Occupy Till I Come

• If you know history you know it was General Douglas MacArthur who went down in American History as one of the greatest Generals this country has ever had.

• When President Roosevelt ordered him to leave the Philippines and go to Australia, he spoke these words that went down in the history books, “I shall return.”

• In 1945 President Roosevelt sent him back. A year later, the Japanese surrendered to him and ended the war.

But MacArthur is not the first to utter these words, “I shall return!” The Lord Jesus uttered almost these identical words hundreds of years before.

He said it this way in John 14:2-3, “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I WILL COME AGAIN, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

The Lord Jesus has promised to return to gather His church.

Knowing that He is going to return for His church any moment now, HOW SHOULD WE AS CHRISTIANS LIVE OUR LIVES?

In the parable of the distribution of pounds, in Luke 19:13, Jesus tells us how Christians should live until He returns. He said, “Occupy till I come.”

We get our word “occupation” from the word “Occupy”.

So the Lord is saying, until he RETURNS for the church we should all find the job we can do, and BE BUSY WORKING FOR THE LORD.

Illus: Your boss man gives you a job and hour later he returns and he finds you sitting down. How embarrassing that would be!!!

Can you imagine what it is going to be like when the Lord returns for His church and he finds many Christians sitting down on the job.

God has left all of us here for a purpose and it is not just sit on a church pew.

If He were to return today, how should He find us?

He tells us:

I. BE SOBER

Illus: In 1929 a German scientist by that name of Hans Berger proved there was electrical activity in the brain.

Humor: He proved that some of us run on 220 volts while other are running on about 110. Just kidding!

His discovery led to the development of a device that enabled him to measure and record the electrical activity of the brain known as an EEG.

For the first time in history man was able to take a look at what was going on inside the brain.

We now have many modern devices which allow even a closer look at the brain such as CAT scans and Brain scans, all of which are very helpful to doctors.

While we can see the function of the brain we cannot know the thoughts that are inside. This is good as you can imagine this would not be good if we knew what each others thoughts were. If we could this would fill the divorce courts and the jails probably!!!

Illus: Remember that program called Gilliagan’s island. In one of the episodes they found berries on the island that let them read each other thoughts which made a very funny episode.

But let us say that it was possible for them to open up your mind and see what was in there.

What would they find?

I would say that if they could they would probably find some:

• Good stuff,

• But probably also some bad stuff that would bring to us much embarrassment and shame.

But the scripture is talking about a SOUND MIND.

Look at 1 Peter 4:7, we read, “But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore SOBER, and WATCH unto prayer.”

Look at the words SOBER and WATCH.

These two words bring a double emphasis.

• BE SOBER - to be of sound mind

• WATCH - to be sober (sound mind) and watching for His return.

In other words, as we are looking for the return of Christ, we need to make sure that we do not have the SAME MINDSET the lost world has.

WHY?

Because it is obvious that the lost world is not looking for Christ to return.

The reason we know that, is because if they thought He would return soon, they would not be living in sin.

God wants Christians to live each day with a SOUND MIND AND BE LOOKING FOR THE RETURN OF CHRIST EVERY DAY.

One of the biggest traps that Christians can fall into each day is to conform to the way the lost world thinks and live.

HOW DO THEY THINK?

They don’t! They allow others to do their thinking for them.

They do not believe in thinking things through, they simply follow others, and allow them to do their thinking for them.