I Must Be About My Father's Business — G.W. North

Living According to Christ’s Principles

I've got a feeling that we're going to sort of enjoy this time together. I don't mean just tonight, but in the days ahead. When we really settle down, God will be able to really work and move among us as he wants to.

So what you'd better do tomorrow afternoon and night is get here right on time, or else you might lose a lot. We'll turn to scripture, shall we, in the New Testament. And I want to speak to you concerning the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think that it's absolutely true that every one of us wants to be really all that God wants us to be. And if we do want that, then of course we've got to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. And it is with this thought in mind that I approach our time together on this note that we should examine scripture.

And I want to look at four things with you concerning our Lord Jesus that lay fundamental principles for us if we really want to achieve all that God designs for us in Christ, if we want to attain that.

Really, you know, we're not worth our salt unless we really want to do that. And I don't see much what God should have loved us so much for if as a result of it all we want to do is escape going to hell.

If that's all we want out of it, then we're just a lot of calculated Jacobs, calculating Jacobs really. We haven't really got through to Israel. We need, beloved, that God should move us into the greatness of this thing that was in his heart, that he so loved the world that he gave us his Son.

That's it. He just didn't give us security from hell. Perhaps he might have devised some other kind of message for us. But he gave us his Son. And this is the marvelous thing about it, that if we believe in him we shouldn't perish but have everlasting life.

And as you know, perishing here is not the word that has to do with sort of annihilation. Or so much with the future as with the present, that we should not perish in the present. Allow precious life to slip away and that moment, that hour, that day not be like Jesus' day.

That's the wonder and the terror of it. And it is a terrible thing really. But we can look into these scriptures together, and I want to do that, just four of them. And see the reason why our Lord Jesus could be the Redeemer of men.

That on these foundations, these moral and spiritual foundations, he built his life. Useless for us to say, oh well he was God and that was that. But he was man as well as God. And so he couldn't have lived his life as God on the earth, unless he'd lived this life as a perfect man on earth.

And if we're going to have the life that God wants us to have eternally, we've got to live it upon the same bases that the Lord Jesus lived his life upon. Do you agree with me? Well it's not much use to me going on unless you do.

I haven't taken my coat off because I feel I've got to fight you over the truth, but because I want to be free to preach it without getting too hot. All right, we'll take these four great statements, because that's about all we'll have time for.

It will take us quite an hour, so get comfortable. And turn with me first into the Hebrews letter. You may think it's strange that we should turn there for our beginning in the earliest statements of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But that is exactly what I am doing. You know, what a man is comes out of his mouth. It always does. It was so with God. It is so with us. What you are comes right out of your mouth. And your speaking must be consistent with your living.

If you're not, then you're a hypocrite. You've just learned the jargon. Any fool can do that. You could train a budgerigar to do it. You could get the devil to come and do it. But you and I, beloved, have to talk truth.

And what we say must be real. The fundamental word of Jesus about this is in John, where he said, The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. Amen. Unless a man speaks his spirit out, he's a deceiver.

He must speak his spirit. And spirit leads to life. And they are the same. And what a wonderful thing it is, then, that if we really want to go on with God, we can find ourselves saying these same things as the Lord Jesus.

Christ’s Willingness to Do the Father’s Will

In Hebrews 10, verse 5, When he, that is, Jesus, cometh into the world, Think of this great God, as Wesley has it, contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. Think of the communion he had in spirit with his father, even though as a babe he only cried.

Here is the divine mystery. This is what our great God was, and is. He humbled himself. He became a baby, and as a baby he just cried for his milk. Or for some other reasons for which babies cry, and we don't always know.

Women are supposed to know, but men never do. And they did that. He did that, just like you and I did. But this is what he says. He comes into the world, and he's talking to his father. Birth, as a man, hasn't broken his communion with God and with his father.

Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not. But a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God.

What a statement for a newborn babe. If you and I claim to be newborn babes of God, even if you were only born again this morning, amen, that is as far as time is concerned, or last week, or the week before, it little matters, praise the name of the Lord, here then is the very foundation of spiritual life.

