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Dec 18, 2022

Waiting Until the World’s Last Night

Waiting Until the World’s Last Night

Passage: Luke 12:35-48

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: 2022 Advent: Waiting is the Hardest Part

As we’ve said repeatedly, Advent recalls Jesus’s arrival on earth for the purpose of clarifying and refreshing our hope in His return. Here in this both severe and bracing passage, Jesus outlines the heart of one who waits not casually but mindfully. How does His return shift from being an unfathomable idea to a controlling principle for life? How does the hymn Come, thou Long, Expected Jesus become more than a song, but a living hope?

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Luke 1:46-50
LEADER: And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

PEOPLE: for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
LEADER: for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

ALL: And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:)
LEADER: 2Pet. 3:8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

CENTRAL TEXT: Luke 12:35-48
Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36 and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Luke 12:41 Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” 42 And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? 43 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 44 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 45 But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, 46 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 unfaithful. 47 And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. 48 But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

CONFESSION OF SIN: based on 1 Corinthians 1, Hebrews 1

ALL: Love is patient. We are not. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the convictions of things unseen. We prefer, if not demand, the visible and the immediate. You call us to live in our present in light of a future. We live for the present as if there were no future. As one poet has said, all we need is everything. A patient love. An anchored faith. A hopeful outlook. And a reminder of your abundant forgiveness. Lord, hear our confession. Lord, help us to believe again in your pardon, your purposes, and your presence that sustains our belief.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON Acts 10:39b-43
LEADER: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

ALL: Thanks be to God.

BENEDICTION: Revelation 22:21-22
LEADER: He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

PEOPLE: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

LEADER: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.

ALL: Amen.

Related Scriptures

Genesis 1:26-29
Matthew 20:26
Luke 17:10
John 13:14
Acts 1:5-10
Philippians 2:5-11
1 Peter 2:11-15**
2 Peter 3:11-12

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Group project: invite everyone to add to an inventory of things you think the New Testament teaches about Jesus’s return. What’s the lowdown on that clear but clearly unimaginable prospect?
  2. Hearing this passage in full, what is your first reaction, and why? How does this stern, severe language fit with his gentler words? Why might he couch this topic in this kind of startling language? (venture various possibilities)
  3. How do you make sense of Jesus being divine and yet also being uninformed about the timing of His return (e.g. Matthew 24:36)? 
  4. How does this passage rescue us from adopting a posture of waiting like you heard in the sketch of “look busy”--of a mindset either blithely indifferent or neurotically fearful? What are we to see in the servant about living expectantly for what will occur unexpectedly?
  5. At risk of sentimentality, what first question would you ask Jesus upon seeing Him, at last, not by faith but by sight?

QUOTES: 

  • What if this present were the world’s last night? John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIII
  • I dare not say that he [George MacDonald] is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continuously close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself. Hence his Christ-like union of tenderness and severity. Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined. C.S. Lewis
  • Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you. C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
  • His teaching on the subject quite clearly consisted of three propositions. (1) That he will certainly return. (2) That we cannot possibly find out when. (3) And that therefore we must always be ready for him. C.S. Lewis
  • What is important is not that we should always fear (or hope) about the End but that we should always remember, always take it into account. C.S. Lewis
  • A man of seventy need not be always feeling (much less talking) about his approaching death: but a wise man of seventy should always be taking it into account. . . .he should remember how short, precarious, temporary, and provisional a thing [life] is; should never give all his heart to anything which will end when his life ends. C.S. Lewis
  • Frantic administration of solutions to the world is certainly discouraged by the reflection that “this present” might be “the world’s last night”; sober work for the future, within the limits of ordinary morality and prudence, is not. . . . happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came. C.S. Lewis
  • Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if I expected it would not be above an hour, before I should hear the last trump. Jonathan Edwards
  • If he knows the Lord, he will not trouble himself about heaven; if he does not know him, he will not be drawn to him by it. I would not care to persuade the feeble Christian that heaven was a place worth going to; I would rather persuade him that no spot in space, no hour in eternity is worth anything to one who remains such as he is. Unspoken Sermons, George MacDonald
  • Whatever a father can do to make his children blessed, that will God do for his children. Let us, then, live in continual expectation, looking for the good things that God will give to men, being their father and their everlasting saviour. If the things I have here come from him, and are so plainly but a beginning, shall I not take them as an earnest of the better to follow? Unspoken Sermons, George MacDonald
  • Will I join with the ocean blue?
    Or run into a savior true?
    And shake hands laughing
    “No Hard Feelings,” The Avett Brothers

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