The Word This Week
Luke 12:35…
Jesus next speaks to the intentionality required in following Him once He is no longer present with His Church in bodily form.
He employs word pictures to depict what He expects of dedicated lives in His Church. The expectations Jesus declares here are very high – and demonstrate great faith in His return.
When will He return? It is made very clear by the allusions Jesus employs no one knows.
We are NOT to know. But we are to live our lives as if we expect Him to return at any time, because when we least expect it, He will. (Return, that is.)
To have your waist girded and your lamps burning at all times tells us the intent and the intensity we are to maintain at all times as His followers. The Master IS going to return - it is only a matter of when - and we are to have made ourselves ready and kept ourselves ready in the time He does.
These are not trivial truths we have been given to hold on to. Since we are those who have been informed so directly by Jesus Himself about these things, we bear a greater responsibility to live our lives according to the things Jesus has said to us.
If you think of it, it is kind of an amazing context in which Jesus brings this up. He hasn’t gone anywhere yet, no one in this crowd knows He is leaving, and the terms of what those in His Church are to do once He is gone have not been defined previously. Everything Jesus has taught has been about following Him, as in, following Him while He is with them physically – of course while knowing all the principles of Christian living apply whether He was physically in their presence or not.
But now something else enters the picture. How are we to live once He’s gone?
Would Christianity just fade away?
What could provide the impetus to remain faithful to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ once He has departed? More than anything else, Jesus knows it is the expectation of His soon return, and on a day and in an hour no one knows. This is the expectation we are to live with, and how we are to live while we wait.
Pastor Bill
Jesus next speaks to the intentionality required in following Him once He is no longer present with His Church in bodily form.
He employs word pictures to depict what He expects of dedicated lives in His Church. The expectations Jesus declares here are very high – and demonstrate great faith in His return.
When will He return? It is made very clear by the allusions Jesus employs no one knows.
We are NOT to know. But we are to live our lives as if we expect Him to return at any time, because when we least expect it, He will. (Return, that is.)
To have your waist girded and your lamps burning at all times tells us the intent and the intensity we are to maintain at all times as His followers. The Master IS going to return - it is only a matter of when - and we are to have made ourselves ready and kept ourselves ready in the time He does.
These are not trivial truths we have been given to hold on to. Since we are those who have been informed so directly by Jesus Himself about these things, we bear a greater responsibility to live our lives according to the things Jesus has said to us.
If you think of it, it is kind of an amazing context in which Jesus brings this up. He hasn’t gone anywhere yet, no one in this crowd knows He is leaving, and the terms of what those in His Church are to do once He is gone have not been defined previously. Everything Jesus has taught has been about following Him, as in, following Him while He is with them physically – of course while knowing all the principles of Christian living apply whether He was physically in their presence or not.
But now something else enters the picture. How are we to live once He’s gone?
Would Christianity just fade away?
What could provide the impetus to remain faithful to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ once He has departed? More than anything else, Jesus knows it is the expectation of His soon return, and on a day and in an hour no one knows. This is the expectation we are to live with, and how we are to live while we wait.
Pastor Bill