“An Unexpected Hour!”

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 24: 36-44

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Advent 1-A, December 1, 2013

  "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour  (Mat 24:44 NRS).

“I didn’t see it coming!”    

Back in September, as the NFL football season just got started, Trent Richardson,  former Running Back for the Cleveland Browns, was surprised when he got traded from the Browns to the Colts.  “I turned on the radio and all of a sudden I heard,” Richardson told News 19 in Cleveland. “I can’t believe it, I didn’t see it coming from anywhere… I wanted to be a Brown, I didn’t see it coming…. I bought my house here in Cleveland, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff in the community.  I’m really shocked, especially for my family who have got to pick up and move. And also for my fans, I know I have a lot of fans behind me….I just didn’t see it coming.” (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/09/19/trent-richardson-i-cant-believe-it-i-didnt-see-it-coming/).

A Morgan Stanley banker and boss, Ruth Porat, who thought she understood the risks to the financial system, didn’t see the great financial collapse coming in September of 2008.   At the time, she was advising the U.S. Treasury about how to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but then she got the call that her own bank almost vanished.  To stay afloat, they had to sell 20% of their holdings, and then the government had to bail them out with a single-day loan of $107 billion dollars.  Will another collapse come?   If it does, you can bet your bottom dollar, it will happen the same way.  No one will see it coming.  http://hereisthecity.com/2013/09/10/five-years-on-from-collapse-banks-still-at-risk/.

Do you remember when that meteorite screamed across the Russian sky and rained down fire and debris as it broke apart over the Ural Mountains, injuring nearly 1,000 people.  So why couldn't Scientist predict this?  They had an explanation:  “Size matters,” said Andrew Cheng, a Johns Hopkins Physicist. “It doesn’t take a very large object.  A 10 meter size (feet wide) object already packs the same energy as a nuclear bomb.”  The one that crashed in Russia was 15 meters, or 49 feet; entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 33,000 mph and shattered about 18-32 miles above the ground.  It released the energy of several kilotons when it broke apart, but it was relatively small so that it was nearly impossible to track.  “While Scientist scan the heavens frequently and keep track of millions of objects,” Cheng said, “they don’t keep watch continually.”  While they can see a lot, they can't see everything that's coming.  http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/15/russian-meteorite-why-didnt-scientists-see-it-coming/.

We haven’t yet experienced the crash of meteors in the Yadkin Valley---but most all of us have been there, or will be there when something happens that we won't see coming.   A Rock Band known as Belle and Sabastian even has a song about it:  “I didn’t see it coming….”   But over and over the truth keeps coming, and in our text today Jesus reminds us too: “Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour….”  It’s the same truth.  You had better be ready, for when it happens, no one will see it coming.  

THE ‘COMING’ THAT DOESN’T COME

But of course, people don’t want to believe this.  There are all kinds of prophecy preachers, soothsayers, astrologers and all kinds of so called Bible experts who will claim otherwise, saying that they know how to read the signs or that they have it figured out.   They like to scare us into thinking that some of us will be ‘left behind’ or that they have decoded the final scenario of how everything will take place.   They claim to know  how to see it coming and can ‘map out’ how it will all end.   This kind of ‘reading’ into Scripture is similar to the Psychic lady who was reading palms and telling fortunes for a fee.  Someone demanded their money back, and she would not comply.  They reported her deceptive practice to the police.  While it is legal to tell the future for a fee, it becomes illegal when you don’t give a money back guarantee.  When things did not happen like she predicted, someone wanted their money back.  She didn’t give it back, so they reported her to the police.  The police came and took her off to jail.   She claimed to be a psychic and to know the future for everyone else, but when it came to reading her own future, “She didn’t see it coming!” (http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/crestline-38717-didn-psychic.html).

In today’s Bible, what Jesus says should settle the matter once and for all:  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”   No one knows, says Jesus.  He can't know either.   But there are those people who will tell you that it is “coming soon” or that it they know it is ‘near’ or they claim to have the ‘right’ interpretation from the Bible about the end times.   But people keep claiming to know.   Throughout the years, especially here in America, people have come up with all kinds of new predictions and interpretations about the return of Jesus and the end.  During World War I, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed the Second Coming, or the coming of Christ’s presence, as they claim, happened secretly in 1914 and then later they said it happened in 1925, and now they are still going door to door to find the 144,000 are the only ones who will be saved.   In the 1970’s it was Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” that caused a big stir, and then shortly thereafter, someone came up with the prediction that Jesus would return in 1988.    Jesus didn’t return then either.   

