Matthew-107

“Watch”: live in truth and righteousness, be consistently faithful to God

Today, we continue again with the Lord Jesus’ teaching, and the theme of today’s discussion will be on “How to be sons of light, sons of the day.”

We have studied what it means to “watch” in the last message. When the Lord Jesus says, “Watch and pray that you do not enter into temptation,” when he says, “Watch for you do not know the hour the Son of Man comes,” what does “watch” mean? We saw that “watch” literally means to stay awake.

From that, we went on to see that “watch” means a whole way of life, living as sons of the light because as Paul says, “those who sleep, sleep in the night (in the darkness), but we are not of the night, we are of the day, we are children of the light. And those in the daytime do not sleep, they stay awake.” So we saw that when the Lord Jesus says, “Watch,” he did not mean trying to stare at something we could not know when it would appear, or looking into the clouds hoping that Jesus might suddenly turn up in the clouds. We saw that is not the meaning of “watch.” “Watch” means a lifestyle in which we live in the light, we live in a consistent and faithful manner to God. Although we don’t know when Christ Jesus will appear, but whenever the time, we will be ready because we are consistently faithful. We will not be taken by surprise, caught in a very compromising spiritual position, because we live consistently, steadfastly, not unstably, in faithfulness.

So many Christians’ spiritual life is up and down; up today, down tomorrow, down today, up tomorrow. It is very dangerous when a Christian does not have that even steadiness, that consistency, because you could well be caught at a time when you are down. What happens at that moment when Christ Jesus returns? You dishonor God and his Christ because your life is inconsistent. Make sure that you are going to become a consistent Christian moving on a steady keel all the time with no great variations of ups and downs. That is being a son of light. It means that your light does not become bright one moment, dim the next, bright again, and dim again. There is something wrong with the generator when a light does that because it is a power problem. Christians cannot function like this. We are to be the light of the world and we live steadily and consistently in the light. That is what it means to “watch.”

Watch like a soldier: Don’t get ambushed!

Now the importance of watching is made very clear to us in a num­ber of ways. The Lord Jesus said that his Coming will be unexpected, like a snare that suddenly springs. The Cambridge scholar, C. H. Dodd in his New Testament studies on this particular section pointed out that there seems to be a military intonation in this language of watching. Soldiers know they have to keep alert since they might be attacked at any moment. The trap may suddenly spring, if you change the metaphor. That is what you call a “war motif” or a “battle motif” in here. It’s like you know that the enemy is moving in on you, so you have to stay awake. You dare not doze off and be attacked suddenly. So this consistency of light is the way in which we remain spiritually awake.

Watch: Satan takes by surprise when off guard and he devours

Recently, I was in Calgary, and I had desired to spend ten days in the mountains, and finally, I managed to spend at least a few hours in the mountains although I could not manage the ten days! When you go into the Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, you will see a leaflet which tells you rather encouragingly that you are entering “bear territory”! That means that bears are roaming around there entirely free. Now if you think you could comfort yourself by bringing your hunting rifle, you are mistaken because no weapons are allowed in the national park. So we have the interesting situation in which the bears have free range of the park, and you are not permitted to enter with any form of arms to protect yourself!

All of you know that the grizzly bear is not exactly the kind of creature you would like to quarrel with in any place. The grizzly bear can weigh up to 450 kilos, close to 1,000 pounds, and can stand up 8 feet tall. That means to say, even if you are 6 feet, you have 2 more feet to look up to! You don’t want to quarrel with this powerful, massive creature even if you know some karate or kung fu! You will hardly make a dent on one of these grizzly bears with your powerful muscles.

