The Bible provides a considerable wealth of teaching about this. And when we study them, we should be stirred up and encouraged to prepare ourselves well for His imminent return. The Lord has deliberately informed us about the end time events for this very purpose that His people will be more motivated to serve Him with much greater zeal and fervour knowing that He will return soon to judge the world, and to usher in a new and glorious age. One particular chapter where such information is revealed is Matthew 24. In v.6 He tells us that there will be wars, rumours of wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes – these are only the beginning of sorrows. In v.13 he says that iniquity will abound, i.e. there is be an increase of sin. In v.14 Jesus said that the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world for a witness, and then the end shall come. In the verses that come after this, the focus is on Israel – particularly the appearing of the ‘abomination of desolation’. This can only happen when the nation of Israel exists – which was only since 1948. Thus the stage is being set for the return of Christ.

And so, when Jesus told His disciples about the signs of His return in Matthew 24, He expected them to watch out for the signs to appear. This is what he said to them in v.33 –“When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” We cannot close our eyes to the events that are happening around us – the events happening in the world, setting the stage for the end-time events. Since Christ Himself - “When ye shall see …” the duty of every saint to be aware of things that are happening in the world, and this is not too difficult, thanks to abundance of information from the mass media today.

For example, the headlines for yesterday’s edition of Today newspaper was “Climate and Calamity” and the article that followed tells us that peace on earth could be shattered if nothing is done soon to avert the climate changes in the world today. The headlines of today’s issue of the Straits Times is “Barrage of Strong Quakes Shakes Japan”. Let us be aware of these things, as they are part of our duty to watch out for the signs of the end times!

But at the same time, we need to understand that the Lord has NOT revealed every little detail about the events of His return. And because of this no one should ever claim to know the exact day and time of Christ’s return. There are some who have attempted to analyse the data given in the Scritptures in order to determine the exact time of Christ’s return, but the results were quite disastrous!

About 160 years ago there was a farmer in New York by the name of William Miller who thought that Christ was to return in March 1843. He had spent much of his time studying the prophecies of the end times, and sincerely believed that the second coming was about to take place. Thousands of people believed him and the expectation in the air was high that when nothing happened on the day when Christ was expected to return, many were disappointed. But shortly after that Miller announced that he had made an error in his calculations and Christ was due to return on 22^nd October 1844, and this time he was dead certain about the date.

Once again the expectations ran very high. But once again they were utterly disappointed, and after this, many became disillusioned with prophecies of Christ’s return. Since then there have been many other similar date-setting false alarms like this one. One recent instance is that of the turn of the millennium just 4 years ago. We can remember the high degree of excitement and expectation as the new millennium drew nearer. Some were expecting the millennium bug to cause cataclysmic havoc. But in the end, nothing happened! And there will be more of such things in time to come.

You may receive an email or news from someone persuading you to believe that Christ is coming on a certain date very soon. It may even cite convincing evidence like the fact that the “cashless society” is already here or that some newly elected leader perfectly fits the Bible’s description of the Antichrist. Please do not be misled by these strange and unreliable reports. Some time ago, when I received one of these reports forwarded to me by email asking me to broadcast it to all church members, my response to the writer was that we should not be too eager to believe them and spread things like this around, or else the effect would be the very opposite: instead of getting people ready for Christ’s coming, they will only become more and more hardened or desensitised against it because of all the false alarms. Like the boy who cried wolf so many times. If we keep on issuing false alarms, you can imagine what will happen when the real crisis comes!

In 1 Thessalonians 5:3 the apostle Paul likened the Lord’s coming to a woman who is about to give birth. If are an expectant mother and you asked your gynae when your baby is arriving, he will say to you that it will arrive on such-an such a date, but it could be any time between two to three weeks before or after the date. And as you enter into your 7^th month and 8^th month of pregnancy, you live with any sense of imminency looking out for the signs of the time of delivery – contraction pains, spotting, etc. And when you are just one week from the delivery date (assuming of course a natural delivery, not caesarean), you will keep saying whenever you feel something, “Is it now? Is this it?” And that is precisely what it means to wait for Christ’s Second coming. We know that the time for it to happen is very near, and yet we don’t know exactly when it will happen! How nice it would be if only we could know the exact time.

I believe that there is a perfectly good reason why the Lord wanted it to be that way. Just imagine what would happen if the exact time of the Christ’s return had been made known long ago to the disciples. Knowing the tendency of the depravity of our human nature, such knowledge would only be abused or exploited to the maximum. People would say, “Since I know that Christ will certainly be coming on such and such a date and there is stll plenty of time from now until then, I can relax for now and when the date is nearer, I will really do whatever I need to do.” Those who tend to do things at the last minute will understand this quite well. But is this the attitude that God’s people should have with regards to Christ’s return? Not at all. And so, God in His infinite wisdom chose to reveal only just enough about the Christ’s second coming to keep His people in every age in a state of readiness, motivated with a sense of hope and expectation, but not enough to allow them to abuse and exploit the knowledge for their own selfish ends.

