[Machine transcription]
Jesus says it is like a man going on a journey when he leaves home and puts his servants
in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake.
Therefore, stay awake.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, what does Jesus mean by this command to stay awake?
He surely doesn’t mean that the Christian doesn’t go to sleep at night.
We would all be sitting every night, repenting when we wake up in the morning, rather than
thanking the Lord for keeping us safe.
What does he mean by this?
This is what we want to consider.
What does it mean to stay awake, to be ready, to be alert, to be watchful?
Because that’s what the Lord charges us with in the text this morning.
But a few things about the text, and then we’ll lean into this.
We want to remember as we begin Advent, as we finish the church year, talking about the
Lord’s return in glory.
We’re pulling the texts from the preaching
that Jesus does on Holy Tuesday.
So just a few days before the crucifixion,
it’s in fact right after the last public teaching of Jesus,
and he’s leaving Jerusalem with his disciples,
heading back over to Bethany,
which is on the other side of the Mount of Olives.
So Jesus is going out of Jerusalem,
past the temple, then down through the valley,
and back up the other side.
And as they’re leaving Jerusalem,
the disciples are marveling at the temple.
People look at these huge rocks, they say, and Jesus says, well, there’s a day coming
when not one of these rocks is going to be on top of another.
The temple will be destroyed.
And the disciples wonder about this the whole way down the valley and then back up and as
they take a break to sit on the top of the Mount of Olives and they turn around and they
look over Jerusalem, it’s this, perhaps the sun is setting, it’s a beautiful view, here’s
the limestone city, and everything looks so peaceful, and they’re thinking about this
destruction.
I don’t even wonder, just to see it in your imagination as the sun is setting, if the
sunset looks like the city is on fire and they are wondering about this, and Jesus can
even see it.
And so they ask Him two questions, it’s really important to get that there are two questions
here.
When will this be?
And, they say, what will be the sign of the coming of the end of the age?
Now they ask what they maybe think is the same question, because I think for the disciples
if Jerusalem is destroyed then the world is over.
But we know that that’s two very distinct events.
One happened already, the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D.
The other is what we’re waiting for here today, the Lord to come back in glory and Jesus answers
though the two questions together.
That’s why he says this generation won’t pass away until these things happen.
In other words, the destruction of Jerusalem will be even in your own age.
It was, what, it was 37 years later, maybe 36 in a few months, years later, that that
happened, but the coming of the Son of Man, we’re still waiting for that, for Him to come
in glory.
Now, the other thing about the coming of the Son of Man in glory that we don’t want to
miss in this text is that Jesus says that He, even He, doesn’t know the day or the hour.
The Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God who knows all things,
He is omniscient, He knows all things.
According to His humiliation,
can hide some things even from Himself.
So He can be ignorant of things
if He needs to be ignorant of things.
Like for example on the cross,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Or in the garden just a few days
after what we’re talking about here,
Lord if possible let the cup pass from me.
And here also, He’s ignorant of the day
and the hour of his return and glory,
and we don’t want to miss that,
because the Lord Jesus is the one
who reveals the heart of God to us,
and that means that if Jesus does not know something,
then we also don’t know that thing,
and we don’t need to know, and we shouldn’t know.
In fact, when Jesus is ignorant of something,
he is, it’s a good work.
It’s a good work that Jesus does
to not know the day or the hour of the second coming,
And that means it’s also a good work for us also to not know the day or the hour.
We’re not supposed to.
If we did, it would be bad for us.
So when Jesus assumes that ignorance into Himself, He also gives it to us as a gift.
And this should be the final word of all of the kind of goofy nonsense that happens in
the church where we’re trying to calculate the last day.
How much damage has been done, especially in the last century, of people that have tried
to calculate the day and the hour of our Lord’s return in glory.
It is good that we don’t know.
It’s holy and sanctified that we don’t know.
But the Lord wants us to, in that ignorance, to watch, and that’s what He sets us to today.
In fact, He gives us the beautiful picture of a doorman.
