The Uncertainty of Life the Great Reason for Holiness.
I. With all our consciousness that there is great mercy in the concealment of the future, we cannot question that there would be far more preparation for death under an arrangement which gave notice when life would terminate, than under another which leaves it wholly uncertain. Why, then, is this information withheld? Though we may not be able to show why God draws a veil before coming days, we may certainly determine enough to induce us to be thankful rather than oppressed. For you must readily perceive that the character of the existing dispensation would be altogether changed, were we enabled to foresee whatever could happen. It would no longer be a dispensation of faith, but a dispensation of sight. It is evident enough that walking by faith is no better to us than would be walking by sight. We find it intensely difficult in our ignorance to submit ourselves to God, in whose hands we are. What would it be if we had acquaintance with the future, and so were in a measure independent; and could make our plans with certainty as to their issue. The wife would be a widow while her husband lived, the child would be an orphan while yet blessed with parents if the funeral were foreknown and the day of separation clearly revealed.
II. It is practically of very little importance whether we can give satisfactory reasons why the future should be hidden, and for the declaration that the unveiling it would produce far greater preparedness for the termination of life. It might on the whole, be advantageous, or it might on the whole be disastrous, that the day of death should be known; but the arrangement to which we are to conform is one in which the day is absolutely unknown; and it must be our business rather to labour at acting agreeably to the circumstances in which we are placed, than to determine what effect would be wrought were those circumstances changed. The goodman of the house is not informed in what watch the thief will approach. No matter, then, whether or not the being informed would make him more vigilant in securing a successful resistance. He cannot gain the information, and the only question therefore is What can be done now that, search how we will, tomorrow eludes our inquiry? The answer to this is contained in the last verse of our text, in the exhortation which Christ founds on the statement in regard to the dispensation: "Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,501.
The Second Coming of Christ is spoken of in divers passages as an event that will take the world unawares come when men are not expecting it when they are immersed in the cares and pleasures and business of life, in such an hour as they think not. But why need we speculate as to the precise hour of that Advent? Death is to each of us the Lord's coming. Death closes our day of probation. Death puts a stop to preparation. Death seals our eternal destiny. As the tree falls, so it lies; as we die, so shall we rise in the judgment, fit or not fit, ready or not ready, to meet the Lord. And what is it to be ready? In what consists the preparation for Christ's coming, for death, for judgment which all will allow ought now to be made.
I. We must be rooted and grounded in religious faith. We must have a strong grasp upon the righteousness of Christ; we must be joined to him by a lively faith; we must have wrought in us a settled conviction of His power to usward.
II. "To every man his work." We have, then, each one of us here a work to do in this world a work which Christ has set us. Our work, God's ordained work for us, is that which lies at our feet the daily task we have to do. We need not look out for other fields, we need not cast about for what are called (often miscalled) larger spheres of usefulness. Let a man labour diligently in his calling; let him put his heart into his daily task, be it the commonest or apparently the least interesting task; let him work at it with a will, as doing it under God's eye, not as mere pleasure, but as the servant of Jesus Christ, and he may rest assured his labours will not be in vain in the Lord.
III. Again, to be ready for Christ, to be in any sort prepared for His coming, we must have fought and conquered our besetting sin the evil to which we are most inclined; the bad habit we have contracted; the lust in which we may have indulged. That soul is altogether unfit to meet its God that is living in any known wilful sin.
IV. Once again, I must not omit that which is the very essence of Christian preparation, the having in us the mind that was in Him; some portion of His blessed spirit, the spirit of brotherly kindness, and of charity. "All our doings without charity are nothing worth. Charity is the bond of peace, and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before God."
R.D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,3rd series, p. 1.
References: Matthew 24:44. C. Girdlestone Twenty Parochial Sermons,2nd series, p. 291; W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,vol. ii., p. 247. Matthew 24:45-51. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. vii., p. 165.