Mark chapter 13 and verse 28. We remember that the Lord is
still on the mountainside, the Mount of Olives, and he is speaking
to his disciples after a very full day in the city of Jerusalem
and in the temple. And this is what he says to his
disciples in verse 28. Now learn a parable of the fig
tree. When her branch is 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. Verily I say unto
you, that this generation shall not pass until all these things
be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither
the Son, but the Father. 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, who left his house and gave authority
to his servants, and to every man his work, and commandeth
the porter to watch. 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 what I say unto you, I say
unto all, watch. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from His Word. So once again, the Lord was with
his disciples on the Mount of Olives, where not only there
were olive trees, but there were also fig trees. And perhaps the
Lord caught one of these fig trees in the corner of his eye
and he points it out to his disciples. And he applies, he gives a very
simple lesson and an easy application to them with respect to this
fig tree. When the fig tree puts forth
its leaves, you know that summer is near. And the Lord is simply
saying, read these signs that I am giving you carefully. When
you see the things of which we have spoken come to pass, especially
those things concerning the coming to Jerusalem of the Roman army,
know that the destruction is nigh, even at the doors. Know that it's time to leave,
it's time to get out of there. This wasn't simply going to be
some sort of gesture, some sort of sabre rattling, some sort
of political influence. This was going to be a whole-hearted
slaughter. This was going to be a complete
and utter destruction. And the people of God, being
forewarned, were forearmed to be out of the city. before these
events should occur and before this destruction should fall
upon them. The Lord was being very clear
on this matter. And the Lord has set out, the
disciples asked Him as they left the city of Jerusalem that evening,
as they headed up onto the Mount of Olives, as they looked at
the grandeur of the temple and the city with its walls, And
they remembered what the Lord had said about its desolation.
They were perplexed. They thought, when is this all
going to happen? And the Lord is very clear. And
he tells them, as he sets out these warning signs, that they
need to be out of the city before it happens. He sets out what
would happen, where it would happen, how it would happen and
why it would happen. And he set out what the disciples
or the apostles and their families and their fellow believers had
to do. Get out of the city, flee to
the mountains, don't even turn back to pick up a coat. Such
was the speed and brutality with which the Roman army would fall
upon the city and its people. And the only thing that was left
unspecified was the exact time that this would occur. Signs
would be given, but not the exact time. And it is of this timing
that the Lord is now about to speak. He says, look at the fig
tree. When its leaves begin to show,
you know that it's the time of summer. So read the signs. But just before we begin to think
about this, I want to mention one thing in respect to the Saviour's
warnings. Because this passage, this chapter
and the parallel chapters in Matthew and Luke have been full
of warnings. A warning is a notice of danger. and it's an opportunity to prevent
trouble. We were thinking just a few minutes
ago about the plagues in Egypt and how the Lord warned Pharaoh
about what it was that was going to happen. Pharaoh was given
lots of warnings, but he hardened his heart against God. In Mark chapter three, It's a
long time ago that we were thinking about Mark 3, but the Lord spoke
of our need for forgiveness of sin. Your need and my need for
the forgiveness of our sins. And the Lord warned of a danger,
what he called eternal damnation. And as you listen today, to what
we're thinking about here. I want us all to consider this
service, this message, this gospel to be a warning. The Lord Jesus
Christ is coming back to this world and he is coming back to
judge and to condemn sin. in the hearts and lives of the
men and women and boys and girls of this world. Just as surely
as the Romans fell upon Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the judgment of God
will fall on sinful people in another great and terrible day
of judgment. Judgment and retribution. Hell
and eternal separation awaits all who do not know the Lord
Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. In a few days' time, the Lord
would be going to the cross. The death that the Lord suffered
on the cross was not for crimes that He had committed, but for
the sins of His people. for the sins of others, to make
for his people, to make for others, a way of escape and a door of
salvation. A way of escape from eternal
damnation. And our Lord Jesus Christ gave
notice to his disciples and has given notice to us to flee from
the city of destruction to a place of safety and security. To flee
from the wrath that is coming to the hiding place that is the
Lord Jesus Christ. When the Saviour died on the
cross, he opened a way of salvation. It's a narrow way. It's a narrow
door. Few there be that find it, but
let these words be a warning to us and let them point us to
the Saviour Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, once looked
upon a gathering of sinners and asked them, who warned you to
flee from the wrath that is to come? Who warned you to flee
from the wrath which is to come? May all of us who hear these
things today be given grace to answer that question thus. The Lord warned me by the words
in the gospel and he saved me by his death on the cross. These last few verses that we've
been thinking about in this chapter are full of gospel help and encouragement
for the Lord's people. And I want to stress that because
the scriptures are ours. The scriptures are the inheritance
of the people of God. And when the gospel writers wrote
as they did, when they took the Lord's words and they set them
down upon the pages of Holy Writ, of Holy Scripture, they were
giving them to us for our comfort and for our help. The Lord was still teaching his
apostles. Remember, we've spent a lot of
time emphasising that in these studies in the book of Mark.
