New Thoughts (10/20/11-10/21/11)
I am once more confronted with just how greatly I have jostled and jumbled these passages in my attempts to coordinate. Clearly, the verse from Mark should more properly have been included in the previous section, and the latter half of the verses from Matthew seem better fit to what lies ahead in Mark. So be it. I shall just have to cover things as I have them at this point.
I’ll start with that small portion that is common to Matthew and Luke, describing the culling of humanity, if you will. This is clearly a parallel in thought to the separating of the sheep and the goats, although that passage does not come up among the parallel verses. What is interesting to me, on a technical level, is the degree of debate that exists as to which are the taken and which are the left. Recall that when I was touching on Luke 17:37, and the question of whether we should see vultures and corpses or eagles and live beings, the answer hinged on how one parsed the preceding material. If those taken are the condemned, then vultures and corpses suit the context. If those taken are the chosen, eagles and live bodies are a much better fit.
So, I was particularly keen to look beneath the English of the translations and see what these terms might indicate. That proves rather interesting. As to the term we have as ‘taken’, this translates paralambanetai. Strong gives the sense as ‘to associate with oneself in familiar or intimate relation’. That is pretty suggestive as to who the taken ought to be understood as being. Looking at ‘left’, translating apheitai, Zhodiates offers the ideas of dismissing, forsaking, leaving, or omitting. I would note that with both of these terms the definitions provided by Thayer are in keeping with what I have chosen to mention here. It does not appear that either Strong or Zhodiates is reading more into the term from context than ought to be done.
This being the case, it seems pretty clear which are the taken and which the left. In light of the terminology, I’m actually rather surprised to find footnotes in the NET suggesting it’s too inscrutable to admit of a certain answer. It hardly seems likely that Jesus would be calling the reprobate to Himself and forsaking the saved, does it? Taking these scenes of selection in the context of His return that we have in view in this discourse, it seems clear enough to me that those taken are those who will be meeting Him where He is, coming in the cloud of glory with His angels, visible to all mankind at His return. It’s going to be a very evident reunion! I know I mentioned this in one of the recent studies, but the idea that we have from Left Behind that everybody not chosen will be hanging about scratching their heads and wondering where we’ve got off to is just not accurate. Remember the message of the lightning flashing from east to west (Mt 24:27). It will be visible to all! They’ll know. It is thus that we hear of all the nations mourning at His return; because at His return we will be joining Him and those who are left behind will have no misconceptions whatsoever as to their situation.
What is in view here is twofold, and it neatly ties the comments Jesus had made in comparing this event with the Flood together with the warnings about not expecting to know the timetable in advance. The activities we are shown between Luke and Matthew lay out very normal daily situations, and they also cover the span of the day. There is nothing offensive in the activities depicted. Sleeping, working the fields, keeping the house; these are all perfectly acceptable and expectable activities for believer and unbeliever alike. There is little to no moral freight attached to such things. If anything, the moral freight would attach to those who do not work the fields or keep house, neither are they resting from their labors, only frittering away time. But, this is not the image we are handed. We see men and women going about their reasonable daily cycles of life. Until the Great Interruption comes.
What is the implication? Are we then to live with no taste for the daily cycle? Are we to become so ascetic in our lifestyles as to deny these necessities of life? Clearly not. The activities are not judged. Neither are the avoidable except we be suicidal. The implication is first and foremost that His return could come at any moment. We might be in the middle of any sort of thing when the call comes, and there will not be time to clean up. That is why we have this tied to the message to be alert and mindful of His return. And the message is to be thus mindful no matter what activities we are involved in.
Do you see this? Let’s just lay it right out there: There is no call for a cloistered life here. There is no room for compartmentalization. We cannot be Christians in the church and heathens in public. We cannot set aside our adherence and devotion to God’s way of living as we go about making a living. That puts us right back on the wrong side of the equation Luke lays out. “Seek to preserve your life and livelihood and it shall be utterly destroyed. If your pursuit of God leads to loss of life, however, He will bring you forth wholly alive into eternity. Don’t you worry!
I have to say that ‘preserve’ seems far too weak a translation for what Jesus is saying there. Look at the Greek: zooogoneesei. You might recognize the roots of this term. There’s a clear connection to zoe, and its root zao, which has been seen often enough in these studies. It’s the verb to live. It is that matter of living which is far and away beyond the mere fact of living in bios. It’s living the life that matters, the fullness of life. In that sense, it’s the life that comes from the Life and by no other means. Certainly, that fits in this context. The other term we might recognize in there is a form of ginomai: causing to be, bringing into existence. The combined effect, then, is to cause to be alive, or to bring life into existence.
