Be on Guard - Part 2

[0:01] Our scripture reading this morning is from the book of Mark, chapter 13. This is our, we call this part two because we've been in the book of Mark, chapter 13.

[0:14] We were there last week and this week. And all of 13 has to do with strange, apocalyptic visions, things that are somewhat confusing. You remember I said last week, the best way to read this is not to say, I'm going to stay here until all of my questions are answered.

[0:30] It's to ask what's most important in the passage. What does Jesus most want us to see here? And that's a question we're thinking about as we begin to read. So we're going to read starting at verse 24.

[0:44] Mark 13, verse 24 to the end of the chapter. But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.

[0:59] And the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heaven will be shaken. And then they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

[1:10] And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heaven. From the fig tree, learn its lesson.

[1:21] As soon as its branches become tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates.

[1:37] Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away. But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son of Man, but only the Father.

[1:54] Be on guard, keep awake, for you do not know when the time will come. 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.

[2:08] Therefore stay awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.

[2:20] And what I say to you, I say to all. Stay awake. Amen. This is God's word. Now, oftentimes when preachers talk about the end times, the conclusion is always the same.

[2:34] They ask this question, Are you ready? Are you ready for Jesus to return? And oftentimes what they mean by that is, Have you been saved? Have you given your life to Jesus?

[2:47] Have you asked Jesus for forgiveness? And has he forgiven you? Can you point to a time in your past that shows that you're a Christian? And that's an important question.

[2:59] But I think that Jesus in this passage, he's asking a slightly different question, which is, I think, more searching. And the question is this, Are you living ready?

[3:12] Are you living ready? So it's not a question about your past and what you've done in the past. It's a question about who you are today. So in the second half of Mark 13, what we just saw, Jesus is talking about the end of the world.

[3:27] And he's talking about his return. And more than that, he tells us that one of the marks of a Christian, one of the marks of what it means to be a disciple of Christ, is that a disciple of Christ is someone who is on guard.

[3:43] They're someone who prepares for the end of the world. We saw that last week. I said last week, the clear theme of Mark 13 is be on guard. That's Jesus' message to his disciples and it's good from the moment that he ascends into heaven until he returns again.

[4:02] Be on guard. Be prepared. And what we're going to see in this passage is three reasons Jesus gives us to be on guard when it comes to the end of the world.

[4:12] And that's what we're going to look at this morning. Three reasons Jesus gives us to be on guard. And the first reason is this. We need to be on guard because the end of the world gives the world meaning.

[4:25] The end of the world gives the world meaning. You know, in our society, that may not come as a surprise to you, but in our society, more and more, that's becoming a countercultural statement because some of the loudest voices in our society, whether they be scientists or philosophers or politicians, they tell us that the world has no meaning and that the proof of that is in the way that the world will end.

[4:50] So you've got scientists who will tell us, they guarantee us how the world will end. They will say, at some point in the future, humans are going to go extinct. And then some point well beyond that, the sun is going to go out.

[5:03] This universe will collapse on itself and everything that has been, all of our advancements in technology, all of our philosophy, everything about who we are, the people that we've loved, all of that will just vanish.

[5:14] And it will show that everything that we have been and everything that we will be is meaningless, is meaningless. That's what we call a materialistic worldview.

[5:26] It's a worldview where you judge the world by what, only by what you can see and by what you can touch. Now that worldview is all around us, whether you realize it or not.

[5:40] It's in the TV shows that we watch. It's in our education system. It's in the way policymakers make policy. And it's seen as the rational way to approach the world.

[5:53] And it's tempting because it's something that we can all agree on. You know, it's hard for humans to agree on anything. But what we can agree on, hopefully, is what we can see and what we can touch. But there's a danger when you take that worldview, which is so popular around us, to its logical conclusion.

[6:11] Because if the world is only what you can see and only what you can touch and only what you can sense with your five senses, then that means that what we are, what you and I are, is just the random coming together of molecules.

[6:26] And life has no meaning. Love is an illusion. There is no such thing as truth. Justice is not real.

[6:37] Beauty is not real. At most, all of these things that seem so real to us, they're just feelings. They're not real. By the way, this also feeds another popular idea in our culture right now, which is the idea that all truth is relative.

