People get ready—there’s a train, a comin’
You don’t need no baggage—
you just get on board
All you need is faith—
to hear the diesels hummin’
Don’t need no ticket,
you just thank the Lord.
There is something so true, very positive, and
ominous about that song. You see, it is the very message that Jesus is giving
to his disciples. They are to be ready. They are not to be afraid; they are to
sell their possessions—don’t need no baggage. They are to be dressed for
service and ready to open the door when the master returns.
We are to be
ready for the Master’s return. The Second Coming of Jesus is such a touchy subject
for the church. We wonder why he has taken so long, so many have tried to
figure out when he is coming back, and every one of them has been disappointed.
William Miller (1782-1849) studying the books of Daniel and Revelation,
predicted that March 21, 1844 was the precise date when Christ would return to
earth. When this day came and went without the promised appearance of Christ,
Miller changed his prediction to October 22, 1844. It came and went. Many of
his followers deserted him but many stuck and today you know them as Seventh
Day Adventists, a Christian Church founded on a very shaking beginning. Hal Lindsey
makes predictions in his book The Late
Great Planet Earth, which sold over 30 million copies. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson
and many others have tried to predict this as well.
Luke 12:35-40 assures that your master will return
for you and that he expects to find you ready for him, looking for him,
anticipating his coming. Physically speaking, we are not made of eternal stuff.
We are mortal. We will die. All of us do. But death is not a step into the
void, nor is the text an invitation to morbidly concern you with death. It is
an invitation to see death as a time when the Lord comes to pick you up. The
old spiritual has it right. You’ve sung, “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for
to carry me home.” Death is not the end of our existence, but is the
translation from this life into the life that has been prepared beyond this
life.
Abraham and Sarah are used to illustrate how
believers ought to live. They received and believed the promises of God: they
were to be led to a promised land, they would have offspring, their descendents
would become as numerous as the stars in the sky, and through those descendents
the whole human family would be blessed. That was God’s promise to them. They
trusted that promise, even when they had no way of knowing how in the world God
was going to accomplish it. They weren’t given the boundaries of a promised
land. They were wanderers all the days of their lives. They had to go into old
age, and even to the point of thinking that they had to help God by providing a
handmaid as a surrogate parent, in order to get a child. But they kept on
trusting that somehow God would keep his promise, even if they thought they had
to help God out.
God did get the job done. God did make Abraham’s
descendants as numerous as the sands on the seashore God did raise out of his
descendants the Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of all humankind. All of the promises
were kept, but Abraham and Sarah had to trust in them by faith. Most of the
things that God is asking us to believe and to do are not things that we are
going to see visually while we are here on this earth. They are to be taken by
faith. God has given us words of promise, and by them we are to live just as
Abraham and Sarah did. They died as they had lived, trusting in the promises of
God. You are to do the same.
I am told that a lobster, when left high and dry
among the rocks, isn’t smart enough, or does not have enough initiative, to make
his way back to the sea. Instead, he waits for the sea to come to him. If the
sea does not come, he remains where he is, and dies. He does this in spite of
the fact that the slightest exertion would enable him to reach the waves, which
are tossing and tumbling within a yard of him. Some people are like that
lobster. At some time in their lives they find themselves left high and dry
among the rocks. Life has been cruel to them, as it is to all of us at one time
or another. And they give up. They become bitter. What they do not realize is
that trust is something that develops as you confront your difficulties with
God’s help. And you discover that there are those loving arms beneath you
carrying you in those difficult places where you cannot make it on your own.
Go with God,
Pastor Qualley
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