Can I just toss a side note in here? Given the meaning of this term, wouldn’t it seem natural for this to be the term used for childbirth, or at least for conception? Yet, it is not thus used. This is significant. You see, though we are certainly involved in the process of conception, we are still not the ones who bring life into existence. This is a gross overestimation of our part in the process, with all apologies to Bill Cosby. No. You did not bring your child’s life into existence, neither have you the authority to remove it. There is One Who has the power to achieve both of these things, and One only. This is a particularly strong support for the sanctity of life, if it seems insufficient that the life we consider sacrosanct was created in God’s own image. It was furthermore created by God Himself. We have enjoyed our part in the process, but apart from God’s first involvement, we could no more bring forth life into this world than could a rock.
Coming back to our passage, feel the power of that in the setting given. Should your life be destroyed even so, He shall bring you forth alive into eternity! Go back to an earlier message Jesus delivered. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot touch the soul. Rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both” (Mt 10:28). I must stress, in regard to that message, that fear is subject to varied understanding, whether it ought to suggest terror or reverence in its context. The overarching message of the Gospel is that the abject fear of terror is unbefitting the child of God. We are not put here to cringe before Him, to see in Him a tyrant and a terror liable to destroy us on the merest excuse. No! We are to reverence Him, to honor Him as the Father, the epitome of fatherhood! We are to aspire to His example, though it remains ever so far from our capacity. We are not pawns in His cosmic chess game, we are children of His household. And, the promise we have in this massage is astonishing: He will bring us forth alive, even if we perish utterly from this life.
Preserve? No, no. Preservation makes me think of keeping things as they are. I could hardly be satisfied with such a thing, nor is the promise anything so unsatisfactory. This is way beyond the heroic efforts of some medical team trying to help us preserve some slender grip on life. No! This is Life we’re talking about! This is the Life of the soul, whether the body cares to join in or not. This is eternity! The issue is, of course, where that eternity shall be spent, for in truth, the soul does not die per se. Even that touching of the soul from Matthew 10:28 must be understood in this light. The death of the soul is not a cessation of consciousness. No. Though the many will wish it were, it is not so. The death of the soul, in so far as it dies, is that it is set across that unbridgeable abyss set between heaven and hell, evermore aware that God truly is, and evermore separated from His presence, always longing for one drop of the water of Life, and refused even that.
To the lost, as they walk this earth, that may not seem any great thing. If it impinges on thought at all, it registers as something of no consequence. But, that reality lies ahead for those who think they don’t care, and indeed, the agony of an eternity knowing what could have been will be agony indeed! I am oft times struck by the great boon we enjoy in this life, that we cannot know what would have transpired had we changed a decision here or an action there. Throughout our days, we find divergent paths and we make our choices. And we shall never know where the other path might have taken us. Even were the concept of the multiverse found to be real, and at each decision point, another us find himself launched down the avenue we do not follow, the infinitude of choices made would surely exceed the capacity of such a multiverse to accommodate them all. No, we do not know. For the duration of this lifespan, we do not know what would have happened if. But, comes a day! Comes a day when the sheep and the goats are finally and fully separated. Then, there shall be an eternal awareness of what would have happened. That’s the true hell of hell, I think: that throughout eternity there you shall be, and you shall finally know that you could have chosen otherwise. But, you shall also know that there will be no further choices. Life could have been had, but you chose death, separation, an eternal knowing that God is but you are not known to Him, nor ever shall be. Is this really what you want?
As to the one verse we have from Mark in this study, though it parallels what we read from Matthew 24:36 in the previous study I did not focus on it so much there. So, let me consider it in somewhat more detail here, particularly as I have drawn this section’s title from that verse. No one knows the hour. This is, I should think, one of the hallmark beliefs of the sound Christian church. When one comes along, and they do, claiming to have the timetable for the end, claiming to know the date certain upon which the Christ shall return and the world be judged, know for certain that this one is a charlatan. Let’s be absolutely clear about this point: The message Jesus delivers here was not a ‘for the Apostles only’ message. It was not an ‘applies to the early church but not thereafter’ message. It is a word for the ages. It continues to apply so long as heavens and earth persist in their present form.
