Episode 260: Stay Awake | +Quigg Lawrence

Introduction

Good morning, friends. Good morning. Day 15 of the flu. You know how men are. It's been terrible. As bad as childbirth is what I tell people. It's terrible. I know. I know. Right? That one.

So, here's our focus verse. Stay awake. Stay awake and alert. For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Stay awake. Stay alert. The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Let's roll tape. It's my granddaughter Sage. Press the little play, she'll get more animated that way. There's a little button at the bottom, it's the play button, and you push it, and you push it. Well, if it was working, you would see a little girl like this falling asleep in her mashed potatoes or whatever she's eating.

Oh, you had it? There you go. There you go. You got it? Anyway, the point is she looks like most people I preach to every Sunday. She's fighting it. She's fighting it. She just didn't get enough sleep and she's falling asleep into her food. So what I'm gonna say right now is pinch yourself, breathe in, get your pulse ox up because we don't want you going to sleep, especially in the first two minutes while I tell you about Advent.

The Season of Advent

Okay? I get it. I totally get it. I don't want you saging out in the first two minutes. So we're in Advent, and it's a season of the church year, and it's confusing. It's a season of penitence and penitence and repentance and asking the Lord, search me, try me, and you go, why in the world do we do that? It seems totally at odds with what our culture does. Christmas decorations come right after Labor Day now. You know, it's crazy. Certainly, Halloween, they're up.

And yet, the church for years has had seasons. We mark our time by seasons. Now, before you go, I don't like that. I understand that, but I don't like what you accountants do. You guys have fiscal years. I'm a January 1 to December 31 guy, and yet some brainiac figured out to have fiscal year from what is it July 1 to I don't get that. It's confusing. My brain can't hold too many calendars at the same time.

And on top of that, the church has its own way of marking time. Right. And so, there's we have the Gregorian calendar. That's ours, January through December. We have a fiscal year calendar, and we also have the church year calendar. In the Old Testament, we actually see that there were seasons, and there were feasts.

Biblical Seasons and Marking Time

Ecclesiastes 3:1
To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to harvest; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
For everything, there is a season.

Next slide, please. That one's not really doing that well anyway.

Next slide. Next slide. Okay. Here we go.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

If you think I'm making this stuff up, we're talking about seasons. Are there seasons in the Bible? Are there ways that God's people would mark time? And the answer is yes.

Ecclesiastes 3:1
To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.

And it continues with examples: a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to harvest, and so on. It shows us that God's creation is marked by seasons.

Then, Genesis 8:22:

Genesis 8:22
While the earth remains, seedtime, and harvest, cold, and heat, summer, and winter, day, and night shall not cease.

As long as the earth endures, there are going to be seasons. Now, Virginia has how many seasons? Four. Four. Israel, you could argue, some say two, some say four seasons, but the main point is Israel has seasons.

Now, in Virginia, if I said fall, what comes to mind? Go.
Leaves.
Right. Okay. Perfect. That's great. You got, you just gotta get most of ‘em. Yeah, Thanksgiving, leaf color, football, hunting.

Winter, go.
Snow.
Colder. Right?
If you're fit and young, you ski.
Uh-huh. How about seasonal affective disorder?
Right? You start getting sad because it's dark. Kids, what do you love during winter? Go ahead, free form.
It's great. Go ahead. That's the way we do it.

Hot cocoa.
What else?
Fireplace, wood stoves, winter vacations to anywhere warm.

Okay, let's go to spring real quick. Go.
There's a tug of war between cold blustery days and warmer days.
What else happens in the spring?
Baseball.
Baseball, right?
Flowers begin to bloom. We plant our…
Yes, the world begins to slowly green back up. Leaves grow back on trees. Pollen appears and basketball, we have March.

Thank you. Last one about seasons, then we'll get to the scriptures.

Summer. What defines summer for you? Go.
Happy.
Summer break.
Break.
No school. School's out for summer.
The beach, family vacations, hot, swimming pools, all that stuff.

The Church Calendar and Its Significance

So, here's what we want to say. Just as we have seasons and we mark time, so the church is marked by time. And this season is a time where you know what? We don't set our calendars by Madison Avenue. Madison Avenue sets their calendars to make money.

The church does it so that we might be mature and fully equipped, growing into the full measure of Jesus. And so there's times for thinking people to slow down and think and say, Lord, search me and try me. Search me and try me.

Jesus, as a Jew living in Israel, lived by changing seasons, and he celebrated feast and seasons. Some of the feast Jesus celebrated were Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, feast of Weeks, feast of Trumpets, feast of Atonement. So you get the point. There's seasons.

This is how the church, even back to Israel, has marked time. The punch line as we go into our scripture.

The Call to Stay Awake

What do you say today, honey? This is what I'm saying today. What do you say? No one knows the day or the hour of Jesus' return. No one except for the Father. No one. I mean, no one.

Number two, we are commanded to stay awake and alert as we await his return. Stay awake and alert. We want to look at what that actually means.

