Morning. We're going to be in
Mark 13. Mark 13, and we'll be looking
at verses 28 through 37. This will likely be the last
message, at least for a bit, in Mark 13. And our Lord here
has been speaking of His second coming. And now He uses, as He's
wrapping it up, He uses a fig tree to illustrate for every
one of us that in verse 29 it says that when ye shall see these
things come to pass, when you see these things, then know that
it is nigh even at the doors, and the purpose If you're familiar
with Mark 13 and Luke 21 and Matthew 24, these companion passages
in the scriptures, if you're familiar with the words that
our Lord uses, you notice that there's a generic attribute to
these words. You can't look at these words
and know, oh, he's definitely speaking of this time or this
time. Now, he did speak, certainly, of the destruction of Jerusalem,
the destruction of the Temple, the end of the nation of Israel. But he speaks to us all, and
he uses generic words, because What he's revealing to us, to
every believer, in every generation, is the truth of these. That when
you see these things come to pass, when you see them, then
know that the end is near. It's a reminder to us. He's putting
us in remembrance to know the truth of the words of the Lord. It does. Certain events and times
in history throughout the generations, things did come to an end for
those people in those generations. Certain kingdoms rose and certain
kingdoms went down and certain things were part of that history
that were no more after that. But for every one of us, we that
believe Christ and hope in His return, knowing what He has promised
us. We that hope in Him, we know
when we see these things come to pass that the end is near.
It's at the door. What Christ has said is coming
to pass. And the Lord is going to return,
just as He promised. He's going to judge the earth
for the wickedness of the earth. Therefore, He says to us, watch. Watch. Be watching. Be prayerful. be looking and waiting for the
return of your Lord. And our title is Unto All Watch. Unto All Watch. And we'll have
three divisions. First we'll look at this parable
of the fig tree. And then we'll see that the word
that our Lord has spoken, it shall come to pass, just as he
said. And then we'll see the end and
the last point that no one knows. No one knows the time when our
Lord is going to return. All right, so let's begin here
with this parable of the fig tree. You'll notice as we read
verses 28 and 29, In his illustration, there's an urgency. There's a
pressing nature to what he is saying. It's important to us
to hear what he's saying. Look at verse 28. Mark 13, 28. Now learn a parable of the fig
tree. When her branches yet tender
and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near. So
ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass,
know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Now this parable is
relating to what our Lord has been speaking of in context. It's of what he's been saying
in the context of this passage. And so that abomination of desolation
that he spoke of, I think it was in verse 14, the abomination
of desolation, when you see it, it's speaking of the workings
of that body of Antichrist. There's a body of Christ, his
church, There's a body of Antichrist, and all those outside of Christ
are there in that body of Antichrist. Now, the generation of believers,
I was standing there listening to the Lord speak, that generation
of believers, they would see the destruction of the temple.
They would see come to pass what the Lord spoke of, and he was
telling them, when you see these events that I've described to
you, as they start building and increasing, just as a tree puts
out its branches more and more as it gets older and then it
puts out little buds of leaves and those leaves unfurl and it
grows into a tree you know that what I've said to you leading
up to it all these events are coming to pass that what I said
is going to happen is going to happen. Verse 30, Verily I say
unto you that this generation shall not pass till all these
things be done. And so they saw those things.
Now, on Wednesdays we're typically going through Isaiah, and one
of the things that we've seen in Isaiah is this pattern. You see these kingdoms in the
spirit of Babylon, even before Babylon was established, but
you see that pattern in Isaiah, these kingdoms. You saw Assyria
rising and Assyria falling. And before then you saw Syria
and Samaria. They seemed powerful and were
threatening the people of God in Judah. But they were brought
down as well. And so all these kingdoms come
and they go. And then eventually Babylon came.
