Are we prepared for Jesus’s return? Pastor Tim continues our series in Matthew 24-25, looking this week at Jesus’s call that we always be prepared.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor uses the fig tree analogy (and the Girl Scout cookies story) to illustrate that we cannot predict the exact timing of Jesus’s return. How does this challenge the way you naturally tend to look for “billboards” or spectacular signs before getting serious about your faith? What does it mean to be spiritually prepared without relying on predictions?
Jesus says that even He, in His humanity, did not know the day or hour of His return. What does this reveal about His incarnation and His identification with human uncertainty? How does knowing that Jesus experienced this kind of “not knowing” affect your own anxiety about the future?
The sermon contrasts two types of servants: the faithful servant who continually does his assigned work, and the wicked servant who neglects his duties while thinking the master is delayed. Which servant’s temptation do you most identify with, and in what areas of life might you be tempted to use a “mouse mover”—appearing faithful without actually serving?
The pastor suggests that being prepared for Jesus’s return means “acting like Jesus right now” rather than waiting for some future moment to get serious about faith. What specific things has God called you to do that you have been postponing, and how might the reality of Christ’s imminent and unexpected return change your priorities this week?
How does the restaurant server illustration challenge the way we treat the people around us? Can you think of times when you have been more attentive or kind only when you knew someone was watching or a benefit was at stake—and what would it look like to serve those at your “table” consistently, regardless of when the master returns?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you tonight as we continue our series, The Future is Here. Tonight, as we continue to explore Matthew 24 and 25, thinking about how Jesus describes the end of time and what we should be doing, that doing word becomes really critical because tonight we’re thinking about His urging us to be prepared. What does it mean to prepare for the end? There’s lots of things we could think about. We could think about that we need to stock up on supplies in case things get really tough. We could think about we need to be watching for certain signs, but it doesn’t always work that well when we try to prepare for things we don’t really understand.
I heard a headline this week that the Girl Scouts are overloaded with cookies. They have 15 million too many cookies. It’s kind of hard to imagine, isn’t it? All those cookies just sitting there that they don’t know what they’re going to do with. Why do they have so many extra cookies? Well, they prepared for what they thought was going to be a successful selling season, but with the continued safety protocols that were in place earlier this year and people’s hesitancy to go get them and so on and so forth, they haven’t sold nearly as many cookies as they expected. They tried to prepare, but they didn’t prepare in what ultimately was the way that needed to be prepared for.
When we try to prepare for the end, we too end up falling short because we don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know how things are going to play out. And as we begin tonight, Jesus is going to warn us against preparing in the sense of thinking we can get everything lined up in a way that’s ready for the end. There’s a different kind of preparation He’s calling us to. So let’s go ahead and come before our God in prayer, and then we’ll think about what that preparation is, the meaningful preparation that He calls us to.
Let’s pray. Father, would you lead us tonight? As we find ourselves often feeling uncertain about our own lives and about our world, we wonder, should we prepare? Do we need to somehow prepare for the end? And as we read Your Word, we see that You do in fact tell us that we should be prepared. But the places our hearts run to thinking that we’re going to be ready and we’re going to be prepared are not the same places that You call us to. So would You help us to prepare in the right way, in the way that’s pleasing to You, we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Jesus starts the next part of this segment, this message that He’s giving, by telling us that preparation’s going to be a little different than we might think. The disciples, if you recall, at the beginning had asked, How are we going to know when the end’s going to come? When is the temple going to be destroyed? How do we understand that? And Jesus comes back to that at this point, and He gives this little analogy. Let’s go ahead and look at verses 32 to 35. He says, “From the fig tree learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that He is near, at the very gates. Clearly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Now, the first thing we need to remember, and I just mentioned this, is that this is referring again to that initial question of the disciples. He’s been telling them various other things, and He comes back to the question, Jesus, you’ve said the temple’s going to be destroyed, and clearly the world’s going to end when the temple’s going to be destroyed. When is that going to happen? When is the temple going to be destroyed? And before Jesus gets into the question they’re really asking, when is the world going to end, He comes to what they think is a completely interrelated question. When is the temple going to be destroyed? And there is a connection, because the destruction of the temple is tied to Jesus being the perfect sacrifice, and they’re not being in need any longer for temple sacrifices. And certainly an aspect of judgment as well.