He says the kingdom of God is like a master who left the house and He put the servants
in charge to do all their work, and to the doorman, he gave specific instructions.
He said, now you, buddy, your job â I don’t know if he called him buddy, I just â you,
your job is to stay awake.
The word, sometimes, in the Old King James we translated it like this, to watch.
The Greek word there is gregaria, it’s where we get the name Gregory, it’s where we get
the word gregarious.
It means to be awake, but not the kind of you,
someone called you in the middle of the night
and they say, are you awake?
And you say, yeah, I’m awake.
It’s not that kind of awake,
it’s the sleeps out of your eyes,
your eyes are sparkling, you’re ready,
you’re paying attention, you’re alert,
you’re watching, you’re attentive.
That’s the kind of awakeness that the Lord has called us to.
Now, this happens, I think, in two distinct ways.
The first is that we have a spiritual discipline
that’s hardly ever talked about in the church,
and we should probably recover it.
Let St. Paul Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas
be the place where the conversation started again.
It’s all over the Fathers, it’s all over Luther,
and it was called watching.
When we think of our spiritual disciplines,
we mostly think of scripture reading and prayer and fasting
where we go for a time without eating.
Season of Advent is fasting season as we’re getting ready.
but there’s also the spiritual discipline of watching,
which is where you go without sleep.
When you wake up early to pray,
when you stay up late to pray.
Jesus would practice this discipline.
I think He practiced this discipline
more than He practiced fasting,
because oftentimes He would go into the wilderness to pray,
and He would pray all through the night.
That’s watching.
And we can do that on purpose,
but we can also do that on accident.
And I think the Lord calls us to this often,
In other words, here’s what I think,
I want you to think that whenever you wake up
in the middle of the night,
I know a bunch of you told me
that that happened to you last night already.
In fact, some of you were worried about this gospel lesson.
It says stay awake so many times
that you might get in trouble if you fall asleep,
especially today.
Well, Pastor, I didn’t sleep that well.
So look, when you wake up in the middle of the night,
just consider that the Holy Spirit rousing you
to the work of watching, of prayer.
Because doesn’t it happen when you wake up
in the middle of the night.
It’s not, it’s because there’s something on your mind
or maybe even more often,
it’s because there’s some body on your mind,
some body that you’re thinking about.
So let’s receive that as a gift from God
who’s calling us to this work of watching,
of praying for them,
of bringing them before the Lord and his throne of glory
and asking him to deliver them and to help them.
Who knows what the need is
and we don’t even need to know what the need is,
but if the Lord rouses you to the work of watchfulness
that you give thanks to God for that work.
And that way we can sanctify our insomnia.
And we can rejoice that the Lord wakes us up.
But there’s another way, and here I want to,
I really want to meditate on this picture
of the doorkeeper that Jesus gives to us this morning.
That we are to be an alert and a watchful and awake people.
And I want to think about this in five ways.
So five quick things to think about what it means to be awake and watchful and alert and
on guard.
Number one, it means that we’re sober.
Listen to how Paul connects these two things in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 6, therefore let
us not sleep as others do but let us watch and be sober.
Or 1 Peter 5.8, he says, be sober, be vigilant.
That’s the same word there, gregarious, but watchful, be watchful.
Your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion.
So that wakefulness means sobriety.
Now I don’t think that means not getting drunk with, being drunk with wine or beer
or whatever.
I mean, it’s not less than that, but it’s more than that.
It’s hard to be spiritually sober when you’re drunk.
So the Christian is a sober person.
The Christian is not getting drunk.
So at least that, at least that.
But it’s more than that.
The Christian is clear-minded.
The Christian is paying attention
to the things that are happening around them.
And I think this is really the second aspect
of watchfulness, is that watchfulness
involves spiritual listening,
and in two distinct directions,
that we are very careful on the one hand
to listen to the Scriptures
and to hear what the Lord is saying,
and then on the other hand,
to listen to our neighbor and to their need.
So that we know what the Lord says about things
and we know what’s happening with the neighbors
that the Lord has given to us.
