It's All About Jesus" - Week 42 (Mark 13:24=37)

``So how do we live? Jesus tells us stay awake through faithful obedience. Look at verse 34. It's like a man going on a journey. When he leaves his home, he puts his servants in charge, each with his own work, commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore, stay awake for you don't know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning. Lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all my disciples, stay awake. [00:41:22] (39 seconds)  #stayAwakeFaithfully

And faithful Christians land in all kinds of different places, and there's all kinds of different views. But notice how Jesus does not linger there and neither should we. The weight of the passage falls on verse 31, that everything else is temporary. The temple falls. Empires fall. Cultures rise and collapse. Generations come and go. Even creation itself will one day be renewed, but Jesus' words stand. That Jesus places his own words on the same level as God's eternal promises, and history has only confirmed it. [00:36:50] (42 seconds)  #JesusWordsEndure

Even Jesus in his as as he is, put aside he he didn't hold on. He didn't grasp to what it means to be God, but he humbled himself. He became a slave. He became human like us in in this mission. He entrusted the timing to the father. He lived in faithful submission to the father's plan. And if the son could entrust himself to the father in uncertainty, so can you. Waiting implies we don't have control. [00:38:55] (34 seconds)  #humbleTrustInFather

And this is where grace floods in. Our watchfulness does not save us. His faithfulness does. Christianity is not first about what we must do, but about what Christ has already done for us. Because Jesus stayed awake, endured the cross, finished the work of salvation, we can now live awake not to earn God's favor and salvation, but because we already have it in Christ Jesus. [00:45:23] (27 seconds)  #graceNotWorks

It also gently confronts our anxiety driven fear about the future. Yeah. We don't know, but God is in control, and we can trust God. How can we trust God? Because Jesus trusted God. And Jesus died a horrible death on the cross, but God raised him from the dead three days later. And God has promised to do the exact same thing to you for you. [00:40:50] (31 seconds)  #trustGodNotAnxiety

Again, there's a lot of uncertainty in our lives. But one thing we do know is that this present fallen world is not all there is. This sick broken body is not all there is. It's soon we will live forever in the kingdom with our king, a new resurrection bodies, and a new renewed heaven and earth. So we have hope because there is an end to this present world, and there's a new and better world coming. And we know this because on the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead. [00:47:17] (37 seconds)  #hopeBeyondThisWorld

Christ, if you return today, what would faithfulness look like for me? Open God's word even briefly. Speak intentionally about Christ to at least one person. Choose obedience to that place that you're most tempted to delay it, and don't do it alone. Do it together. Talk about it with your spouse, with your friends, with someone in the church. We stay awake best when we stay awake together. [00:50:30] (29 seconds)  #faithfulTogether

It's this kind of faithfulness that Jesus looks for. This kind of faithfulness is hard. Change always is. We'll stumble. We'll grow tired. We'll fall asleep. But we do not we do not strive to stay awake alone. The same Jesus who stayed awake for us now intercedes for us, strengthens us by his spirit, promises that our labor in him is not in vain, and so we can stay awake. [00:50:59] (34 seconds)  #sustainedFaithfulness