and eventually Babylon was destroyed, but the Lord uses that spirit
of Babylon as a picture of the great enemy of the Lord's people. So the Lord is telling us that
when you see it in your day, When you see that pattern, when
you see the wickedness of man just increase, and you see the
filth and thoughts of your own heart when the Lord makes it
known to you, When you see the darkness about you, when you
see just the corruption of man and the love of man growing cold,
and you see that sin rampant in the earth, and things going
the way that they are, it's a reminder to us not to grow comfortable
and complacent in this world and doing what we would do in
this life, but it's a reminder to us, you flee to the mountains. He said, when you see the abomination
of desolation spoken of by Daniel, then flee to the flee to the
mountains. And what he's saying is, not
to natural mountains, but rather flee to the mountain of the salvation
that God has provided in His Son, Jesus Christ, who worked
a perfect righteousness for you. to deliver you, to prepare you
for that coming day of judgment which comes on the people of
the earth. And so this generation of religious
Pharisees, with all their wisdom and all their study, as religious
as they were, because there's a lot of religious people, we
know what religion is, we ourselves See it in our own hearts and
and need to be delivered from religion They couldn't see with
all their wisdom They couldn't see him who is the light and
life of men standing right there before them Though it was plain
in their sight then they could hear him and see the miracles
They didn't see that he was the Christ the promised Christ of
God and in Matthew 16 3 the Lord chided them saying I O ye hypocrites,
ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the
signs of the times? And so, Christ would rise, he
would be crucified, he would rise from the dead, just like
that sign of Jonah. I didn't read it, but he spoke
of the sign of Jonah. That's what you're gonna see.
And Christ rose from the dead, just as Jonah rose out of the
belly of the whale, yet seeing all these things and hearing
the witness, they did not believe. And in like manner, here the
Lord is telling his disciples. this is what I told you, these
things are going to be destroyed. All these things here that you
see before you, the temple, they're going to be laid waste and it's
going to come to pass just as I said. And the disciples, those
who believed Christ and trusted Him, they believed Him and they
knew and when they saw these things building up, They knew
the time is near and they were ready to go when they saw the
sign that the Lord told them to look for. But there were certainly
people there that saw these same things, maybe even heard some
people speaking of them, but they didn't believe. And so when
they saw the signs all coming together, they did nothing and
they perished when the Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem. So for us today, because you
might think, well what happened back in 70 AD had to do with
me today. What do I care? But for us, this
fig tree is given to us as a reminder so that when we see these things
in our day, in our generation, that coldness and that spirit
of Antichrist just working and all these judgments falling upon
man and these things unfolding before us, it's a reminder to
us that the Lord said he's going to return. This world, this earth,
as we know it, has an expiration date. When the Lord says it's
done, It's done. And he's going to return. Turn
over to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2, and we'll
look at verses 3 and 4. And you can put a marker in 2
Thessalonians 2, because we'll look at a couple other scriptures.
If you want to see them easier, just put a marker there. And
Paul tells us, because we have a I like to, I mean I love seeing
the spirit of Christ and his word and what that means for
us as believers. But here you can see that they
do tell us there's a literal figure that will be here. There's
coming a time when these things will come to an end. It's not
only speaking of that work of salvation in the heart, but there's
a physical end to these things when Christ returns again. And
Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, Let no man deceive you
by any means. For that day shall not come except
there come a falling away first. And that man of sin be revealed,
the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Now, we may not be alive to see
that day when that particular one that Paul is speaking of
is revealed, but we do see the pattern of darkness. We definitely
see the workings of ungodliness, we see apostasy in our day, we
see the idolatry of free will works religion. where people
believe that it's in their religion and in their practice of religion
that they're saved. That they think that their righteousness
and acceptance with God is in the things that we do in religion. And Christ is showing us it's
not in religion that you're saved. Religion doesn't save any one
of us. Christ saves, and Christ Jesus
alone saves. That's why God gave his son,
because he is the forgiveness, he is the reason why God forgives
his people, because he put away sin. Not us doing religious things,
doing dead letter religious things. The Pharisees did dead letter
religious things, and still they didn't know the true and living
Christ, alright? So, when you see it, and you
see this world, saying that which is light, what God says is light,
oh, that's darkness. But this which God says is darkness,
that's light. When you see those things, you
know that the time is near. You're reminded that Christ said,
I'm going to return and I'm going to judge this world for its wickedness. And so we're reminded again,
I need Christ. Lord, have mercy on me. Let me
not be taken away with that deception. Because who of us can stand here
and boast and say, I won't be deceived. Or if I was in Christ's
day, I would have believed Him. No, you wouldn't. I wouldn't.