But now, let's go to the Bible passage itself. Alright. If you have a Bible, if you'd open them, Matthew 24, verse—go to verse 36. We're going to shorten it up a little bit. Unless y'all have a problem with that. Y'all want long? Sometimes I wonder like, how long could I preach before every person left the building? Four hours, you know, the real dutiful types of it anyway.

Okay, so here we go.

Matthew 24:36
But concerning that day and hour, no one knows. No one knows.
Not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Could anything be more clear? When it says no one knows, that's what it means. No one. And yet, what's up with these freaky old white dude preachers? Started with a guy named Miller in the 1800s. A guy named Harold Camping, Pat Robertson, a whole bunch of people. They're always predicting the end of the world is going to be on this day. And every time they've been wrong, they've got a thousand percent batting average of being wrong.

The Bible says, no one knows, and so, you can throw those old charts out because the Bible says, not even the Son knows.

Matthew 24:36

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You're just like, quick, hold on. The Father and the Son are both God. Co-eternal, equal in power, and majesty, and beauty, and glory. Both are worshiped.

And yet, this verse seems to indicate that the Son is less than the Father. It says, no one knows only the Father. Well, that's a hard sentence. That's a hard truth, but we do know this. When Jesus came to earth, he wasn't fully God and wink wink man. He was both fully God and fully man. And as a man, to be fully man, he could not be omnipresent. He can't be here in California, Linda, at the same time. Right?

So, there was some limit in his earthly life, because he was fully human, and so Jesus, at this time, is saying, no one knows. It's also showing us some roles in the Trinity. Well, god is Father, god is Son, god is Holy Spirit—co-equal, co-eternal, co-majestic. There are different roles. The Father has a different role than the Son. And so, we see that here.

And Jesus is saying, hey, not only do these old weird white preachers not know it, I don't even know the date. It's kept to the Father only.

Let's go to verse 37. It says, as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

That sounds so cheery and holiday-ish until you go to Genesis 6 and you actually get a picture of what it looks like.

Matthew 24:37
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

That sounds ominous. How was it in the days of Noah? According to Genesis 6, in those days, the earth was corrupt. The earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. Sounds familiar. But apparently, this was even worse. The earth was totally corrupt and people totally depraved. They were completely unconcerned about the Lord. Sounding familiar?

The Bible says, God was sorry that he had made man. Is that one of the saddest verses of Scripture? The guy—I mean, you can imagine the delight you have when you hold your child or your grandchild. Do you know that moment? It’s a holy moment. Is there anything more exciting than that moment? And you can imagine the joy the Father had when he made us.

And yet, because of man's hardness of heart and his willful disobedience and his complete disregard for his creator, the Bible recounts sadly that God was sorry he made man. I don't know about you, but that makes me very sad.

But, the Bible says, in Noah's time, the earth was totally corrupt and depraved, but Noah found favor in God's sight.

What a weird test. Noah, I want you to build an ark. Okay, God. What's an ark? There's going to be a great flood. What's a flood? See, Noah is like this all by faith. He did what the Lord asked, and he says, but Noah found favor in God's sight.

I don't know about you, but I have these weird pictures of what it was like the day the rain started. All these people, you know, I had this in my sermon, I realized it's not in the Bible. It says all the people mock Noah. It's not in the Bible. Never says they mock Noah. They didn't care. They didn't care. They're so busy—eat, drink, sleep, comfort, doing this. But one day, the floodwaters rose, and it began.

The Bible recounts that God shut the door of the ark. And then, for those who could swim—could you imagine now the people that could not make one second of their life available to their Creator are suddenly realizing that God is holy and He's a loving God, but part of His love is also wrath against sinfulness and things that hurt people.

And so, we see these people in the times of Noah. As the waters were rising, this is conjecture, not the Bible, that they were swimming, trying to beat on the outside of the ark. It was too late. And they all drowned. They all drowned.

Verse 38, we pick it up. It says, for as in those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.

Eating and drinking, giving in marriage—Is there anything wrong with eating? Okay, if you like eating, raise your hand. I won't out you for anything else, like you like eating meat too. I love you. I love food. I love it.

People were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, giving a marriage. Is that sin? Is it? No. No. Except for the fact in the midst of those amazing gifts, they weren't even considering the giver of the gift.

And the Bible recounts this. It says in verse 39, they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. And so it's going to be with the coming of the Son of Man.

In other words, Jesus said, the flood in the days of Noah came out of left field. It came out of nowhere when it was least expected. Not only were they unaware of God, but they were unaware of when this flood was going to happen, and they were caught off guard.

He says, so it's going to be with the second coming of Jesus. The second coming of Jesus—he's not coming as a lamb to be slaughtered. He's not coming as a man to teach people this or that, to tell you how to live or about the kingdom of God. He's not going to allow wicked, sinful men to spit on him, mock him, hit him, crucify him. No.