So let us not get caught up any more with so many arguments on how near or how far the return of Christ is. We should not spend precious hours and hours of reading and study trying to determine which view of the Rapture is biblically correct – whether pretribulation, mid-tribulation or post-tribulation. One theologian has also come up with a three-quarter tribulation view! There are good and equally convincing arguments for each of them, and it is actually quite unecessary for us to be dogmatic about this, or to insist that we must all agree on one particular view of the timing of the Rapture. This has been the stand we have taken in Life Church all along, concerning the timing of the Rapture, because we believe that it is one of those points of doctrine in which “men of good character and principles may differ.” (Constitution 5.5) And it is our duty to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other in such matters.

All that we really need to know is what God expects all believers in every age to know, and that is that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming soon, and we should be ready at any time for His coming. And we must not be living like the majority of the world today who will be caught unprepared for Christ’s coming.  

In v.38 of Matthew 24, Jesus says “for as in the days before that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Now, it is not as if the world in Noah’s time knew nothing about the coming Flood. The Word of God tells us that Noah had been warning the people of his time about the Flood. They could see him building the Ark. They could also see the animals coming mysteriously on their own in pairs from all parts of the world to enter the ark. Despite all this, they continued in their own selfish pursuits until the Flood came and were caught utterly unprepared.

It is sad thing that many among God’s people today are more interested in worldly material pursuits, than in the things of the Lord. I say with sadness that there are many even in our own midst who have left their first love and grown cold spiritually. They are not living the way that they should in view of Christ’s return. The Lord wants us to be in a state of readiness. The sense of His imminent return should fill us, both with a sense of gladness, as well as a sense of fear –

Gladness that He is coming soon to save us out of this wicked world, and fear that we might be caught unprepared to meet Him. And here in our text of Matthew 24 and the following chapter Jesus gives a series of four parables to teach this truth effectively.

Parables are short stories or illustrations that the Lord Jesus used in His teaching ministry, and they are very rich with meaning and excellent instruction for all Christians. They have been described as “earthly stories with heavenly meaning.” Now, Jesus related a total of 43 parables recorded for us in the Gospels, and they serve two important functions: They function as mirrors and as windows. As mirrors, they help us to see and understand ourselves, as we really are. And as windows, they help us to see and understand life and God. In this sermon we will look at the first two of them, and the other two will be studied in subsequent messages

I. The Parable of The Goodman of the House

This is found in vv.43-44 – “But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” In those days there were no such things as burglar alarms. The houseowner just had to be alert to any sign of thieves trying to break in at night. If he was not alert enough or slept too soundly, the thief would come and go without him knowing at all. 

Such watchfulness is not easy to maintain. It requires much concentration and endurance. Those of us who have been in the army may know what it is like to be on guard duty. In the first hour you may be very fresh and alert, looking out carefully for movements and sounds that may betray the enemy’s presence. But in the second hour, your mind begins to wander. You become less careful because you are distracted from your duty. By the third hour, you begin to feel very bored, because of the inactivity and it becomes very difficult to concentrate. And unless someone comes to take over your guard duty by then, you will probably fall asleep

A similar situation to this actually took place in the Garden of Gethsemane when Christ took three of His closest disciples with Him and told them to “watch with Him one hour.” But when He came to them, He found them all asleep and rebuked them sharply – “What, could ye not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:40,41).

So the first thing that we must learn on how to live in the light of Christ’s return is: to Watch and pray. Please do not allow yourself to fall into a state of spiritual slumber.

Dearly beloved, the Christian life is like a long-distance race, where constant vigilance and endurance are needed qualities. A person may begin very well, but after some time, he may get tired and weary of watching and praying. Then he is tempted to slow down and lose momentum. The challenge we face is to keep on going at the same pace all the time. Perhaps many of us have also faced this problem. We started out very well in living the Christian life and in our walk with the Lord, but somehow we got distracted by other things along the way. We lost our momentum and slowed down. And we need to be reminded to get ourselves up to the right speed again. Let us all keep up with our watching and praying until Christ comes!

II. The Parable of the Faithful and Wise Steward

We now proceed to the second parable Jesus told, which is found in vv.45-51. It focuses on the carrying out of our responsibilities – “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  I would like to draw three lessons from this parable. These are lessons on what we need to do if we are to be in a state of readiness for Christ’s return.

A. Consider Yourself as a Servant

The first lesson is that we must consider ourselves as servants. We see this clearly in the parable since it is about a servant. Dear friends, let us understand this point well. You and I are servants of God, not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a real sense as well. Turn your Bibles to Romans 6:22 – “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” There is no verse more explicit than this in teaching us that being saved from sins we have become God’s servants.

So often people tend to think of the angels, prophets and apostles as being the servants of God. And many would also include missionaries, pastors and preachers as being God’s servants. But have you thought of yourself as bring a servant of God? You should, because that is exactly what we are! It is good for us to know what is servanthood all about. There are three points about servanthood we need to know: Let us look at these now as it relates to our servanthood.

