, or using the analogy of being a servant of Christ, as Jesus himself talks about. in verse 45, being a faithful and wise servant of Christ. You cultivate a personal relationship with Christ through prayer, through discipleship, through lifelong faithfulness to Christ as his servant.

That is a hard thing to do because we do not see Christ face-to-face. And when we pray, we do not hear an audible voice from Christ coming back to us and saying, here is what I want you to do, my child? So having a personal relationship with Christ is a hard thing. It takes faith, it takes patience, it takes perseverance. It takes careful study of God’s Word.

It takes getting to know Christ through the pages of the Bible. That is what the Bible is all about. The Bible is all about Christ. It is the Bible’s there to reveal Christ to you. And so the more you read the Bible, especially the Gospels, but the more you read the Bible, the more you get to know Christ and you have that personal relationship with him. All of which is simply a foretaste of the eternal relationship that we will have with Him when we hear that cry at midnight.

Here is the bridegroom. Here is your Lord. Here is the one who loved you and died for you and gave his life for you and that you have been serving all these years. Even though it is been hard, And even though you do not have that audible voice, and even though you are not sure, because you do not see Him face to face, yet this Savior who loved you, and who loves you still, and who is interceding for you, and who has called you, and made you His servant.

And that is true for every one of you in this church, not just for the pastors and the elders of the church. Every one of you is a servant of Christ. Wherever Christ has placed you in life at this moment, He is calling you to serve Him, to be faithful to Him in that which He has given you to do. And you can only do that by faith in Christ, by resting in what He has done for you as your Savior, and by longing for that day when you see Him face to face and you go out to meet Him and to fellowship with Him forever.