I've come to do thy will, O my God. That's what you've come for. That's why you've come forth to use the figure from the womb of God. That's why you have been born again. You have, as it were, come into this world anew.

You, by the death of Jesus Christ, were cut off, as he was cut off, as Daniel tells us, he was cut off out of the land of the living. I'm sorry, Isaiah tells us in 53, he was cut off out of the land of the living, and who shall declare his generation?

And when he was cut off at the cross, that's when you, as it were, left the earth. You died then. And when you came back from that death, you were born again. That was your experience of the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you were cut off from your first birth, and you had, as it were, an entree into the world in a second birth from your heavenly Father.

And you are now a heavenly being on this earth in a mortal body, a body that, to use the figure, has been prepared for you. I'd like to spend time on that tonight, perhaps another occasion. We have a fortnight, but that's fairly good.

You people are very greedy here. You're the only people I give a fortnight to. It's this Scott sort of way of getting everything, you know. But this... Praise God. But you had your body prepared for you.

You'll have to dwell in Romans 8 and 11 for this. But at the moment, you've come back into a body where sin and its effects and workings in your members should have been dealt with and cut off so that you can live a glorious new life in this glorious body prepared for you by the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is, you're not having trouble with drinking, smoking, drug-taking or anything like that anymore. That's all been slain, dead, crucified, put away, buried. Hallelujah. We've had a resurrection into a glorious new life.

Amen. You're a heavenly being now in a body fit for God to live in for that's what it's all about when you're born again. And now, what's your beginning? Lo, I've come to do thy will, O my God. Amen. That's why you're on this earth now.

If you're a Christian, if you've been born again, that's what it is. You're here to do the will of God. We're not here to do the will of man. The last man's will we should do is our own. And we're here just to live for him and him alone.

And learn this. Sacrifices and offerings, he doesn't want. He doesn't want that. Don't consider that first. Lo, I've come to make big sacrifices for God. You know, I'll do this, I'll give up that, I'll go somewhere else.

You hear these people who haven't got a clue. They start making these kind of pie crust promises right at the beginning. Now I'll break them. The very next moment, they haven't learned Jesus yet. Jesus is our lesson.

He said, I've come to do thy will, O my God. Sacrifices and offerings, you would not. Amen. God's moved in a new direction. You've prepared me a body. I'm going to be a living sacrifice. Amen. Glory be to God.

And you're going to do the will of God. You know, don't you, that this is the very basis of all spiritual and certainly of effectual living. This. You know, the Bible says that stubbornness and rebellion, that is, refusing to do the will of God, either too stubborn to do it, I won't do it, or in complete rebellion and revolt against it, so that you're in open rebellion against it, God says that that's as the sin of witchcraft.

Now, you know, beloved, here is the reason why so many people are having trouble with demons. They wonder why they get demon trouble. They think that witchcraft only comes, say, through heathen nations or through people who have a spiritualism.

But Bible says that stubbornness and rebellion is like witchcraft. Then people wonder why they get demon trouble. Because they won't do the will of God. They've automatically shifted themselves over into a region which is in this sense mediumistic.

I'll talk to you more about that, but not tonight. And they wonder why they have these great troubles. God must have us to do his will at all costs. And at eternal price, the will of God must be done.

That's why Jesus came in. At all costs, he knew that. He spelled out Calvary when he said, I've come to do thy will, O my God. He destined himself to that small hill outside the city wall when he said, I've come to do thy will, O my God.

Your redemption and mine lies wrapped up in that word. I've come to do thy will, O my God. What a wonderful thing it is then, beloved, to know that we've come to do God's will. If I said to you, have you ever understood this?

What you've really come for? Why you have eternal life? Did you realize why you have eternal life? Did you think it was to do something heroic? Go to India, climb up into Tibet, and I don't know what.

Did you think it was for this reason? It's so that you should have no plans. It's so that you should know nothing. It's so that you should be in a place where you're saying you're directly communicable from God.

