Stay Awake - Sober-Mindedness

Matthew 24:42 - Stay Awake - Sober-Mindedness 

What does Matthew 24:42 mean?  

Pointedly, Christ made it clear that no person can claim to know the time of His return (Matthew 24:36). Absolutely every prediction that gives a date of the second coming is based on false premises.

That leaves only one option for those who want to be ready: His followers must "stay awake" all the time. Of course, Jesus is not speaking literally, suggesting one should avoid actual sleep. Instead, He is telling them to live in a state of awareness. Believers should never lapse into the false notion that what happens in this life, from day to day, is all that will ever happen (2 Peter 3:3–7; James 4:13–14). Wakeful believers remember that this life is temporary, and the next life is eternal. The next life can begin without warning.

Far too many people live only for today or for the days before this life ends. They put off dealing with the reality of God's judgment and eternity as if they are sleeping through the alarm. The opportunity to trust in Christ for salvation is limited to the length of one's life before death (Hebrews 9:27) or the return of Christ (Revelation 19:11–15). In either case, the time is short. By the time a person knows their moment has come, their choice has already been made.

In the end, the call to sober-mindedness is a warning against spiritual sleepiness and laziness. “Let us not sleep, as others do,” the apostle Paul warns, “but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6). Sober-mindedness is awakeness to spiritual reality — to the bloody victory of the cross, to the murderous schemes of our enemy, to the unavoidable judgment, to the challenges of love and certainty of suffering, to the sovereign care of our Father and his ceaseless waves of mercy and grace. How real do those realities feel to you?

“Be on guard, keep awake,” Jesus himself says, “for you do not know when [the end] will come. . . . Therefore stay awake. . . . And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake” (Mark 13:33–37). We must recognize our proneness to tire and slumber, to lose sight of ultimate, all-important realities, and to instead fix our eyes all the more on what is real — to stay awake. That is, we must learn to be sober-minded.

May God bless you and yours as you go forward each day from now on!

https://www.bibleref.com/biblepassage/Printer?section=Matthew_24:42&lang=en

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/to-souls-who-fall-asleep

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