When you are entering “bear country,” you must surrender all weapons that you might carry at the entrance to the national park. So it’s illegal to carry a pistol, even more if you carry a rifle of any sort. Therefore, you are literally being told that you are going to face the bear unarmed, which is a problem. Therefore, the national park gives you other advice in their brochure about how to protect yourself. These include taking a tin with stones in it so that you could make a lot of rattling noise hoping that it might distract the bear. But if that doesn’t disturb the bear too much, then if you are carrying a knapsack, take it off and throw it on the ground and run for it so that the bear might get attracted by the knapsack and leave you to get away! However, if you have no tin with stones in it, and no knapsack that you can lay down, then all you can do is remain as still as possible in the face of the advancing mammal. And if that doesn’t disturb the bear too much, then you can drop on the ground and put your hands behind your neck and play dead. Hopefully, you might get away with only a few scratches or a few small bites. And it says the idea is that even if you get scratched or bitten, stay very still! I am not sure how they expect you to do that because when you feel the great teeth chewing into your forearm, you are still to remain as dead as possible in the hope that after he has chewed your arm somewhat, he will decide to leave you in peace! All of this shows that the situation is not too good if you happen to confront a bear in there. So what can you do? What you do is that you always go in there on the sense of alert.

The Christian functions in a living community, the Church

You will find that people who walk in the park would rather walk in groups. The bear rather stays away from a group of people because it doesn’t like to take on a stronger force, and a group also makes more noise. Every beast is more afraid of a community, of a group than of one single individual. If you are alone, you are in danger. There are so many spiritual lessons we can learn from this about watching. Part of being alive is not just that you are alive but in a living community. There is where the church comes in. This is very important in the Christian life.

I noticed even for myself, that as we went further and further into the mountains, you always had the sense that your eye was constantly sweeping around, as they tell you that a she bear having one or two cubs with her is absolutely lethal. She will charge and attack immediately as soon as she has any sense of danger. In fact, the day before I went into the mountains, on the front page of a Calgary newspaper was the news of a person attacked by a grizzly bear just the day before, and sent to hospital in quite bad condition. So I felt a sense of constant alertness and watchfulness as I was walking in the mountains since you don’t particularly want to turn the next corner and suddenly discover an eight-foot monster is waiting there and looking at you. What is more, the pamphlet tells you also, if that encourages you at all, that you cannot outrun the bear. So if you think you are good at jogging, forget it because a grizzly bear can travel at a speed of 30 m.p.h., so it is rather difficult for you to outrun him, if he decides to put on the chase. So there are important spiritual lessons: the need for watchfulness and being in the community of the Church.

The parallel to this is in 1 Peter 5:8. Why is watchfulness necessary? Your salvation could depend on it; your life could depend on it. 1 Peter 5:8 says,

Satan wants to devour you. If you have got the mistaken notion that Satan is a lion who has got his teeth pulled out, and that he is not capable of devouring you, then you had better read this passage again. He knows how to devour you if you are not alert. So be sober! Be alert!

Today, we are being lulled to sleep by a form of teaching that tells us there nothing to worry about. We are permanently secure. To put this kind of teaching in the minds of people is simply to disarm them. It is like telling them to walk through “grizzly bear country” and not to bat an eye because all those grizzlies out there are really dying of old age or, if you really happen to see them, they actually have one foot chained down to the ground. Or if you happen to run into the monster, don’t worry because they have already taken his teeth out and removed his claws. If you send a person into that kind of country with this kind of delusion, you are asking for him to get killed. This is absolutely disastrous! We cannot have this kind of teaching. Scriptural teaching tells you to be constantly alert, constantly watchful.

It is vital to remember that this has to do with the “battle motif,” or “war motif.” The thing that scares people who walk in the Rockies is not that you know there are grizzlies, but that you don’t know at what moment you are going to meet one. This is exactly how close it is to the Lord Jesus’ teaching – you don’t know at what moment these hazards will happen. As you walk along, suddenly, out of the bush there comes this great and fearsome monster!

In military terms, this is known as the state of ambush. Ambush is something every military commander fears. He fears the ambush because its surprise element robs you of those essential moments to react. You are marching along and suddenly, machine gun bursts come from all directions. You realize you are in an ambush. You are trapped in open terrain because they laid the ground for where they are going to catch you. It is a deadly thing! Every military command­er fears the ambush. It is something that is exceedingly frightening, and the Lord’s teaching is warning us to be on the alert because Satan is ready to ambush you at any moment, to take you suddenly by surprise at a moment when you are not on guard. That is why I say, the kind of Christian who is unstable, who is weak, is inviting Satan’s attack. The moment you are weak is the moment of the attack.