There are those matters that concerned the more immediate fulfillment seen in the fall of Jerusalem, but we are beyond that now. We are talking strictly of the final judgment. Seriously, Jesus knew the timetable for the fall of Jerusalem sufficiently well as to place it in the lifetime of His listeners, so that already nullifies any thought that this comment about not knowing applies to that more immediate event. No. He is focused much further afield, at the end of the age.
From the letters Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica we know that this issue of folks predicting or declaring the end is no new phenomenon. Already, we learn, that church was being disturbed by reports that the end had come and they had apparently missed the cut. Wrong! The whole thrust of this message Jesus has been giving should have served to make that clear. Look at His message. There will be no missing the event. All will know, whether to their great joy or their eternal sorrow. There won’t be any question about it. If the event is announced by the collapse of the heavens, do you really suppose there will be anybody who failed to notice that? The unbeliever might well fail to discern the significance of those events, but he won’t fail to observe them. Then, we are told, that the coming Christ arrives so great a visibility and so loud a proclamation that it becomes impossible that anybody fails to take note. It’s enough to call the dead in Christ from their graves, and you think the living might not be aware of it?
He is the faithful Shepherd. He has not lost so much as one of His sheep yet, nor ever shall! It is this confidence we have in Him, rooted in Him, that gives Paul cause to remind the Thessalonicans of these facts. “You need nobody to write to you about the times and epochs”, he writes (1Th 5:1-2). Why not? Because you know full well that His return will be like a thief come in the night. What is the parallel he’s getting at? After all, it’s an image Jesus Himself uses. What is it about the thief that Jesus is picking up on? It’s not that he’s sneaky, certainly, nor that he’s bent on profiting from your misery. No. The sole point of comparison we are to take from that image is that the thief does not announce his intentions. That’s what Jesus is stressing toward the end of the verses we have here from Matthew’s account. Had the householder advanced warning as to the thief’s schedule, he’d be ready and waiting to thwart the thief’s plans. The thief’s whole operation rather hinges on taking his victim unawares.
We cannot say that God’s plan hinges on our being unaware. Yet, there is an aspect in which His plan is made perfect in that we are unaware of the timing. Let me put it to you this way: There is a reason why God has decided to reserve knowledge of the schedule to Himself alone. Further, as we know from Romans 8:28, His reasons for this are matters that promote our own highest good. The good of this is hinted at by the conclusion reached in Matthew 24:44. Therefore, knowing that you will never know the moment of His return until it is that moment, be ready at all times.
See, if we knew the schedule, our fleshly nature remains such that we would simply postpone all efforts at righteousness until the time was near. We would soon enough decide that we might as well get on with life as we had been pursuing it without Christ until time draws short. You know the mentality, here. Sow your wild oats in your youth, have that last wild fling before settling into married life. The world’s full of this perverse sort of wisdom. We have entire corporate cultures built on it. Take the idea that it is better to do what you think should be done and then apologize for bucking authority in the process than to seek proper authorization and wait. And we hear some of these concepts offered as wisdom and we nod our heads in sage agreement. But, we’re wrong. All of these things reflect a life unprepared, a careless lack of concern for living as near to righteousness as we may.
What’s the message? Be ready at all times because you don’t know which moment will be the last. You know, as I started reading through these verses, the impact of that really began to sink in for me in a fashion it has not always done. Consider the daily routine. Consider the mundane activities of any given morning. Then ask yourself, how would I like it if this were the moment? How pleased would I be to find myself caught up straight out of this present activity or thought and presented to my Lord?
Now, some of these thoughts would prove embarrassing even in their innocence. I mean, nobody wants to find themselves hauled out in public from the midst of morning ablutions. No way! Most of us would not be that pleased to be set on public display freshly out of bed, either. We’re just not presentable, according to our lights, and we will do anything we can to avoid being seen by any but our most intimate companions until all has been set to rights.