It's your will, father, not mine. And immediately a man brings himself to the place where his will is subservient to his father. Then, beloved, he's in the place where God can just do what he wants. Tell him.

It's up to God then. He need make no plans for his life. None at all. This hasn't got to be a glib repetition of a scriptural verse, but an absolute fundamental knowledge in your heart. Have you got that?

Have you got that fundamental knowledge? Or are you thinking that God is wanting you to go out and promise, promise Him, make Him promises, I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll do that. It should be an inward knowledge.

Jesus Christ spoke from inward knowledge. Jesus Christ spoke from the center of His being. Jesus Christ, that blessed baby. Come to do your will. In the volume of the book it's written of me. Praise God.

As you read through the Bible, though not in the particular sense in which this applies to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as supreme, but if you've read through the Bible, you'll find that's what the Bible's really all about.

The only people really worth talking about as people who have ever accomplished anything that's pleased God have always been the people that have done His will. Isn't that right? Look at David. Look at Abraham.

Look at Moses. Wherever you go in the scripture, the whole volume of the book really revolves around people who come to do God's will since there was a man called Adam with a wife Eve who refused to do it and brought sin into the world.

This was balm. This was music. This was glory in the ears of the Father. To hear that, that one on the other side, come to do thy will oh my God. The most horrible thing in the beginning I suppose that God ever did hear was a glorious being saying I'm going to be as God.

I'm going to rule. I'm going to assert my will. Lucifer. Mustn't it have been wonderful for the Lord to have heard His Son on the earth say I'm done here. I'm going to do thy will oh my God. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

No wonder as it says in the first chapter. Let's have a look at it shall we? As it goes back to the first chapter. And it says God spoken to us by His Son. It says verse 5 Unto which of the angels said He at any time Thou art my Son.

This day have I begotten Thee. And again I will be to Him for a father. He should be to me for a son. Verse 6. And again when He bringeth in the first begotten into the world He said and let all the angels of God worship Him.

Praise the name of the Lord. They all came worshiping down. Some were visible. Most were invisible. Ten thousand, thousands and thousands of those heavenly beings they came and worshipped. Not the earth now that's going to do the will of the Father.

I tell you beloved I believe deeply in my heart that it thrills all heaven when men and women on the earth come to this place. Not heroics you see. Not somebody crowning themselves with many crowns. Just a conscious knowledge of what life is for and what it's all about.

No plans. Just a statement. Reasons understood between the Father and the Son. Have you come there beloved? You and I have no chance of living this life that God wants us to live if we're committed to do another's will.

Our own will. We're not here to do the will of a government or the will of a church or in a denominational sense. We're not here to do the will of a man or do the will of a woman. We're not here to do the will of these people.

We're here to do the will of God. Do you realize that? Oh how many lives would have been so utterly different if this had been the substance of their communications with God. If they knew it, knew it, knew it.

I wish I could put over this that rings in my own being. This is the sort of the foundation of everything. This inward knowledge. Nothing else matters much after that. Well then there's the first great thing upon which Jesus Christ built his life as a man.

His baby statement. If I may put it that way. The next great fundamental thing is found in the Gospel according to Luke. Amen. In Gospel according to Luke we have in the second chapter this thing about Jesus.

Being About the Father’s Business

Verse 41. His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days as they returned the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.

But they supposing him to have been in the company went a day's journey and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not they turned back again to Jerusalem seeking him.

It came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple. Sitting in the midst of the doctors both hearing them and asking them questions and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

And when they saw him they were amazed and his mother said unto him Son why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. Mary's mistake of course. Joseph wasn't his father.

You see how easy beloved it is to slip from a revelation that you can get from God this is rather an aside I want to comment on Mary's position here. You see the writer, the inspired writer has it right it says that Joseph and his mother in verse 43 the Holy Ghost of inspiration has it right but when his mother gets to Jesus she says Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.

