Meditation on the Text of the Week

Cleaning the Place Up

But his master answered and said to him, “You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow,and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received the money back with interest.
Matthew 25: 26,27

Where is the Kingdom of God going in history? This question has three possible answers: all three have been propounded in the course of the history of the Kingdom. None has yet gained permanent hold in the collective heart and mind of God's people. The three possible outcomes are:

1. That the Kingdom will progressively diminish in the world, until, like Frodo and Sam clinging to the last rock at the breaking of the world, the eagles will come and rescue the last few remaining Christians before all is swept away. In this view of the course of the Kingdom, the idea is to get as many life rafts and life-belts into the sea as possible so that the maximum number of drowning people can be saved as the ship goes down.

2. That things will stay pretty much as they are—with ebbs and flows. The Kingdom will neither increase nor decrease; from a Christian perspective things will neither get worse nor better. It will be “same old, same old” until the final advent of our Lord—which could occur at any time, since there are no developments in the Kingdom which must take place prior to His final return.

3. That the Kingdom will be so filled and empowered by God's Spirit that the world will be progressively Christianised—genuinely so—to where the overwhelming majority of the world's population will be truly converted and living holy and godly lives. In this possibility the world will be a grand and glorious place prior to the Final Advent. Since the Kingdom is way short of that glory at present, there remains much work to be done. Therefore, the coming of our Lord is a long way off.

As we mentioned above all three possibilities have been propounded at different times and locations in the history of the Church. Generally, in the West the first possibility has held dominance throughout most of the previous century. Two world wars, totalitarian communism, the Great Depression, the nuclear threat—all helped convince Christian folk that the future of the Kingdom was bleak indeed, and that glory and triumph would only be known and experienced after the end of redemptive history, when the stricken ship had gone down.

Our view is that the Scriptures teach the third outcome for the Kingdom—the world-wide Christianization of mankind through the preaching of the Gospel. One of the reasons is the sequence of parables our Lord delivered just prior to His death in answer to the disciples' question upon hearing that the temple would be torn down, “When shall these things be?”

Of course, the destruction of the Temple was imminent, within a generation. For the disciples, steeped in the prevailing rabbinic eschatology, the coming of the Messiah meant the Final Advent. It took them several years to be weaned off this mono-dimensional view and grasp that the destruction and judgment of Jerusalem in AD 68—70 was not the end of redemptive history, but the beginning of a work of redemption greater than the human race had ever seen. The Gospel was going to the Gentiles, and all the world was to be made a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In answer to the question as to when the temple stones would be torn down, our Lord definitively stated that it would occur within that generation (Matthew 24: 34)—as indeed it came to pass. But redemptive history would go on. Jesus then told a series of parables, all of which imply a long passage of time. He uses the image of a landowner who goes away for a long time, leaving his servants in charge of His affairs. When He comes back, it is clear that He expects that things will have changed a lot since His departure. His servants will have been hard at work; His household will be greatly enlarged, running smoothly, well governed, and in much better shape than when He departed. He returns as one who is very demanding, a “hard man”, who expects to reap where He did not sow, and harvest where He had not scattered seed.

Our great hope is that we will be present at the Final Advent of our Lord when He comes to the earth. We long to be here when He comes. And we shall be. Paul insists upon it (I Thessalonians 4:16,17). Our hope does not focus and terminate upon death and our souls going to heaven. Our hope looks beyond that—it looks for our being able to participate in the greatest glorification of the Son of God ever seen in all creation—and that will be when He returns to the earth to make it His dwelling place forever. Our greatest hope is to be there bodily—whole and complete. And we shall be, for we will all form part of His glory train. The dancing, the feasting, the singing, and the celebration will be unlike anything ever seen since the beginning of time. “I'll be back,” is the great, triumphant cry of the dying saint.

When our Lord comes, He expects to see everything in order, well managed, running smoothly. He expects to find the Gospel preached to every creature as He commanded, and all the nations discipled, being instructed daily in all His commandments. He expects to reap where He did not sow—and what the Lord expects, He will get. He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, after all.

So, knowing that the Lord is returning, we work hard to clean the place up before He gets here. It is what faithful servants do. “Occupy until I come!”