2025-03-08_Defiance Series: The Hard Work of Waiting for Jesus part 1

Welcome to Moody Presents with Mark Jobe.  Mark is the president of Moody Bible Institute.  The Bible is clear that Jesus is coming back.  And while there have been many people throughout history who have tried to predict exactly when that will happen, they’ve always come up short.  But the time and date of Christ's return matters so little compared to working hard for Him until He comes.  It's a life-change message, get ready!

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
Today on Moody Presents with Mark Jobe what it means
to learn to do the hard work while we're waiting
for the Lord to return.

S2 (00:08):
The best thing that you can do while you wait
for Christ is live for God in the world. Even
if we knew that Jesus Christ was coming a week
from today, because the best way to get ready for
Christ is to live your life full of God.

S1 (00:24):
Welcome to Moody Presents with Mark Jobe. Mark is the
senior pastor of New Life Community Church in Chicago and
president of Moody Bible Institute. He joins us briefly here
in the studio in just a moment. I'm John Geiger, and,
you know, the Bible is clear that Jesus is coming back.
And while there have been many people throughout history who
have all tried to predict exactly when that will happen,

(00:48):
you've noticed they always come up short, right? So let
me ask pastor Mark, what's the proper way to prepare
for Christ's return?

S3 (00:56):
A lot of people ask me that question. If I
knew that Jesus was coming back next month, what would
I do different, exactly? And I believe in the imminent
return of Jesus, which means that he could come at
any time. Yes. And I know that this was written
2000 years ago. But, you know, God's timetable is different

(01:16):
than ours. And but I believe that Jesus could return
at any time, and that we as believers need to
live ready for his return. Yeah, but the best way
to prepare for his return is not necessarily knowing the
eschatology charts well, or trying to determine the exact time

(01:36):
and date. The best way to prepare for his return
is by living for him. Submitted to his Lordship today.

S1 (01:44):
Boy that's good. Thanks, Mark. Well, let's jump into today's
message called the Hard Work of Waiting for Jesus. Here's
pastor Mark Jobe on Moody Presents.

S2 (01:54):
First Thessalonians chapter four, verses nine through 12. Now about
brotherly Love. We do not need to write you, for
you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.

(02:19):
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to
mind your own business, and to work with your hands
just as we told you, so that your daily life
may win the respect of outsiders, so that you will
not be dependent on anyone. Word of God, you may

(02:40):
be seated. One of the hardest things in life is
to wait. Oh, I hate waiting. I remember when my
first child, Marissa, was going to be born. I had
to wait nine months. Drove me nuts. I thought it

(03:00):
was Josiah. So I'd get up to my wife's belly
and I'd say, all right, Josiah, are you going to
come out pretty soon? Here? Come on. I'm waiting for you, bud.
Don't make us wait. And as it was, my parents
were here for her birth, and they had to change
their plane ticket three times because she was supposed to
be born on my birthday, July 9th. And she wasn't
born until July 22nd. Oh, man. It's hard to wait

(03:22):
for something that you want a lot, right? It's just
hard to wait. Some of us are in the waiting room,
and it's really difficult because we get really impatient in
the waiting room. How many of you make doctor's appointments?
And I don't know what those doctors are up to,
but they always have us. Wait. I feel like if
I'm two minutes late, I have to apologize. But if

(03:42):
they make me wait a half hour, they just think
like it's normal. It's. Hold on. Something's wrong here. I
just hate waiting. You get the magazines. It's all old
copies of Reader's Digest. They're all 3 or 4 months old,
and you're just kind of thumbing through them. And, you know,
some of these waiting rooms are all women's magazine home. Whatever.

(04:04):
This in style. It's like. If you're single here today,
maybe you've been waiting for that right person. In fact,
sometimes you walk in this auditorium, you think today is
the day. Jesus. I'm looking for a spiritual, God filled
kind of person. So you scan the auditorium, walk around.

