Author and humorist Douglas Adams once said, I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. We're all familiar with deadlines, that critical date on or before which something must be completed. Because of human nature, a project or assignments without a deadline will typically languish, if not fail altogether. A deadline helps us to focus by giving us a fixed point that we can use to compare where we are in our progress with where we need to be. And in this way, a deadline is an invaluable tool.
But today we will turn that fact on its head. We are part of a very special project that has a deadline at which all progress stops. And yet we do not know what the deadline is. The project I am talking about is God's plan of salvation, and the unknown deadline is when the process is finished for us. And we will look at this unknown deadline in two ways. Within Christ's various statements about His return, He consistently warns that He will come back at an unexpected time.
Now He describes conditions such as the days of Noah and the days of Lot, but in every reference, the timing is a question mark. I'll read you a sampling of these very well-known verses. Matthew 24:42.
Matthew 24:42 He says, watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
Verse 44.
Matthew 24:44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Now it's just, it's not just the hour that is unknown, but the day as well. Matthew 24:36.
Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
Keep that in mind, He says, My Father only. The next one is the conclusion of the parable of the Virgins in which everybody falls asleep. Matthew 25:13.
Matthew 25:13 Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
And then after Christ's resurrection, there is the account in Acts 1, verses 6 and 7.
Acts 1:6-7 It says, therefore, when the disciples had come together, they asked Him, saying, Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.
So the establishment of the kingdom was on their minds, and Christ's words indicate that it is not only the hour and the day that are unknown, but that even the significant times and seasons are reserved by the Father on a need to know basis, and He has judged that no one else needs to know. It's knowledge that He has retained to Himself. Now we will turn to the next reference, it's in Mark 13, so that this truth can be deeply impressed on us. Mark 13 is Mark's version of the Olivet prophecy, and we will start reading in verse 32. Mark 13:32.
Mark 13:32 But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son. But only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when the time is.
Now the day and hour here in verse 32 refers back to the section in verses 24 through 27, where He foretells His return in the clouds with great power and glory, along with the gathering of His elect. And then declares that even He does not know that day, only the Father does. Christ's statement has some implications that we may not have ever thought about. But it also serves as a test for us as to whether we truly believe what the Creator God says here. Jesus declares that He does not know. This was the same being who inspired all prophecy.
He was behind the prophecies in Daniel of 3.5 years, of 1290 days, of 1,335 days, of 2300 evenings and mornings, as well as the 70 weeks prophecy. All those very precise prophecies that make up every prophetic timeline that anybody has ever come up with. Jesus was behind all other prophecies of His second coming. He knows them better than we do. And what's more, and this is something to really think about. The word of God also gave instructions for the holy days.
He gave the command to set apart the 1st day of the 7th month, which is today, and to keep it holy and to make it a memorial with shouting, just as trumpets are said to shout. He knows what this day is about better than we do. He also inspired Psalm 47, which is a prophetic psalm about His return and His future kingdom. It contains the statements, God has gone up with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of a trumpet, which sounds a lot like the first day of the 7th month. Not to mention Paul's later prophecies about the trumpets and the shouting. Psalm 47 also declares that at that time it says God is the king of all the earth.
Psalm 47 is all about His return, written millennia in advance. Jesus also inspired Isaiah 27, which describes the day of the Lord and which mentions a great trumpet that will gather God's people to the Holy Mount at Jerusalem. All these things came from the mind of the one who knows the end from the beginning. He was and is God. He was in the beginning with the Father. All things were created through Him and for Him, including the holy scriptures.
And yet He tells His disciples He does not know the day of His return. He knew the significance of trumpets because He instituted it. He knew what the prophecies actually foretell while we still look through a glass darkly. The scriptures testify of Him. And yet He testified that He did not know the day of His return. And that means that He did not put together that He would return on Trumpets.
It should give us something to think about. Since He did not know the upcoming deadline, we should consider whether our assumption is correct that the Feast of Trumpets is the day on which His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Consider how likely or unlikely it is that we have connected the dots and put something together that even He did not. Now just to be clear, the themes of this holy day certainly match with the way that His return is described. However, matching themes do not by themselves give us the deadline which He says no one knows except the Father. We have faith that Christ will return.
But are given no assurance as to the exact day. We have other examples of unexpected timing in the scriptures. Think about when Passover was fulfilled. Actually that was a loaded statement because Christ said that the Passover will not be fulfilled until the kingdom. Even so, think about the timing of His crucifixion. It might seem logical to us that He would die at the time that the Passover lambs were killed because He is our Passover, and yet the gospel accounts are clear that Jesus kept the Passover with His disciples, and then He died the following afternoon, not at the time that we might expect.