Wasn't true. And Jesus knew it wasn't true. And this is what he says How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? They understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

But this beloved is the second great foundation of spiritual living. I must be about my father's business. Hallelujah. Glory be to God. Now I don't know at what age Joseph started Jesus in the carpenter's shop.

I don't know what age he started. I know that at 12 years of age all these young lads had to go to be instructed into the things of the old covenant. They had to be taught these things at 12 years of age.

But Jesus made it absolutely and fundamentally clear that really basically he didn't need any teaching for he was listening to the doctors of the law and he was asking them and answering their questions.

I rather like this you know. He wasn't one of these lads at 12 years of age who thought he ought to go preaching round the world. It was a marvellous thing that he could hear and answer questions. And it's absolutely vital beloved if you and I are ever going to be what God wants us to be we've got to be able to hear people's questions and answer them.

I don't know whether you can do that. To hear and answer questions. One of the greatest things in the world beloved is to be able to answer people's questions. The great problems that they have. You know most people I suspect all the young men in this room want to be preachers.

Well it's a great thing to be a preacher but one of the things of Jesus' young manhood his boyhood that he could answer people's questions. He didn't say, shut up you I'm going to preach. Get up in the pulpits.

He was prepared to sit down listen to the problems of people's hearts and lives. No wonder he built up a wonderful life of glorious ministry among men and women. He sat there, listened to them. I sometimes, I several times referred to a question and answer session we had at a place called Calimpong rather.

We sat on a platform and the minister there was the sort of question master and he collared dear brother Jack to answer all the scientific questions. Jack said I'll take that. I said yes that's fine. He said you take the spiritual ones.

So we sat one side of the platform and up came the questions. And beloved there are real problems in people's hearts. Not only to do with their personal being but about God. One of the first ones that was asked a young fellow from Sikkim.

He stood up and he said aren't all religions the same and aren't they all going to one end? What would you have answered there? You've only got a brief time I mean you don't make an opportunity to preach to browbeat everybody down.

What do you say? Well this is what I said to this young man. I said yes, yes all religions are the same. They're all going to the same end. As religion, even a Christian religion is a religion. All go to the same end.

But the salvation of Jesus Christ is not a religion. And carried on for about five minutes along this line and this young man was absolutely satisfied. He was a Hindu from Sikkim. Here's another little girl.

She stares up, she says Who and what is God? Poor. Who and what is God? How would you have answered these questions? You say well give the ontological argument. Let the teleological argument. Theologians.

Who worries about what the theologians think when you're on that level? Nobody worries much about them. What's an ontological argument to a girl there about 16 or 17 years of age? Well what is it anyway?

But the whole glorious thing is this. I said to her It's evident you don't know God dear. Now I know him. I can tell you who and what God is. In your country you see nobody knows God. You know they don't because you go to one place and you see an idol and it's an elephant head on a man's body.

You say that's God. You go somewhere else and you see something's got about six or eight arms sticking out. That's God. You go somewhere else and say There you are. It's a great big monkey. An effigy of it painted red.

And all this sort of thing. Now that's God. Or you go to Kathmandu and you see a great cobra sticking over the head. Some say oh that's God. You go somewhere else and you see rats all stuck up round a cornice.

I say that's God. They worship that. So you see you don't know God at all. That's not black. I understand you're asking that question. Now I know God. Now the only God you can know is Jesus. For God was manifest in the earth as Jesus.

So that we could know God. He didn't send a religion. Why when Jesus came there were ever so many religions on the earth. Buddhism had been in the earth a long time. Hunuism had been on the earth a long time when Jesus came.

Confucianism had been on the earth a long time when Jesus came. God didn't want to confuse matters by sending another religion. He sent his son. He came on the earth himself. And we went along this line and answered who he was then.

We said what he was. That's an abstract. Well we all know what God is. He's love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, peace, tenderness, glory, power. And they were all combined in the person of Jesus.

So we don't worship abstract things. But we do know what he is. If we're going to describe him. And she was quite satisfied. You see, to be able to answer questions. Oh it's a sign of really moving in.