(04:25):
You take a while to find your seat. The usher says, no,
there's a seat here. You say, no, no, I'm going
to sit up there so you just can scan. You
sit down and say, no, I think he's not here today, Lord.
But one thing that we are all waiting for is
we're believers. We're waiting for the second coming of Christ.
And so this passage here is really talking to us

(04:47):
about how to wait. Well, what we're supposed to do
while we wait. Because while we wait, sometimes people put
their life on hold and they don't live how they're
supposed to live. Some some of you are waiting for something,
and it's almost like your life is on hold until
that something happens. So you're wasting life waiting for something
to happen where you need to be living life. And

(05:11):
some of us are in the waiting room and we
start doing the wrong things while we're in the waiting room,
not prepared for the appointment that's coming. And so Paul
is telling them, hey, you're waiting for the second coming
of Christ, but some of you are really messing up
in the waiting room. In essence, he tells them, if
you start. Last week we looked at verse seven and verse.

(05:33):
The earlier part of the chapter is all about purity.
He's saying, if you're waiting for me, make sure you
understand that your body is the temple of the Holy
Spirit and you need to live with sexual purity. If
you're getting ready for the coming of Christ, you need
to understand that part of getting ready is that you
determine that you will live sexually pure until he comes. Now,

(05:55):
in this passage, he's talking to us about two other
main important waiting room experiences, and one has to do
with our relationships and the other has to do with
our work ethic. So as we look at First Thessalonians,

(06:15):
you'll realize that in this book, Paul looks at the
return of Christ, and he talks about it three times
in this book. He explains aspects of the return of
Christ that take up 16 verses of first Thessalonians 19.
Out of the 89 total verses, over 20% of the
book is devoted to the Second Coming of Christ. So
he's talking to them about the fact that Jesus Christ

(06:38):
is coming again. Now, as I told you before, some
of them had gotten so into the end times thinking
that Jesus was coming soon, that they had started to
behave in ways that were sabotaging their waiting process. It
seems like some of them had started had had quit

(06:59):
their jobs. I don't know, maybe they were bunkering down
with water and cans of foods in their basement, waiting
for the coming of Christ. Some of them thought that
the end of the world was coming at them right away,
and so they had started to just not prepare for
their future, quit their jobs. They weren't. People from the
outside were looking at them as though they were kooky.

(07:22):
They were nuts. Like, what are these people doing? And
they weren't doing what they should have been doing while
they waited for Christ. Listen, the best thing that you
can do while you wait for Christ is live for
God in the world. Even if we knew that Jesus
Christ was coming a week from today, I would tell you,

(07:43):
don't quit your job. Just go to your job, work hard,
do what you're supposed to do, because the best way
to get ready for Christ is to live your life
full of God. Whatever you're supposed to be doing, do it,
but full of God. And so the Apostle Paul talks
to them about a couple of things he says while
you wait, don't blow it. Keep pure increase in love

(08:05):
and work hard. Look at what he says in verses
nine through ten. If you're taking notes, write this down.
Waiting for Jesus means working at loving others. This is
your relational testimony. Verse nine says, now about brotherly love.
By the way, that word brotherly love is literally the

(08:26):
word Philadelphia. Yeah, you may know what Philadelphia means, but
it's taken from the Greek word phila means love. In
the Greek, there's three expressions of love. There's there's filial love,
which is brotherly love. There's eros love, which is more sensual,

(08:48):
romantic love. And then there's agape love, which is more
this unconditional love. It's the kind of love that's often
used by God towards us. And so he says, he
says now about brotherly love. The word philia means love.
The word adelphia means brothers. So brotherly love. It's the
kind of love that you have towards people like your brother,

(09:11):
your sister, family members that you say, hey, I really
care about them. No matter what they do, no matter
how they blow it, they're still my family and we
may not get along. We may argue, but we always
go back to loving each other. Why? Because they're family.
And the apostle Paul says now about brotherly love. I

(09:33):
don't need to write you. He says, you know what?
I look at your church. I look at the church
in Thessalonia. I look at how you relate to each other.
And I realize I don't even have to encourage you
to love each other, because he says, for you yourselves
have been taught by God to love each other, taught

(09:53):
by God. Well, yeah. How were they taught by God?
Did God come down and teach them a course on
loving one another 101 no no no no. Here's how
we learn to love each other. It's the idea of
loving each other is more court than it is taught.
And here's what happens. Listen. The moment that you come

(10:15):
to Christ and you bow your knee and accept Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit comes
and starts living inside of you. The Holy Spirit is
the third person of the Godhead that dwells inside of you.
When someone says, Where is God's address on earth? God's
address is your body because you it's a moving target.