It's always the grace of God that turns us. It's always His
work that delivers us from death and turns us to even know the
true and living God. It's not our religion, it's Christ,
it's His grace and mercy that does that for us. If you're still
there in 2 Thessalonians 2, look at verses 11 and 12. having read of those that they
believed the lie of the spirit of antichrist were told for this
cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe
a lie that they all might be damned to believe not the truth
but had pleasure in unrighteousness and so it's the Lord that delivers
us from that we all would be damned we all would believe a
lie because we all come forth from Adam and Adam sinned and
when Adam sinned, we sinned too. We all fell in the garden. We
have nothing to boast of. It's not I'm smarter and I knew
better and so I turned and believed Christ. It's by His grace and
mercy we heard, by the hearing of faith, the work of the Spirit
turned our dead hearts to behold and to see the true and living
God and to behold His righteousness revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, let me just say, we're not
to try and figure out the day, or the hour, or the time when
Christ will come. It's not about trying to figure
out that, oh, I see, any day now Christ is going to come.
It's not about trying to figure out that day or that hour. There are people out there that
do that, and when they tell you that it's a day, it's going to
be this particular time, and when you hear that, don't believe
them. They're looking at the wrong
thing. But rather as you see these things, as you see the
day approaching, it serves as a reminder to us and we see these
things that we would be reminded and know that the Lord has promised. It is coming and the end is near
because it creates in the child of God a desire, a longing for,
a looking for the return of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So we're ever to live in the hope and realization that our
Lord is going to return and therefore we want to be found watching
and waiting. We don't want to be found diligent
in this life in creating a kingdom for ourselves and establishing
ourselves here in the earth and putting down deep roots in the
earth. That's not where we want to be
found, but rather whatever we're doing, it's with that eye knowing
that these things are temporal. These things are passing away
and the Lord's returning. So that's what we see in the
parable of the fig tree. That's what he's saying. When
you see these things, know that the end is near. It's a reminder
to you, all right? Now, let's look at our second
point, it shall come to pass. And what that's speaking to is
the certainty of Christ's words. Look at verse 31. Mark 13, verse
31. He says, heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my words shall not pass away. And so it's as
if the Lord is addressing the objection of a skeptic, one who
says, I don't believe God. I don't believe there is a God,
or I don't believe that Christ is the Son of God, or that he's
going to return. And so he points to, Christ points
to creation. And he has us look at creation. He says, heaven and earth shall
pass away. And he says, these things that
you see, which we naturally look at and say, well, here, this
is strength, and this is solid, and this is real. But I don't
see God. That's not real. And he says,
those things that you see and that you trust in, that you have
confidence in, these things are going to pass away. But my words,
that which goes out and you don't see it, his word, you don't see
that word, and so you doubt it, you don't believe. But he assures
us, he says, I'm telling you, this word will not pass. away. And so it's not going to fall
to the ground and be undone. Though it's been a long time,
what I say will come to pass, shall come to pass in the time
that I appointed to come to pass. And so you see the wickedness
in our heart because we as men and women, young and old, we
are more willing to believe our own thoughts and our own ideas
and our own experience and to doubt the truth of God revealed
in His Son, Jesus Christ. But don't doubt for a moment
that His words are not. Don't doubt that they're going
to come to pass. They shall come to pass. Don't doubt or think
that they're improbable or unlikely to happen just because your sense,
your logic, your experience, what you think is going to happen
is going to happen. No, it's not. What the Lord says
is going to happen, it will. And so to deny Christ's words
is to side with the scoffers, to doubt it, to say, well, it's
been a long time. I mean, come on, it's been 2,000
years. And we haven't seen anything. And Peter said, this is what
they would say. He said, knowing first, knowing
this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers
walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise
of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep,
all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. And so it's no new thing that
there's people who scoff and deny and challenge God and sooner
trust themselves rather than what the Lord has revealed in
His Word. And, you know, we are very honest
when it comes to other people and we say, well, I don't think
I can trust I don't think I can trust another person, but I can
trust myself. But even you can't bring to pass
what you would bring to pass. You can't even do what you would
do with your own will, right? We have a will that changes.