We see in the New Testament, as we’ve talked about, that the end times are marked as starting with the ascension of Jesus and the giving of the Holy Spirit. But what they’re really asking is, when are these spectacular things going to happen that we can just look for? If the temple’s being destroyed, we’ll have no way of missing out on when you’re returning, when the world’s ending, all these different things. We want to know exactly the roadmap, Jesus. They wanted it to be like when we’re driving down the highway and there’s the tourist attraction on the side of the road, and there’s billboard after billboard, 10 miles away, 9 miles away, 9 and a half miles away, we’re going the wrong direction, we must have turned wrong, 8 miles away, 7 and a half miles away, 6 miles away, right? You know you’re going in the right direction, there’s all these billboards, you can’t miss it. And then finally, this exit, 100 feet before you turn off, we won’t miss it. That’s what we’d like.
That’s not what Jesus tells them is going to be. Yes, there’s going to be a time when the temple’s destroyed, but if they’re looking for that as the sign to tell them when the end is going to come, it’s as fruitless as a farmer looking to see the sprouting of the fig tree to know when he should plant his crops. Now if you’re like me and you’re not familiar with Middle Eastern plants, that doesn’t really convey a whole lot to me. I know what trees do, I know how they leaf out, but here’s something that’s really important to know about this particular analogy. You see, most of the plants in the region are evergreen. If they’re going to be green at all, it’s not the most lush region, but the plants that are green stay green for the most part. But the fig doesn’t. It does actually lose its leaves and it sprouts new leaves, and it does that right as summer approaches.
It doesn’t sprout early spring and give you a long warning that the summer is coming. It sprouts right before summer is in full swing, and so when you see the leaves sprouting, you’re already there at summer. If you were trying to use that to figure out when you should plant, you’d be too late. If you want fresh fruit this summer, you don’t go and plant a peach orchard right now. You need to plant it years ago, and you’ve missed out on being ready for this summer if you’re preparing right now. But if you didn’t know you were going to be hungry for those peaches until now, well, there’s not really anything you can do about that other than go and buy someone else’s.
If you’re a farmer and you’re not paying attention to the weather and everything else, and all you’re looking at is when the fig tree sprouts, you’re going to be too late to plant your crops. And Jesus is saying to them, if you’re looking for some spectacular sign like the destruction of the temple, and you think that all you have to do is be ready when that happens, and then you’ll know when the end is here, you’re not going to be prepared in the right way. You can’t predict it because those signs are going to come upon you, and you need to be ready to take action at that point. It’s too late if you’re going to just prepare when something bad happens.
Now, of course, the temple was destroyed almost two millennia ago. And that’s another aspect we’re going to see here. There can be signs, but we’re not going to know exactly how those signs tie in with the actual end. But the point is, whether it’s the immediate judgment that’s experienced in Jerusalem when the temple is destroyed, or the ultimate fulfillment of the end that we still anticipate, regardless if our question is, Jesus, tell me the sign so that I’ll know when it is that I need to stand up and be ready, it’s not going to work any better than that farmer waiting for that fig tree to sprout before planting.
The simple truth is, Jesus says, as you go throughout life, life is going to seem very normal up until the very point that the world ends. And that’s what we see in the next section. So let’s go ahead and turn to verse 36 and following. It says, “But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field, one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one left.”
What does it look like for the end to come? Does it look like the spectacular destruction of the temple? Oh, there’s the big sign, there’s the billboards that have been telling me I’m getting closer and closer to my exit. No, it looks like going about a normal day. It looks like trying to find that special spot as you’re traveling that is sort of unknown, and you’re driving down the road and the only way you’re going to find it is by constantly keeping your gaze for it because there aren’t billboards telling you that it’s coming. Jesus says that not even the Son of Man, not even Jesus himself knows when that moment will come.
Now let me just take us on a slight scenic detour here to think about that remark because we say, well, how is it that Jesus can find Himself clueless about when He will return? He’s God. How does He not know? Doesn’t He know everything? And indeed, this is a bit of a head-scratching turn of phrase, but it’s not really when you think about the broader context of who Jesus is. Jesus is both fully God and fully human. He experienced a human life and yes, He had all the power of being the God of the universe at His fingertips. He is God, but what did He do in life? He chose to experience human life and we see throughout scripture, we certainly see in the few remarks we get of His earlier years that He grew up, that He grew stronger, that He learned things.
And so as theologians have wrestled with this, it seems like the best way to understand that very interesting remark is that Jesus willingly, as part of that humbling that we’re told He did to take on the form of a human being, He willingly chose at times to restrict His knowledge. Not that He didn’t have access to it, not that He isn’t the all-knowing God of the universe, but to experience the same life that we experience. To the extent of even the uncertainties of life that it appears in some places, at least, He chose to restrict His knowledge. Other times we see He has perfect knowledge of things going on, so it seems as though He clearly, even in human form, could choose to have full access to His knowledge. But it appears here, this is an aspect of Jesus understanding what we’re going through.
