Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3
Click here for Part 4
Click here for the sermon that accompanies this post
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. 37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
45 “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. 47 Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods. 48 But if that evil servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, 51 and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Matthew 24:36-51
Introduction
Being “left behind” is sometimes a bad thing and sometimes a good thing. If you are a child on a long road trip with your family and you stop at a rest area, and you are left behind that, of course, is a very bad thing. If you are on the elementary school playground and they are picking teams, being left behind is a very bad thing. If you are living in a coastal village in Europe any time from the fall of Rome right up until the modern age, and Norse or Arab raiders come to enslave you (as happened regularly) you very much do want to be left behind. What matters is who is doing the taking and leaving in this scenario. In our passage today, Jesus talks about people being taken and left behind. Obviously, many people read these passages through the lens of the Scofield Reference Bible and rapture pop-fiction, but the Bible does not want us to read it through the lens of 19th and 20th Century novelties, it wants to be read in its own context. The founder of Voice of the Martyrs, Richard Wurmbrand, had a passage in his book, Tortured For Christ, where he talked about teaching the Bible to Communists inside the Iron Curtain. When he would try to explain certain parables like the Good Shepherd, they could not understand what he was talking about. They would say things like “why does this guy have all those sheep? Those belong to the state, he is a criminal who is hoarding them for himself.” They did not understand because they had no idea what the context was. They were reading the story as if Jesus was living in the 20th Century Soviet Union. This might be comical to us to look at them from the outside, but as 21st Century Americans, we often do the same thing. We read these gospels as if these people are just like us, living in a world just like ours, with a history and a culture just like ours. That is a major mistake. We need to read the New Testament like we are aliens from another planet who have crash-landed in First Century Israel. Their culture and history and way of life are totally alien to us and we must first understand that rather than assuming they are operating in our context. Our passage today is a prime example.