When we want to change our mind and when things don't work out
the way we thought they would work out, the Lord turns us.
And so we don't have a will that's trustworthy, so why do we trust
and believe ourselves but not trust and believe the true and
living God? But Paul, I'm sorry, John says
in 1 John 2, 15 and 16, he warns us saying, love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is
in the world, the lust of the flesh, right, that which is religious,
that we would do an exercise in our flesh, flesh being our
natural affections, the things that appeal to us by nature,
the idolatrous thoughts that we have about God in our imagination,
the works that we do thinking that God is pleased with us for
these works, that's all the flesh. The Lord tells us the flesh is
enmity. against the truth of God. It
doesn't reveal to us the truth of God. It's not a partner with
God. The flesh is enmity against God. And he says the lust of the eyes,
those sensual desires that we all have in the flesh and in
the heart and our thoughts and minds, those things that we want
in the world for ourselves and the pride of life, right, that
recognition, that status, that power and authority that we want
over other people. He says all of that is not of
the Father, but is of the world. And so that scoffing, that willingness
to believe and trust self rather than to believe the Word of God
and to forego the things that would take us further and further
into darkness, That is the enmity. What you
see there in that flesh and that love of the world is enmity against
God. It's not the Spirit of God, because
the Spirit of God turns you to Christ and to hear His Word and
to believe His Word and what He said. And so the natural heart
of man is revealed in this because the Lord is showing us this is
what we are by nature. But the truth of God is not what
we are by nature. There's enmity there and the
Lord is revealing that to us in saying this word. And so it may challenge us, it may concern
us at times, but the Lord has a way of revealing that enmity
that's there in the heart, the root of the matter, that we would
call out upon him and cry to him. And he makes it known to
us that he shall bring his word to pass. And that brings us to
our final point, no one knows. The reality is we shall soon
meet God. Every one of us shall meet the
true and living God. The prophet Amos told his hearers,
he said, prepare to meet thy God. And every one of us is going
to meet him. It's funny how we doubt the truth
that Christ is going to return and set all things new when he
returns. And yet we so easily forget that
we ourselves are going to die. We may live 70 or 80 years, but
we too are going to die and stand before God. And the question
to ask ourselves is, are we ready? Are we prepared to meet our God? Are we ready to meet our God? Paul told Timothy at the end
of his life, he said, I am now ready to be offered, and the
time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight. I
have finished my course. I have kept the faith. And so
the question for us is, are we ready to meet God? And the question
we should have is, well, I don't know. Like, there's a lot of
people that say, I don't know if I'm ready to meet God. You
know, I've done good works, I've done my best in things, I've
tried to read the Bible, I try to pray, I come to services as
regularly as I can, and I try to do that which is good and
right. But I don't know if I'm ready
to meet God. And I can tell you, according to the Word of God,
if that's your hope, and reading your Bible, and saying your prayers,
and saying, well, I'm a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the Son
of God, and being baptized, if that's your hope, you're not
prepared to meet Christ. What prepares us to meet Christ
is Christ Himself. The good news is that you and
I, we can't do good enough. We can't do that which pleases
the true and living God by our works. He reveals to us and shows
us that we come up short all of sin to come short of the glory
of God. And so he's revealing by his
law by what he's revealing in his word is that we come up short
in the things of God so that we cannot work a righteousness.
