Bible Text: Luke 21:25-36 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Advent 2019 | Jesus once asked, “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?” It’s a startling question, coming from Jesus, it seems cynical, pessimistic, but it’s frankly the question anyone would ask if he could see, as Jesus did, how easily we will throw away the treasure of everlasting life for earthly pleasure. Look at the world. So many abandoning the faith around us, the shrinking churches around the country, the total apathy so many have now toward attending church, the death of family devotions, the list goes on. When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth? Jesus asked this question for a reason. He had just finished telling a parable about a widow who went to a judge, a wicked judge, a nasty one who had no respect for God or for other people, and she begged him for help, for relief, from her enemy. And of course, he refused, because he was a bad man. But then she kept asking. Over and over again. She kept asking. And finally the wicked judge did what she asked, not because he understood her pain or pitied her distress or wanted justice, but because he didn’t want her bothering him anymore. Jesus’ point is obvious. If this wicked judge answered the woman, gave her what she needed, because she was persistent, how much more will God who is good and faithful and true and merciful, answer us who are persistent in praying for and seeking out what only He can give, relief from our enemies of sin and death and hell? And it’s here, and this is extremely important, it’s here that Jesus says, “But when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?” This is for Jesus to define faith in a way that we need to take to heart this Advent Season – it’s trust in Christ, yes, but it’s a persistence in it, an endurance, that sees obstacle after obstacle, doubt after doubt, failure after failure, and still comes asking, still comes begging for what Christ gives. Faith would crawl a thousand miles on its knees for the chance to eat and drink the body and blood of its Lord. It sings and means, “What is the world to me, with all its vaunted pleasure, when Thou and Thou alone, Lord Jesus, art my treasure?” And it’s this persistence that will pray and get what it prays for from our God, finally to stand on the last day before the Son of Man.
When the Son of Man returns, He will find faith on the earth. That’s what Jesus says here in our Gospel. “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.” This generation, Jesus says, will not pass away until the Final Judgment, until the Son of Man comes in all His glory. The generation Jesus speaks of are His Christians, the persistent, the faithful. They will remain. We remain. We are the ones born from above (a generation is what is born, that’s what generation means), and this generation, we Christians, are born in the waters of Baptism and so have become the generation, the offspring, the children of God. We will endure, faith in our God will not pass away, until Jesus comes again.
So there’s the answer to Jesus’ question. And it’s a beautiful answer. The Church shall never perish her dear Lord to defend. But why? How? Jesus continues, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away.” You see what Jesus does here? He joins together inseparably the fact that His Christians will endure to the end and the fact that His word will never pass away, even when the earth and the heavens go up in flames. Jesus does this often. He simply and happily conflates His Word and faith. It’s called synecdoche. The cause and the effect go together. The cause of faith is God’s Word, and since God’s Word will stand forever, so will faith. Jesus does the same thing in his parable of the sower and the seed, He seamlessly calls the seed both His Word and the people who believe it. Because this is who Christians are. We are born from His Word. We live by His Word. We depend on it. Our persistence, our endurance, is completely dependent on this Word. It’s our identity. This the superscription be, Jesus crucified for me, is my life, my hope’s foundation, and my glory and salvation. This is exactly what St. Paul says in our epistle, too, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through the endurance and through the encouragement that the Scriptures give we might have hope.”
Look at what the Holy Spirit teaches us here. Your endurance is not some great act of your own will, some pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, it’s the endurance and the encouragement that Scripture gives, that God’s Word gives, this is what gives us hope. When the words of our Lord Jesus convince us that nothing could be greater than to look on the face of the Son of God, to see with our own eyes His glorious scars, those dear tokens of His passion, when the words of Christ drive us away from placing our hope and our affections on things that pass away with the using, when we ourselves experience that the things we thought would give us some lasting joy in the world end up burdening us with more worry in the end, then our God gives us endurance, persistence, by preaching to us the Word that never fails, never passes away, tells us to look away from everything else, lift up our heads, and see that our redemption draws near.
