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June 19, 2005
We Believe in the Holy Spirit
Psalm 51: 1-13 / I Samuel 10: 1-12
Acts 19: 1-7
June 19th, 2005
This week I got a note from a friend who had come back from the Church of Scotland General Assembly. On the front of the card was a stylized wild goose. On the back I read that the Wild Goose is a Celtic image for the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know that. A wild goose a symbol of the Holy Spirit!
In the Gospels we read that at Jesus’ baptism the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove. So the dove is a New Testament symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told Nicodemus that the Holy Spirit is like the wind that you can’t tell from where it has come or where it will go. The word for wind and the word for spirit here are the same. Wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
At Pentecost tongues as of fire rested above the heads of the disciples who waited in an upper room. Fire became another symbol of the Holy Spirit.
The uncontrollable Wild Goose. The gentle, harmless Dove. The unpredictable Wind. Consuming Fire. It’s no wonder that at the Council of Nicea when they came to tell of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity all they wrote was, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit.” Who can describe the Holy Spirit of God? Later on, at the Council of Constantinople Church fathers added the statements that we now find in the Nicene Creed. But at first there was great modesty and reserve. Only, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit.”
Indeed, in the Bible we find more precision in describing God the Father and God the Son than in describing God the Holy Spirit.
God the Father identifies Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He identifies Himself to Pharoah as Father of Israel: “Israel is my son.”
God the Son is the very theme of the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is always in the background in both the Old and New Testaments, as it were the inconspicuous person of the Trinity. It is no wonder that when the Church leaders first wrestled with what were the essential truths about God, when it came to the Holy Spirit they said simply, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit.”
In time modesty was to drift away as a characteristic of those who did theology. And the controversies multiplied and divided Christians as the years rolled on. I’m tempted to think that a first lesson we learn from the original form of the Nicene Creed is, “dare to be modest in defining the things of God.”
What did these early believers believe about the Holy Spirit? First, that the Holy Spirit is one Person of the Being revealed to us as God. We call the Holy Spirit a “Person,” a word that comes from the Latin word persona that meant “mask,” “personage,” “part” or “character.” An actor would wear a persona, a mask in playing a role. He could take off one mask and put on another. The meaning of the word person has changed.
We think of a person as a distinct human being. Calling the Holy Spirit the third person of the Godhead is an attempt to express this unique identity of how the one God is mentioned in Scripture.
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “God is Spirit.” By this He meant that God is non-material. He might have quoted Psalm 139, that tells us there is nowhere we can escape God’s presence. This could have been said of God the Father or God the Son before He was born to the Virgin Mary. But to speak of the Holy Spirit is to identify a particular persona of God. We say THE Holy Spirit, not “holy Spirit,” as it is fashionable in some circles to say today.
Second, when we say, “We believe in the Holy Spirit” we acknowledge receiving this special gift of Himself that God poured out on all who trust in Him at Pentecost. But the first Christian Pentecost was not the first time the Holy Spirit was present at least with Jesus’ disciples.
Jesus told His disciples, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”
Jesus seems to say that He will ask the Father to give them something they already have, the Spirit, who dwells in them already.
Then later on, on Easter Sunday, after He had risen Jesus met His disciples as they hid in a room and said: “Peace to you; as the Father has sent me so send I you. Then He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained’.” He breathed on them the Spirit. This moment was different from the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that happened fifty days later at Pentecost. Then the Spirit came with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. Now Jesus breathed, a gentle wind of the Spirit.
This was a special moment when Jesus reproduced with them an interaction between himself and the Father before His Incarnation. Before the Incarnation we can envision God the Father saying to God the Son, soon to be born as the baby Jesus to the Virgin Mary, “Peace to you. Now go do what I bid you to do. The sins you forgive I forgive. The sins you retain I retain.”
Now Jesus reproduced the act of His heavenly Father on them, blessing them, sending them out, and breathing on them His breath. This is so suggestive, so personal an engagement between heaven and earth, between the risen Lord and these eleven men who were representative for all of us who afterward would entrust our lives to Jesus. The capstone moment was when the Holy Spirit was given to them in a special way. When the Gospel says Jesus “breathed” the Spirit on them, it gave them life. How like the story in Genesis this seems, where God breathed into Adam the breath of life.
