Don't Worry, Be Ready

This is the message given at the Oahe Manor service Sunday, December 1, 2013.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 24:36-44.

I hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.  But today is December first.  So, even though we still think of this as Thanksgiving weekend, in the church we need to turn the page.  Today is the first Sunday of the season of Advent.  This is the time in the church calendar when we get ready to celebrate the coming of Christ.

In our reading from Matthew, Jesus talked about getting ready for the coming of Christ, too.  Not his birth, obviously, but the time he's going to come again.  And there are ways in which that second coming will be like the first.  In both cases, people had been told that Jesus was coming.  There are Old Testament prophecies of the coming of the Savior to earth, and Jesus himself said that he would come again.  Also, in both cases, even though people know Jesus is coming, there is no way to know when it's going to happen.  And so, in both cases, it's important for us to be ready.

Jesus says that when he comes again, it's going to be a day just like any other day.  We'll be living our lives, eating and drinking and getting married and doing all the things people do in their lives.  And suddenly, Jesus will be here.  The way it sounds, once he comes, there won't be any time to get ready any more.  So, since we don't know when Jesus is coming and we won't have time to get ready after he comes, we need to be ready now, so we're ready whenever he comes.

That sounds like kind of a hard thing.  It's really not.  We don't have to do a lot of special stuff to get ready for Jesus to come.  In fact, we don't really have to do anything.  Salvation is not about doing stuff.  Salvation is about faith.  If we believe in God, if we've accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, if we've asked God for forgiveness of our sins, then we are ready.

If you went to the inspiration service last Tuesday morning, you heard Norma talk about the Boy Scout motto, “Be prepared”.  That's what we're talking about here.  And when I think about that, I think about something else Jesus said.  This is in Matthew, too, but it comes earlier, in Chapter Six.  Jesus says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

See, to me, worrying and being prepared always seem like exact opposites.  I don't know about you, but the times I do the most worrying are when I'm not prepared.  That's when I start thinking about all the things that could happen or might happen and start wondering what I'll do if they do happen.  If I'm not prepared for stuff, I do a lot of worrying about it.

But I don't worry if I'm prepared.  Because why should I?  When we're prepared, we don't need to worry.  If those things that could happen or might happen actually do happen, it's okay.  We're ready. We know what we're going to do.  There's nothing to worry about, because no matter what happens, we'll be able to handle it.

And that includes the time when we meet Jesus, too.  If we've asked God for forgiveness of our sins and accepted Jesus as our Savior, we don't have to worry about what happens when the time comes.  We're ready for it.  There's nothing to worry about, because when Jesus comes, we'll be able to handle it.

That's true regardless of whether we meet Jesus because Jesus came to earth again or whether we meet Jesus because we've left this earth.  If we've asked God for forgiveness of our sins and accepted Jesus as our Savior, we don't have to worry even about death.  When the time comes, we'll be ready for it.  When the time comes, we'll be able to handle it.

Did you notice, when Jesus told the disciples to be ready, he never told them anything to do.  He did not tell them “I could come again at any time, so make sure you live a perfect, sinless life”.  He did not tell them, “I could come again at any time, so make sure you spend all day every day praying and reading the Bible”.  If you read the verses around this passage, there's really only one thing he tells the disciples to do to get ready, and that is to be faithful to God.  And again, we do that by asking god for forgiveness of our sins and accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior.

We struggle with that idea sometimes.  It seems too simple.  It seems too easy.  We think, “That cannot be all there is to it.  There must be something more that I have to do.  There must be some great and high and noble thing I have to do.  The almighty, all-powerful God would not let somebody like me into heaven.  The righteous, holy, perfect God would not want someone like me around.  I have to get better.  I have to do something to show I'm good enough.  I have to do something to earn my way into heaven.”

We're so tempted to think that, but it's just not so.  There is nothing we can do to be “good enough”.  In fact, there is no such thing as being “good enough” to go to heaven.  We don't get to go to heaven because we're good, we get to go to heaven because God is so good.  We don't get to go to heaven because we're earned it, we get to go to heaven because Jesus earned it for us.  All we need to do is believe.  Believe and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior.

If we've done that, then we're prepared.  And when we're prepared, we don't have to worry.  We can be at peace, and look forward to the day when we will go to be with Jesus in heaven.