(10:38):
It's a roving address. You are the manifestation. God's presence
is manifest in you via His Holy Spirit. He dwells
inside of you as he dwells inside of you. He
is called to be the. In the Greek it's called
the Paraclete, which means the coach, the instructor, the advocate,

(10:59):
the teacher. The Holy Spirit is inside of you to
coach you how to live for God. You have an
inbuilt coach. What about that? How about it? One of
the most experienced, powerful, insightful people in the universe. It's
called the Holy Spirit and he lives inside of you.
And his job is to coach you to live for

(11:21):
God all the way. So as you start listening to
the inner voice of the Holy Spirit, you will begin
to distinguish what is right and what is wrong. Even
though no 1st May have taught you, you will. You
will intuitively know right from wrong when the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit is inside of you. Does that ever
happen to you? No one taught you. And then suddenly

(11:42):
you just stopped doing something and someone said, why did
you stop? I don't know, I just felt it was wrong.
What did church tell you that? No. What's that? It's
the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been in a situation
and you feel like, hey, something's a little weird about this?
I know it's all religious, but it seems a little
weird religious, and you just kind of say, I think

(12:03):
I'm going to bow out of this, and later on
you find out it was some wacky, cultic, demonic thing,
but you didn't know you were new, but just in
your spirit. You felt something's wrong with that. Something's not
right there. Why? It's the Holy Spirit. He's coaching you.
He's guiding you. He's like a spiritual GPS.

S1 (12:23):
With an important message about learning to prepare for the
Lord's return. You're listening to the Bible teaching of Mark Jobe. Now,
to complement this series of messages, we invite you to
access our latest featured Moody Presents Advanced Team Gift by
going to Moody presents.org. It's a book called Your Future
Self will. Thank you. Secrets to Self Control from the

(12:45):
Bible and Brain science I love it. Here's an excerpt.
Without a healthy attachment to God, you and I are
more likely to fall prey to destructive thinking and behaviors. Self-control, then,
is about listening and obeying. It's not self-determined. It means
submitting every decision we make to God. It's about surrendering

(13:06):
your future self will thank you. Is our advance team
gift and you can get it right now at Moody presents.org.
For a gift of any amount, we'll send you out
a copy of your future self will thank you again.
Visit Moody presents.org. All right. Right now let's return to
our message as pastor Mark addresses the second thing that

(13:27):
you and I need to do while we're waiting for Jesus.

S2 (13:36):
My son got lost this morning. 17 year old son.
He's driving. Dad, I don't know. He calls me up
and said, dad, I have no idea where I'm at.
I'm like, okay, got on my computer. Tell me your
street intersections. So he's telling me and over the phone
I'm telling him, okay, turn. Take a right. Two more blocks.

(13:57):
Go this way. Watch that way. Well he he himself,
he doesn't know where he's going, but he's listening to
the small little voice of someone that really loves him
and wants him to arrive safe to his destination. It's
his dad. The Holy Spirit is kind of that way.

