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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Haven’t we had the natural disasters as of late? Like in the last five years at least. Think about it. Just recently the tornado tore through east of here, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and destroyed so many homes and businesses, and changed forever the landscape of that city. Not just there, north of here, Joplin, Missouri. The catastrophic situation that happened there with the tornado that came through. Interesting times, indeed, are we find ourselves in.
Well, we can’t live here and not think about the hurricanes that have destroyed many things along the Gulf Coast. Don’t forget the recently one that flew up the Atlantic seaboard, wrecking its havoc upon all the people there. And then there have been the fires because of the drought here in Texas. But not just here, across the Southwest. Arizona and New Mexico, too, have had their shares of forest fire. Who’d have thought Oklahoma would have an earthquake? And Washington, D.C.? And yet they have happened, as well as Japan. Hmm. Indeed, we live in interesting times.
But these things that we have seen transpire before our eyes, that we can’t help but notice, have been happening and have been viewed and observed by Christians around the world for thousands upon thousands of years. They have been God’s way of saying, Stay awake, be ready, for you know not the hour nor the day when I will come, for you and for the church.
Now, interestingly enough, the church knows that Christ will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. We confess that as the body of Christ here. But Judgment Day could still happen to you and to me today. The day when God says, Okay, you’ve played in the sandbox long enough. Come home. It’s time to come in. That time may come today for you and for me. We think in chronology, thinking, well, it doesn’t happen until we get much older, more feeble, more frail. And yet you and I know all the examples of people who have died, children whom God said, that’s all, it’s time to come home.
These signs that we have seen and will continue to see have been a gift, really, from God to us so that we don’t focus upon the things in this world. That we see our life more as a passing through on our way to the promised land. And everything about this world is breaking, crumbling, failing, dying, coming to no more. And yet, we have to wait. And it’s that waiting part that’s kind of difficult.
Consider the people of Israel. For hundreds of years, God allowed them to be in Egypt. They were enslaved. They were bound. And then God raised up Moses and said, okay, it’s time. And with miraculous signs and wonders did he deliver the people of Israel, the church, through the Red Sea and how it opened up for the people of Israel and enclosed for the soldiers of Egypt. How God fed them every morning and every evening. How God allowed their shoes never to wear out and their clothing never to wear out during that 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. And how God did bring them to the promised land flowing with milk and honey.
And how God had to use them to move people around and change the power makeup of that part of the world for them to settle there. But how God took care of them in that waiting period. Put yourself in their shoes. We have a lot in common with them. They left what they knew according to their reason and senses to begin their journey not toward anything that their reason and senses could grasp at all.
That there would be a place that they were to live at that was flowing with milk and honey, though they had a secure life here. Like you and me, living in this world. There are many things that say, this is pretty secure. Why would we want to risk to do something different?
And do you remember after they had been delivered with those miraculous wonders and miraculous signs during their 40 years of wilderness journeyings, they didn’t daily say, unbelievable God, how you’ve provided for us each day, how you have taken care of us. No, instead, they like we, they grumbled. Does not God take care of us each and every day? Did He not deliver us with great miraculous signs and wonders? And do we not grumble at the manner in which He leads us through this wilderness until we go home? Yes, indeed, we do.
We are tempted to be attached to this world from which we have been freed. Now that seems crazy. Why would a person who has been freed from something that oppresses them want to go back to the very thing that oppressed them? Yeah, there’s all kinds of reasons, but regardless of all the different reasons, you and I can say, verily, verily, I am he and I am she who does grumble, does see God’s deliverance and still grumbles, is fed God’s deliverance and still grumbles. Yes. And complains.
This waiting in which we’re a part of right now, of which the gospel writer Mark tells us what Jesus said to us about it. It’s a messy thing, this waiting. It was messy for the people of Israel as they were led. It’s a messy thing for the church. We cry out as what’s said on that pyramid. Oh, come, Emmanuel. Come. Deliver us. Rend the heavens, as the choir sang. And come down. Because we get tired of it. Very tired of it. The people of Israel grew tired of quail and manna and grumbled.
But in the meantime, what God has done is an amazing thing. Jesus said in the Gospel reading, it’s like a master who goes away and puts his servants in charge, each with their own work. That’s you and me. We’ve been given charge, put in control. Now, the things of which he’s given us to be in charge of are not earthly matters, but of the Gospel. We’ve been given the charge to be used by him to spread this gospel that changes lives. It changed yours. You’ve seen it change other people’s lives. We’ve been given the charge of carrying that to other people.
That’s our job. That’s what the Master left us to do. And we don’t do it to good, do we? Because we act as if it’s not the promised land to which we’re going, but it’s what matters here in this world that is important. We don’t encourage one another to see beyond the transiency and the temporalness of this world, to see the eternal things of which we are called, of which we participate in regularly, to open our eyes to see it’s not about this world and about the things or the accolades of this world, but about something bigger than this world.
The people of Israel, as they were led out, all they could remember was, wow, back in Egypt we had at least a stable and predictable life. This life that you’ve called us to now, God, in this wilderness, is unpredictable. We don’t know where we’re going the next day. Didn’t they know where they were going? Don’t you know where you’re going? If you know where you’re going, then you know where you’re going. It’s not unpredictable. The unpredictability is really the waiting time, the messiness of waiting.