So if you're looking to your works for righteousness you're
not ready to meet God. You're going to meet an angry
God in judgment. But you that see, that have been
shown by God that your works aren't good enough, that I've
tried and they're still not good enough, I can't please God. But
He's provided His Son, Jesus Christ. You that see and hear
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God has provided His Son, the
righteousness of His people, that He is the redemption by
His death, His perfect sacrifice He gave Himself to put away the
sins of the people, so that He purged us of our sins to make
us righteous before God. And you that have no hope in
yourself, no hope in your ability, no hope even in your faith, but
you that hope in Christ, He says, you're ready to meet God because
it's not you, it's not even your faith. It's the work of Christ. You're trusting in the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ to make you fit and acceptable with God. There's our hope. He's the one
that makes us ready to meet the true and living God. So, our
Lord, through His work in washing away our sins by the shedding
of His blood, He bore the sin of His people. and put that sin
away forever. And the Holy Spirit, by nature
we don't understand this, by the flesh we don't understand
this, because all we see is religious things. I need to be doing, I
need to be doing better, I need to stop this and start that.
That's all just fleshly religion. But the Spirit reveals to us
what we are, that our works are never going to be good enough,
and He shows us that God has provided righteousness. not in
yourself, but in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the righteousness
of His people, and so that judgment was poured out upon Him, so that
when we die and stand before God, we won't be standing there
in our own robe of works that we've done, but in the righteous
robe of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as God is pleased and accepts
His own Son, so He's pleased with us because we come in His
Son, which is all His work, to put us there and to give us that
faith and give us that hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right? And so therefore, because He's
our wonderful and glorious salvation, Our Lord encourages us and reminds
us, I'm coming again. And it's meant to be an encouragement
and a blessing for us to watch, to wait, to look for His return. As Peter said in 2 Peter 3.12,
looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God,
wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat. So these things will all
be burned up. And that's why we don't have
a hope in these things and fix our hope and attention here.
Our hope is fixed in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul said, these
things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
seen are eternal. And those who believe in Christ,
they have the hope of that eternal bliss forever in heaven with
the Lord. And those who hope and trust
in these things, all they have to look forward to is that eternal
damnation under the wrath of God for all eternity. And it's our relation to Christ
that determines where we're going to be. It's Christ who determines
that. It's He that laid down His life
for His chosen people. And all who desire Him, all who
have been shown that they can't work a righteousness and have
no confidence in the flesh, but hear of His righteousness and
believe Him, That's the revelation of God to you. That's not the
flesh. You've got hope in Him and say,
Lord, have mercy on me. Wash me in His blood. Lord, don't
leave me to figure this out in my own works and in my own self.
Have mercy upon me, the sinner. He does that work in His people. And John said, This world passeth
away in the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God
abideth forever. And again, religion says, see,
you better be doing, you better be doing the will of God, you
better be doing this better and that better and, you know, really
getting disciplined and doing what you need to be doing. But
again, if that's our hope, that's fear, that's darkness, that's
a scary place to be because when we're honest, we see I'm not
where I'm supposed to be. So when he says, he that doeth
the will of God abideth forever, what does that mean? To what
Christ said, this is the will of God that you believe on the
one whom he has sent. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. you shall receive remission for
your sins, the forgiveness of your sins. You believe on the
one whom God has sent, his Son, Jesus Christ. For, Hebrews tells
us, by one offering, the offering of himself, he hath forever perfected
them that are sanctified. Christ did all the work. Believer, you that believe on
him, that trust not yourself but him, He is your Savior forever. It shall not change. There's
nothing more for you to do. When He was on the cross, He
said, It is finished. And that meant there's nothing
more for you and I to do. And all those works that are
necessary, He does in us and for us. And so just believe Him. It's a sure and certain salvation. It's free, sovereign grace of
God that He's revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ. He did not
fail. He cannot fail. He's a successful
Savior. None for whom Christ died shall
go to hell to pay for their sins. Christ already paid the price
for them. But unbeliever, you that don't
believe God, you that have no confidence in Christ and don't
trust Him and don't believe what God has said concerning His Son,
you shall meet God in your own works and you shall be ashamed
because those who come before God in their own works have a
robe that's full of holes and gaps and is just a tattered old
rag. And they'll be ashamed because
our nakedness will be exposed before God. And so we'll go away
in shame, bearing our own reproach. And Galatians says, Be not deceived,
God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap. And for that purpose, for that
cause, God has worked salvation in his own people. He's put away
the sin by the death of His Son, and He turns our hearts from