The Lord had not given up on his training and preparation
of the apostles. That's what he was doing here.
Remember his audience. It was these four men, Peter,
James, John and Andrew, that had got the Lord, as it were,
apart and asked him about these specific questions. And it was
to these men that the Lord was giving an answer. And right at
the very end of this chapter, he says, and what I say unto
you, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, I say unto all, all the
disciples, watch. watch or take heed, watch and
pray to give it its larger context and so this was directed primarily,
expressly, purposefully to the disciples and it is from the
disciples and the apostles as they wrote these things down,
as they then ministered them and preached them and revealed
them to others that the Lord's words found their conduit, found
their avenue, found their way into the knowledge and the hearts
and the lives of the Lord's people. The whole of the Lord's purpose
has been to inform and prepare his apostles, who in turn would
safeguard the elect against the errors that were coming and help
them and enable them to discern the false prophets and to recognize
the false Christs. And so it's for the Lord's people
in reading these things, in learning and hearing and believing these
things, that comfort and joy and knowledge of the truth is
to be found and discovered and obtained. The truth of the scripture which
comforts the hearts of believers is sovereign grace. The truth
of the revelation of Christ, which does good to our souls,
is the truth of effectual redemption. The fact that our salvation has
been accomplished. Not that it is a possibility. Not that it is a general provision. Not that it is something that
has been done so that we might take advantage of it by doing
something to make it useful to us. That would put obligation
upon us to save ourselves. The comfort and the joy that
flows to believers is the comfort and joy in knowing that our sovereign
God has effectively and effectually saved our souls. That there is
a perfect, imputed righteousness that is freely given to his people. And it is only in knowing this
gospel that the Lord's people have true comfort and joy. This is the house built on the
rock. Everything else is without foundation
and everything else being built on sand will fall down when the
troubles and trials of this world come. It's to this finished work
of Christ that we look in faith. Otherwise we've nothing to believe
upon. It's to the finished work of
Christ that we look believing. It's on that work that we lean
in time of trouble and hardship. We've already read, we read it
last week, that the suffering of the Jews was unparalleled
in the history of the world. But the exact time of these things
was not specified to the apostles. And it is therefore to this fact,
that point, that the Lord now speaks. Why not give the apostles
an actual date. The Lord had told them so much. Why did he not give them the
actual date when this was going to happen? It was still some
35 years hence. Why did he not say that it's
going to be quite a long time yet or it's going to be whatever
would express that to them? Well, for this reason, This would
be an occasion for faith and trust. And I've got a few points
that I want to draw your attention to in the context of why the
Lord did it like this. Here's the first one. We're told
of that day and that hour knoweth no man. of that day and that
hour knoweth no man. You see, there was purpose, there
was design in the Lord concealing the precise details of these
future events from the disciples, from the apostles. There was
wisdom on the part of the Lord in doing it like this. We know enough as the Lord's
elect to prepare for what the Lord has in store. But for the rest, for what we
don't know, we are to be thrown back in faith upon the Lord for
our help and for our comfort. See, the Lord has given us so
much to open, as it were, all that we need to know for the
way of life, for the way of salvation. This is a picture here that we
have in the experience of the disciples. We have been given
sufficient And what is left unsaid, what is left unknown is to be
the cause or the prompting of our trust and our faith. It is this that will be our help
and our guidance in life. I wonder if with me you find
it strange that the Lord says that he does not know the timing
of that day and that hour when Jerusalem would fall. The Lord says that only the Father
knew. Christ himself in his humanity
did not know when that day and that hour would be. In his divine nature, Christ
was omniscient. He knew all things. But in his
human nature, the Lord did not know the future. Do you ever wish that you knew
the future? I don't think that's a very good
idea. I don't think that's a very good
wish. I think that we are blessed not
to know the future. And we are blessed rather to
know and to trust in the love of Christ who does know the future. In heaven, we will have no longer
any need of faith because we shall know all things. But on
earth we are to live by faith in the blood, in the grace, in
the love, and in the kindness of Christ. And we are to lean
upon him. rather than leaning upon our
own knowledge and our own understanding and our own abilities. And therefore
the Lord withholds from us those things which will not do us any
good, but upon which we will place our trust in him, or for
which we will place our trust in him. Here's another point
that is interesting in these verses. The Lord says that his
disciples have to take heed, watch and pray. And this is the reason why knowledge
of the future is withheld from us. It teaches us to trust the
Lord, to take heed, to watch and to pray. enforces upon us
reliance on the sovereignty of God and it keeps us alert to
the lies of the devil. The Lord had warned his disciples