Watch: Never be paralyzed by the fear of attack

I have used the illustration concerning dogs before. I think you all know that dogs are very curious creatures – they can sense your fear. And the moment they sense this fear, they will attack. Have you noticed that the people who are afraid of dogs are always attacked by dogs? People who are not afraid of dogs are simply never attacked by them. It’s very strange, isn’t it? The more you are afraid, the more you are attacked. And Satan is exactly like that. He senses your fear. He senses the moment of your weakness and he strikes. Therefore he cannot do very much with a consistent Christian. A consistent Christian moves on an even keel. He cannot find the opportunity to attack. Which is a good moment? There isn’t a good moment to attack because of that constant high-level of spiritual consistency. That is why we saw in the last message that the Lord Jesus spoke about the end time, this word “watch”, “take heed”, “stay awake” is constantly being repeated because our survival depends on it.

Here I would like to mention one thing in the Christian life which is also very important. The fear of ambush can become paralyzing in the Christian life. There are some Christians who never do anything because they are afraid of being attacked; they fear being criticized. Some people are so afraid that others will criticize them if they do something. The fear of attack paralyzes them. And Satan is a great strategist. He can attack and defeat you, or he can still defeat you without attacking. What do I mean?

Zhu Ge Liang’s “Empty City Strategy” (空城計)

Let me illustrate this by the great strategist in Chinese military history, Zhu Ge Liang. Zhu Ge Liang knew the danger of ambush, in fact, he used ambush against his enemy as well. But he also knew how to exploit the fear of ambush against his enemy, so he could defeat the enemy without attacking him by exploiting his fear of attack. This is the principle of the “Empty City Strategy” (空城計). If you remember, Zhu Ge Liang’s enemy’s intelligence was that Zhu Ge Liang’s armies were elsewhere, therefore this commander, Zhu Ge Liang was without his main body of troops. So his enemy surrounded the city where Zhu Ge Liang was, knowing that his army was not in there. This time his enemy outmaneuvered him!

Now Zhu Ge Liang being the skilled strategist that he was, exploited the fear of ambush. He threw all the city gates open, with the enemy army surrounding him and dared them to come in! Now that is exploiting the fear of ambush! As I said, every commander dreads the ambush. And Zhu Ge Liang was about to call his bluff. This is a case of poker here! He threw all the gates open and had some people peacefully sweeping the road in front of the open gates, as saying, “Come on! Come in!” So the opposing general looked at this scene, scratched his head, and said, “Who is being tricked here? Is my intelligence correct? Or maybe is it Zhu Ge Liang wanted me to get the wrong intelligence? Maybe he is making me think that his army is somewhere else when in fact, his army is really in the city waiting to ambush us when we enter! If his army is not in the city, how dare he open the gates like this and dare us to come in?” Zhu Ge Liang fully exploited the fear of ambush.

The result was of course, the opposing general withdrew his troops because after scratching his head and thinking for a long time, he thought Zhu Ge Liang was too tricky a man. Really, you dare not play his cards like this. So he withdrew. In fact, Zhu Ge Liang did not have his army in the city. The opposing general’s intelligence was correct. There was no ambush in there. All that Zhu Ge Liang did was he made a gamble because he knew that if he did not make that gamble, he would lose for sure because he would be attacked immediately. But he forestalled the enemy by the fear of attack. He threw the gates open and said, “I dare you to come in! Try it and see! And that very thing frightened the enemy.

So if you think, “If I do this, Satan will be waiting for me! And if I go this way, he is going to pounce on me here! Oh, it’s so scary!” I have seen Christians who come to me for counseling and they say, “Should I do this? Should I really do it?” And I say, “Why don’t you just do it? Launch out! Get on with it!” “Oh! But what would happen if this happens? What would happen if that happens?” They are like Si Ma Yi standing outside the gates of the city asking, “Shall I or shall I not attack?” You cannot win any battles like this. You have to go forth, and we know we have an advantage which Si Ma Yi did not have, namely that we have the certainty of victory, provided we move forward in obedience, faithfulness and commitment to God.