Faith is endurance. It’s not, as our American Evangelicals love to say, some one-time decision for Jesus. This is one of the most destructive teachings the devil has ever come up with. Jesus says watch yourself lest you be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the cares of this world, and in the Greek, it’s very clear that this is no one-time watching, it’s a continuous one – Keep a constant watch over yourselves, He says. The problem with the evangelicals is not that they talk about a decision for Jesus, it’s that they locate that decision in the past and then assert that no one can lose the faith, which renders all of Jesus’ warnings to keep the faith and to beware of everything that could tear us away from it meaningless. The fact is that the Christian’s entire life, our real, daily lives, consist in a battle to keep the faith, to endure to the end, to decide day after day that what Jesus promises and gives us makes everything else in this life pale to insignificance in comparison. And more than this, that our decision for Jesus comes not from us, but from God, that whatever endurance we have, whatever comfort we possess, come constantly and daily from Jesus’ Word to us, from His body and blood shed for us and put into our mouths, from the baptismal promise that never fades away, “This is my child, in whom I am well-pleased.”
This is endurance. And it’s against dissipation, drunkenness, and the cares of this life. That’s what Jesus says. There’s a reason Jesus talks of drunkenness, singles it out with dissipation and the cares of this life. When I warn my children against drunkenness, I’m warning not only against a fleeting pleasure, some brief enjoyment that is total selfishness. I’m warning against its results. Drunkenness and hangover go together, right? What does excess of wine do for you? It gives you a brief, artificial, temporary high, but then makes you groggy in the morning, unable to think clearly, makes everything you do harder – it destroys endurance; it brings instead anxiety and depression. And if it continues, night after night, day after day, it eventually destroys all happiness, except that fleeting, fake high of running again to the bottle.
This is the picture of what obsessing over the cares of this life does for Christian faith. Obsession with what this world has to offer, it destroys Christian endurance. Every Christian knows this. We feel it in our own lives. Focusing your life around sports or hunting or watching TV or making money or the success of your job or the size of your retirement will ruin your faith. It’s not that you can’t enjoy these things, look out for the future, and so forth, of course not, God gives you the earth to enjoy, but it’s that we are way too easily weighed down by these things, obsess over them, put them above what we should be looking forward to, which is seeing our God’s face in righteousness, awakening, as the Psalmist says, in His likeness. Put your heart and affection on things that don’t matter and in the end you’ll forget what really matters, that this world with all it has will be swallowed up in fire on the last day, and you will stand before the One who will create a new heavens and a new earth, without sin or pain or death, to be enjoyed forever by those who endure to the end.
So what occupies your time? This is the question we should especially think of during the Advent season. We have no business as Christians watching TV for hours and never reading the Bible. We have no business worrying so much about work and money and skipping church and devotions because life is so busy. This is exactly what Jesus warns against. The exact excuses we make for not reading the Bible faithfully, for not praying faithfully, for not coming to church faithfully, that life’s so hectic, that I love to see my kids play sports, that Sunday is my only day off to take care of the cares of this life! Think of that. Exactly what Jesus warns against! So I’m not saying this simply to make us all feel guilty. I’m saying this so we take action. We’re Christians. We’re expecting the Kingdom of God! We’re expecting to see our Savior’s face. This is our life’s goal. There are temptations galore. We need endurance. So let’s go to exactly where Jesus tells us to go when temptations come – to the Word that will never pass away, that gives us the endurance we need. Hear it now and treasure it in your heart. Let your cares for this life fade away. Your Lord will stand upon this earth. He will come with all His glory. Around you the nations will faint with fear. The sun and the stars will vanish into nothing. The world itself will fade away. But Jesus will be there. Your Jesus will be there. The Jesus who died for you, who took your sins on Himself and purchased your redemption with His own blood. The Jesus who comes to you now with words that will never fade away, You have been bought, purchased with a price, your sins are erased forever from God’s memory, the wrath of God is stilled, your Father loves you beyond knowing, His Spirit belongs to you, His Son’s body and blood once crucified are now placed into your mouth to remove all doubt and fear and anxiety. God is for you. Ask from Him, keep on asking, and you will receive. He will give what He has promised. And when He stands, when your Lord Jesus stands in front of your eyes on that last day, to create a new heavens and a new earth, without any sin, without pain, with pure joy, never ending gladness, you will thank and praise Him that His Word has given you the endurance to stand with all the saints and receive the crown of glory that will not fade away. God grant it for Jesus sake. Amen.