If Jesus knew exactly when the end would come, it would be a comfort, it would be another aspect of knowing how God is in control, that everything is moving according to the Father’s plan. But we don’t, we know that in our heads, but we don’t know that in our hearts because we don’t know the details, and if we don’t know when it’s going to happen, we start to worry, we start to wonder, we start to try to figure out a way to pull it under our control. So when we’re told in scripture that Jesus has experienced everything that we have, all the temptations we have, this seems like another example of that, a moment where He experiences one of the challenges of life, which is not knowing how it ends, not knowing exactly where it’s going.
Okay, so we’ve been on that little detour, let’s pull back on the main highway here, because Jesus does know where things are going, and He describes those things to us, but not in the way the disciples were hoping for. The disciples were hoping that Jesus, again, would give them all these examples of how they could be prepared, they’d know, they’d hear the sirens blaring and they’d know they have ten days or two months or five years to get ready. But what does Jesus say? He’s going to return, and when He returns, it will be just like in the days of Noah, where everyone was just going about their normal business, they were marrying and getting married, they were going to work, they were doing just normal life things, until the moment that the rain started, and the floods came and took them away.
And what do we see also? He says, when the end comes, there’ll be people, they go and they clock in, they put their time card in at the millhouse, and they go in and they’re milling the wheat, just like normal, until the very moment that two people working together will be separated, because one is going to receive God’s judgment, someone who isn’t a follower, and one person’s going to receive God’s grace right in that moment. Kind of hard to get our heads around, because we feel like we should have these signs, how many books have been written, here’s all the signs showing exactly when the end is going to come. Jesus says it’s not going to work that way. You’re not going to know, you’re going to go to work that day, you’re going to go to school that day, you’re going to go to church that day, you’re going to do all the normal life things that day, you’re going to go to a Cardinals baseball game that day, you’re going to be doing those things, and then He’ll come. We need to always be prepared, is what He’s saying. Don’t be looking for the billboards that are going to warn you, be ready, be on the lookout, be vigilant in every single moment.
Now as we’re going down this highway, we have another scenic detour we should take just for a moment, which is this description of one person being left and one being taken. People have often pointed to this and said, here is the description of a doctrine known as the Rapture. We’re not going to get into that in depth tonight, but one thing I think I should at least acknowledge on that is that that does come up here, and I think when we get into that and we start thinking about the exact mechanics of how Jesus returns and will people be physically just evaporated and suddenly cars will be empty of their occupants and things like that, we’re really missing the point that Jesus is making.
And commentators have wrestled on exactly how to take these verses because it would appear given the analogy with the time of Noah that in fact those who are taken up here are those taken up to judgment, those being washed away by the judgment waters, not those being taken up into Jesus’s presence. Commentators have said, no, clearly this is those that are being taken up back to verse 31, taken up into God’s presence. The real point, and I think that’s why Jesus doesn’t go into that further, is not exactly who’s left and who’s taken, it’s that our status, whether we’ve trusted in Jesus and we’re one of those who’s going to experience God’s salvation or not, is at stake. And in that moment, it’ll happen in a blink of an eye, and exactly how it happens isn’t the important part. The important part is that it will happen, that Jesus will return, and when it happens, it will be done before we know it has started. Jesus will return and He’ll be here.
So are we prepared? Normal life can lead us into apathy. We feel like everything’s just cruising along and again we start thinking, well, as long as I don’t see the giant billboards, as long as those warning lights aren’t flashing, as long as the severe weather alert hasn’t been issued, I’m okay. Or I’m adding up, we have more severe weather, and we have more wars, and we’ve had a plague in the last year, we have all these things, clearly the end is right here, and I need to basically quit doing normal life and hunker down and be ready for Jesus to return any moment. And neither of those are the things that Jesus is calling us to.
What Jesus is calling us to is to live a normal life, but to live it in a way that’s faithful to His calling to us. He doesn’t tell His disciples, go and hunker down in a bunker someplace with all kinds of nice canned goods that will keep you alive until I return. He doesn’t say that. Nor does He say, live like the pagans do, doing everything wildly and without regard to God until you see those billboards and then you better straighten up because I’m coming soon and I’m going to expect you to have straightened up before I arrive. He doesn’t say those things. He says, follow me. And that’s where we need to ask a question of ourselves. What have I put off that God calls me to do? What have I set aside because I’m in that lull of normal life and everything feels like it’s going smoothly and I’m not feeling like I’m seeing those billboards right now and so I’m so wrapped up in my life and my work and my hobbies and in my friends and my family that I feel like I can just put off doing what God’s called me to do.
