Be on Watch

 No More Delay: What Are You Waiting For | Day 12

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 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. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." Matthew 24:42-44, NIV

Peace and joy to you as this morning begins. There is a kind of waiting that leaves the heart restless, and there is a kind that leaves it glad. The difference is never the length of the wait. It is knowing who is coming. Most of us have left a porch light on for someone we love, with something warm still on the stove long past the hour it should have been put away, and none of it felt like a burden. That is the waiting this morning is about, and the one we wait for is better than we remember.

The Date Was Never Given to Us

Jesus spoke openly about his return, and he began by taking the calendar out of our hands. "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Matthew 24:36, NIV). Jesus speaks there as the Son who had laid aside the full use of his divine glory for our sake, and the point he presses is the one we need. Nobody is given the date. Christ did not leave his church a puzzle to decode. He left a promise. He will come again, visibly and in glory, at the hour his Father has appointed. That is not a reason to be uneasy. It is a reason to rest, because that day sits in hands far safer than ours.

Then he gave us a picture. "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 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. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." (Matthew 24:42-44, NIV). The thief in that picture says nothing about the character of Christ, and it was never meant to make his own people afraid of him. It describes timing and nothing more. His coming will land in an ordinary hour of an ordinary week, on a morning nobody circled.

There is one place where this touches us honestly. We assume there will be more time. More time to pray, more time to forgive, more time to say something plain about Christ to someone we love. That assumption is quiet and comfortable, and it is dangerous, not because Jesus is harsh but because delay steals opportunities that love would have used. Jesus already carried every drowsy hour of ours, forgave all of it, and left those opportunities still standing in front of us this morning.

Paul says something to anxious Christians that deserves a slow reading. "But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober." (1 Thessalonians 5:4-6, NIV). That is not a warning shouted at believers. It is a name spoken over them. Children of the light is not a rank anyone earned by staying alert. It is what God made us in Christ, and it means the day of his return is not an ambush set for us. It is a homecoming we already belong to.

The Master Comes to Serve

Jesus told another story about waiting up, and its ending is the gladdest turn in the chapter. "Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them." (Luke 12:35-37, NIV).

The servants who stayed awake are not inspected, congratulated for stamina, or handed a list of what still needs doing. They are seated. The master ties on the apron himself and waits on them at his own table. He does not arrive with a clipboard. He arrives with astonishing kindness, and we have watched him do this before, kneeling with a towel and a basin the night before he died and giving his life the next day for the people he had just served.

That same Savior has told us what he is doing at this moment. "My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (John 14:2-3, NIV). Every verb in those two sentences belongs to Jesus. He goes. He prepares. He comes back. He takes. Our hope was never that we will brace ourselves well enough for the end. Our hope is that Christ has promised to bring us home, and he has never broken a promise.

The watching he calls us to is not a score we keep on how alert we felt this week. Faith stays awake because the Holy Spirit keeps it awake, through the word and through the sacraments Christ attached his promise to. We keep watch, then, not as nervous servants listening for punishment at the door, but as loved children waiting up for someone glad to be coming. We stay in his word. We gather where he gives his gifts. We pray. We forgive. We speak his name to the person already standing near us. We live like people expecting someone, because we are.

The joy in all of this has a name, and Paul puts our whole standing on that day into one sentence. "For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him." (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, NIV). Paul is not describing a door God has closed to anyone, because our God wants all people to be saved. He is telling frightened Christians where they stand, and he grounds it in one finished fact. Jesus Christ died for us. Our place at that table was bought by his blood rather than by our vigilance, and no believer waits for that day without an Advocate. The Master is coming, and the Master who comes is the Savior who serves.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for keeping the day and the hour in your Father's hands rather than in mine, and for never asking me to calculate what you have not revealed. Thank you for going ahead of me to prepare a place, and for promising to come back for me yourself. Turn my heart away from fear and away from delay, and forgive me for the hours I have lived as though there would always be more of them.

Holy Spirit, keep my faith awake through the word and through the promises Christ attached his name to. Give me joy rather than dread when I think of that day. Give me one plain sentence about my Savior for someone standing near me before this day is over, and remind me again that my place with him rests on his death and not on my watchfulness. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Leave the porch light on today. Not anxiously, and not with one eye on the horizon, but the way anyone waits for a person they love and fully expect to see. The one who is coming already knows the hour, already knows the room he has prepared for you, and already knows your name. Tomorrow we look at the one appointment every person keeps, and at why those who belong to Christ never have to meet that day without hope.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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