the love of this world and the love of these dying, dead, passing
things to behold Christ and to look to Him. And when we grow
cold and weary and look over here, the Lord in His grace and
mercy turns us once again to behold our glorious, gracious,
kind Savior who sacrificed Himself to save you, to put away your
sin once and for all, forever. And so, our Lord is not going
to be turned from His purpose. He says in Isaiah 14, 26, This
is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth, for the
Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? So
our God is doing all according to his purpose, and he shall
destroy this earth, But He's already prepared everything for
you that are His. He's prepared. He's made you
righteous in Himself. All right, now in Mark 13, 32,
it says, But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no,
not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Now this simply When Christ says
this, he's speaking of himself as a man. He's so fully God,
it's as if he's not a man. And he's so fully man as though
he were not God. He's the God-man. An example
of that would be when he was speaking of Lazarus. And he told
his disciples plainly, Lazarus is dead. They weren't there. No one told them that. But he
knew that as God, Lazarus is dead. But then when they get
there, As man, he says, where have you laid him? Where have
you laid him? So we see that he's the God-man.
He is God, fully God, and fully man. And so the purpose of this
verse, when he says it this way, the help that we have is to know
that there's none here on earth that know it. If you hear someone
saying it, that they know the month or the day and the time
when Christ is coming, the year that he's coming. Don't believe
it because if Christ as a man who knows the scriptures better
than you and I know them, if he didn't know it as a man, none
of us are going to know it as a man either. So you can just
remember Christ himself said, I don't know it. So just remember
that. But the point is to watch and
pray. Watch and pray. Be watching,
be in prayer, knowing that the Lord is going to return. And
John said, Little children, it is the last time. And as ye have
heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists
whereby we know that it is the last time. So we see that pattern
of the body of Antichrist doing its thing in the world and the
ugliness of sin. We see it played out. If not
in our own hearts, we see it out there as well. You see the
workings of sin. And it's so that we don't love
this world. If you're still in 2 Thessalonians
2, look at verses 7 and 8 with me. where Paul said, For the
mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth
will let until he be taken out of the way, and then shall that
wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit
of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. So our Lord tells us now in Mark
13 what we are to do in this time. that were to serve him,
and to serve one another, and to be waiting and watching. Look
at Mark 13 verses 33 and 34. He says, Take ye heed, watch
and pray, for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of Man
is as a man taking a far journey. And notice he said a far journey,
it's taking time, as it pleases him, who left his house and gave
authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded
the porter to watch. So the house is the Lord's church,
and the servants are taking care of the church there. And his
servants are those that are counted worthy to hear this gospel, made
worthy by Christ. And they hear that gospel, and
they preach and declare the gospel. The good news of Christ is our
salvation, not our works, not our doing. of Christ. And so
we each have, and we're, we have the authority here according
to the Word of God. It's what God has revealed in
His Word by His Spirit, testifying to the Spirit He gives us. Revealing
faith unto faith which He gives. And so each of us has fruit to
bear, right? It says Christ gave every man
his work. Everyone has a work to do in
service in his church. For some that may be believing,
believing Christ and just being faithful to come and be a member
and it's such a joy and encouragement to your brethren to be here. Just that presence here is an
encouragement to one another and it bears fruit. And to others
they may be called to do other things and make other sacrifices,
but it's all according to what the Lord works and gives to his
people and the fruit he bears in them. And then the porter,
which is the pastor, he commanded him to watch so that I'm to speak
of these things that the Lord shows us in his word to make
them known to the people so that the Spirit will teach you in
the heart as he would have you to hear it and do for you what
he's working in your heart and teaching you that time. Now it
continues in verses 35 and 36, watch ye therefore for ye know
not when the master of the house cometh at even or at midnight
or at the cock crowing or in the morning lest coming suddenly
he find you sleeping. And so were to ever be watching
as as the Lord began when you see these things and you're reminded
again that yeah this world is corrupt And the Lord said He's
coming. I don't know when He's coming,
but I see these various judgments being worked out, and I see these
things coming to pass. It's a reminder to us. And it's
the same thing, too, that when we see the coldness in our hearts,
the indifference that comes up in our hearts, that carelessness
and the sin that we fall into, when you see it, Cry out to the
Lord and confess your sin. Confess your sin to Him and ask
Him, Lord, help me not to have, you know, let me not be indifferent
to my cold heart. And let me not be indifferent
to this sin, Lord. Help me, save me from it, deliver
me from it, because it's not profitable in your kingdom. And if you do, it's because the
Lord's the one granted you that repentance. shown you your sin
and shown you your need of Him and turned your heart to seek
Him. All right, and so then we're reminded faithfully of Him and
unto faithful watchfulness, to watch for him, to wait upon him.
