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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints, the pressure’s on for you guys when the sermon is about staying awake. Jesus wants us to be ready for the last day. His business of staying awake is not a matter of not sleeping; that’s not the point. But being alert, being ready, and in a particular way, the Lord is calling us to a particular alertness and readiness, the readiness of a night watchman. That’s the parable that Jesus tells. He says the kingdom of heaven is like a man who goes on a journey, and he leads his servants, some to go about their business, but the doorman, he says, you stay awake. You are the doorman. Your task is to watch and to wait.
Now that means that the Christians should be good at waiting. We’re not. We are impatient. Our flesh is impatient, but the Lord is patient, long-suffering, not desiring for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. That’s why Jesus has not yet returned, because of that patience, but he will, and he will return soon. Now, there’s a little business in the text that I sort of want to address before we get to the main thing, and that is that this Gospel lesson from Mark chapter 13 takes us where we’ve been in the Gospel of Matthew, the same location, the same sermon from Jesus. It’s on Holy Tuesday on the top of the Mount of Olives. It’s called the Olivet Discourse. Jesus is teaching about the end, and there’s oftentimes some confusion in the text because Jesus is answering two questions.
You’ll remember the occasion. They were leaving Jerusalem, and the disciples marveled at the size of the rocks that made the foundation of the temple and that made the gates and the walls and all the whole temple structure. They marveled. “Lord, look at these stones.” And Jesus says, “Not one is going to be left on top of the other,” which kind of sets them back for a little bit. Then they get to the top of the mountain. They said, “Lord, when will these things be?” In other words, when will Jerusalem be destroyed? And what are the signs of the coming of the end of the age?
So they ask two questions: when’s Jerusalem going to be destroyed, and when are you coming back? And Jesus answers both questions all at once because the point is that we should be ready for whatever’s coming, but those two events are separated by almost 2,000 years now. We remember that Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70 A.D.; in fact, we can pin it down, the temple fell on August the 10th in the year 70 A.D. That’s why Jesus says in the text, “I tell you that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
But the second thing that Jesus is talking about, His second coming in the end of the world, the judgment seat of all people, that is, of course, yet to come. We are waiting for that, and that’s what Jesus is talking about when He says, “Concerning that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only.” So there are two days that Jesus is talking about: the day of Jerusalem’s destruction and the day of the end of the age as we know it.
But the point is, no matter what, we should be ready. We should be ready. And to be ready, we should be awake, alert, in our waiting. It’s a good time for us to consider what this means, especially in Advent, the beginning of the church year. You know, sometimes you learn things and you say, “How did I survive without knowing that before?” Well, one of those things I learned this week or last week, and that is that in Jerusalem, in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, they had two calendars. They had the secular calendar and they had the religious calendar, and the new year started at two different times. You had the Church New Year and you had the Secular New Year, which really, I just, I don’t know how I didn’t know that. I mean, the chronology was always confusing me, but this answers, this is the one big reason why it was.
But I suppose it’s just like us. We have a Secular New Year, January 1st, but we have a Spiritual New Year, the first Sunday in Advent. And I think, I think just like in the Secular New Year, when we pause and reflect on the year, and we make resolutions about how we’d like the next year to be different, I think there’s something to be done in the same way in the spiritual new year. That we consider how our lives were spiritually this last year, all the blessings that the Lord gave, all the difficulties that we had, and we say, “What will we do this next year?” That we recommit ourselves to a vibrant spiritual life, which means hearing the Lord’s word, that we recommit ourselves to opening our Bibles and studying it as individuals and as families, that we recommit ourselves to prayer, and in this way we are working, setting up our lives to be able to stay awake, to be spiritually alert.
Now what does a spiritual alertness consist of? I want to suggest very simply that it’s three things. Number one, that we hear the voice of Jesus, that we listen with one ear to the Lord’s Word. This means that we come to church and we hear the preaching, that we go to Bible study, that we as families and as individuals are students of the Lord’s Word and theologians, remembering that every Christian is to be a theologian. This is the most basic part of our Christian life, that we hear the voice of Jesus, as he says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I call them by name, and they follow me, and I lead them out.”
So that we listen to the Holy Scriptures with one ear, and then with the other ear, we listen to the world around us. We listen to fathers and mothers listen to their children, and children listen to their parents, and husbands and wives listen to one another and people listen to their pastor, and pastors listen to their people, and we listen to our neighbors too and the news that’s happening around us—that we’re listening to things, and we’re listening not just to hear what’s going on; we want to try to listen with spiritual ears. We want to always try to hear the—you know how this goes—when someone tells you something, there’s always something going on beneath what they’re telling you. We want to try to listen for that stuff, to know what’s really going on in the lives of the people that we love.
So we’re listening with the Scriptures, we’re listening to the people around us in our vocations, and then we’re combining those two things together. We’re taking what we hear and we’re putting them together in our prayers. “Lord, here’s what You’ve promised. Lord, here’s what we need. Lord, please help us. Lord, here’s what You’ve commanded. Lord, here’s where we’ve sinned. Lord, please forgive us.” Do you see this? It should be very simple, that we listen on the one hand to the Lord’s Word, we listen on the other hand to the people around us, and then we bring those together in our prayers, and that, dear saints, is spiritual alertness. That’s the life that we are called to live.
And it’s more important than ever. As the end gets closer and closer, it’s more important than ever. You guys, we have to be paying attention to the things that are happening around us, and it’s hard not to now with so many incredibly difficult things happening in the world. It’s hard not to pay attention to these, but you listen to the news as Christians, so that you can know what’s really going on and you can pray. You read the newspaper as Christians. You listen to the radio as Christians. You listen to your children and your parents and your friends. You listen as Christians, so you can know what’s truly going on, and you can pray. You can see the real need. You can see the real blessings. You can see the things that the Lord is doing, and you can pray so that we’re ready to open the door.
Because just as this watchman—remember how Jesus says it, the man who leaves and he puts the doorkeeper and says to stay awake—just as the watchman was there to welcome the Lord Jesus, so we are too. And not just on the last day, but we are the doorkeepers even as Jesus comes to us every day. We are the ones that open the door for Jesus to come into our homes, for Jesus to come into our church, for Jesus to come into the lives of our neighbors and the people around us. We’re there opening the door because Advent is not only about the promise that Jesus will on the last day come in glory, but it’s about the promise that while we wait, He continues to come to us in His Word, in His sacrament, with all of His gifts and grace and promises.
See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation. So we rejoice in this life of waiting that the Lord has given to us, because in the midst of the waiting, the Lord teaches us repentance, He teaches us patience, and He comes to us with His gifts. He forgives our sins. He calls us by name. He teaches us. He blesses us. He even feeds us, His own body and blood, with the promise of life everlasting. So may God grant us patience as we wait, and may the Lord Jesus come soon, amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.