Matthew 24: 44
Being Ready for the Second Coming

My text today is "verse 44."  It focuses not upon all the intricacies of his coming, but upon its relationship to us who live in this period between the First and the Second coming, sometimes called "The Church Age."

As we look at the text, two questions should immediately come to mind.

I. THE FIRST QUESTION IS: WHAT DOES THE LORD MEAN BY "BEING READY?"

1. Keep in mind the indisputable fact that the Second Coming will be a literal historical event.  And it will usher in a unique period of history, quite unlike the history before it.  It is not like one of those prophesies of the re-establishment of the religion of Israel which were symbolically fulfilled in the First Coming of Christ.  It will be a significant and a unique segment of history.

There is evidence within the New Testament itself that there were, even that early in church history, theologians "doing theology," (as the current expression goes).  II Timothy 2 and I Corinthians 15 suggest that there were those who interpreted the Second Coming of Christ figuratively.  And they were loudly condemned when Paul referred to them. 

2. Keep in mind our text.  Here in v.44 it says "to be ready."  In v. 42, it uses the more figurative word "Watch!" which is similar to our expression "Watch-out!"

In the Pauline literature, he promotes "The love of Christ's appearing," and calls it a "Blessed Hope," a name for the Second Coming of Christ that has especially been used in the past century in our western Christianity. 

3. This does not mean that we are to become thoroughly obsessed with it.  There are those who have made it into a main burden of Christianity, that Christ is coming , and at any moment, they say.  In the 1920's it became a phenomenon of epidemic proportions.  Bible conferences gathered and were told that Christ might come before the end of the conference, at which they were gathered.  And some speakers even "one-upped" that theme by holding out the hope that Christ might come before their message was completed.  (Indeed, some sermons may be so long that the pessimistic hearer may think that the message wouldn't end until Christ comes.  But that is a separate issue.) Back then, in the 20's, a whole system of theology and a whole strategy of evangelism was based, not on the character of God, so much as upon the fact that Christ might come at any minute.  (I used to have a colleague when I was the dean of Carver Bible College, who would rush off in a flurry of responsibility and tedious busy-ness, with what became a "benediction" of sorts, it was so much a part of his departure: "See you tomorrow, if the Lord doesn't come first!") 

4. But the balanced New Testament view is that "loving Christ's appearing," and being "ready" has a far less romantic and a far more practical effect than sky watching.

It is to live life, conscious that the present life is not all that there is.  Christ is coming!  Eternity is the main event; life is not the main event, but a "warm up" for the main event!

"Loving his appearing," "being ready," in that context is to live life conscious that Christ will come, and not losing that somewhat distant focus for one's faith.  It is to live life in such a way as to please Christ, making him the center of all thigns so that the individual could say with Paul: "For me to live is Christ!" 

Every time you show by your choices in life regarding employment, career, family, spending, that eternity is more real than time, you demonstrate that you "love his appearing" and are watching for it.  Do you ever see this future outcome of history as having a significant influence on your life and ministry in the Lord's kingdom of which you are a part?

II. THE SECOND QUESTION THAT OCCURS TO US IS: HOW COULD JESUS SAY THIS IN TERMS OF THE LONG DELAY OF HIS SECOND COMING (from then until, at least, now)?

1. The Second Coming has delayed now for a couple of thousand years.  How could those people, who heard him say this realistically "be ready," or "watch"?  And how could Jesus say these things to those people: "In an hour that you think not, the Son of Man is coming? 

Even in our day, we cannot be absolutely sure that there will not be many more thousands of years before his second coming.  We learn to be cautious as we study history and find every cultic, odd-ball sect and heresy, either predicted Christ's immediate coming or tried to make it a doctrine that he had already come with the rise of their movement which they try to make people believe is the figurative Second Coming. 

And if this is so, the truth is that we are to be cautious, and that the wisdom of history would make us cautious about rash predictions of its figurative immediacy and we would think, how could Christ seem to make it imminent in every Christian's life? 

