“1 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.
9 Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
15 So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. 22 If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.
23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time. 26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.
27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather. 29 Immediately after the distress of those days “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
30 At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
36 No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
45 Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, “My master is staying away a long time,” 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
How do I prepare now? I’ve found myself asking that question a lot over the past few months: how do I prepare now?
I’m the pastor of a congregation. I want people to know God, open themselves up to be known by God, know each other, and open themselves up to be known by each other. How do I do that now? How do I prepare a worship service when I can’t see you face to face? That’s what I was thinking a couple of months ago. How do I prepare an event to foster knowing and being known if we are discouraged from meeting together in person? That’s what I was thinking a month and a half ago.
I’m a father. I look around at a decaying culture and I wonder how do I, as a father, prepare for whatever might come next? Let’s say the society just collapses on itself. Let’s say God has indeed decided to simply remove His hand from this nation and give it over to its desires. How do I, as a father, prepare for that? How do I prepare for the possibility of hyper-inflation? How do I prepare for the possibility of a currency collapse?
Some of you own your own businesses. You’ve doubtlessly found yourselves wondering how you can prepare for possible futures. You do you prepare if slaughterhouses are closed again? How do you prepare if there is a mandatory lockdown?
Some of you are on school boards. You’ve had to prepare a number of different plans for what school might look like. You know how draining that is.
It’s frustrating to try to prepare when the foundations have turned to shifting sand. It’s frustrating to try to prepare when everything seems up in the air.
This is our final sermon in this series thinking about the pandemic and it’s effects. Today we are thinking about preparing, but rather than thinking about preparing for what’s unknown, we will be thinking about preparing for what is known. We will think about preparing for the actual end of the world.
In our first sermon in this passage, we thought the difference between the actual end of the world and the possibility of it merely being the end of the world as we know it. It’s impossible to prepare for the possibility of the end of the world as you know it. It is, however, to prepare for the actual end of the world. Jesus tells you how to do it. Jesus tells us how to prepare for the actual end of the world. That is the claim of this sermon: Jesus tells us how to prepare for the actual end of the world.
We will see that in six points. Now six points isn’t necessarily any longer than two. Think about a piece of licorice split in two segments and that same piece split in six segments. It’s the same amount of licorice; it’s just more pieces; that’s what is going on with these six points on how to prepare for the actual end of the world.
So first point: stand firm. Second: obey God. Third: avoid needless suffering. Fourth: advance missions. Fifth: distinguish between Christ and false-Christs. Sixth: remember that God is in control. We see the call to stand firm in verses 12-13, the call to obey God in verses 45-51, the call to avoid needless suffering in verses 15-22, the call to advance missions in verse 14, the call to know Christ and false-Christs in verses 23-26, and the call to remember that God is in control throughout the chapter.
First: stand firm. You prepare for the end of the world by standing firm; verse 12, “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Others will walk away from Christ in the last days, and remember we’ve been in the last days since Jesus’ ascension. That was the burden of our last sermon on this passage. Pretty much everything that Jesus has said has been the reality throughout church history; so when I say “these last days” recognize that I could have been preaching this in Augustine’s day or in Luther’s day or in your parent’s day.
Others will walk away from Christ in these last days, but what is that to you? Jesus called you to follow him so stand firm. Others might give up hope in God’s promises in these last days, but what is that to you? God called you to live by every word that comes from His mouth. You stand firm. Other Christians you’ve trusted might spew venom and sow discord in these last days, but what is that to you? You have been called to love your enemies by the one who died to save his enemies. You stand firm.
Stand firm today. Stand firm tomorrow. That’s how Jesus told his original disciples to prepare for his second coming and that’s how he tells us disciples to prepare for his second coming.
Standing firm, at times, will involve standing alone; as Jesus put it, “the love of most will grow cold.” There will be times when you say with Elijah, “they have rejected Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and put Your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” When you stand firm, it will, at times, seem like you are standing alone. In those moments, you will most likely find that what was true for Elijah was true for you, “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
Now if it never feels like you are standing alone in these last days, then perhaps you need to consider the possibility that your spirituality has become simply room temperature. Perhaps you have become part of the “most” in Jesus words, “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” Perhaps as the wickedness of this culture has come nearer and nearer to the boiling, you, like the proverbial frog in the pot, have heated right along with it. If so, repent. Stand firm.
