Jesus for Messiah | Week 5 | Sermon · Rewind

Jesus for Messiah | Week 5 | Sermon · Rewind

Pastor Bill Bush · Nov 6, 2024

Big Idea

Quoting the message: Faithfulness today stops freak-outs about tomorrow, end quote..

Jesus offers a peace that doesn't depend on knowing what happens next. Instead of freaking out over wars, elections, or personal crises, we're called to stay faithful in the present—staying alert in the Word, worship, and community, and staying active on mission—trusting God with the timing we were never meant to figure out.

Key points

1
1Getting fixated on the 'sticky' troubles of life takes us out of the game God has for us.
Pastor Bill tells his own story of getting distracted by gum stuck to his pants while trying to steal second base in an all-star game, and getting tagged out because he stopped watching the play. He applies it to how believers get so absorbed in life's messy problems that they take their eyes off their mission.
2
2Jesus predicts the temple's destruction, and the disciples respond by asking when the end will come.
Reading Matthew 24:1-3, Pastor Bill walks through Jesus telling the disciples the temple will be leveled, and the disciples then privately asking when this will happen and when the world will end. He suggests the disciples assumed the temple's fall meant the world was ending, the same way people today assume catastrophe in their own nation means everything is collapsing.
3
3Jesus refuses to answer the 'when' and instead describes a repeating pattern of wars, famines, and persecution until He returns.
Working through Matthew 24:4-9, Pastor Bill shows Jesus warning of false messiahs, wars, famines, and earthquakes as 'birth pains,' followed by persecution and betrayal of His followers. He notes Jesus later admits not even He knows the timing, so the point isn't figuring out prophecy but not being misled or panicked by it.
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4The one who endures to the end, faithfully spreading the gospel, is the goal—not decoding the timeline.
Pastor Bill highlights Matthew 24:13-14, where Jesus ties endurance to salvation and ties the end to the gospel being preached to all nations. He frames this as the disciples' actual mission: not predicting Jesus's return but making disciples, as Jesus commands later in Matthew.
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5Staying alert means guarding against false messiahs—anything put ahead of God—by living in the Word, in worship, and with others.
He redefines a 'false messiah' as any idolatry, anything trusted for happiness above God, including over-attachment to political outcomes. He compares Bible study to how agents are trained to spot counterfeit money: by knowing the real thing so well that the fake is obvious, and stresses worship as believing God, not just believing in Him, lived out in community.
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6Staying active means staying on mission rather than drifting into destructive distraction.
Pastor Bill tells his father's World War II story of a soldier nearly killing himself with a reckless dive off a ship during a lull in combat, and notes that soldiers away from the fight, not those in it, were the ones who fell into destructive habits like drug abuse in Vietnam. He applies this to Christians who get 'gummed up' and idle instead of staying engaged in knowing, growing, and going.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop freaking out about tomorrow by choosing faithfulness today—staying alert and staying active.

Stop fixating on the 'gum' in your life
Deal with the sticky problems life throws at you, but don't let them consume your attention so much that you get taken out of the game God has for you.
Stay alert in the Word
Read your Bible not out of guilt but because knowing the real thing—God's truth—is how you learn to spot false messiahs and misplaced trust.
Stay alert in worship and community
Worship with your whole life, not just by singing, and get into a group of people who know you well enough to challenge and pray for you so you aren't deceived.
Stay active on mission
Intentionally give your time, talents, treasure, and testimony to sharing the gospel and supporting the church rather than drifting into distraction or boredom.
Surrender to God's word and love
Whether you're facing an election, a health crisis, or your own 'prison,' choose to believe Jesus, not just believe in Him, and trust He can work it together for good.

Take it into your week

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

The disciples had just walked out of the Temple — one of the most impressive structures in the ancient world — and they wanted Jesus to admire it with them. Instead, He told them it would be torn down to the ground. When they asked Him to explain, they asked two questions that most of us would ask: when will this happen, and what will the signs be? It's a very human thing to want a timeline. If we could just know when, we could prepare. We could feel less afraid. Pastor Bill made the observation that Jesus doesn't actually answer the 'when' question — not because He doesn't know, but because that's not what His followers most need to know. What the disciples needed wasn't a prophetic calendar. They needed to be prepared to remain faithful in a world that would not be getting easier anytime soon. That reframe is worth sitting with for a moment. So much of our anxiety about the future comes from feeling like we'd be okay if we just had more information. But Jesus seems to suggest that more information is not the answer. Faithfulness is. Today is an invitation to notice where you're reaching for certainty instead of trusting the One who holds the future.

For reflection

Where in your life right now are you seeking a 'when' answer instead of trusting God in the present moment?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to release your need for a timeline and to trust God with what you cannot see.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message sits with a question most of us carry somewhere in the back of our minds: what is going to happen, and when? Pastor Bill took that question to Matthew 24 — and what Jesus does with it might surprise you.

Discussion questions

1
In Matthew 24:1-14, the disciples come to Jesus wanting a timeline, and He redirects them entirely toward endurance. What do you think His disciples were hoping to hear — and what might have been disorienting about the answer He actually gave?
2
Jesus says in Matthew 24:6-12 that wars, famines, persecution, and people falling away are the pattern of life until He returns — not a puzzle to decode but a reality to endure. How does framing those things as 'the pattern of the world' rather than 'signs to figure out' change the way we might hold the news or hard seasons?
3
Pastor Bill made a distinction between believing in Jesus and believing Jesus — the difference between holding a theological opinion about Him and actually trusting and obeying Him through hardship. What does that difference look like in practice, from what you heard in the message?
4
Pastor Bill described false messiahs as anything placed above God as the source of our happiness and security. What kinds of things tend to fill that role in everyday life, and how does staying in the Word and in genuine community help people recognize them?
5
The story of Pastor Malenga — wrongfully imprisoned yet faithfully ministering right where he was, with Romans 8:28 as his anchor — was central to this message. What does his story reveal about what peace through suffering actually looks like, as opposed to what we might expect it to look like?
6
Matthew 24:14 ties faithful endurance directly to the mission: the gospel going to all nations before the end comes. Pastor Bill challenged us to orient our time, relationships, and yes, even our money around that mission rather than getting stuck in fear. How might a community of people take that seriously together — what would it look like in the rhythms of everyday life?

Pray together

Courage to endure faithfully, trust in God's purposes through uncertain and hard things, and open eyes to the mission right in front of us

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Topics

Faithful Endurance False Messiahs Gospel Mission Peace in Suffering Surrendering to God

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