Sunday school teacher Joel had injured his back and had to wear an unnoticeable cast around his upper part of his body. So it was under his clothes. Nobody could see it. During the first Sunday back after his injury, the class became unruly during devotion and repeatedly ignored Joel’s requests for quiet and to turn off their phones. Eventually, he got hot and sweaty, and he opened a window close to his desk for some sweat fresh air. When the breeze kept flapping his tie, the frustrated Joel took a stapler out of his desk and stapled the the flapping tie to his chest in several places. Student discipline was no problem from then on, and all the phones were silenced.
You never know. Oh. Oh, sorry. I’m just scrolling. Ah, speaking of scrolling, check out these stats on Americans and scrolling. Did you know that the average American will spend 30 to 40 years of their life consuming media and entertainment? We were just talking about that, right? That’s in a person’s lifetime of maybe 70 to 90 years old. Isn’t that insane? Think about that for a minute. We take 40 years off of our life watching TV, looking at our phones. 15 of those years will be in front of a TV. Think about when you were younger, probably watched a lot of cartoons on Saturday mornings, right? And another six years of scrolling through social media. Now you add smartphones into the mix and tablets. Do you know the average person will look at their phone 96 times a day?
Think about that. How many times do you look at your phone? I look at my phone a lot. So, I’m going to start counting to see if I look at it 96 times a day. These are just stats. I don’t, you know, they’re who knows exactly.
But anyway, so now in this parable we read today, these people were thinking that the kingdom of God had already come. They were on their way to Jerusalem. It’s Passover. They were going to celebrate their release from the captivity of the Roman rule. The Messiah was here and he would destroy the Romans. Right? Jesus came. He was going to destroy the Romans. They were thinking about a literal kingdom in which the son of David, Messiah, would sit on the throne and overthrow politically and militarily all their enemies and establish his kingdom.
This parable is about the two comings of Jesus Christ. The first when Jesus Christ came to die for the sins of the world. The second will be when he comes again to reign and bring us into his kingdom. During the period between these two events, he’s telling us we need to be faithful servants who occupy until he comes. Occupy till he comes. Jesus says in Luke 19:13, “And when he called 10 of his slaves and gave them 10 minus and said to them, do business with this until I come back.” Now, we know his parables, Jesus tells something, but he’s also telling a story inside the parables for all of us. He says, “Do my business. Occupy till I come.” He didn’t say scroll on your phones or binge on Netflix till I come back. The word occupy doesn’t just mean occupy space in a pew or sit around waiting for the rapture. It means do Jesus business until he comes back. Be busy. Be productive until he comes again. Just like I was saying to the kids, you make a difference. So be productive. Don’t let your youth stop you from being productive.
It is interesting that this parable is based on a historical event that happened shortly after 4 BC. When Herod the Great died and wanted to give his kingdom over to his son Archelaus, Archelaus went to Rome to get his kingdom and the Jews sent messengers after him to say that they would not have this man reign over them.
The two reasons Jesus told this parable because he was near Jerusalem where he would be arrested and crucified. Remember, right after this parable, he rides into um Jerusalem and everybody’s going, “Oh, yay. It’s Jesus.” And they’re all happy and what happens in the next 24 hours? Crucify him.
The second reason he told this parable was because the people thought the kingdom of God would immediately appear and he was trying to tell them, “This is not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about earthly things. I’m talking about your spiritual things. That was their problem. They had the wrong understanding. The kingdom of God was not going to be immediately appear as they thought it should. They were missing the true message.
How many times do we sometimes miss the message? The parable talks about the importance between the first coming and the second coming. There’s a huge gap between these two events, right? We know that as of today there has already been what 2,000 years right between death uh Christ’s death and who knows how many more years until he comes back right we have been commissioned we all of us here to occupy and be busy with the Lord’s business until he comes back we need to use the time treasures and talents God has given us right now and spread the gospel. We are to occupy until the Lord returns in his second coming.
We live in a world that is rebelling against God. We know that by everything that’s going on around us. We live in a world where men are shaking their fists at God and saying, “We will not have this man reign over us.” In this parable when Jesus is saying don’t you sit around don’t sit on a mountain waiting for the rapture he is saying to us today go out charge all don’t don’t go out and charge up all your credit cards thinking that the rapture is coming and you don’t have to pay them off because the rapture is coming right don’t occupy your time with things that are not useful. He says, “Don’t waste time doing things that don’t co coincide with the word.”
As many of you know, Maron was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and he told me a similar story to waiting for the rapture about the Jehovah’s Witness and what they believed. They thought that the rapture was coming in their lifetime. And when he was a young man, he saw that people were buying things. They weren’t going to school. They were uh charging their credit cards. They thought the end was near and that they were going to walk off this earth and not have to die. They soon found out that they were being told and what they believed was not true. So he experienced a lot of that and he experienced it in his own personal life because he wanted so badly to be a pilot and go into the military and his dad refused to let him go. He should have done it when he was a little bit older because he always thought outside of the box anyway. So he experienced this type of occupying in the real world in the earthly world instead of the spiritual world.
In my eyes, they had rebelled, relied on themselves instead of the Bible. They relied on the word of a man or men in New York. According to their teachers, now they have a new understanding. So my, you know, my father-in-law, I deal with him five days a week. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness. They now have a new understanding. The rapture isn’t coming right now. Had they read the Bible a little bit more, guess what? They wouldn’t have a new understanding today. They would have had the same understanding back then as they have today. Jesus says, “You do the Lord’s work. Do the Lord’s business until Jesus comes again.” In this parable, I think the minus represents the gospel.
The call to do business till I come represents the great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We have to remember that Satan has free reign now. He is free and he’s hanging out in our houses, in our churches, and in our schools and in our parks. He’s all over. Every time we turn on the news, we see tragedy and wars, right? We see sadness, loss, hurt, and pain. But we must not lose heart. We must not get discouraged. As the world gets darker and darker before the dawning of a new day, we need to share the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called and chosen to do his business till he comes again.
It’s easy to get discouraged, right? Especially when we see persecution of Christians in the world, you think, “Oh, that was me. I wouldn’t say anything because I wouldn’t want to lose my head or get killed.” But if we occupy ourselves doing his business, the reward is far greater than what this life has to offer. We want to be like the first faithful servants in this parable. Our requirement from God is not that we are smart or talented. It’s just to be faithful. You don’t have to be a professor. God wants us to be faithful because everything we have, our time, our talents, our treasures, they all belong to God, not to us. When we use our time, our talents, and our treasures, and the gospel that has been given to us faithfully, God will give us more. Just like he did in the parable of the servants, God will give us more blessings, more opportunities, and more service.
No matter what we’re given, big or small, God is telling us to use it. So even though you think you’re too young, you’re not. Using what God has given us stops us from losing the people that need to hear the gospel. Remember when Jesus was talking to his parents when they couldn’t find him in Luke 2:49 he says to them why did you seek me did you not know that I was about my father’s business. It’s not a bad thing to watch TV or binge or look at our smartphones or enjoy what the media has to offer I know I do as long as it is in line with the word and doesn’t occupy all our time. So instead of spending the the majority of our time binging on our devices, we should be binging on the word of God, telling people about Jesus Christ, occupying till he comes. We don’t know when the Lord’s going to return. So let’s stay binging in his business. Let’s occupy till he comes.
I’m giving you all a challenge today that every day you open your Bible, I don’t care where it is, and you read a passage. You can read one passage or you can read a bunch of passages. But I’m giving you a challenge for this week, take the time, morning, noon, night, before you go to bed, open the Bible, and find a passage and read it. That’s your challenge for this week. All right. I’m done.