[6:55] Because if justice and truth and beauty are nothing more than feelings, then truth is whatever you make it is. You can't find truth out there.

[7:06] Truth is something you have to produce within yourself. And that's where we get the term, my truth from. You know, to speak my truth, what someone is saying is there's no such thing as objective truth.

[7:16] The only truth is what I determine it is. I determine my identity. I determine who I am and what is right and wrong. There's no God out there that shows me what's right and wrong. And what Jesus does in this passage is he comes to us at the beginning of the passage and he says, that's not the way the world is.

[7:36] Our world has meaning and it's not a meaning that you produce within yourself. It's a meaning that you find out in the world. It's a meaning that God gives to us.

[7:48] In verses 24 to 27, which is the first section, Jesus tells his disciples what the end of the world will look like. He says, the sun and the moon will go dark, the stars will fall from heaven, and the Son of Man will come in power and glory to gather up his elect.

[8:05] And there's a lot of mystery here. There's a lot that I don't know about this passage. But I want to focus on one thing that those few verses do tell us about the end of the world.

[8:15] One thing that we can say for certain that these verses tell us is that Jesus, Jesus will be the fulfillment of history. Jesus is the reason for history and he will be its fulfillment.

[8:28] And here's what I mean by that. If you were to study these first few verses, 24 to 27, one of the things that you would realize is that almost every word that Jesus says here is not original.

[8:41] He's quoting the Old Testament, pulling passages together and quoting them. And just to give you one example, the most important example to me right now is Daniel chapter 7, which is maybe the most important chapter of the Bible that you might have never heard of.

[8:56] And in Daniel chapter 7, God gives Daniel a vision. And it's just two verses, so I want to read it because it tells you what Jesus is trying to say here.

[9:08] So Daniel has this vision in chapter 7 where he says this. He says, I saw in the night visions. That sounds eerie, doesn't it? I saw in the night visions. Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man.

[9:22] So that's what Jesus just quoted in verse 27. There came one like a son of man. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him and to him, to the Son of Man, was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all the peoples and all the nations and all the languages should serve him.

[9:43] His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. And his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. So Jesus is quoting Daniel chapter 7 for a reason.

[9:56] And what he's saying is he's telling his disciples that he is the one that Daniel was talking about. He is the one that Daniel said would come on the clouds and would receive from God an eternal dominion.

[10:13] So Jesus is saying at the end of the world Jesus is going to return and he's going to be given an eternal kingdom. Now, why does that matter? It's significant, right?

[10:24] But why does it matter to us? Well, when you read the Bible and what the Bible says about what Jesus will do when he comes, Jesus is returning to set everything right.

[10:37] When he comes, he will judge the world. He will set every right, wrong. He'll restore everything in the cosmos that's out of joint. John puts it like this, that he'll wipe away every tear of his people.

[10:51] You know, one of the laments of the Old Testament, one of the cries of God's people when you read the Psalms is where is God? Where is God?

[11:03] Does God see? Because there is so much evil in the world. Does God really, does he see this? Because he's not acting. And that question is as painful to us as it was 2,000 years ago to God's people.

[11:20] and the end of the world, Jesus' return, is the promise that God sees because Jesus says, one day, Jesus says, one day he is going to come back and he's going to be given all the power and all the authority and he's going to set the world right.

[11:38] So the end of the world for a believer is good news. It's something to look forward to with hope. And that's especially relevant. You know, Jesus in the first half of chapter 13, he's been talking about how painful it will often be for Christians in the time between his going up into heaven and his coming back.

[11:59] Remember, we saw last week, Jesus said, there's going to be, you're going to be taken before judges. They're going to beat you. Many of these disciples will be martyred. It's going to get really bad for God's people at different points in history.

[12:14] And so Jesus, he says that, but then he says, but be on guard because I'm coming back. So it's hope. It's hope in the midst of the pain. And that's why there's, I think this fig tree analogy is really interesting.

[12:28] He talks about the fig tree in the next few verses. And what he's saying is, he's saying, I'm going to come back. And he uses a line here where he says, when you see these things take place, you know that he is near at the very gates.

[12:50] You know, Jesus has been talking about the suffering that his disciples are going to go through. And then he says, when you see these things, then you will know that Jesus is near. And it's a way of saying, in the midst of your suffering, can you see that Jesus is going to return?