These are points I would particularly like you as young Christians to grasp clearly. Never be paralyzed by the fear of attack. Although I have stressed the danger of attack, I must stress the other side. We must advance but advance alertly. We must not say because there is danger, we will not launch out. We will advance, but with our hand upon our swords, or if you would like more modern imagery, with our finger on the trigger, fully alert, moving forward cautiously but steadily into spiritual battle.

I really wish to stress that I have seen so many Christians crippled by this. They want to serve the Lord full-time, and then they think: “What will my friends think? What will my parents do?” By the time they finish thinking about what will this and what will that, they are ready to give up the idea. So we keep scaling down our commitment, we keep compromising until in the end we don’t do anything at all. That is the fear of attack, and too much of it. You need to go out there. There’s a chance of getting shot or wounded, but that’s the duty of a soldier. If you think, “Perhaps I’m afraid to be hurt, so I won’t become a soldier. Maybe I will be a cook.” Even so, you might cut your finger. Then you would try something less dangerous. But if you don’t want to get hurt, you don’t become a soldier of Christ. Soldiers go forth, and they know that maybe the next bullet that comes will take them down, but they advance all the same. And I would like that all of us as Christians, will not be timid, as Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:7, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity,” but a wise, sound mind that advances bravely and wisely.

Watch: Be spiritually alive and so be a righteous person

Having said all of this, I would like to examine a number of things. In my previous message, we came to the conclusion that watching has to do with a way of life. It’s very important to grasp that watching has to do with what we are, not with what we do. It is an attitude towards daily life which is spiritually alive. You are spiritually alive, so you are spiritually alert, awake. You do something because of what you are.

You may do something without being something, that is, you may try to be a good person when in fact you are a bad person. You put an outward show of goodness when in fact inwardly you are bad. That is not being, that is doing. In Scripture and in the Lord’s teaching, being is most important. It is what you are that is important and after that comes the doing on the basis of the being. This principle is exceedingly important for understanding the Lord’s teaching.

How is a disciple’s “being” most important re Matthew 24:34?

I would like to move on to show you how this principle needs to be applied in much of the Lord Jesus’ teaching. Let us deal with our first passage, often regarded as a difficult passage in Matthew 24. In expounding the Word of God, I don’t wish to run away from any passage no matter how difficult. But I want to preface the exposition of this passage with the importance of being – being those who consistently live in the light. This means not just acting, not just doing, knowing or having things, but we are sons of God, we are sons of the light.

What has all this got to do with Matthew 24:34?

How do we understand this verse? What has what we have discussed so far got to do with this verse? It seems to have pitifully little to do with it. But you will see that this is not so. The Lord Jesus has been saying about the unexpectedness of his Coming, and he has said what kind of events will take place leading up to his sudden and unexpected Coming. Then he goes on to say, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place.” How do we understand this verse? This has been a crux interpretum, that is, a difficult passage for many commentators. In fact, they find this extremely difficult to deal with. Let us consider what possibilities there are.

“This generation” does not mean Jesus’ contemporaries

What does “this generation” mean? Which generation? Presumably, if “generation” means the contemporaries of Jesus, and he is saying these people who are standing here now will not pass away until all these things he has said take place, it indicates that Jesus was going to come in the lifetime of that generation. If so, then however good his intentions were, he was wrong. We have to face the truth of the matter if that is what he meant. As those who love the truth, we will not flinch in the face of the truth, we will have to say, “I guess he was wrong.” He did not come in that generation. Not all these things were fulfilled in that generation.

Compare Mt. 24:34, 36 – does Christ know the time of his Coming?

Secondly, these words “all these things take place” that is, these things will take place in the course of this generation, the word “take place”, genetai is aorist subjunctive. Aorist subjunctive has a future meaning, therefore it is translated as a future here “will take place.” As some of you know, an aorist is one of those words which has no equivalent in English. But if we take this as an inceptive aorist—meaning something will begin from that point of time—then we can properly translate verse 34 to read like this:

This is a possible translation. However, there is no way to explain why this has to be an inceptive aorist rather than another form of aorist. Therefore, to say that it must be inceptive is arbitrary, and no exegesis that has to depend on an arbitrary declaration can really stand.