(14:17):
It's that inner voice speaking into your ear. And now. Now,
when you call upon him, he'll answer you. When you say,
I'm listening, let me dial you up and call you.
The Holy Spirit travels alongside of us that way. I've
had people. I've had people say to me, pastor, I just,
you know, I get so much out of Sunday, I
wish I could just I wish you could kind of
travel with me to work in the back seat and

(14:40):
coach me a little to disciple me, you know? Hey, I,
I'm not going to do that first of all. Um, secondly,
would just be weird for me to wake up and say, hey,
can I walk with you to work and kind of
hold your coffee and just kind of. But you have
something a lot better than that. You have the Holy
Spirit 24 hours a day, the person of the Godhead

(15:02):
convicting you, leading you and guiding you. And one of
the things that the Holy Spirit does is he teaches
you to love. Paul says, I don't even have to
tell you about this because you already know it. You've
been taught by God. God has begun to teach you
to love people that are different than you. And of course,

(15:22):
what God begins to teach us is that one of
the cultures of the Kingdom of God people is that
we love. One of the things that distinguishes us from
other people is the fact that we actually deeply love
people around us. I'm not talking about loving people that
love you, because that's easy. How about it? You have

(15:42):
people in life that are really friendly. They always encourage you.
You just love to be around them. You just like
to hang out with them because they're just so easy
to love. You said, my buddy here, they're just easy
to love because they like you. You like them, but
then you have others, right? They're not so easy. And
that's why Jesus says, you have been taught, love those

(16:04):
that love you, and I tell you, love your enemies.
There are people that are hard to love. All of
us will encounter people that are hard to love. But
here's what the Word of God says I believe that
God is teaching us to increase more and more in love.
It's God who teaches us to love. There have been
times in my life as a pastor that I know

(16:26):
when my love tank is running really, really low. I mean,
sometimes you deal with people. There's a lot of problems.
Some people are chronic problems, chronic issues, and chronic attitudes.
Some of you are in situations where you're dealing with
your son, or your daughter, or your husband, or an
aunt or an uncle or a rowdy neighbor, and and

(16:46):
you just need to say, okay, God, fill me with
your love again. Because, man, my tank is dry. I
need a fresh filling of your love, God, because I
want to have your type of attitude. I want that
to flow out of me. So the first thing he
says is that it is taught by God himself. The
second thing that he says is that it should always

(17:09):
be increasing in our lives. Look at what it says.
It says. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so.
Do what? Love more and more. Increase more and more.
You say? Well, I've gotten to a good point. No, no.
Every day you need to increase. It needs to be
an ongoing increasing of your capacity and power to love

(17:29):
others in a practical way. This means that your sympathy
for those in need, your patience for those that are struggling,
your tolerance for those whom we disagree with and that
we develop a care for them. And listen. When I
talk about love, I'm not talking about an emotion. You
know that, right? Because the Bible never tells us to

(17:51):
feel something. The Bible tells us to do something. When
I talk about love, I'm not talking about you feeling love.
I'm talking about you having an attitude that cares about
people even when they're hard to care for? When Jesus
was hanging on that cross and there were nails in
his hands and nails in his feet, and blood was
streaming down his forehead because big thorns had been wedged

(18:15):
in his head, I can guarantee you he wasn't having
goosebumps up and down the back of his neck as
he looked at his, the soldiers gambling his garments away
and thinking, wow, I just really feel love. No no no.
That wasn't what he. That wasn't a feeling in his pain.
Jesus had chosen to love and hear me. Well, listen,

(18:40):
if you're in a marriage today and you base your
marriage on how you feel, if you feel or don't
feel love, then I can guarantee you your marriage is
not going to last very long. If that's what you base,
whether your marriage stays together or not, because feelings will
come and go. The commitment to choose. Love is bigger

(19:01):
than your feelings, and as you choose it and go
down that way, the feelings will follow. But your commitment
to love is bigger. There are times when you walk
in this auditorium, or when you interact with people, that
you're not going to feel an emotion of love, that
you just say, I'm going to love them anyways, regardless
of how I feel. I may feel impatient, but I'm

(19:21):
choosing to love. And so Jesus says, if you're preparing
for my coming, I want you to increase more and
more in love. My desire is that as people walk
into a place like this and we are full of God,
that they will walk into a place where they sense
this caring acceptance, this powerful presence of God that makes