[13:03] And then he's going to come and make everything right. Now, you know, when you're a soldier in battle, being on guard is, I've never experienced it. When I hear people talk about it, it's an awful thing because there's nothing going on.

[13:18] And yet you have to keep yourself totally alert. You can't lose focus. And so I've heard of soldiers talking about how the duty may not last long. It could be a couple of hours when they're on guard.

[13:32] And yet they come off of it and they're completely exhausted because you're living in this tension of knowing the enemy is right around the corner or could be and you can't look away. And for a Christian, it's almost the opposite because what you're looking for over the corner is not the enemy, but it's your army coming to rescue you.

[13:52] And so when Jesus says, be on guard, it's not always bad news. Part of it is saying, listen, you need to anchor your hope to this. You need to anchor your hope to the fact that Jesus is going to return and he's going to come and he's going to make all things new.

[14:08] It's good news. And that means that this life is not meaningless, that you can pursue goodness and truth and justice and beauty and you can fight temptation and evil and those are not figments of your imagination like some people say that they are.

[14:24] There is something called truth. There is something called justice and it's worth fighting for. And we can say that because Jesus will come and he will make and set things right.

[14:37] The end of the world, let me put it like this before I go on to the next point. The end of the world is part of the gospel. You know, it's not just that you're forgiven of your sins. It's that Jesus is going to come back.

[14:48] That's part of the gospel. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Right? So that's one reason to be on guard is because well, I forgot why.

[15:04] Because the end of the world gives this life meaning. But let me give you a second reason to be on guard. It's because we don't know when Jesus will return. That's Jesus' main point in the last few verses of this passage.

[15:18] And he says we don't know when he will come back. And he almost guarantees that when Jesus comes back it will be a surprise to us. So you can't guess it.

[15:29] But when he comes back you'll know it. You'll know it without a doubt. In fact, Jesus says the end is such a closely guarded secret that not even Jesus knows when Jesus will return.

[15:43] You saw him say that. Not even the sun knows the hour. And there's been a lot of ink spilt over these words. How can Jesus, how can the son of God not know when he's going to come back?

[15:54] Because he's God, right? Doesn't God know everything? And Jesus is God? And people have wondered about that question but I think there's a really, there is an answer to this that the Bible gives us.

[16:06] And it's this, that in order to become man, well let me go before that, in order to save us, Jesus had to become a man. And in order to become a man, Jesus couldn't become like a man.

[16:21] He had to become a man. And that means that he had to take on himself all of the limitations that go along with being a human being. You know, we just talked about some of those with the kids.

[16:32] One of them is that you have a body, you're limited in space. But another one is that Jesus took on himself a human mind. You know, listen to this because I'm going somewhere with this.

[16:42] He took on himself a human mind which is that, which means that Jesus, there were things that Jesus did not know. Remember there was a woman who touched his robe and he said, who touched me? And it says here, he doesn't know when he will return.

[16:58] And I think if you think about that long enough, there's a tremendous encouragement there because it means that Jesus knows what it is like not to know. And isn't that one of the hardest parts of being a human being?

[17:14] Living with the unknown, looking out into the future and not seeing what is out there. And when you pray, you know, isn't it so often sometimes we say, if God would just tell me such and such, if he would tell me what to do here or if he would reveal this to me, then I could relax and God doesn't do that.

[17:36] But, you can pray to Jesus Christ and you can say to Christ, Lord, you know what it is like not to know. And so you know how I'm struggling with this right now.

[17:49] That's a tremendous encouragement. But, I think some people might say, well, that still doesn't answer the question. Because even though Jesus didn't know when he was going to return, couldn't God have told Jesus when he was going to return?

[18:03] Couldn't God have said, alright, Jesus, you're about to be crucified. Here's when you're going to come back so you can let everyone know. Why didn't he do that? And I think the simple answer is this.

[18:13] I always keep this phrase in my back pocket and I think it's biblical and true that God keeps us on a need-to-know basis. God keeps us on a need-to-know basis. I get that from Deuteronomy 29, 29.

[18:28] God puts it like this. Moses says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants forever so that we might obey all the words of this law.