You stand firm by way of love for God. If, as Jesus put it, “the love of most will grow cold,” you stand firm by way of love. You love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. You don’t stand firm by falling into a rigid way of thinking which highlights the 1950’s, or the age of the Puritans, or the age of the Reformation as the golden era to which we must return. You stand firm by loving God with all you are and have in this year and culture in which God has chosen for you to live.
You stand firm by thinking about the next age. In the midst of the culture wars, we tend to think that standing firm is primarily about this age. We think we stand firm by refusing to give an inch in this age. There is something to that, of course, but you cannot continue to stand firm by focusing only on this age. You can only persevere by turning your eyes upon the age to come. That’s what the men and women in Hebrews 11 did; they longed, “long[ed] for a better country [than any to be found or won in this age]. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” You stand firm in these last days by thinking of that city.
So, if you want to prepare for the end, make it your business to stand firm. Also, obey God. That’s our second point: obey God. If you want to be ready for the end, don’t try to predict the end; just obey God in what He puts in front of you today. Live out God’s commandments in the context in which He has placed you. That is what is going in verse 45, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.”
That servant prepared for the master’s return by doing what his master commanded. That is manageable and it is a manageable way to prepare. Stop worrying and fretting about the future; simply obey God in what He puts in front of you today. A mother prepares her children not by worrying about what sort of world they will live in, but by doing them daily good as God commands her today. Tomorrow has enough trouble of its own. Obey today.
Obedience is a necessary way to prepare for the end because when the end comes, the judge comes. In verse 48, Jesus imagines a servant who doesn’t take that judgment seriously; ‘suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, “My master is staying away a long time,” and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of.’
The master is returning, and he will expect an accounting of how you have behaved in his absence; “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” writes Paul, “so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” If you want to be ready for the end of the world, obey God today.
If you want to prepare for the end, stand firm and obey God. Jesus says that you would also be wise to avoid needless suffering. That’s our third point. Thinking about the coming destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, Jesus urged the people to flee; verse 16, “let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak.”
When God’s wrath fell upon Jerusalem, Jesus urged his followers to get out of the way. The angel did the same with Lot when wrath fell on Sodom. Lot and Lot’s wife are a helpful case study in avoiding needless suffering.
Lot lived, in many ways, as a righteous man in an unrighteous culture. He suffered as a result of his stands for righteousness, but he avoided needless suffering. He fled when God’s wrath fell. This distinction between suffering for righteousness and avoiding needless suffering as the wrath of God falls might become much more important in our culture if God removes His hand completely.
Lot’s wife suffered the wrath of God along with the culture because she was in love with the culture. She wasn’t judged by God for simply looking back. She was judged because even though her body left Sodom, but her heart never did. She didn’t avoid needless suffering.
When the wrath of God fell upon Jerusalem, those who choose to stay would suffer like Lot’s wife. That was needless suffering said Jesus. Avoid needless suffering in the places in which you see the wrath of God falling upon our own nation. There is suffering for righteousness’ sake and there is suffering because you love what the world loves. Be willing to suffer for righteousness’s sake. Be unwilling to like Lot’s wife.
If you want to prepare for the end, stand firm, obey God, and avoid needless suffering. Jesus also tells you to advance missions. That’s our fourth point: advance missions. If we take the return of Jesus seriously, we will call others to prepare themselves. This is called missions and you can’t think about the end of the world without thinking about missions; verse 14, “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Many have taken Jesus’ words in this verse as a call to end the world by way of missions. They reason that since the gospel must go out to the entire world before the end comes, we should send the gospel to the entire world to bring about the return of Christ. I don’t think that is the thrust of Jesus’ words here.