Firstly, since the Bible states that we are all servants of God, we cannot be greater than our Lord (John 13:16). Now, our Lord Jesus Christ took on the form of a servant, and was willing even to wash the feet of His disciples. As a servant, Jesus Himself said that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but He had no place even to lay His head. The point we want to emphasise is this: If Jesus was willing to sacrifice His own personal comfort and convenience, can we do any less than that? Dear friends, if you regard yourself as a servant, you cannot be living for yourself anymore, you cannot be seeking your own desires and rights anymore. If you do that, you become an evil servant, like the one described in vv.48-51 of this parable.

Secondly, since we are servants of God, that means we are to take orders from Him (e.g. 1 Samuel 3:9,10). We must be always readly to listen to our master’s instructions carefully. What He says we will do, where He sends, we will go. We must render full unquestioning obedience to the Lord, and especially so when we expect Christ to come soon, and realise that there is not much time left to do His work. Let us have the same resolve that Christ had as he said in John 9:4 – “I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”

Thirdly, since we are servants of God, we must prepare to give an account of our service to Him. We know that in the working world, people get all tense and jittery when an audit is coming. There will be a flurry of activity, late nights spent on getting everything in order for the auditor to inspect. As Christians, we must regard Christ as our auditor. And there are certain things that He will be looking for: Have you been doing what you are supposed to do? vv.45 and 46 of our parable tells us that the auditing may come at any time, and it will be a blessed thing to be found doing what we are supposed to do because we have been consistent and faithful. And this brings us to the second lesson we want to learn from this parable:

B. Be Faithful in Carrying Out Your Given Tasks

We notice that v.45 mentions this: “Who then is a faithful and wise servant…?” Dear friends, we may be very good at serving the Lord well, but what we need is to be faithful to keep doing it at all times. Faithfulness is the point in which many have failed. There are times when we slacken, and stop doing the work. There are times when our love grows cold and we slow down.

If this is the state of things with us, let us not just excuse ourselves, and say, “We can’t help it, we are human” Because the Lord wants us not just to be servants, but to be faithful servants, servants that are consistent, that can be relied upon to do the work. Servants that will not just come and go as they please, but will stay on and persevere till the end.

What happens so often is that we keep up the work for a time, but after a while we are diverted or distracted to doing other things --  things which the Lord has not instructed us to do? Are there things in our life that have caused us to compromise our faithfulness to God? And are there tasks that we have left undone, tasks that we have neglected and that we should really be doing? Perhaps you might want to spend some time today to rearrange your priorities and your schedule so that you can be faithful in all these responsibilities for the Lord. One common complaint that can be heard nowadays from people is that they have no time – No time to read the Bible, no time to pray, no time to have one’s Quiet time, or to serve the Lord in an area of service. This becomes to them, their solid excuse for not doing what God wants them to do.

But Psalm 31:15 tells us - “My times are in Thy hand …” And if God has a plan for each of us, then He must have allotted all the time that is necessary for each of us to fulfill all that He expects us to do according to His plan. God is like an employer who tells his workers: “Here is the work you are to do, and here are the sufficient resources you will need to do it.”  We see this principle at work in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ when He was on earth. Within the 3 years of ministry He fulfilled everything that He came to do - to preach the kingdom of God, train 12 disciples and to make an atonement for sin by death on the cross.

The Gospels show that Christ was always concerned to be doing the right thing at the right time, e.g. early in His ministry when His own brothers suggested that He should go to Judaea and make Himself known to the world by doing miracles there, this is what He said, “My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready.” (John 7:6) So we must train our minds to think like this: there is enough time for us to do all that we have to do. If the 24 hours of each day seem to be inadequate for you, then this must be do to one of two causes: Either: you have missed the will of God for your life (you are doing something He never intended you to do), or you are doing things inefficiently - not the way that God wants you to do them.

If you want to be faithful in doing what God wants you to do, please do not encumber yourself with things that God never intended you to do, and learn to be efficient in your use of time and resources. In order to do this, we need wisdom. This brings us to the third and final lesson we will learn from this parable:

C. Live Wisely

We see this in the description given to the servant in the parable: He is not just a faithful servant, but a faithful and wise servant. This servant was blessed because he had wisdom and he applied it well. The master was supposed to come by a certain day, but for some reason he was delayed for a long time. There was therefore a real temptation for him to think that the master will not come for a longer time or that he will not come at all! The Israelites made a similar foolish mistake at Mount Sinai. When Moses went up to Mt Sinai to meet with God and receive the 10 commandments, things were all right for a while. The people did not know that he would be up there for 40 days. So when he did not come down after a long time, some of them thought that he had already died, and concluded that he would never come. Exodus 32:1, “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount,” then they committed the sin of idolatry.

But the faithful and wise servant in our parable was not like them at all. He knew that although His master had not yet come, he could appear at any time. He knew that his master would be angry with him if he came and found him in a backslidden state. He also knew that his master would be very pleased with him, if he came and found him faithfully doing what he had been told to do.

This was his wisdom – he exercised foresight, he looked well ahead, and made all his choices in the light of things that are going to happen. He chose to do those works that would give him a pleasant time to account before his master.

Let us be wise like this servant: Make all your present choices in the light of the future. To live only for the present is to live as fools. In Ephesians 5:15-17 Paul puts it this way – “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”