[18:42] The secret things belong to our God, but the revealed things belong to us. And that's saying there are some things that God knows that he could tell us, he could tell us, but he has chosen not to tell us.

[18:54] And that sounds very stingy at first. God keeps us on a need-to-know basis. But if you think about it, there's actually a promise being made here, which is this, that everything you need to know to be who God has called you to be, God has revealed to you.

[19:11] He's given you all the tools in the tool chest that you need to be the person that God has called you to be in this life. You know, so often we think it's hard to be faithful in this season.

[19:23] I need God to give me this, or I need God to reveal this to me so I can understand. And the Bible makes this promise that you have exactly what you need.

[19:33] And that was even true of Jesus. Jesus, if he didn't know when he was going to return, what that means is that knowledge was not necessary to his mission.

[19:44] He didn't need to know it. What's amazing to me is that he did know what he did know, that he was going to have to go to the cross and that with that knowledge he chose to keep going forward anyway.

[19:59] So let me ask this, what does it look like to stay on guard in light of the fact that we don't know when Jesus is going to return? Two things really quickly. One, we've got to learn to be satisfied with the not knowing.

[20:12] We talked last week about how Jesus says it's going to be tempting to look for signs of the end of time. You're going to want to look for signs.

[20:24] You're going to see people who call themselves the Messiah and you're going to want to go towards them. And Jesus says you've got to be satisfied not knowing because you won't know. But more importantly, how do you stay on guard when you don't know when Jesus is going to come back?

[20:42] You don't look at the calendar. You look at the Father. You know what Jesus says here? He says, the Son doesn't know. No one knows when He will return. But the Father knows.

[20:54] He says that in verse 32. The Father knows. And so part of what faith is, part of what faith is living in this season of unknown is continually going to the Father and saying, Father, there's so much that I don't know, but You know.

[21:09] And so I rest in the fact that I can trust You and I can look to You in this season of not knowing. You know, when we pray for our daily bread, a lot of people think what we're praying for is literally just that God will put food on our table.

[21:22] But what we really mean when the people who wrote it, what they meant was we're praying that God will give us everything that we need today to be who God has called us to be.

[21:35] So yes, that includes the sustenance that we need, but that He'll give us the community that we need, that He'll give us the words and Scripture that we need. Give us our daily bread means give me exactly what I need today.

[21:49] And that's what we look to when we look at the Father. That's what it means to trust in the Father. So be on guard because we don't know when Jesus will return. And then lastly, this, a third reason to be on guard. And I think this is the reason that Jesus is highlighting more than any other.

[22:04] Be on guard because drifting to sleep is easy. Drifting to sleep is easy. And the illustration Jesus uses here is of a doorkeeper.

[22:15] And a doorkeeper has one job, right? The doorkeeper's job is to sit there and to watch. And you see that in verse 34 when the master of the house leaves, he looks at the doorkeeper and he says, stay awake.

[22:27] That's your job. And at first, the doorkeeper's job sounds like the easiest job in the world, the least important job in the world. But Jesus is warning about this because it actually requires a lot of stamina.

[22:42] It requires discipline. And he warns his disciples because he knows how easy it will be for them to fall asleep in the next few years and decades and centuries.

[22:55] He says, the job of a disciple is to be the doorkeeper. There's a watch for Jesus. Now, practically, what does that mean? What does it mean to watch, to be a doorkeeper? And first, let me say this.

[23:09] When Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 13 to stay awake, he's not speaking literally, right? He's not saying, don't go to sleep, right? And that's obvious.

[23:21] But if that's true, think about what it means. It means that Jesus is talking about a danger where you can be awake, where you can be busy, where you can be successful, and yet spiritually, you can be asleep.

[23:35] You can be successful in every way and yet be fast asleep. And what does that mean? What is he talking about there? He's talking about a life that is no longer oriented towards Jesus.

[23:46] A life where Jesus is no longer the true north, and it's not because you've made a decision to choose something else as your true north. It's because there's been a drift where you just keep sliding and sliding and sliding, and before you realize it, you're going in the totally wrong direction.

[24:05] And that's the danger of sleep is that it happens unexpectedly. It's not a choice. You drift, drift, drift until one day you look up and you're asleep. You're caught off guard when Jesus returns.