What does Jesus say as He goes on in verses 42 to 44? We need to stay awake, that we need to be prepared. Listen to what He says. “Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
How do you prepare for someone breaking into your house? Do you wait and order an alarm system as the windows are being bashed in? No, of course not. You put in the alarm system ahead of time. You put locks on your house ahead of time. By the time that your house is being broken into, either you’re away and you don’t know about it and it’s too late because everything’s stolen by the time you find out, or if you’re in it, you’re in it as the person’s breaking into your house. We don’t want to do that. We prepare ahead of time. And that’s what Jesus says we need to do.
The person who wants to protect what’s really precious prepares before the thief arrives. The person who wants to enjoy the presence of God forever prepares ahead of time. That person follows Jesus now and doesn’t think, well, someday later when life seems less normal, when the pressing thing seems to be that the world is ending and not that I need to go to work tomorrow and I need to figure out how to deal with the big family gathering this weekend and so on and so forth. The moment to prepare is now.
And so what is it that God has called you to do? What is it that God has called me to do that we put off and we shouldn’t put off any longer? Maybe it’s just simply reading His Word that you’re so busy doing everything else in life and we all experience these times that we put off and think, well, a few weeks from now I’ll get to reading His Word. Or if things get a little crazier in life and it really seems like the end is coming, I’ll start reading His Word more. But what are we called to do? We’re called to read it right now, not to put it off. Maybe it’s loving your neighbor better, your coworker better, your family better. Whatever it might be, prepare now. Follow Jesus now is what we’re called to do because we don’t know when He will arrive.
The fact that things seem normal is not an excuse to remain unprepared and it’s not an excuse to be partially prepared. I ran across this device recently, an ad popped up, and it’s a mouse mover. I had never heard of this before, but it’s a little device. You can set your mouse on it and it keeps your mouse moving around your computer screen so that if you’re working remotely and your IT department at work is monitoring to see if you’re attentive and at your computer and they can look and see if you’re away or present on Microsoft Teams or Skype or Zoom or what have you, that they won’t know because your mouse keeps moving. And so it’ll say you’re still there. It seems like a way to prepare without having to be prepared. You don’t actually have to be doing the work because everyone’s going to think you’re prepared.
But what happens when you do that and then your boss writes you and thinks that you’re right at the computer and you don’t respond because you’re not really there? That’d be far worse than it saying you were away because now it looks like you’re outright ignoring him. That’s what Jesus describes essentially in the next verses. Listen to what He says in verse 45. He says, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour that he does not know, and he will cut him to pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
So often in life we get the equivalent of a mouse mover. We try to have the facade of being present in what God’s called us to do, but we think, well, if Jesus isn’t returning for a while, maybe not even in my lifetime, as long as my mouse is sort of moving, as long as I sort of look active still, it’ll be okay. And if I hear someone pulling up into my driveway and I think my boss is actually going to come and visit me, or if I’m back at work and I’m in the cubicle and I hear someone talking off in the distance and it sounds like my boss, then I’m going to set aside that mouse mover, tuck it under the desk, and get back to being busy at work.
Our temptation in life is to wait to get it right, but Jesus says, you don’t know when I’m going to return. If you choose to do the route of the wicked servant, if you choose instead of serving those people that I’ve placed around you, that I’ve called you to serve, instead to actually take advantage of them, and to take advantage of Me thinking that I’m not going to be there yet and so you can get away with it, it’s not going to end well.
If you think I can always get right with God later, I have more pressing things, I need to experience life first, the life you need to experience is the life in Christ, not the life of the world. We’re playing a very dangerous game of chicken when we do that. We’re racing down that alley hoping the other person’s going to blink. We’re putting our mouse on that mouse mover and the boss is about to knock on the door. We don’t know when He will, but we need to be prepared.
Notice how Jesus describes the good servant here. The good servant isn’t even just not breaking the rules and not taking advantage of other people, he’s actively serving them. He’s doing what he’s supposed to do every day, day in and day out, not knowing when the master’s going to return. He just knows that the master set them with these tasks before him. He’s supposed to take care of the other people and make sure they’re fed at the times that meals are supposed to be served. He’s supposed to take good care of the household, and so he does. He doesn’t know if the master will be gone for months or years. Maybe the master won’t return before he dies, but he knows that the master expects of him and he does it.
