July 24, 2017: An Hour You Do Not Expect

Today’s Bible Reading: 2 Chronicles 30-33, Psalm 149, Luke 12:38-48, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Luke 12:38-48: Stay dressed for action and keep your lamp burning. These are the words that ring through this paragraph like a peel of bells awaking us from our sleep and calling us to action. There is hard, cold, truth: you do not know when Jesus will return. Who knows when a thief would break into his house? If you did, you would not need locks. Similarly, no one knows when Jesus will return. There is a most dire warning: The servant who begins to beat his fellow servants, and the master returns at an hour he is not expecting, that servant is not a true servant of Christ and will receive the reward of those who reject Christ (12:46). There is nuance: If someone did not know what they should be doing, and therefore did not do it, there will be a different kind of lesser punishment (12:48). Our sin is sin against what we do know (not what we do not know). There is a high call to responsibility: If we have received much—and who reading these words could honestly say that they have not received much, whether financially, in terms of health, or most of all access to the Bible—then we have much that will be required of us (12:48). What then should be our response to this teaching of Jesus?  Let me suggest some action points:

• Ensure that you are a miser with time and generous with finances. We spend time in a way that if we wasted our money in that regard people would call us insane. But we cannot ever buy back more time. Use each second, each minute, wisely. As Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days and so give us a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
• Keep short accounts with God and repent now of any known sin. Jesus could return at any moment. Make sure that you are right with him before it is too late.
• Do your work as for Jesus. That will transform every labor into love, every dreary task into a delightful transcendence. Do it for Jesus. Be faithful to him: at home, at work, at school, at play.
• Plan your work. Do not go haphazardly through life but take your own life in your hands, consider how God has made you and the opportunities he has given you, and make the most of them. Plan it out. And then work the plan.
• Take Christ’s Word as your commission. Seek first the kingdom of God.