The United Methodist Church of Swartz Creek

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

This Bible verse is possibly the most often quoted and famous verse in the Bible. It is a good one. You see reference to it in many places, including many public places as well. How often do you see someone at a ball game holding up a sign saying John 3:16. It is a very positive and uplifting verse that is a reminder of the love that God has for us by sending us His Son to save us from our sins.

However, this verse is hardly the focal point of the section of the Bible which it is in. This section which is today’s reading is very much focused in the need to in indeed know Christ as your Lord and savior, and if you don’t, death and sin will come. It’s actually a very harsh and condemning paragraph and it requires of us a great discipline in our following of Christ.

I also believe that this section puts a lot of responsibility on Christians as a whole. It is our job to be so loving of others and illustrating what it truly means to be a follower of the light that the people around us can’t really help but want to know more about this Christ guy.

However, in general, we Christians are not very good at spreading the word. We can be very good about following it and keeping it for ourselves. This is a problem because there are so many people out there who need to know Christ. This must be our number one priority, to make sure others have the opportunity to share about Christ. We often don’t share because we don’t want to offend someone. A friend once shared with me that we need to be more concerned for the good of our friends then for our friendship. Friendship is often for us, looking out for our friends is about them. Often we need to think about this and remember the important of reaching out to folks and talking about faith with folks no matter what the circumstances may be.

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Matthew 25:1-13

Okay, we are here on the fourth devotion of this week and the same basic topic has been the same for all of them, being prepared for the end times. I’ll be honest, I’m kind of running out of ideas for devotions here. So I’m going to take this devotion a little different direction. Again, I’ll be honest here, I don’t actually spend very much time thinking about ‘the end times’. I do occasionally think about death, but that is really about death of me, not the end of the world (I do believe the world will continue on when I am gone). I would guess that most of you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the end times either.

Why is it that we don’t think about it very often. I suppose there are several reasons. It probably isn’t that fun of a topic to think about. There is the perception that there is a lot of bad that would be associated with it. I would guess that it is also difficult for us to think about or comprehend. We do have some pictures of what the end times may be like from the Gospels and from Revelations, but most of us don’t have real good images deep inside of us. So it is hard to figure out.

Bottom line is that we are warned that we need to be living in a way that we may be prepared for the end times as they happen. And as we do so, we have to let go of our need for control and trust that God has these times covered in ways that are of the best interest for His kingdom.

I don’t know if any of us will be here to see the end times, who knows. I do encourage all of us to make it a priority to work on our lives and our behaviors so that we may honor God in everything we do. And we need to be regularly making plans to continue to find new ways to do this. If we can be successful at all of this, there is a pretty good chance that we will be surviving the end times.

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. – Matthew 24:45-46

Obedience. A very good thing. Jesus is making it clear that it is good for a servant to be doing what he is supposed to be doing when the master returns. In this story, the master has told the servant his responsibilities and the good response is to indeed be doing that, and not taking things into your own hands and doing things that are inappropriate with the hopes of not getting caught.

Any parent is well aware of times where their kids have tried to get away with something, and we probably also realize that there have been other times where they have actually indeed gotten away with it. And hey, we can certainly remember the same when we were kids where we either did or didn’t get away with doing something that we knew we weren’t supposed to be doing.

One of the things that we need to remember is that even when our masters are not watching us, our Master is. A good friend once shared with me that a true judge of character is what we do in our lives when nobody is looking. Of course we all fail in this situation from time to time, but it certainly is something that we need to be thinking about for sure.

This idea reminds me of the stories in the Bible where the Pharisees and Priests make sure to pray in public places so that they can be seen. Jesus seems to indicate that these folks perhaps are not living a quality prayer life at other times. That is what is really important and is a definition of what our true relationship with God is. How well are in communion with God when it is just Him and us? If we can work to perfect this time of our lives, we will be much better off for sure. Think about this when you are driving, or at the mall, or at home in personal prayer time. Are we always loving the Lord with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind and all of our strength and are we always loving our neighbors? Think about this.