He says, and what I say unto you, I say unto all, watch. And so, pray that the Lord warms
our hearts, gives us a heart that seeks him, desires to know
him, is watching, because we do have a purpose for being here
in this dark part of the world. The Lord has established his
candlestick here and put the gospel here. And though we're
not a strong great bunch of people and we don't have anything to
boast in of ourselves, that's actually a good thing. It's a
good thing because when I am weak, then I am strong, right? When we're weak, when we see
our nothingness, that's when we're not boasting and bragging
and making trouble for one another and getting up in one another's
business, but instead we're trusting Him to do the work. Though we
are weak in ourselves and have nothing to glory in, we glory
in Christ. And that's right where we should
be, is glorying in Him, waiting upon Him, trusting Him, to do
for us what He's purposed to do here in this part. And when
it pleases Him, He'll return, or He'll call us to Himself as
we individually pass away. I pray the Lord will bless that
word to your hearts, especially as we go now to take the Lord's
Supper, that the Lord would use that word to remember. Remember
your Lord and Savior who did for you. what you cannot do for
yourself in salvation. So, let's pray. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for your grace and mercy and kindness
in your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, help us. You know how the
love of this world and the the lust of the flesh and the lust
of the eyes and the pride of life, Lord, how these things
have a place in our flesh. And Lord, it'll be with us till
we die and are raised anew again in our Savior, Jesus Christ.
But Lord, we thank you for the work that you've done in us,
in the new man, that creation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
pray, Lord, that you would keep us ever looking to him. And Lord,
while we wait for your return, that we would do that work which
you've purposed us to do in serving one another and loving you, Lord.
We thank you for your kindness and mercy and pray that you bless
this congregation here. Lord, that you help us even in
the hidden pains and concerns and troubles that we have, Lord,
that others do not know. We pray that you would comfort
your people. that you would minister to our needs and that you would
turn all things to the glory and praise of your name, Lord,
even bringing us to confess that Christ is all and that we're
nothing. Lord, we thank you for this time of fellowship that
we'll have. We ask that you would bless the food that we're about
to eat and the nourishment of our bodies and that you would
bless our time of fellowship in getting to know one another
and this being with one another. We pray this In Christ's name,
our Lord and Savior. Amen. Alright, so as I said, it's the
first of the month, so we take the Lord's Supper together. And
again, we're not about religion. It isn't religion that saved
you. But if you have a hope in Christ, by all means, partake.
Feel free to partake. But if you don't know the Lord,
if you don't believe Him, then don't take it. Don't feel any
obligation. We that are his people were saved
by grace. And we know that the Lord has
to do that work in his people. And so we're not asking or challenging
people to be religious. You don't feel an obligation
to take the Lord's Supper. But if you love him, if he's
your Lord and your Savior, and you have no hope in your flesh,
by all means partake of the Lord's Supper with us. All right? Scott,
would you come up? And Carl, would you help pass
out the things? Yeah, and you Carl. And then
Scott, if you pray.