[24:18] So as we work towards a close here, let me give two practical examples. Two ways that we can stay awake. One is practical, and the other I'll say is a gospel reason, but that implies that the gospel is not practical, and the gospel is very practical.

[24:33] But a practical way for staying awake, I'll pose it as a question. This week, do you have a plan to stay awake?

[24:46] Do you have a plan to stay awake? You know, when you're fighting sleep, the way that you lose that battle is by forgetting that there's a battle.

[25:00] You go to sleep because you forget that you're supposed to stay awake, and that's why we call it drifting to sleep. And what Sunday is, to me, one of the things that Sunday is, is it's one day in seven where God says, all right, it's time for you to come back to me, come back to everyone else who shares your trust in me, and reorient your life again.

[25:24] Because we drift every week. There's a temptation to drift away from what we know to be true. And so Sunday is the day to say, all right, it's time to set my tree north again. But then we can go beyond that, and I can say, how in this week do you plan not to go to sleep?

[25:40] Because it's an intentional habit, right? And one way that we do it as a church is we gather on Wednesdays and we pray, and we don't just do that because we think that Jesus likes when we do it.

[25:51] We do it because we think we need it. We think we need prayer. We think we need to have our hearts shaped by being together and worshiping in the middle of the week. And then every day, you can ask this question every day, how am I keeping myself awake?

[26:06] You know, historically, Christians throughout the centuries have woken up in the morning, they have prayed and they've sung, and before they went to sleep at night, they prayed and they sang. That's true for two millennia of Christians.

[26:20] They don't just do that because they love the habit of it. They do that because they believe that habit changes us. Our habits shape who we are. Daniel, who we just read about, Daniel in chapter 7.

[26:33] Daniel, we learn in that story that Daniel prayed three times a day. It makes a point of saying that because Daniel was going through a hard time faced with all kinds of temptations and one of the habits that he kept was he prayed morning, noon, day, and evening and that kept him, that kept his true north when everything around him was saying, your God is a lie, that you don't know the true God.

[27:00] That kept him, gave him a true north. And I don't know about you but I find when I pray, the more I pray, the more I realize how much I need prayer. The more I reorient myself to God, the more I realize how much I need to reorient myself to God.

[27:17] But let me close with this. How can we keep awake? How can we not fall asleep? How can we be on guard against the danger of falling asleep? The gospel answer to that question is, you cannot do it on your own.

[27:35] You cannot do it on your own. And I don't think that's illustrated anywhere more clearly than in the very next chapter. You don't have to turn there but you probably know the story. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane.

[27:48] He's brought his disciples with him. He is in the deepest anguish of his entire life and you know what he says to his disciples. He says the same thing that he says here. He says, keep watch.

[28:01] Be on guard. And what did his disciples do? They don't figuratively fall asleep. They literally fall asleep. And he comes back three times and the last time he says this, he says, could you not keep on guard for even one hour?

[28:21] Peter, he looks at Peter and says that. Peter, could you not keep on guard for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.

[28:33] Now, I think when Jesus says that, he's not talking about Peter, he's talking about humanity. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. In Jesus' greatest hour of need, the disciples could not stay awake for him.

[28:48] But the mercy and the grace of that story is that Jesus stays awake for them. He stays awake and prays that he might be sufficient for the task ahead of him, which is saving those disciples who are so fickle in their discipleship.

[29:07] Life is long and life is hard. And it's easy to drift. So easy because the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak.

[29:19] And what we need to stay awake is not just more self-discipline, but it's not less than that. We need a new spirit. And that's what Jesus Christ promises, which is that when he commands us to stay awake, he also gives us the eyes.

[29:37] He gives us the heart to stay awake. So we stay awake, but we also look at him and say, Lord, help me. It's amazing. You know, he makes two promises that sound contradictory.

[29:48] He says, I will come back for you in this passage. And then at the end of Matthew, he also says, I am with you until the end of the age. He's with us until he comes back for us.

[30:00] And that's our hope this morning as we stay on guard. Let's pray. Lord, help us to stay awake. Help us not to be those who sleep, who lose sight of what is most important, but help us to live for you.

[30:17] Help us to keep you as our true north every day of our lives. In your son's name we pray. Amen. Thank you.