Isn’t it interesting, the most difficult task that our parents tried to teach us from a little baby on is to be patient. And it doesn’t seem to change as we grow older, does it? We still are impatient. We have a lot to be repentant of coming into contact with what Christ is proclaiming to us in this Gospel reading. Repenting of loving this world too much and not loving where we’re going more.
The things of this world are passing. Egypt is gone. Let it die. God could have said to the people of Israel, this world will die. Let it go. God is saying to you and to me now, what you have now, you may not have tomorrow. Your health now may be gone tomorrow. The health you don’t have now may be restored tomorrow. The money you have now may be gone tomorrow. The money you don’t have now may be given to you tomorrow. But you know where you’re going. You know who’s provided for you. You know who’s brought you through all of these things in this wilderness in which we find ourselves now as we wait with these miraculous signs and wonders that He’s done among us, in us, through us.
You and I have been praying a specific request of God. And we’ve been asking Him this for decades for some of us. And this request that we’ve been asking of God, He’s been answering. And sometimes we see it clearly before our eyes, and sometimes we’re completely oblivious to this answer to our prayer.
This prayer that you and I have been praying for decades, of which God has revealed to us at times and hidden it from us, not because of His fault, but because of our own sin, is this one short phrase that we’ve been praying. Thy kingdom come! Come! Come! It’s just that the coming isn’t always realized by us. We see it come. We’ve experienced its coming. We’ve seen it come and have seen it in other people’s lives. And yet, we forget that ultimately He will come again with glory.
And our life may come to an end today. We live as if this world is all that there is. And that there isn’t a promised land flowing with milk and honey awaiting us. We need to repent, for we fear the loss of things in this world, and don’t embrace that which is ours now in Christ. Remember we discussed that isn’t it unusual that someone would return to what binds them and holds them and enslaves them quicker than to flee toward the freedom of which we’ve been given.
The people of Israel did and struggled with it, and we’re just like them. Moments we are completely confident of what we’ve been freed from and what this world is going to be and yet, yet a breaking of a twig or a rustling of a leaf and we’re fearful, fearful of losing something in this world whether it is something that is material or whether it is something that has to do with our person—we’re fearful. Why?
And all these things that the servants have been given, each with his own work, we hearken for somebody else’s work to accomplish. We hearken for somebody else’s job and not our own. We feel like, Lord, you gave me this job, but this isn’t really for me, because it’s not glory-filled enough. It needs to be something more fabulous. This is too mundane. This is too beneath me. And yet he’s given us those kind of things to accomplish in this world as we wait.
We need to repent today. For the things that he’s given us to do are very mundane and very servant-like, not very glory-filled, and yes, beneath us as we perceive it, but not as God perceives it. Why is it we shirk our responsibility in a gift? Why is it we hearken for the flesh pots of Egypt as they did? We need to repent. For we forsake the freedom that we’ve been given in this world for the bondage of the things of this world.
This world has tentacles, tentacles unlike we’ve ever seen or experienced in plants or otherwise, that enrapture us and hold us tight. And it is Christ who frees us from these. We have been freed from those tentacles. Why is it then we still wish to be embraced by them? Because it’s security according to our mind and reason. And not freedom according to the faith that he’s been given us.
Paul, in this morning’s epistle lesson, says it beautifully as a summary. Listen again. I give thanks to my God always for you, he says with great love toward these Corinthians, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. What God has done in you, he’s thanking God for. And that in every way, not in some, not in partial, in every way you were enriched in Him. In all speech and in all knowledge. You’ve been given this freedom, he’s saying. I’m rejoicing because you have it. Even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you.
He’s seen it. We’ve seen it in one another. And now we are to encourage one another. But why and how? Why? So that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait. We’ve been given all that we need during this waiting time. There is nothing more that needs to be added during this waiting time. It is living out our faith during this waiting time. It is doing the things that God has given us to do during this waiting time, which isn’t always fun, and it isn’t always glory-filled, but it is the things He’s chosen specifically for you, not for anybody else.
At the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the revealing, who will sustain you to the end. Thanks be to God, because you and I get weary, and we sometimes feel like we’re floundering or overwhelmed, and He promises He will sustain us to the end. The very one who has put us in charge, the very one who has given us each His work, is the very one who will sustain us during this wilderness journey upon which we find ourselves. He will also sustain us to the end guiltless, forgiven, freed from the bondage of sin and guilt and shame and questioning. Have we done enough? Have we not done enough? Are we the right way? Are we not the right way? Guiltless! God be praised for such good news.
God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Notice Paul does not say, Be faithful! He reminds us God is faithful. Jesus has already said clearly enough in the Gospel reading what those things are. And Paul adds, God’s faithful, the one who called you, will bring it about. Just as Moses kept telling the people of Israel, the promised land is coming, the promised land is coming, remember the miracles, remember the wonders, remember the signs, how you were delivered from the hand of bondage. That is what is proclaimed here. That is what we encourage one another with.
As we get tired and messy waiting in which we find ourselves, live as a people freed from such things because God is faithful. He will sustain you to the very end, whether it’s today or whether it’s 50 years from now. In the name of the one who called you, enlightened you, and sanctified you, Jesus Christ, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