The bad servant, though, says, what’s in it for me? How can I look out for me right now? That’s a very human impulse, an impulse all of us are going to struggle with, what’s in it for me? And if I have some time before God’s going to demand a reckoning, why don’t I get a little bit more for me? After all, God’s about grace anyway, so I can always get more grace later on. But preparing for Jesus, being prepared, doesn’t mean looking for signs and reading books of prophecies and checking out the internet for predictions around the world.
Being prepared for Jesus means acting like Jesus right now. Let’s ask this question, what would I do today if I knew Jesus was returning tomorrow? Now I’ve heard people ask this question, and they use it in a legalistic sense, like if you’re going to do anything fun, you better not because Jesus might return, and what happens if Jesus returns and you’re busy rooting at the Cardinals game to make sure the Cardinals defeat the Cubs, and you should have been instead at your third Bible study of the day so that when Jesus returns, He sees you hard at work? I don’t think that’s what we should be thinking. It’s not in a super legalistic sense. Jesus doesn’t mind if we have times of recreation and fun. He doesn’t mind if we enjoy the beautiful world He’s made. In fact, He wants us to. He made it for us to enjoy.
That servant who’s making sure all the people are fed is eating himself as well. What does it mean? It means that we do the things Jesus has called us to do, though. We continue to love our neighbors. If we’re at that Cardinals game enjoying it, we’re not rude to the people around us thinking we can always be nice to people tomorrow. Even the Cubs fans. I know it’s crazy, but we can show them God’s love, too.
Imagine you go to dinner at a restaurant. And I think probably most of us have had this experience where you have a really rude waiter or waitress and you’re just waiting forever just to get a glass of water, just to get your menu, just to finally get to order the food, and the person seems totally uninterested. Maybe they’re even a bit insulting. Maybe they let it be known that you’re not ordering fast enough because they need to get on to something else. And then something changes right before you get the check. They start to actually be attentive and they bring you an extra drink and they bring you a to-go bag and it’s so transparent. What they’re doing is they didn’t really care about you, but they know that the reckoning, the tip is coming and they want to make sure they get one. And if we’re trying to be kind, maybe we start to even think, well, maybe that person’s just having a bad day and they realized they weren’t being very nice and now they’re trying harder and you start to think, well, maybe I wasn’t really going to give a very good tip. Maybe I should give a better tip. And we do all these sorts of things.
But imagine if someone, as so often it seems to be the case, the person’s doing it very intentionally. They know they need to improve the service at a certain time in order to have a better shot at a tip. And as you’re eating your dinner, you get called away. There’s a family emergency. And so you have to say, I needed to go back. I’m out of here. And the waiter or waitress doesn’t have time to bring the extra drink. We don’t want to be that waiter or waitress. We want to be those who take care of the people at the tables God has given us right now. We want to be those who follow Jesus right now because we don’t know if He’ll return now or 10 tables from now. But what we do know is that He will return and we know it’s pleasing to Him. Don’t put off following Jesus. If you’ve never followed Him, follow Him now. Don’t assume that you have 10 tables to go. And if you’re following Jesus, be encouraged. He will return. When He does, we have the joy of hearing Him say, well done, good and faithful servant.
Let’s come before our God and pray. Lord, we thank You for Your love. We thank You for the love that You demonstrated by coming in and not putting Yourself first but giving Yourself for us. And Lord, would You help us to do the same? Would You help us to prioritize being like You today, not someday? Lord, if we’ve never made You our Lord, my prayer is that tonight You would convict each person in that spot through the power of Your Holy Spirit and we all might celebrate together as those who know You. And as we continue to follow You and we feel discouraged and we get into a lull because of normal life, Lord, would You not let us do that? But would You guide us all the more towards You, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, what are we being prepared for? We’re being prepared for, as we started to allude to at the end of tonight, for service, to serve the people around us while Jesus gives us the time to do it. And we’re going to think more about that next week as we continue with what Jesus says. He goes on to talk about the kind of service that He calls us to. So I hope you’ll join me again next week.
If this has been an encouragement to you, I’d be so thankful if you’d give us a like, if you’d give us a share. Please help share the messages that we are exploring from God’s Word, help more people to hear them and to be encouraged by them. You really can make a difference. If there’s any way I can be praying for you tonight, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to shoot an email to the email address on screen, leave a prayer request in the comments below. It’s always a blessing to get to share in God’s Word with you, and I can’t wait to be back here next week as we continue our series. So I’ll see you then, and I look forward to hearing from you in the meantime. Have a great week.
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