But, then there are those things we know are sinful which manage to snare us into their pursuit none the less. In spite of our love for Jesus, in spite of our desire to walk worthy of our Lord, there remains that within us that really does view His return as some event so far into the mists of future as to be irrelevant. In spite of knowing God is omnipresent and omniscient, we still manage to con ourselves into thinking that there are moments of our day that He does not see, matters in our thoughts that He does not know of. We think we can hide from Him, but even were we to conceal ourselves in the depths of the Marianas Trench, yet He would see us. Even though we took ourselves away to the farthest limb of the most distant galaxy, yet He would find us there. There is no thought that escapes His awareness. There is no sin which we might commit without His knowing. There is no moment at which we can safely let down our guard and just be; not when just being inevitably means just being sinful.
We are told to be ready, ready in every moment. This is the thing that is gripping me. If any moment could be the moment, then every action of mine could be the final action, engagement in which will be painfully obvious as I find myself face to face with God. It has to make you think: Do I really want to be doing this when I meet Him? Is this the first impression I wish to make at heaven’s gates – or the last, as it may be? Would my Lord and King really be pleased to find His servant engaged in whatever it is I am doing or not doing when He returns?
Again, there are plenty of situations where the answer will be obvious. There are others that might seem more grey to us. Well, then, let us measure by the marks of readiness. What does it mean to be ready at all times? One clear aspect of that is that we maintain a minimal attachment to the stuff and the priorities of this life. Look at the examples Matthew and Luke lay out. These are normal, day to day activities – nothing to be ashamed of, and in some respects, activities to be proud of. We are not slothful, but actively pursuing the work of the day, or resting from the labors of the previous day. Nothing wrong here. Yet, one is taken and one left. What distinguishes? Well, if I go back to the preceding messages about not going back to grab one last thing before departing the scene, it suggests an answer. The answer is that some are more attached to the stuff of this life than to the hope of the next. When the King calls us home, we want to be wholly of the mindset that home is where we want to be. We need to be wholly of the mindset that when the King commands, there is no, ‘hold on a second’. There is no, “I’m on the phone, now. Let me get back to you.” There is no prior engagement that justifies delay. There can be no attachment to the things of this life that might cause us to hesitate, whose loss can be allowed to weigh more greatly with us than the weight of glory ahead.
There is one other thing that feeds into our preparedness and that is prayer. Notice the instructions He gave His closest companions amongst the disciples there in the garden of Gethsemene as He prayed Himself. “Keep watch and keep praying” (Mt 26:41). There is a fundamental cause given for this advice, and it’s not just because Jesus is going to pray, and it’s not just because they’re coming to arrest Him. Not at all! It’s in the interest of the disciples to do so because while the spirit is willing, the flesh remains weak. Being watchful, ready at all times, and – critical to that effort – praying at all times, is our primal defense against temptation. Temptation has an easy inroad if we are neglectful of that idea that this moment could very well be the one. Temptation has little trouble garnering our attention if our attention is not otherwise occupied with the Lord.
There is that old adage that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Well, the idle mind, the mind that has forgotten to keep itself zeroed in on matters of the kingdom, is the first to receive the produce of that workshop. If we will seek first the kingdom of God, and seek it constantly, then it is most unlikely that our hands will be found idle in the first place. Supposing that even with such a singular focus on God’s plans and purposes our hands were to have a few idle hours now and again, the mind actively connected to God in prayer cannot easily be persuaded to command the hands to sinful activities. If we are mindful of our Master, it’s hardly going to strike us as reasonable that we should present our members to His primary opponent for that one’s use (Ro 6:13).
We who belong to Christ are a people under His command. We are family, to be sure, but we are also bondservants to His household, sworn to His service and His alone. If, then, our Liege King has commanded us to readiness, then ready we must be. If He has seen fit to warn us, this older Brother of ours, that even though we seek to be ready, our flesh will seek to betray us, then we must be that much more keenly aware of our own weakness. We must avail ourselves constantly of those means He has given us by which we may counteract the weakness. In simplest form: If Jesus Himself found it needful to go to prayer to strengthen Himself to the task, how much more do we need to do so?
Readiness: Detached from the attractions of this life – not dismissing the needs of this life, but not giving them more attention than they deserve; praying always; measuring our pursuits on the scale of His return. This is the crux of the Christian life. To be found ready when He comes is all. The spiritual battles we may think to pursue in the meantime? Well and good, but if we are not seeking to be ready, they won’t matter. The poor we have served, the sick we have visited? Well and good, but not if we have made ourselves unready in pursuit of that service. All the things, all the stuff, all those visible measures by which we think to show ourselves good children of God; they will amount to naught if we have been keeping ourselves ready for His return.