Could it be that we are faced with a contradiction in the words of the Lord Jesus? Christians must not be afraid to face the truth.

What does the Lord say in verse 36?

He says, “I don’t know when that will be,” but in verse 34 he tells us that he knows it’s going to be in the lifetime of this generation. So you might want to ask him, “Do you or don’t you know? You say you don’t know but suddenly, you know it has got to be in this genera­tion?” Now none of us dare to say it has to be in this generation. We say, “It might be,” but we also say with the Lord Jesus, “We don’t know when Christ’s Coming will be.” Verse 36 that says the Lord Jesus does not know when it will be is again offensive to some Christians, which is very foolish.

The Lord Jesus is the perfect, sinless man, who delights to do his God and Father’s will completely, by God’s power. During his life on earth, he focused his will on doing God’s will to be sinless in order to redeem mankind from the power of sin with his blood. He had the limitations of man. And what are the limitations of man? Among other things one of these is clearly the fact of ignorance. It is important when you study the Gospels that you understand that Jesus had the limitations of man. That is why he said to his disciples and to us, “The works that I do you can do too because I am a man. I want to show you that I am functioning completely under the limitations of a human life just as you do. Therefore, everything I do is through the Father’s power, so you can do the same. I am not operating in my own strength. I act only as the Father instructs me; I do nothing on my own. I live entirely dependent on him, under his authority.” (Jo. 14:10-12)

Therefore, when he says he doesn’t know the day and hour of his Coming again, he is showing us that he is also functioning under the limitations of the human life. I find that really wonderful because I cannot be a disciple of the Lord Jesus if he were omnipotent and I am not omnipotent, if he knew everything and I don’t know everything. How can I function as he functioned when he had all the advantages over me? I cannot follow in his steps because I function under severe handicaps which he did not suffer. But when he lives under all these handicaps, then he is showing us that he can live the Christian life, live the life of holiness even with those handicaps. He says, “There­fore what I do, you can do it too. Follow in my steps. The Holy Spirit of God will be in you, upholding you, guiding you, exactly as the Father upholds and guides me.”

Let us return then to this question: If we take seriously the fact that he said he did not know the time of his Coming again under his limitations of being a man, how can he go on to say that he knows his Coming has to be in this generation? That would be self-contradic­tory.

If Jesus were wrong in verse 34, then verse 35 becomes ridiculous:

How can he have such confidence in his own words when in fact, immediately, he is shown to be wrong historically? If this is what the situation is, then we have to say, “We’ve got a problem here!”

How the Lord Jesus uses “generation” determines its meaning

Now I have carefully investigated the passage, and the key to understanding this I find, is in this word “generation.” What does “generation” mean? Does it mean contemporaries? If it means contemporaries, then Jesus was certainly wrong. All you have to do is look into a Greek-English dictionary, you will find that this word in no way means just contemporaries. It has a strikingly wide range of meaning. And when we have looked very briefly at that, we will also have to look at how this word is used by the Lord Jesus himself because the way he uses it is determinative of how he uses it in this passage.

Generation (genea): Be a kind of person, not a period of time

The word “generation” translates the Greek word genea, which basically means those descended from a common ancestor. So the word can be translated as it is translated in the unabridged Liddell & Scott as “offspring” or “family.” It means basically to be born of something, and comes from a root which has the meaning to become, to be born—and notice—to be. It is very important to grasp this point. You will begin to see the connection of what I am saying now with what we were just talking about. It has to do with being – being something that you were born as.

Let us look to the previous chapter for an example of this, Matthew 23:33. Here the Lord Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, and he says to these religious hypocrites, “You brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” Most English versions of the Bible translate the word gennēma as “brood.” The KJV translates it as “you, generation of vipers” The words gennēma and genea come from exactly the same root meaning offspring or descendants. This means that the idea of “generation” is not about a period of time as it might particularly suggest in English. It is vital to understand that the Lord Jesus is talking about a kind of person.