(19:42):
them feel like I don't know what it is, but
I feel something in this place. It's the tangible, powerful, incredible,
life changing love of God. And I hope you felt
that as you walked in this place and as we worshiped.
And then he goes on to say in verse 11
through 12, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life,

(20:07):
to mind your own business, and to work with your hands.
So if you're taking notes, jot this down for the
second part of this. Waiting for Jesus not only means
that we increase in our love for others, but waiting
for Jesus means working at being self-supporting. It not only

(20:29):
has to do with our relational testimony, it has to
do with our economic testimony. Now, this is a very
interesting set of verses because he says, first of all,
make it your ambition. Ambition is this inner drive. If
it hasn't been your ambition. Some people say, well, my
ambition is to make it to the top of the ladder,

(20:51):
be the CEO of my company, be a millionaire by
the time I'm 30, or whatever your ambition may be.
But have you ever heard someone be ambitious about leading
a quiet life? Well, that seems a little weird. Quiet
life means this. It means a tranquil, content, secure attitude

(21:17):
in your heart. Make it your ambition to be content
and secure and tranquil in your heart. It's the opposite
of a busy body. It's the opposite of someone that's
always stirring up trouble everywhere they go. Problems, attitudes. Ecclesiastes
four six says better. One handful with tranquility than two

(21:41):
handfuls with toil and chasing after wind. How about it?
It's better to have one handful and have tranquility than
have two handfuls, and be all stressed out and full
of issues and problems. And so he says, hey, some
of you Everywhere you go, you create problems and trouble

(22:02):
and there's always conflict around you. And he says, hey, listen,
I want you to make it your ambition to lead
a quiet life. In other words, to be content with
what you have. Some Christians are like volcanoes. They're waiting
to erupt anywhere they go. They live on the edge.
They stuff their frustrations down, and they're constantly running into
trouble wherever they go. How about it? Have you run

(22:24):
into people like that? You know, it reminds me of
the old Greek grandfather who his grandson decided that he
was taking a nap, and his grandson decided that he
would play a little trick on him. So he took
this old, moldy cheese, and he rubbed it in his
grandfather's big, thick mustache. So the grandfather woke up from

(22:49):
his nap. And he said, I stink. He walked through
his house a little bit and he said, this house stinks.
He opened up the front door of his house. He
started smelling. He said, this whole world stinks. But really,

(23:11):
the problem you got, it was right under his nose.

S1 (23:21):
This is Moody Presents, and you've been listening to pastor,
author and Moody Bible Institute president doctor Mark Jobe. To
learn more about Mark, this ministry, or Moody, be sure
to visit us online at Moody Presents. Org. And just
as you've grown to value the Bible teaching that you
receive here every week, we thought you'd be encouraged to

(23:41):
know that Mark is inspiring a generation of young people
with his bold and authentic presentation of the gospel. We're
reaching people all across the world like this listener who said,
thank you for your message, Mark. I am returning to
church because of what I heard on this program. Boy,
that's wonderful news. Revival and renewal are at the very
heart of this broadcast. As we tell you what God

(24:03):
is up to at the Moody Bible Institute. Moody radio,
and in our listening audience. Hey, don't forget that we've
got a special book for you. It's called Your Future
Self Will. Thank you. Secrets to Self-control from the Bible
and Brain Science. I love my copy. Here's an excerpt.
We can only do what we love when we succumb
to sin. It's because in that moment, we loved something

(24:26):
else pleasure. Pride, comfort more than God. We will always
operate out of our loves. That means we must rightly
order our hearts, taking special care to ensure that we're
not worshiping anything or anyone other than God. Hey, can
we send you a copy of your future self Will?
Thank you. It's yours for a gift of any amount.

(24:47):
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(25:10):
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at Moody presents.org. I'm John Geiger, inviting you to join

(25:33):
us again next week for part two of our message
called The Hard Work of Waiting for Jesus. We'll explore then,
how you and I can strive to be ambitious yet
orderly with our own lives. Be listening, then, for Moody
Presents with Mark Jobe. Moody Presents is a production of
Moody Radio and a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.