How to Wait for Jesus: Vigilance in Waiting (Part 1)

D. A. Carson discusses how Christians should actively prepare for Jesus’ return. He focuses on maintaining readiness and vigilance, paralleling the days of Noah and the unexpected nature of the Second Coming, and applying this to personal spiritual readiness and faithful service. The sermon also incorporates several parables to emphasize the importance of readiness and accountability in Christian life as believers await Jesus’ return.

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 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.

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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. 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. 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 drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’

Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

It is an enormous privilege for me to join you here in Minneapolis. I’ve enjoyed friendship with John Piper and others in this congregation now for many years, and many of us around the world thank God for the ministry this church exercises not only here but, by extension, in many other places.

How does our culture envisage the end of the age or the end of the world? How do things end up? Shall we follow the spirals of decadence, decay, and meaninglessness powerfully described by T.S. Eliot?

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Or shall we see ourselves choking to death, awash in our own pollution? Or perhaps we shall think of some wretched nuclear exchange that goes wild. Now we’re more closely aligned with Nevil Shute’s famous book On the Beach, where the nuclear clouds cover more and more, and as the trade winds blow, death goes farther and farther south, until eventually Australia is wiped out and any life on Antarctica and the planet is dead.

Or shall we project billions of years into the future until our star burns out? Will the human race by then have colonized other worlds? Now we think more in terms of Isaac Asimov than T.S. Eliot, or perhaps Battlestar Galactica. All that seems so remote in any case. Most of us don’t give that sort of stuff much thought, do we? It belongs to the realm of science fiction. How will we see our own end? Shall we echo the despair of Dylan Thomas, who, on his dad’s impending death, writes:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Or perhaps, worst of all, we simply refuse to think about it. The only thing more certain than taxes is death, the end of this world sooner or later as we know it, but we refuse to think about it. It could even be argued that talk about death is the last taboo in Western culture.

I can have a batch of university students around my dinner table and say, “What do you folks think about homosexuality?” Bang! I have a discussion going, but if I say, “I’d like to tell you how my dad died,” you can cut the air with a knife. That’s a taboo. You’re not supposed to talk about stuff like that.

But suppressing thought is never the path to wisdom, and Christians in some other ages have been known as those who know how to die well. Christians across the ages, when there is any genuine vitality in the church at all, have learned to repeat the words in the last chapter of Holy Scripture: “Yes. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Now Christians divide sometimes on their respective understandings of exactly how things unfold at the end of the age, and I’m not even going to address that question. Some of these matters are addressed in the first half of Matthew 24, and if it were another sort of series I would be glad to expound those texts.

When we come to our passage from 24:36 on, the discussion of what happens has passed, and what you find from here on, from 24:36 all the way to 25:46, is instruction on how to wait for Jesus. Granted that Jesus is coming back, how do you wait for him? There are five extended parables here, and each tells us another facet of how we are to wait for Jesus. Let me tell you the whole five. Tonight we’re going to look at the first three, and next weekend, God willing, the last two … unless Jesus has come back between the two weekends.

First, wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the Master’s return (chapter 24, verses 36–44). Second, wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise (finishing chapter 24). Third, wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the Master’s coming may be long delayed (chapter 25, verses 1–13).

Then next week, wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves commissioned to improve their Master’s assets. Finally, wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are transformed by the gospel such that they unself-consciously serve brothers and sisters in Christ in self-sacrificing ways. Tonight we look at the first three.

1. Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the Master’s coming.

Verse 36: “But about that day or hour …” That is, the day at the end of the age when the Master finally does come, regardless of the details of the sequence. “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

Now sometimes when people speak of how it was in the days of Noah, they think, “The world was so corrupt then … so much idolatry, so much debauchery, so much rebellion against God, so much hedonism, and you know, it’s like that again today.” That’s not what the text says. It may be true, but it’s not what the text says. The point emphasized by the text is that in many respects, life was normal. People were still going to weddings, having babies, getting hired and fired, bringing in the crops. Things were normal.

Oh, there was that chap, of course, down the road, Noah, who got his family together and spent a lot of years building that most ridiculous boat, but on the other hand, you can’t give much credence to an idiot like that. They had no set of categories to anticipate the destruction that was about to fall on them. They didn’t believe what the preacher Noah said. Then the judgment came, and they weren’t ready.

Then another vignette. “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” In the nature of the case in the ancient world, these are likely to be two brothers or a father and a son, and they’re working together. When the end comes, it will be so sudden, so unannounced, so unexpected that one will be taken and the other left.