2. Well, first of all, it must be said that it is an absolutely secret decree.  In Mark 13, Jesus said that in his incarnate, pre-resurrection state, even he, himself, did not know the timing of the Second Coming!  Presumably, this was a part of the things that he "emptied himself" of at the incarnation, as mentioned in Philippians 2: 7.

As in the matter of election, we are totally in the dark and proceed as if the matter were one which we could not know in our earthly grasp of the truth.

We live our lives as if the matter were one without predetermination.  We live our lives with discretionary planning, looking at the long ages in which Christians lived out their lives in service to Christ and in the spirit of the New Testament.  But we recognize that this also could possibly be the last generation before the Second Coming of the Lord.

3. In the Second Place, though , there is a sense in which the literal Second Coming of Christ might not occur for thousands of years from now, yet our experience of the immediate transformation of our souls from time to eternity which it will accomplish, is potentially an any-moment event. 

Warfare, natural tragedy, lawless anarchy, are things over which we have little control and which could snuff out our individual, earthly life at any moment.  Sickness, though we have learned how to drag it out to the last drop of life, sometimes still comes with a sudden pointedness that reinforces our symbolic, mythological idea of the angel of death as a grim reaper, carrying a sythe.

You would be surprised that in my career of almost 50 years of burying people, how many of them did not have advance warning of their death; and even among those who did not die instantaneously, there have been those who had surprising deaths that cut their expected life surprisingly short. 

Your life is frail and you could "go to be with the Lord" at any moment and at any day or month in your life.  And though it is not the same thing as the second coming, (because the second coming will be a historical, public event) still, there will be a kind of sameness in principle to the Second Coming when you experience death. 

Physical life will be over as far as you are concerned; what you have done in the past will have to stand as your record for all of eternity to come.  Plans of living life selfishly, or sowing wild oats later on, will come to naught.  And Christ will have come as far as you are concerned.

This is very much consistent with the viewpoint of Paul.  In II Timothy 4, he did not expect that Christ was going to literally come and save him from the somewhat dubious distinction of having been beheaded for Christ.  He clearly expected to die.  He gracefully calls it "The time of my departure."  For him, it was not that the "historical second coming of Christ" was at hand, but that the "the time of (his) departure was at hand."  For those are the words he uses in II Timothy 4: 6.

Yet, in that context, he affirms:

There is a crown, which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, shall give me on that day; 
and not to me only, but to all those who have loved his appearing."

The question then, for each of us -- in the face of our Lord's challenge -- is to examine our individual lives as to the extent to which they are lived in the light of the more metaphorical and figurative "coming" which will surely come to pass when our personal lives will end, and will become eternal, never-dying souls. 

If this present year were to be your last year before you experienced what was for you, at least, the Second Coming of Christ, would it be aptly described as "your having been ready?" as a "loving of the Lord's appearing?" 

Understand, I'm not asking if you will have been a missionary, of if you spent a whole year in prayer and Bible reading, because I don't think that is necessarily the New Testament example given unto us as the typical way to "be ready."

I am asking if this were the timing of your departure, if you have lived your year doing what you have done "as unto the Lord" (as the Pauline expression goes.)  And if you sought to obey and glorify him in all things?  And sought a life of closer fellowship with God and (not to leave traditional categories entirely untouched) to have shown concern for the spiritual welfare of those whom God has brought into your life? 

Is your life, like mine, replete with situations where you had a wonderful opportunity to do something for the Lord, which you did do, and you are continually thankful that you did what it was?  And as a result, your life is filled with gratitude that you did this or these things for the Lord.  And, perhaps, there is something in your memory that was done years ago, and it is continually a matter of thanksgiving to you.  Well, this is something of the joy and satisfaction you will have in heaven -- only that it will be multiplied by a hundred times -- that you will have for eternity at the remembrance that you, by God's grace, followed and served the Lord Jesus Christ during this little time you were here on this earth in the pre-resurrected body. 

If so, then you are one of those who have heeded the words of our Savior:

'Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of man is coming in an hour that you do not expect."