Or as in John 8:44, he put it in another way, “You are of your father the devil.” He is the serpent and you are the offspring of the serpent. You are vipers.” You are a snake because your spiritual father is a snake. He is not talking about earthly father of course. You were descended spiritually in this way, born of the devil.” Those are powerful words. They are not meant to be insulting. They are meant to be diagnostic, to tell you what your situation is.

As I have said before, when a doctor tells you, “You have cancer,” he is not trying to insult you. He is telling you what your situation is. If he tells you that you have bad breath, he is not trying to be rude to you. He is trying to tell you that you are suffering from a condition of the mouth that needs to be cured. So no one stands up and punch the doctor in the nose when he tells you, “You’ve got cancer.” You don’t say, “You are insulting me. I jog every day and now you tell me I have cancer.” In fact, we had a brother in Liverpool who had a problem, and when taken to the doctor he quite literally punched the doctor in the face. So when Scripture tells us our condition, it doesn’t mean to insult us. It means to tell us that unless we do something to change this we are in big trouble!

Meaning in the Old Testament

There are too many examples in the Old Testament where genea is used to mean a kind of person. For example, in Psalm 14:5, “the gene­ration of the righteous” means the kind of people who are righteous.

In Proverbs 30:11-14, in all four verses, you have this same word in Hebrew which means generation, and is translated as “generation” or “these are those who.” The RSV has always translated the Hebrew word for “generation” as “these are those who” are like this. The Authorized Version has translated it as “generation”:

“Generation” means a kind of person.

You find this in Jeremiah 2:31 as well.

“O generation!” It means “O you people” who conduct yourselves in the way that I have been talking about.

I would particularly like to read to you Jeremiah 7:29 because this takes us straight into the New Testament:

“Generation of his wrath” is the kind of people who are under his wrath. The cutting of the hair was a sign of mourning. “Raise a lamentation” means mourn as though someone had died because Yahweh God has forsaken this kind of people who are subject to his wrath.

It is also used in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A New Testament scholar, I. H. Marshall said in his Commentary on Luke, “In 1QS314 of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this same word, “generations” used in the plural, refers not to a chronological succession of generations but to types of character.”

Meaning in the New Testament

We find this very common again in the New Testament. This kind of language in fact is also used by Paul. In the New Testament, we find this for example in Paul’s writings time and again.

For example, in Philippians 2:15, it is very much summing up what we have said in our opening verses:

By “a crooked and twisted generation,” he did not mean that the only generation in the history of mankind that was crooked and twisted was the one in which Paul lived. They were no more crooked and no more twisted than any other generation if we use the word “generation” in terms of a period of time or a number of years. But he is talking about the kind of people who live in darkness, who live under sin, who live in alienation from God as a crooked and twisted generation.

I can go on multiplying this sort of examples, and there will simply be too many of these to look at for today. We shall continue to look at this next time, and we will need to look at more evidence in the Lord’s teaching.

Let us conclude for today in Matthew 24:34. We begin to see when the Lord Jesus speaks about this “evil and adulterous generation” (Mt. 12:39, 16:4), he is not just saying that the people he is talking to are the only people in the history of the earth who are evil and adulterous. No, he is saying that all people who live in the power of darkness are crooked and twisted. So “this generation” refers to a kind of people who are the sons of darkness, the offspring of darkness in contrast to the Christians who are described as “children of light.”

Conclusion to Matthew 24:34

Therefore, when the Lord uses the word “generation” in Matthew 24:34, “this generation will not pass away till all these things take place,” he means “This whole wicked, adulterous and perverse generation, this kind of person, the children of this age will not pass away until the kingdom of God comes to change all that.” That is most important for us to grasp. We will continue to expound this.

Hence I would like you to see that in the Lord Jesus’ teaching, the stress is on what kind of people we are. Even when he uses the word “generation,” he speaks about the kind of people who live in the light in contrast to “this generation,” the people who live in darkness. Even Paul himself speaks of this kind of people as “a crooked and twisted generation.”

So let us shine in the midst of this generation. Let us walk as those who are spiritually alive.

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.