We can add the Day of Atonement as another example. Jesus did not fulfill the Leviticus 16 ceremony of the two goats on the Day of Atonement, as we would expect. Nor did He fulfill the Day of Atonement in the order that we would expect. He bore our sins on Passover Day. That was the role of the second goat, the azazel. But He did not completely fulfill the role of the first goat until He ascended and entered the heavenly holy of holies with His own blood.
And so the timing and the sequence and other specifics of His instructions are not always fulfilled as we might expect. When we add in that He did not know the day of His return and the gathering of His saints, we must allow that these things could happen on a day other than the 1st day of the 7th month. That deadline remains unknown. Now there is a 2nd factor that makes the end of the project unknowable for us, and that's the number of our years as individuals. We each have a personal deadline, so to speak, after which nothing more can be done. Our longevity is not something upon which we can depend.
God may choose to override the general allotment of 70 or perhaps 120 for any number of reasons that we may not fully understand. When my father died, he was younger than I am now, which is kind of strange to think about. But he ran his race in the faith, and God determined that his years were complete, even though they were fewer than average. Maybe God credited the unused years to the account of Wilfred Lee, so Wilfred could live extra long. Probably doesn't work that way, but regardless, the death of each saint is precious in God's sight, as it says in the Psalms, because it signifies the completion of His project.
And yet only God knows when that completion is. The Bible has examples of faithful believers who died early, as we would count it. John the Baptist was in his early 30s when God determined that he had faithfully run his race. A very faithful witness was made, and God was satisfied with his work. With John was finished, and similarly, we do not know how old Stephen was when he was stoned, martyred, but we do know that he had only been converted for a handful of years. And yet God judged that he was complete.
One of Christ's parables speaks of an unexpected deadline. And it adds some gravity. Please turn with me to Luke chapter 12. Luke 12 starting in verse 16.
Luke 12:16-21 So then He spoke a parable to them, saying the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully, and he thought within himself, saying, what shall I do since I have no room to store my crops? So he said, I'll do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, fool. It's not something He says very often. This night your soul will be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? Verse 21, so is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
So we can extract a principle that there is a downside to knowing a deadline, which is the human tendency to bank on having enough time to finish the project and so one starts to let down. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. That's from AW Tozer. Not knowing the deadline should drive us to remain focused and keep us from complacency. The question naturally arises of what we should do with the unknown time that we have, and this parable points us in the right direction. It teaches us that it is foolish to assume that we have more time and therefore we should be rich toward God right now in the present.
Now this is an offertory sermonette, and certainly there is a financial application here. We understand that when we come before God, we are to give as we are able. But there are larger principles involved. Writing a check or making a digital donation fulfills the letter of the law, but such things can be done without truly being rich toward God. Maybe you never thought of this, but God's currency is not the US dollar. Nor is it the Israeli new shekel, nor even the ancient temple shekel.
It's not Bitcoin either, if anyone was wondering. God says all gold and silver are His anyway. That's not what He's really interested in. He is interested in souls, if I can put it that way, in lives that glorify Him. He's interested in our directing our lives toward Him and using His gifts to yield to Him and take on His character image. That is worth far more to Him than anything.
God presents this very powerfully through Micah, if you'd please turn with me. A little book of Micah. Chapter 6. Micah 6 verses 6 through 8.
Micah 6:6-8 So with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God. Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Verse 8. He has shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you. But to do justly. To love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
So while we do have financial obligations to God, Micah describes the offerings that are really pleasing to God. He mentions acting fairly and justly. He mentions loving mercy, which could be translated as steadfastness or loyalty. It's chesed. He mentions walking humbly with God in faithful obedience. These are character traits that show our devotion to God's project of creating us in His image.
When we do things like these, we are rich toward Him. We are giving back to Him from the quality of life, the way of living that He has made available to us. We are using His currency by living as He lives. Thinking back to the parable of the rich fool, what we treasure is not limited to physical wealth. Recall that in another parable, the parable of the sower, it was not just riches that kept the seed of God's word from flourishing in people's lives. It was the cares of this world.
It was a focus on all the things to do, all the things to acquire, the distractions and the pleasures of life. The seed of eternal life can be choked out by far more things than just riches. There are any number of things that we could be treasuring up, things about our lives we are reserving for ourselves that are keeping us from being rich toward God. What God wants is us. And we already belong to Him, but what He wants is our growth into His image and our complete dedication to Him and His will for us. Anything that competes with that is something we may be treasuring up for ourselves, blocking us from being rich toward God with our entire lives.
We do not know how much longer the project will take. No matter how we look at it, the deadline is unknown. What this means is that each day is critical in doing our part in being of the same mind as God. Each day is a new opportunity to be rich toward God in the way that pleases Him.
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