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Matthew 24:42

Recently I have been interested a little more in the story of Noah and the Ark. I have learned more about why God was frustrated with the people of the time, namely sexual immorality and men taking advantage of women. From rereading the stories in Genesis, we learn more about the heart of God.

I found it interesting in reading this section in Matthew about how the people at the time of Noah had no idea that a flood was coming. Imagine for a moment that you are busy minding your own business, perhaps working in the fields or something, and it starts raining. The first thing you would do is probably just go ahead and go inside. All of us have experienced that in our lives. And then the rain keeps coming and you start to think, man, sure is a very rainy day. And then it keeps raining the next day. We have all experienced that as well. Soon it starts to flood. There are places in this world that have experienced that as well. At what point do you realize that there is a serious problem here. None of us have experienced 40 days of constant rain, and none of us ever will. But it did certainly catch all of the folks at that time off guard.

Recently, I allowed Kyla Ford and Michael Hilden to use my computer to look up some chords to a song they were planning on working on together. I thought nothing of it and certainly had no problem with what there were trying to do. I came back to my computer later to find a very strange picture of Kyla and Michael making funny faces that they took with the camera on my computer and placed as my wall paper.

I was completely caught off guard, and actually found it pretty funny. But this happening definitely was something that never entered my mind. I think that the next coming of Christ will be like that. We will be going about our business and wham, it will happen. So, that makes it very important that we be living our lives all the time as best we can in a way that pleases Christ. Something that I am working on and I hope you are too.

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect – if that were possible. – Matthew 24:23-24

In this section of Matthew and in other places in the Gospels as well, Jesus makes it clear that we do not know exactly when He will return, in fact, Jesus Himself didn’t even know the specific time. Most of you have heard from time to time how folks have proclaimed that either Christ is about to come or the world is about to end. These of course have proven to be false, and the next time we hear this, it will be false as well. We simply don’t know.

We live in a society that expects us to know things. “I don’t know” is not a very acceptable answer in many aspects of our society. We are supposed to be smart enough and educated enough to figure things out. But the truth is, there are many things that we just don’t know because they have not been revealed to us, including when Christ will come again.

The problem with not knowing things is that it prevents us from being in control of given situations. The positive of this though, is that it forces us to rely on others, namely God. It is important for all of us to understand that others are in place in our lives for a reason and it is certainly okay for us to rely on others for information and support.

I think Jesus is making this clear in this section that it is not our job to know when things are going to happen, but rather we need to just live life like we are always ready. I of course am guilty of not always doing so, but at least I am trying.

I encourage all of us to work hard in life at not knowing things and just trusting. The good news behind this is that it is one way to really experience greater blessings. And that is a good thing of course.

Brian Kelley

Key Verse: “There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true.” John 5:32

In Deuteronomy God sets forth the divine rules of evidence. “Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.” (Deuteronomy 19:15b) Jesus says something similar in Matthew18:16. And in our reading for today Jesus seems to be applying that principle to the testimony about himself. “Don’t take my word for it,” Jesus seems to say. “I can produce even more than the three witnesses that God’s rules of evidence require.”

John the Baptist “was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.” When you sent messengers to him he “testified to the truth.” What truth was that? Well, when asked if he was the Messiah, he said “no”. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’”. (John 1:23) He pointed to Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ . . . And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:29b-30 & 34)

That’s one.

“But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.” (John 5:36) Nicodemus, himself a member of the Pharisee’s sect, admitted to Jesus that “no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” (John 3:2c)

That’s two.

“And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf.” (John 5:37a) First at Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:11) and later on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5) God’s voice proclaimed “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Jesus was very clear in answering his critics: if you didn’t hear God’s voice it’s simply because you don’t have his word abiding in you.

That’s three. Case closed.

But wait, there’s more!

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. . . If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” (John 5:39 & 46) Indeed, Moses reported God’s promise: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak for them everything that I command.”

(Deuteronomy 18:18) Moreover, all the sacrifices that Moses wrote about, all the furniture of the Tabernacle, all the signs of the water from the rock and the manna in the wilderness–all of these symbolically told the story of Christ who was to come.

That’s four. The defense rests! Hallelujah!