Jesus didn't go out and make great big prophecies. He didn't go out and make great big preachments at that time. He just sat down there and he listened to people opening their hearts and answered their questions.

You know why? He said because I must be about my father's business. And father's business is to un-muddle people's hearts and minds. Get them onto a great place where through ultimately the sacrifice, through the precious blood and the glorious cleansing of Christ and by the incoming of the Holy Spirit a man could be so taught of God that he could become the dwelling place of God in all his fullness and live the glorious life of God and know that we have been built into father's house.

Because that's what a good marginal reference will tell you about this text here. It says I must be about the things of my father's house. You see, that's what he's really saying. And he's there because he wants to build people up into the great house of God.

Amen. I wonder, does everybody know, beloved, that you're in this world to do your father's business? Does your earthly father know it? Does your earthly mother know it? Have you made them understand that so far as you're concerned you've been born of the will of God to do the will of God and that you're in this world to do father's business?

Not just go into your father's business if he wants to make you a director on the board someday or run his carpenter's shop for him or anything like that. You're not here just to take on school teaching because your father was a school teacher or be a doctor because your father was a doctor or something like that.

That's not what you're in the world for. You're here to know the will of God and to do father's business. That's what you're here for. Your parents must understand it. Your friends must understand it.

Oh, he didn't leave home and say, I'm going to do it now. He went back for another 18 years and he lived in his family. But they understood then and there what it was all about and glory be to God. Amen.

It's a wonderful thing when people know what you're in the world for. About father's business. Amen. Especially if your father is a rag merchant or something like that or collects old bones and bottles.

It's good to be in father's business. Are you in it? Are you concerned about souls? Or are you one of these people that want to go over the top of all these underlying things? Never meet the real questions just so long as you can preach a sermon.

You know, beloved, we've suffered from this for years and years and years. Some brother or whatever name you may call him comes along and he preaches a sermon and everyone says, that was a good word or something like that.

And he's never really dealt with the problems that lay deep down in the heart. This is the tragedy. One of the greatest men that America ever raised was a man named Charles Grandison Finney. God used him to bring in millions and millions of souls in that great continent.

And he said that a preacher should take a stick and beat about every bush. This was the way he said it. Don't leave anything concealed. Everything brought to the surface. Everything answered. Glory be to God.

This is the great way of God. When a man is moving in the Spirit of God and he's here to do the will of God, everything comes to the light. Everything gets dealt with. Everything. There's no getting blessed over the top of a lot of poison down underneath.

No coming into some kinds of believing. And underneath are all the great grumbling, niggling questions that are never answered. Isn't this the trouble? Churches are full up with these kinds of people.

Simply because somebody wants to graduate from conversion to being a preacher. Instead of knowing that God is here to answer our questions, have you had the deep underlying problems of your being dealt with?

Your questions really answered? Are you clear? So clear that you can say to another, Yes, brother, come on. Here's the answer to your need. Amen. A man will live to the will of God. I tell you he'll have the answer to every question.

Everybody's problems. Jesus has already been 12 years living for the will of God. 12 years of total abandonment under the will of the Father. Of course, he could answer people's problems. Can you? Can you?

Amen. Let's get right down here then, beloved. That's the first two things. Let's take the third. The third great thing, I think we'll go into Matthew's gospel for this because it puts it more clearly.

Fulfilling All Righteousness

Although Mark records the same, Luke records the same incident. In Matthew chapter 3, John is baptizing in the wilderness. And, oh, he's so tremendous. Verse 9, he says, Don't you think to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.

For I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also, the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. But he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in his hand, and he will truly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garment.

But he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me.

And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water.

And, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. And, lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Glory! I should think he would be too. I who knew nothing of the inner workings of God except the Spirit of God has revealed them to me. Yet, reading that even objectively, a man who had come into the world saying, I've come to do thy will, at twelve years of age as a boy, he's saying, I must be about my Father's business.

Oh, get your hands off me, everyone else. Why don't you leave me alone? I've come to do Father's will. And you see, and now he's come to his baptism. Praise God! He had come to a baptism of repentance who had no sin of which to repent, no confession to make in the waters.