There are some who think this means taken away suddenly by the returning Christ, and there are others who think it means taken in judgment, like those taken in judgment in the flood in the preceding verse. You know what? For the purpose of this text, it doesn’t make any difference, because the point is they’re separated. Two brothers; one is ready and one is not. A father and son; one is ready and one is not.

Then two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. In these small hand mills (not the large ones that were moved by oxen), there was a flat stone, and on top of it another stone with a stick sticking out from each side, 180 degrees opposed. Two women, for this was women’s work, sat opposite, crouched around this stone. One pulled one stick 180 degrees, and the woman on the other side pulled it the other 180 degrees.

The seed was put down a hole in the middle, and gradually the stone, as it moved round and round and round, ground out the seed until flour was produced. A hundred and eighty degrees. The other one got on it. A hundred and eighty degrees, a hundred and eighty degrees, a hundred and eighty degrees. It was likely to be two sisters or a mother and daughter. One is taken and the other is left. It’s unexpected.

Then the most startling image, the image of the thief. “If the owner of the house had known at what time the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.” If you live long enough, you may well get your house broken into. It happened to me when I was an undergraduate living in an apartment in Montreal, decades ago. I came home, and the wonderful leather case that I had (it was actually my dad’s; he had let me have it) was slashed. They could have just opened the clasps to get in, but they slashed it. It was ruined.

I didn’t have much, but anything I had was gone. Now if I had known they were coming that night, it wouldn’t have happened that way. I knew some fairly tough dudes with some martial arts training. If I had known they were coming, believe me, they would not have slashed my dad’s case, but I didn’t know, and they came at an unexpected time, and I was robbed.

The point of all of these vignettes is exactly the same. Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the Master’s return. The point is that I cannot tell you when he is coming, but I can’t tell you when he’s not. In this case, the separation is not between those who enter into greater rewards and those who enter into less, or the like. If we judge by the Noah account, some are destroyed, most are destroyed, and only those who are ready are saved.

If deep down in your mind you’ve heard the gospel enough times, you know that Christ has died for sinners, and that is the only basis on which we may have security at the judgment seat of God. It’s the only way we’re going to be accepted before God on the last day. Not on the ground of how good I’ve been or how hard I’ve tried or how sincerely I’ve served people in my medical profession, or whatever it may be, but solely on the ground of what Christ has done on my behalf.

You know that’s what Christians think, but you for your part say, “That’s going to put a crimp in my lifestyle. Someday, not yet.” If Christ comes while you’re thinking that, may God have mercy on your soul, because when he comes, it’s that unexpected that even the closest relationships, the closest activities, will divide Christ’s people from those who reject him.

2. Wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise.

Verses 45–51: “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all of his possessions.

But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and then he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

What seems to be envisaged here is not the judgment that falls on pagans on the other side of the world or secularists who have no connection with Christ and the gospel at all. What seems to be envisaged instead is people who apparently, as we observe things, are themselves servants of Christ. Nevertheless, in the discharge of their duties, they don’t really believe that Christ is coming back. They don’t see themselves as under any sort of sanction, and they enjoy their positions of power.

There are a lot of strands of the so-called confessing church where people get into positions of authority and, quite frankly, what they lust for is power. They’re not servants at all. They’re not really committed to building up others. They’re not dying to self-interest in order to serve others. Their situation is even worse than the one the apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3. Do you recall that passage?

There, the apostle Paul is deploying an extended agricultural metaphor. He says, “Listen, I planted the seed. Apollos came along and watered it, but God gave the increase. We’re both workers with different tasks, different jobs, but the real fruit comes about because God gives the increase. We are God’s workers. We are coworkers belonging to God,” he says, “and you are God’s field.” Then he changes the metaphor. “You are God’s building.”

If you change the metaphor from an agricultural one to an architectural one, then he says, “I lay the foundation, and others have built on the foundation.” You can’t change the foundation. The foundation, he says, is Jesus Christ. But you have to be careful what materials you use when you build on it. You might build with such shoddy materials that nothing can withstand the final judgment.

The day comes. The fire comes, and if the only building materials that have gone onto this foundation are wood, hay, and stubble, everything is burned up. And the workers? Well, they’re saved, Paul says. We would put it, “By the skin of their teeth.” So as by fire. They may truly trust Jesus. They may really know him.

They may have been regenerate, but all of their ministry.… We’re talking now about Christian workers. All of their ministry has been shoddy. The putative converts have not been genuine converts. The building of the building has just been a building. The building of the community has just been a religious social club.

You don’t have people who have been transformed by the power of the gospel, who have genuinely been born again, who already have the Spirit as the down payment of the promised inheritance, who have been justified freely by grace through faith. You don’t have that. There’s nothing really to show. It all gets burned up at the end, but at least this wretched preacher is himself converted and gets in. So as by fire.