I think Jesus wants us to be busy with missions until his return. I’ve been reading through missionary biographies over the past five years. I recently finished Henry Martyn’s and here’s what he had to say; “the Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to him, the more intensely missionary we become.” If he’s right, I need to ask myself how near to Christ I am getting. As I think about the future, I need to ask myself if missions is anywhere in my own agenda. We, as a church, need to ask ourselves about the place of missions in our agenda.
Jesus says that this is a non-negotiable part of preparing for his return, but we tend to dismiss it. When the future father of modern missions William Carey was a young pastor, he stood up at a church meeting to argue for the importance of overseas missions. An older pastor told him to sit down; the older man said, “Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He’ll do it without consulting you or me.” Now given our emotional distance from that argument we can see that, that pastor’s theology was problematic, but each of us must ask ourselves if our priorities were more like that older pastors or like Carey’s. If you want your priorities to be more in line with Carey’s, listen to him; “is not the commission of our Lord still binding upon us? Can we not do more than we are now doing?” That’s a question for me, “is not the commission of our Lord still binding upon me? Can I not do more than I am now doing?” Think of the different missions we support as a congregation. Think of your involvements. Perhaps that is a question for you; can you not do more than you are now doing?
If you want to prepare for the actual end of the world stand firm, obey God, avoid needless suffering, advance missions, and, Jesus says, know the difference between Christ and false-Christs. That’s our fifth point: know the difference between Christ and false-Christs. There is a good deal that masquerades as Christlike that has nothing to do with Christ. Jesus said to beware; verse 23, “At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.”’
You need to be able to differentiate between what is of Christ and what is not of Christ. This is clearly difficult because as Jesus said, “false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.”
There are any number of teachers who speak in the name of Christ, but whose messages are actually opposed to Christ. They have much more in common with the spirit of this age than the spirit of Christ. You need to be able to tell what is of the beast and what is of the Christ, and it is difficult. It is far more difficult than simply labelling our enemies as demonic; it is about knowing Christ well enough to be able to know what he favors and what he opposes in real time; in order to even begin doing that we must acknowledge how little we are like Christ and how very much we all enjoy judging those with whom we disagree. We are never warned to beware of those who are anti-us. We are warned to beware of those who are anti-Christ.
You can only differentiate between Christ and false-Christs by knowing Christ. You know him by way of his word. Bible studies are not outdated. This is how you know Christ. You also know him by way of obedience. Any teaching or movement that is uncomfortable talking about obedience or about the law of God is not of Christ.
You differentiate between Christ and false-Christs by what is present and absent. Is the priorities and realities present in Scripture present in this or that teaching? Right now in many cultural conversations the concept of sin is very present but there is no concept of salvation. The concept of original sin is present, but there is not possibility of atonement. That’s not of Christ. In these last days, you need to be able to differentiate what is of Christ and what is not.
If you want to prepare for the actual end of the world stand firm, obey God, avoid needless suffering, advance missions, know the difference between Christ and false-Christs, and remember that God is in control; that’s our final point. These signs of the end and these acts of preparation for the end are not meant to frighten us. They are meant to remind us that this is all part of God’s plan; as verse 8 puts it, “All these are the beginning of birth pains.”
It’s strange; we tend to consider the end times when everything seems out of control, but Jesus tells us about everything being out of control beforehand so that we will know that isn’t out of control. It is under God’s control. This should give you peace. As Calvin put it, “nothing is more effective in bringing us to control ourselves than to recognize that the greatest apparent confusion is restrained by the authority of God.”
Jesus didn’t seem too alarmed by the end as he spoke about it. He also wasn’t too alarmed as he suffered the worst of what is part of the end. He was persecuted. The love of many around him grew cold. He suffered great distress. What did he do? He stood firm. He obeyed God. He was willing to suffer for righteousness, but he didn’t suffer needlessly. He advanced missions. He knew what was of God and what was of the devil. He did what he called you to do. In a way, you prepare for the end by becoming more like Jesus.
Jesus also knew it was all in his Father’s control. “This is my Father's world: o let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet. This is my Father’s world, the battle is not done: Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.” That’s how it will end. Remember that as you prepare. Amen.