Recently, not learning anything from other failed attempts to date the second coming, it was Harold Camping, who insisted that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011.   “The Bible is perfect, literal word of God, infallible and utterly precise,” Camping claimed.  But when Jesus didn’t make his date, he changed it to October, 2011.   (http://nymag.com/news/features/harold-camping-2011-10/index6.html).  Most recently, Harold Camping has admitted to being wrong and even acknowledged that he had sinned by making a date for ‘judgment day’ and wasting over $100 million dollars in false advertising (http://nymag.com/news/features/harold-camping-2011-10/index6.html).  Doomsday did come for Camping, but it wasn’t the Doomsday he imagined.   But before you think this is only a problem of ignorance, even John Wesley fell into that trap of trying to predict the end, so did Martin Luther, John Calvin and other reformers.   The problem of ‘failed predictions’ about the second coming go all the way back to New Testament times. http://wesleyanarminian.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/failed-predictions-of-christs-return/.  Strange isn’t it?.  No matter how clear Jesus was when he said, ‘no one knows the day or hour’ there are always people who think they know more than Jesus.

THE ‘COMING’ THAT WILL COME

What we need to do before we fall into the trap of thinking that anyone has a scoop on the last days, is understand what Jesus was saying, not what we want Jesus to say.    Jesus goes on to say that ‘about that hour’ which no one knows that it will be “as the days of Noah”.   He says it will be like ‘those days before the flood when they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage?”   I used think that this text meant they were ‘over eating’ or ‘drinking too much’, that times were going from bad to worse, but that may not be what this text is saying.  What Jesus could also mean is that like in the days of Noah, people were going on with the everyday activities of life.  People were living their lives, getting married, having children, planning for their futures, and then, without warning the flood came and ‘swept them all away’.  It was just like that.  No one saw it coming.

If you travel up above Lenoir, in the mountain just below Grandfather Mountain, there is a spot on the map that goes by the name of Mortimer.   Mortimer used to be a small boom town in western North Carolina.  It had a cotton mill, a CCC Camp, a Lumber company, a railroad line, a blacksmith shop, a church, a school, a hotel and even a motion picture facility  and the Laurel Inn, which Teddy Roosevelt visited.  It was a town which had over 800 residents who lived in the isolated picturesque logging community located below Grandfather Mountain between Wilson and Steel creeks.  Then disaster struck.  In 1916 a fire burned from Grandfather Mountain, and then a flood immediately followed.  The flood was the worst in Caldwell County history.  Everything did not end at once, but the little town never recovered.  Today, all that is left is 16 residents who live along the streams, a few boilers from the cotton mill, and a white maintenance building.  Like it the days of Noah, they were all minding their own business, the logging business, and then it happened, and they didn’t see it coming!  (http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2010/08/north-carolina-ghost-town.html).

Will it be any different for us?  Jesus goes on to say that it will happen so fast, that ‘Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left (Mat 24:40-41).  Here’s where the Bible gives us the idea that some will be ‘left behind’ but again, it may not be what most people think.  It could be nothing like what those wildly popular “Left Behind” fiction stories by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.  Those books of fiction, not books of serious prediction, were written based on the non-Scriptural teaching that Jesus will return two times, instead of once.   It claims that the Bible teaches the coming of Christ will be in two parts, having Jesus come in a secret rapture the first time and in a visible, public return the second the second time.   Dispensationalists say that the image of ‘four women’ being ‘taken’ refers to the secret rapture---the secret second coming that comes before the third coming.  They interpret that the one who is ‘taken’ is saved and the one who is ‘left’ behind, is doomed.   That might scare people into to buying the books, and it made Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins popular millionaires, but this is not the actual meaning of the image Jesus gave.   Think about it in context:   If you are carried off in a flood you are not the one who is saved.   The warning about these women being taken is more like a warning about invasion, warfare, and hostage taking.  When an army invades us or when terrorists attack, you had better watch out for being ‘taken’ instead of being ‘left behind’.   But the point Jesus is making is not to tell us exactly how it will happen, but to tell us that it will happen like the people during the time of Noah and the Flood.  These women are doing their normal chores, but not realizing how suddenly everything can change.  They will not see it coming.