The situation that Jesus describes is worse than that. They’re servants in some sense. They’re servants of the master. They’ve been assigned certain tasks, but their failure and defection is so awful that all they do is demonstrate they’re not even converted themselves. They’re just brutal, power-hungry, money-grabbing people for whom religion is a neat con game and they’re at the top of their form.

Of course, most of us are not vocational ministers who succumb to these particular temptations, but most of us exercise certain kinds of leadership in one domain or another, don’t we? Sunday school classes in our own home. Doesn’t it happen occasionally that there are parents who, in the name of Jesus, are really the most painfully brutal people in the name of righteousness until eventually you even wonder if they know Jesus at all?

Wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise. That is what we must do. Christians who take the long view want above all to hear the Master say on the last day, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.” The happy irony of it all is that if they have been good and faithful servants it’s all of grace anyway. This Jesus is remarkable. He gives us the grace and then congratulates us on having it.

Sometimes people are troubled at the reward sort of language that this picture calls up. In fact, Jesus often enough does talk about rewards. They say, “Is not such language inimical to grace?” We’ll come back to that one in more detail next week, but I have always found helpful an illustration first penned by C.S. Lewis. I have used it before. If you’re familiar with it, bear with me.

C.S. Lewis pictures two men. One goes to the red-light district in town, pays his money, and gets his woman. He has his reward. The other meets a charming young woman and courts her and woos her, treats her with immaculate respect and integrity, is eventually trusted by her family, and in due course there is a glorious wedding, the two families are joined, and he has his reward. What’s the difference?

The difference, says Lewis, is that in the first case, the reward is so incommensurate with the payment that the transaction is obscene. In the second case, the reward is nothing other than the consummation of the relationship. Christian rewards are closer to that. That is, the relationship is already established by grace through faith, and he gives us grace to persevere and to progress. He pours out his Spirit upon us, not only as the down payment of the promised inheritance but also as the one who empowers us.

In consequence, we do good things. We learn to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God working in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Then we come to the end and he says, “Well done.” Those are Christian rewards, finally grounded deeply in grace. That doesn’t mean we’re not responsible for working out this salvation, and we’d better do so because we know that the end is coming and we will give an account of our stewardship. That’s what the text says.

So wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise. The good servant is prepared for his lord at any time and is faithful throughout this delay and in the end is highly rewarded.

3. Wait for the Lord Jesus as one who knows the Master’s coming may be long delayed.

Chapter 25, verses 1–13. I have to tell you there have been some remarkably clever and irrelevant interpretations of this passage. I remember reading one a number of years ago by Josephine Massingberd Ford. The virgins represent Jewish scholars, the lamps represent the Torah, and oil represents good deeds. Well, you can figure it out. Finally the best ones get into the chamber of instruction.

This is an example of what is sometimes called parallelomania. That is, you look for parallels in roughly adjacent literature, in this case rabbinic literature, you find something roughly parallel, and then you say, “That’s what this text is really about.” You’ve actually domesticated the text by appealing to parallels. Sometimes parallels are clarifying. They’re useful. They’re somewhat analogous. In this case, somebody is not listening to the text. Rather, something that’s going on in rabbinic literature has been imposed on the text so that we can’t hear what the text is saying.

Others spend a great deal of energy demonstrating that oil here represents good works. You have to have enough oil; that is, good works. Others say, “No, no, no. The oil represents the Holy Spirit. You have to have enough Holy Spirit.” Others say, “No, no, no. Oil represents grace. You have to have enough grace.” Do you know what? The text doesn’t tell us what the oil represents, and it doesn’t matter. It misunderstands what the parable is about.

To understand it, we must understand how village marriages often worked in Jesus’ day. In Jesus’ day, they focused very heavily on the bridegroom. The bridegroom would go to the bride’s home, and with closer family friends there would be some ceremonies there, a small party. Then there might well be a procession through the streets all the way back to the groom’s home, where the ceremony would take place and the real festivities would begin.

If it were a poor couple, then these festivities might last a day or so. If this was a rich young man, the festivities might well go on for a week. Do you recall the picture of the wedding in John, chapter 2, where the poor bridegroom announced a good long ceremony and bridal party and celebration, but he didn’t have enough wine, and Jesus helps him out?

That’s the kind of scene that’s going on here. The bridegroom goes to the bride’s home. They have some ceremonies with intimates and family, and things have gotten a bit out of hand. They don’t watch the clock quite the way we do in the Western world, so instead of coming back in daylight for the celebration to begin in the evening back in the groom’s home, it has gone on and on and on.