of false Christs and false teachers and this helps us to discriminate
between the teaching and the preaching that we hear around
about us. These three qualities are characteristic
of our spiritual life. Heedfulness, watchfulness, and
prayerfulness. Take heed, watch, and pray. These three qualities throw us
upon the grace and mercy of the Lord and they cause us, they
emphasize how much we rely on the goodness and the kindness
of the Lord for the wisdom that we don't have, for the truth
that we need. and for the self-awareness of
knowing the dangers into which our own will brings us. If the disciples had known everything,
they would have been heedless, careless and prayerless. They would have had too much
pride in themselves but rather the Lord lovingly
and kindly keeps us humble that we might in turn lean upon him. I wanted to take an example and
just touch upon it perhaps to tease out some aspects of this
need for being heedful and watchful and prayerful. And I'm going
to use the example of bereavement. All of us know that we will lose
a loved one sometime in our life. The day will come when someone
that we have lived with and someone that we have loved will be taken
from us and we will have to continue this life without them. and it will be a hard experience
to endure. We know it will happen, but we
don't know when it will happen. But that knowledge that it will
happen, it enables preparation. It allows us to prepare for the
time when we will be left alone. And that preparation should be
to learn how to rely upon the Lord more for those times that
will come when we will feel left alone and abandoned. We should
endeavour to deepen our knowledge of the Lord deepen our awareness
of his kindness and his goodness and his comfort. We should build
our relationship with the Lord now, before the time of trial
comes, so that we will be able to cope and to manage and to
bear the times of trials and the times of hardship. We have a friend in Christ and
these are the years and the months and the weeks and the days to
prepare and exercise our reliance and our knowledge of him, our
trust in him for the evil days that lie ahead. to learn to lean
upon the Lord now, to anticipate his comfort now, to deepen our
familiarity with the Lord and nurture our relationship with
him now, practising our entrance into his presence in the knowledge
that the hard times are coming. And this will prepare our hearts
and our minds and our souls for the challenges ahead. In the normal course of life's
events we take heed of the worldly things around about us and we
set our affairs in order. Let us take heed of the spiritual
things. Let us watch the Lord's providences
unfold and his purposes come to pass. Let us pray for the
help to endure and to overcome and to triumph in those trials
when they come. This is what the Lord meant when
he told his disciples, pray ye that your flight be not in winter. Here's another thing that the
Lord would teach us from this little passage. He gave his servants
authority. The Lord tells his disciples,
the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house
and gave authority to his servants and to every man his work and
commanded the porter to watch. It's verse 34. So here we have
the Saviour enlarging upon this admonition, this instruction
to take heed and to watch and to pray and he gives us this
example of the householder the son of man, so he draws it to
himself. He says it's like a man taking
a far journey, leaves his house and gives authority to his servants
to look after his house. And so it's a practical example
of the point that he has just been making, the principle in
view. And the Lord is enlarging on
his direction here. We might consider that the house
of which he speaks is the church and the servants to whom he speaks
and to whom he gives authority is the apostles. And right it
is that these men were to serve in God's house and they would
teach and preach and manage and protect the master's possessions,
his church, his people. And they were given authority
to do that. and that similitude would be
a good'un. It fits perfectly and we could
apply it quite properly in that way. The Lord did give his apostles
such authority and they served him well in the years that were
to come. But I want to take it more broadly
than that, if I may, because I think that there is an application
which comes not only to the disciples for the sake of the young church,
but to all of us as members of the body of Christ. We are all
servants, we are all ministers in the Lord's house, which is
His church, His people, His body. And the Lord has given all his
people authority and privilege to serve his cause and labour
in his vineyard. Indeed, we're all called to service. We're all called to care for
and to love and to support our brothers and sisters in Christ,
and to take heed on their behalf and ours, and to watch and pray
on their behalf and ours, so that we engage together advocating,
we engage together interceding, we engage together caring for
and praying for one another. for the cause of Christ, for
the well-being of the fellowship of the Lord's people, for the
honour and help of the body of Christ. And this is truly a blessed service
that we are called to engage upon. We learn hereby to exercise Christian
graces on one another's behalf, to contribute profitably to the
body of Christ, to do good for the whole body of Christ, as
we support the cause of Christ. Our brothers and sisters in Christ
are God's gift to us. and the Lord has placed us in
this family at this time for our good and for theirs. I think it's particularly wonderful
and probably I don't give and maybe you don't give sufficient
thought to the fact that here is the Lord and he has bound
us together even over these past few months and couple of years.