When he comes back, he will come back as king, in glory, in power, and everyone will bow and kneel before him, to give him the honor he is due.

Verse 40 says this: that there will be two men in the field. One will be taken, one will be left. There are going to be two women grinding at the mill. One will be taken, and one will be left.

And so, here in this text, we see there is judgment from a holy God, from a loving God, from the same God who says,

If any of you are thirsty
At the very end of the book.
He says, If you're thirsty, come.

He came not to condemn, but to save.

And yet, because he loves us, he's never going to force us to love him back. Two men will be in the field, one taken, one left. And so, we're left knowing that Jesus will return. It will be like in the days of Noah, and yet we don't know when that is. And the Lord said, in the meantime, just be awake, be alert, be awake.

We're going to look in a second at what that means.

It says, verse 41, two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken, one will be left. When Jesus returns, it will be a day of rejoicing for his children. A happy day, a day of rejoicing. But for those who refuse the Lord, who were unaware of him, who never made time for the Lord, who said, I'm good, there will be a time of great sorrow because judgment is at hand.

Verse 42, it says, therefore, because the Lord is going to come back like a thief in the night, stay awake. You don't know on what day your Lord is coming.

But let me give you an example. I usually use hunting examples, and everybody goes, I don't get that. But all y'all fish sometime in your life.

Don't you remember your kid you had a Zepco 202? Right? Zepco 202, cheapest fishing rod and reel thing ever made. You got a little worm on a hook and a bobber, blue, red, and white. But remember you or your dad or your mom, somebody cast it out and you're sitting there watching the bobber. Right? And most of the time, it goes like an hour. You're watching it, and you start to get bored. And so, about the time you're starting to get bored, you think, I think I'll get myself a sandwich, or a drink of water or something. You stop looking at that bobber, you turn around to your tackle box, and you get yourself a sandwich. And the very second you turn your eye off that bobber, is the very second the fish goes boom. It happens every time.

I mean, did do this deer hunting once. Remember my dad took me to Surry County. There we were. He gets you up at some outrageous time of the morning, 3:30, to drive an hour and a half to Surry County to kill these big deer. The problem was, I've been drinking coffee the whole time, aged 11 or 12. So, I get out there, and I'm sitting on a deer stand. Sometimes I would sit on the deer stand and fall asleep. The minute I would fall asleep, a deer would jump across the path where I was hunting.

But I remember one time the coffee started to take its toll. I was at a tree, and I've been there waiting for the deer, waiting for the deer, waiting for the deer. I'm like, well, I gotta go. So, I did my stuff. The minute I turned around, unbuttoned, unhooked to do my duty, the deer came. I was sitting there with my pants and my ankles. That's the level of surprise we're talking about. He’s going to come like a thief in the night.

And so again, the main point is verse 42. Therefore, stay awake. You don't know what day the Lord is coming. But know this, if the master of the house had known what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake. He would not have left his house, broken into.

Therefore, y'all, me, us, we must be ready and must be alert.

And so, here's the question. How do we do that? How do we do that? Like, when I fish and look at the bobber, I can only do that for so many hours, and it just wears me out. Right? That's why a lot of y'all don't fish and a lot of y'all don't hunt. You get tired of waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.

So when the Lord says, stay awake, stay alert. What does he mean? I think he means something like this. As soon as your little eyes wake up in the morning, as soon as you get your consciousness, right? You say, Lord, you are Lord. I'm not. Lord, I don't know what you're doing, but I won't be part of it.

Would you take this day, Lord? Would you use me? Whether it's ministering to kids without dads, broken homes, maybe a teenager in trouble, maybe an old widow woman, like my mom was. Lord, what do you have?

Keeping alert, keeping awake is not looking at Bible charts. It's saying, Lord, this is your kingdom. This is your day. This is your time. Would you help me to invest in a way that you've called me to? Help me to walk in your ways.

Imagine if we started doing this as a church and say, Lord, this is your day. You are king. Fill my mind with your truth. That might mean actually taking time to open a one-year Bible or read a chapter a day to recalibrate. And as you read God's word, he speaks to you. And as he speaks to you, that is keeping alert and ready. You're saying, Lord, bring your kingdom here.

So at the end of the day, we want to be more like Anna and Simeon recorded in the New Testament. Anna was a widow of some eighty-something years. She said she worshiped night and day in the temple for Messiah. She never left her post. Or Simeon, an old man who knew Messiah was coming. And when they brought the baby Jesus, he said,

Lord, let thy servant depart in peace according to your word, for mine eyes have seen your salvation.

He took the child. He blessed the child. Are we going to be more like Anna and Simeon? Or are we going to be more like Sage falling asleep in our Kingdom duties?

I'm going to owe Sage a lot of money for this sermon. I think it's gone from five to fifteen dollars. Did you see that? Let that be a metaphor, a parable, an example. That's what God gets from most of his church. They were giving and receiving a marriage, eating and drinking, completely unaware that there was God.

That's not our call. That's not our inheritance.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.