What happens when there is supposed to be this procession through the streets is that other people who are not family intimates, not relatives, are waiting for the procession to come, and then they’re going to join in on the procession, and if it’s after dark, with torches and singing and dancing down the streets until they get to the groom’s place, but this groom is taking his own sweet time.

Some people are upset that there’s no mention of the bride here. It’s sort of the inverse of the way we describe weddings today. Have you ever read newspaper accounts of bridal processions and weddings today? I don’t even know half the technical terms that are used to describe the bride’s dress. I know words like how long the train was, and some part of it was taffeta or something. Then all of these little words for various designs in the dress and what shape it was, and so on, just flow over me, I’m afraid. I’m a bit slow.

Then they might go on to talk about the maid of honor and the bridesmaids and what kinds of gowns they had, and maybe a flower girl. It goes on and on and on, and down toward the end it’ll say, “The groom was also present.” In the ancient world, it tended to be the reverse of that. I’m not even saying one is culturally better or the other. Certainly, in many other passages in the Bible, God can use the symbolism of a bride as he can use the symbolism of a groom, but here the whole point of the story is not on the relationship between the bride and the groom.

The turning point of the whole story is the delay means some are not ready. That’s the whole point. Some brought enough oil to be prepared for a long delay just in case, and the others are not prepared for a long delay. So in due course, the foolish ones who are not prepared for a long delay have to go off and buy some more oil, and while they’re away, the procession comes. Torchlight parade through the streets of the village. The wise virgins join in.

They finally enter into the compound down at the other end of the village, and the doors are shut, and the foolish ones are excluded. The language is very severe. “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you. My friends would have joined with the procession at the right time. My friends were waiting for me. My friends were prepared for long delay. I don’t know you. Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

If the first set of instructions is, “Be ready at any time,” this third set of instructions is, “It could be a long time.” There are a lot of people who try to whip up readiness for the Lord’s return in a kind of heated atmosphere, such that people are not encouraged to think long term, to think strategically, but just as it is a mistake not to be ready at any time, it is a mistake not to be ready for a long time.

That comes up in many passages in the Bible. Peter, writing his second letter, warns us that God doesn’t look at time quite the way we do. For him, a thousand years is a day. He inhabits eternity. That’s not the issue. We are to be ready whenever he comes back. Just as some pooh-poohed that there would be any judgment in the day of Noah, he came unexpectedly, and not only may he come unexpectedly, but he may do so after a very long delay.

The apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 2, verse 4, says that if Christ delays for a long time, it’s out of love, out of forbearance, knowing that the longer delay is precisely occasion for more people to bend the knee, hear the gospel, and turn to Christ. It’s not because he’s callous or indifferent or careless or forgetful. Even the delay is a mark of grace. Now what does this say to us?

First, it presupposes that genuine Christians persevere. Genuine Christians, by definition, persevere. Do you remember how Jesus tells the parable of the sower in Mark 4 and Matthew 13? He describes seed that falls on different kinds of soil. One of the soils on which seed falls is called rocky ground. In first-century Palestine, rocky ground was limestone bedrock with a thin layer of topsoil.

The seed falls on that sort of ground, and precisely because the topsoil is so shallow, it heats up first. As a result, it germinates and grows most quickly. But unfortunately, because Israel is such a semi-arid country, the early rains come, and then there may be no more rain until the latter rains a little farther on in the summer. So once the Mid-Eastern sun is pelting down and there’s no more rain, the roots go down looking for moisture, and there’s nothing there. The plant keels over and dies.

Then Jesus gives the interpretation. These, he says, are those who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy. They seem to be the most promising of the crop, but later, when tribulation or trouble comes, they seek to put down roots somewhere, and they just keel over and die. There’s no real life in them. There’s no real root. They’re lumped together with the ones where the birds of the air took away the seed before it even germinated. They never do produce any fruit. They don’t persevere.

Or Hebrews 2:14 tells us that we have been made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. That’s what a genuine Christian is, by definition: someone who by God’s grace holds the beginning of our confidence in Christ steadfast to the end. Or it’s the sort of thing that happens in an exchange between Jesus and would-be disciples in John 8.

We’re told in John 8:30 that many believed in him. They put their faith in him, so to those who had put their faith in him, Jesus said, “If you continue in my Word, then you are truly my disciples.” On the other hand, in 1 John 2:18–19, the apostle can refer to some who went out from us. “In fact,” John comments, “they went out from us in order that it might be made clear that they really were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but their going showed they were not of us.”