He has bound together a little fellowship of his people who
have the tremendous privilege of praying for one another, of
interceding for one another, of drawing the benefit and the
blessings of mutual care and concern and love on one another's
behalf, taking heed, watching and praying on behalf of one
another. Our practical engagement and
involvement provide us opportunities to love and care and pray for
one another, to take heed for one another's spiritual well-being,
watch out for one another's souls, pray for one another's circumstances. And we may well be separated
by miles, but we are fellow labourers in the service of our Master. And the Lord goes on to say something
which I think is a beautiful little phrase. And when I read
it the other day, in fact, it's what I've called this sermon. So it's the title that you will
see on the sermon if you look at it on the website. To every man his work. What a potent little phrase that
is. To every man his work. When the master committed the
care of his house into the hands of his servants, he gave to every
man his work. And it reminds us how delightfully
different we are one from another, and how unique are the roles
that we fulfil. He speaks about a porter. The
porter was the doorkeeper. And we might well enlarge upon
that one role and talk about the role and the important role
and responsibility that fell uniquely to the porter or the
doorkeeper. But if we think about this house
as the temple, for example, and temple worship, there were those
in the Old Testament temple who fetched and carried. There were
those who lit the fires. There were those who sang and
prayed. There were those who brought
oil and carried wood and did all manner of tasks in the house
of the Lord. So that each of us has a unique
service to perform in the house of our God. And the master gives
to every man his work. And very soon we shall pass from
this scene of time, because our work here will be complete. But until that time, let us serve
our Master as only we can, having been given this express work,
this particular work, this work by which we can thank the Lord
for the opportunity of serving Him and His people and His body. Sometimes we think, do we not? Sometimes we think, if I could
only get through these immediate problems, then I could get down
to serving the Lord. No, no, no. These problems are the Lord's
work for us and he honours us by giving us these problems and
causing and calling us to serve in his house in the midst of
them. Here's my final point and then
we'll wrap up our thoughts today. The Lord says to his servants,
lest coming suddenly he find us sleeping. A doorkeeper who is asleep at
his post cannot protect those who dwell in the house. And the
minister or the pastor who sleeps in his pulpit cannot protect
the souls of the sheep under his charge. The elders and the deacons who
sleep at their post cannot be alert to the need of the congregation. Do you know that you can be physically
awake and spiritually asleep? In a few days time, from this
occasion when the Lord was speaking to his disciples, the Lord would
ask his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane to watch and pray
with him. And he expressly says, watch
and pray that ye fall not into temptation. But they could not. and they
did not, not even for an hour. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians
5, verse 6, Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let
us watch and be sober. Let us take heed. Let us watch. Let us pray. Let us not be found
to be asleep. Let us be alert. Let us be attentive. Let us be able-minded in our
labours. for the Lord's people, for our
service for the church, for our engagement with the body of Christ. Let us watch, let us be sober,
let us be attentive to these things that the Lord sets before
us. I'm not here today to lay on
you duties and obligations that are too heavy and difficult for
you to bear. The Lord's yoke is easy and his
burden is light. and yet the Lord will have his
people to follow. He calls us to service and he
enables us with hearts that are filled with gratitude for the
grace that he has given to us and the salvation which he has
imparted. Being called into Christ's kingdom
brings the rights but it also brings the responsibilities of
being citizens of heaven. Watching and praying is not some
super spiritual proficiency that is set apart for a few special
saintly followers. Watching and praying is evidence
of life. Like lungs breathing or hearts
beating. We take heed, we watch and we
pray for the work of the gospel and for the souls of our brothers
and sisters in Christ. We watch and we pray, we take
heed for the soon return of the Lord. We take heed for the privileges
and the blessings that we've received. Lest falling asleep, we show
ourselves to be ungrateful and we lose what gifts we have been
given. We often say, do we not, that
the Lord asks no more of us than he graciously gives to us and
freely enables in us. Grace to trust and grace to follow. May the Lord bless these admonitions
to our hearts today. Amen.