We’re paying attention.
Oftentimes the watchman, the doorman,
he’s on the inside of the house and the door is locked
and so he doesn’t know what’s going on on the outside
so he has to sit and listen.
Can you hear something?
His ear is to the door to see if he knows what’s going on out there.
And so the Christian is a listening person.
Remember when Solomon prayed for wisdom, what he was actually praying for is a hearing heart,
a listening heart, so that the Lord would give to us by the Word and the Spirit that
gift of paying attention.
Especially husbands and fathers, you’re listening to your wives and your children.
And mothers and wives, you’re listening to your husband and to your children, and children,
you’re listening to your parents, grandparents, you’re listening to your grandchildren, and
you’re listening to hear what’s happening spiritually, because the key idea of the doorman
is he has to know who to let in and who to not let in, when to open the door and when
to keep it shut.
Who is it out there?
And the doorman has to be discerning.
This is the third thing about the work of listening is that it has to be a discerning
work knowing when to open and when to shut.
I think this especially comes up in Acts chapter 20.
Paul is preaching to the pastors, or maybe it’s an ordination sermon in Miletus, and
he’s warning them.
And he says, look, I’m going to leave.
This is the last time you’re going to see me.
There’s going to be false teachers from outside.
There’s going to be false teachers from inside.
And so you have to be alert and remember what I said,
that we have to be watchful and making those
discerning decisions about what’s good and what’s evil,
what’s dangerous and what’s helpful,
what’s holy and what’s unholy,
what’s right and what’s wrong,
so that we are watching with discernment.
And we don’t want to let in to the church
or to our homes or even to our own hearts
those things which are not helpful.
so that the watchman is making those discerning things.
Fourth, we are watching and we are listening
so that we might pray.
This is the chief work of watching.
I think it’s easy for us to forget this,
that we are called to a life, to an office of prayer,
but that’s most often how the Lord speaks of watching.
In fact, it’s just the next chapter in Mark chapter 14
that Jesus is, he’s not on the top of the Mount of Olives,
He’s down in the side in the garden of Gethsemane, and he’s about to get arrested and what does he tell his disciples?
Watch and pray
He goes off to pray and comes back and finds him sleeping
Could you not watch and pray with me for just one hour this the the spirit is willing
But the flesh is weak watch and pray that you do not fall into temptation so that as we are watching we are praying
We’re praying for the Lord to come, we’re praying for the Lord to deliver, we’re praying
for the Lord to rescue, we’re praying for the Lord to bless and to give wisdom and to
teach us His law and His gospel.
And that brings us to the fifth part of watching, and that is that in our watching we are thankful.
Here’s how Paul puts it all together, Colossians 4.2, continue earnestly in prayer, watching
in it with thanksgiving.
Did you get it?
Continue earnestly in prayer, watching in your prayer with thanksgiving so that the
Lord has told you the things that He’s told you and shown you the things that He’s shown
you in His Word and in your life so that you could pray and give thanks to Him.
We are not gloomy doormen, we are not fearful doorman, we are not frightened and shaking
about who’s going to knock on the door next.
No, we’re thankful doormen.
We are alert with the Spirit giving thanks to God for all the gifts that He gives to
us because even as we are sitting here waiting and watching and praying and opening the door
and keeping the door shut and opening and keeping the door shut and discerning what’s
right and wrong and living in this life, we know that one day our job will be over because
one day there will be a final knock on the door.
And it will be none other than Jesus and He’ll knock and we will open.
I think this is maybe the best part.
You know why the Lord wants you to stay awake?
It’s so that you don’t miss it.
You don’t miss His glory on the last day because on that face, on that glorious face,
on which sits the crown of the universe and which radiates the glory of God, in His right
hand is that rod of iron which rules all the nations on his face is for you a
smile and that’s how he’s coming in glory with a smile on his face to bless
you and to receive you as his own so we received these instructions from the
Lord by the word and by the Spirit this wisdom this charge and this blessing what
And Jesus says to His disciples, He says also to us, stay awake.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord, amen.