No wonder John's knees almost quaked and said, I have need to be baptized of thee who baptizes in the Holy Ghost and fire. I have need to be baptized of thee, he said. He'd been preaching repentance and forgiveness and conversion all his life.

Now he says, I need to be baptized of thee with the Holy Ghost and fire. You see, he said, I have need to be baptized of thee. Jesus said, suffer it to be so now. For thus it behoves us to fulfill all righteousness.

See, he didn't say, come on, John, I want the thrill of getting baptized. He said, I've come to fulfill all righteousness. Hallelujah! Glory be to God! Are you so keen about this great truth of righteousness?

You who would never have been regenerate except through the justifying act of Jesus on the cross. Hey, when you were made righteous with Christ's own righteous, having died to your own sin and self and your own self-righteousness, if you ever thought of having any, and risen again into a glorious new life, to be about Father's business, do you want to fulfill all righteousness?

All righteousness? When I read these verses, I say, oh, God help me! To fulfill all righteousness. What an ambition! Not heal ten million sick. That wasn't he. He did that by the thousands. Not just feed thousands and thousands.

Not just display heavenly power, though glory to God he did this. But you see, the reason he could do this was because he says, I've come to fulfill all righteousness. The basis of it all was righteousness.

Through and through and through. People want power when they haven't got righteousness. People want extreme and great power when they're not ready to live under extreme and great righteousness. This tells the story of so much declension.

It behoves us to fulfill all righteousness. Hallelujah! Everything about righteousness. That's a marvellous thing. That's why you've been given righteousness. And it was the righteousness of this man that's talking now, this great God-man, who's fulfilled it to the scruple, down to the letter.

Oh, he wasn't letter-bound. He was free in the Spirit. He was so free in the Spirit that he could fulfill all that was written in the volume of the book. That's the way to be free in the Spirit. He didn't say, oh, I'm bound by the letter.

Glory be to the name of the Lord. He was free by the Spirit. And he could fulfill the letter out with the flesh and blood of God. He could do this in a tremendous way. And God, he said, this has got to be fundamental.

We've got to be prepared to fulfill all righteousness. Are you righteous? Are you righteous in the church? Are you righteous in your home? Are you righteous in your bedroom? Are you righteous in your kitchen?

Are you righteous in your dining room? Are you righteous there in the shops? Are you righteous with your fellow men? Are you righteous with women? Are you righteous with children? Are you righteous with your parents?

Are you righteous with your wife? Are you righteous with your husband? Fulfill all righteousness. If every preacher preached the glorious word, the revelation of the book as it is here laid out before us we'd see how people come to their anointing under the Spirit.

I've come to fulfill all righteousness down comes the Blessed Spirit. He sees John Baptist saw it too, he recorded in John 1 he sees the heaven open, he sees the Spirit come upon him, bless the name of the Lord.

The Holy Dove loves to rest on people who are going to fulfill all righteousness. The Blessed Dove loves to come there the Blessed One loves to rest there the One loves to be absorbed in and become identified with that One glory be to God, loves to give Him a ministry loves to give Him an outflowing stronger than the river of death, even Jordan the river of life to flow by the Spirit this was the life, the Holy Ghost came on Him liberated that blessed life, wondrous Jesus flowed through the land, ministered here and there.

Oh and Father saying this, my beloved son my beloved son, oh glory to God when God should open heaven and talk like that tonight, who would He talk to in this room? Somebody who says, I've come to do your will oh God I'm not just crying out to get to heaven, I'm on the earth maybe for 50 years, I know everybody's saying Jesus is coming back next minute sort of thing, but don't get too carried away by that, you've got to live as though He's not coming back for 50 years you've got to really get down to it, you've got to live here, not make the coming of Jesus an escape hatch, He's coming but oh, blessed are they, who when He's coming when He comes, finds getting on with it, living as though they don't know when He's going to come because you don't know when He's going to come.