I must admit, and you should admit too, we don’t know what’s coming.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you that what’s coming is not what people, even God’s people have been expecting.  No one knows, says Jesus.   Jesus didn’t know, Paul didn’t, John Wesley didn’t, Harold Camping didn’t, and neither do we.   We must not overlook the heart of what Jesus is saying:  We will not see it coming because we don’t know exactly how or when he is coming.  When that bomb went off at the Boston Marathon, or when those terrorists seized that Shopping Mall in Nairobi; or when the next terrible thing happens; whether it be a natural disaster, a terrorists attack or some future war,  the only thing Jesus will guarantee is that he doesn’t know how it will happen, nor do we.  The only guarantee Jesus gives is this:  Whenever it happens, you won’t see it coming.

GET READY AND STAY READY

So, if no one knows, why is Jesus making this point?   Since Jesus says he doesn’t know, nor can you or I figure it out, what we need to do, says Jesus, is get ready and stay ready: “Therefore, you also must be ready, for the son of man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:44).  The example Jesus uses to remind us to ‘be ready’ is the unforgettable image of a ‘thief’ coming in the night.  “Keep awake”, says Jesus.  “If the owner 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 (Mat 24:43 NRS).”  How do you get ready for a thief who is coming to your house to break in?   Larry Handy, the Crime Prevention Officer for Yadkin County, told our senior groups recently that the best way to stop a crime is to prevent it.   Be alert.  Don’t do something stupid, like leaving your stuff or yourself exposed for criminals to take advantage of.  In other words, defend yourself by being prepared.  Stay ready.  Keep alert.  It’s the same message that Jesus is trying to get across.   If you are ready and awake, the thief will not likely break into your house.         

Jesus is not a ‘thief’, but elsewhere it says Jesus will come ‘like a thief’ (1 Thes. 5.2-4; 2 Peter 4.15; Rev 3:3; 16:15).   In other words, when he comes and how he comes will be completely ‘unexpected’.   To prevent that ‘unexpected hour’ from sneaking up on us like a thief, we need to ‘be ready’, which means we need to get ready and stay ready.   Listen to this story:  A certain ‘Mr. Smith’ is riding through Manhattan with a reckless cab driver. At the first intersection they come to, the cab driver runs a red light.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Mr. Smith yells. “That was a red light!”

“Don’t worry, fella,” the cabbie replies, “My brother drives a cab too, and he does that all the time.”

Mr. Smith grits his teeth and tries to remain calm, but loses his cool when the driver runs a second red light.

“Are you insane? You’re just asking for trouble,” he yells.

“I know what I’m doing, man,” says the cabbie. “My brother runs red lights all the time, and nothing’s ever happened to him.”

At the third intersection, the cabbie slows down and stops at a green light.

“What’s your problem?” the passenger asks. “The light’s green!”

“Yeah,” says the cabbie, “but you never know when my brother might be coming through.”

I know it’s a dumb joke, but at least that taxi driver was prepared.   After all, he never knew when his brother might be coming through, running another traffic light. (From King Duncan at sermons.com).

How do we get and stay prepared?   Right after our text for today, Jesus goes on to explain: “Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.” (Mat 24:45-46 NRS).  Jesus is not blessing slavery here, but he says we who call Jesus ‘master’ should be found doing his work when he returns.  Whatever ‘work’ God has called you to do is what you should be doing now, rather than later.  You should not waste your time trying to figure ‘when’ or ‘how’ he will return.  You had better do the good you can do now, because you might not have tomorrow.  There is no more biblical prophecy that needs to be fulfilled.  Jesus is the fulfillment of all prophecy.  The end started with Jesus and has been ending ever since.  Each day after him is only the ‘grace period' and we don't know when grace will end, period. 

Whether Jesus comes back for us or we go to him does not matter as much as what we need to be doing right now.   We need to do what Jesus is calling and commanding us to do now, because there is only one thing we can know for sure:  we definitely won’t see the end coming.   Are we being the person we need to be?  Are we being the Christian we need to be?  Are we being the Church we need to be?  Do we want Jesus to come and find us as we are, right now?   Today is the time to get ready, for it will be ‘in such an hour as you think not’ (KJV)---‘an unexpected hour’.   Amen.