You must understand these were baptized members of the church in good standing. They were accepted by everyone as fellow Christians but, “They went out from us in order that it might be made clear that they really were not of us.” Because genuine Christians do stick. Now in the broadest theological sense, thank God, the reason we stick is because God perseveres with us. That doesn’t diminish our responsibility to persevere; it grounds it, and now Jesus warns about not persevering.

Those who are not ready for a long delay may simply be finally excluded on the last day. They’re short-term bursts of light who have tasted enough of grace to produce a bit of initial fruit. They have gotten baptized. They’re accepted in the church. They sing the songs. They talk about the Spirit, and they show some righteousness, but they don’t persevere.

In fact, there is implicitly a deeper lesson to learn from this parable. If we are to be prepared for the possibility that Christ’s coming is long delayed, that although we who are Christians have to be ready for Christ to come at any time (maybe before you hear part two of this sermon), you also have to be prepared for the possibility of delay, and that means the importance of thinking strategically about Christian things.

You see, if I knew for sure that Christ were coming in five years, wouldn’t that change how I order my life, what I do? I’m certainly not going to start on another doctoral program. I’m not going to try to build a whopping big institution. This is a time for rapid evangelism, as fast as you can possibly go. It’s how you should think. But supposing Christ’s delay might be really significant. Then it becomes important to think strategically.

You find that in the apostle Paul too, when he writes to young Timothy. Paul knows that he himself is leaving the scene. He has already commissioned so much to another generation to Timothy, but then he writes to him, and he says (2 Timothy 2), “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

Don’t you worry about the kind of local church ministry that is really intense and helpful and gospel-centered on so many fronts but doesn’t give this much reflection to the business of how to train the next generation? One of the saddest characters in Scripture, as I see it, is Hezekiah. He was a good man in many ways. For 15 years he ruled with justice, integrity, righteousness, and fruitfulness.

Then the time came when he was told he was going to die, and he whined like a baby. He turned his face to the wall and sulked. Eventually, God gave him 15 more years. Somewhere in the course of his life, some emissaries came from the fledgling regional empire of Babylon. At that time, the Assyrians were still in the ascendency, but Babylon was on the rise.

Instead of being wise and discreet and careful, he starts showing off. He starts showing off all of his treasures and the treasures of the kingdom and the treasures in the temple. He’s just showing off to emissaries. Meanwhile, the emissaries are taking notes. It won’t be that many more decades before the time comes when Nebuchadnezzar, now the head of this regional empire, which has, in fact, crushed the Assyrians, sweeps through the land and destroys Jerusalem and takes all of those treasures away.

The prophet comes to Hezekiah and says, “Do you understand what you’ve done? By your arrogance, by your self-promotion, by describing your riches, by disclosing things that weren’t their business, by not seeking the face of God, by just trying to puff yourself up and be a great king, you have, in fact, betrayed your own country and sent it down the chute.” Do you remember what Hezekiah’s response was? “The Word of the Lord is good,” he said, because he thought to himself, “But it won’t happen in my lifetime, and I’ll be gone by then.” Pathetic beyond calculation.

No, Christians are thinking for the long term. So in the family, as we address our children and try to stamp another generation and the generation after that one, as we teach children in a Sunday school class, as we get involved in apprenticeship programs and training, as we seek to understand our times and still be faithful to the gospel, we understand that no Christian leader is around perennially. They die off. They go. Just add a few more years.

We don’t know how long the delay of Jesus’ return will be, but we can be pretty sure that if Jesus delays 2,000 more years, John Piper won’t still be here, so it becomes part of the responsibility of every Christian leader, in every context, in every dimension of leadership, to think strategically and plan for the future and strategize and pray ahead and never, ever adopt the view of Hezekiah. “So long as it doesn’t happen in my generation, I really couldn’t care less.”

What does Holy Scripture say? Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the Master’s coming may be long delayed. Brothers and sisters in Christ, all that has been secured for us has already been secured by the Lord Jesus, and even now Christ reigns, and we may have confidence in him. Already he has poured out his Spirit as the down payment of the promised inheritance, and we do wait for the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. Learn there from Scripture how to wait. Let us pray.

Forbid, Lord, that our attention should be so utterly consumed by the things that belong to a passing age that we never think with eternity’s values in mind. Burn on our minds and hearts the words of the Lord Jesus, who instructs us to lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven where moth and rust do not corrode and where thieves do not dig through and steal.

Grant that this church may be full of brothers and sisters in Christ who eagerly look forward to the Master’s return, are ready for it at any time, discharge their roles of stewardship wisely, carefully, lovingly, faithfully, and who are in it for the long haul, borne along by the persevering work of the Spirit of God in their lives so that they themselves persevere to the end. We pray for the glory of King Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.