I’m not sure what Jesus meant when He told His disciples in John 14: 16 that the Spirit was already in them. They did not yet seethe with the power they would later have after Pentecost. Some things must remain a mystery to us. Nor is it important, or perhaps good that we should understand the mysteries of God’s work with us.
There is a tendency in us all to want to dissect, to take apart and examine things, to know in detail. When you and I took biology in high school and college we were given fetal pigs and other animals to take apart in the lab. It was part of our education that was essential because it taught us things we could never learn as well by reading about them.
But with regard to the Holy Spirit, I’m tempted to think that it is vital to remember what we cannot dissect in order to know. Nor is this necessary to be available to the Spirit’s use. Knowledge is power, we say. And in this case what we do not want is any feeling of power.
Imagine a robotics engineer trying to operate those mechanical hands with the hands trying to do things on their own. Just so, what the Holy Spirit needs in us is completely supple hands, supple hearts, pliant availability for use.
Part of the mystery of the Holy Spirit is that in Old Testament times the Spirit of God was everywhere as He is today, but He seems to have only been given to certain people for particular tasks. But since the Day of Pentecost described in the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on “all flesh.” That is, on us as individuals—not just of pastors or elders and deacons.
In the Book of Exodus we read that the Lord called two men, Bezalel and Oholiab and filled them with the Spirit of God—with ability, with intelligence, with knowledge and with all craftsmanship to make the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was very important then as the place where Israel was to learn to worship the God who had made Himself known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But it was also important as a symbol of Jesus who was to come. The Gospel of John tells us that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” So God specially enabled these two men for their task by sending them His Spirit.
Similarly, when prophets, priests, and kings were anointed to serve Israel, the Spirit of God was given to them in their anointing. We read this morning of Saul’s anointing, that, “the spirit of God came mightily on him.” In this case Saul showed the immediate effect of God’s spirit on Him by prophesying with a band of prophets. This must have been some sort of ecstatic expression. But it was not just a momentary exhibit of ecstasy that was given with the gift of the Spirit of God.
The prophet Isaiah wrote of the “stump from Jesse,” which we know as the Messiah-Jesus, that “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
This list of the “seven-fold gift of the Spirit” perhaps referred to what the Spirit of God brought to all those who were so favored even in Old Testament times. Kings, priests, and prophets need wisdom, understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord to do their work in God’s behalf.
King David feared that this Spirit, given to him when he was anointed king, would be taken from him because of his crime and sin with Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. When David stole Uriah’s wife and used his kingly power to make sure Uriah got killed in the thick of battle, we wonder how God could ever use him again, much less make him a link in the chain of a heritage that would give the world a Savior from their sins. He prayed, “Cast me not from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”
But it may have been this horrible sin that taught him, “the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit and a contrite heart.”
Later on the prophet Joel prophesied that the Spirit of God would be poured out on all flesh. “ This referred to a particular moment that was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost described in the Book of Acts. But clearly God’s gift of the Holy Spirit was much more than a one-time demonstration of spiritual power. We read this morning the story of Paul’s passing through Ephesus. We don’t know all the topics of his conversation with folk there.
But among the things Paul brings up is the question, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they replied, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Clearly Paul expected that when they trusted in Jesus they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus had commanded them to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” those who believed in Him. Paul laid hands on them and then knew they had the Holy Spirit because they got gift of tongues.
The church in Ephesus began with the preaching of the Alexandrian orator, Apollos. He taught accurately the things about Jesus, but he apparently knew nothing about the Holy Spirit.
He was told by whoever brought him to Christ, and commissioned him to preach, “You must baptize those who believe in Jesus,” and so he did, but the only kind of baptism he knew about was John’s baptism. This suggests that whoever brought the Gospel to Alexandria, his home city, did not teach about the Holy Spirit. The full Gospel did not make it to Alexandria. We don’t know who taught Apollos in his home town that was later on to become a great center of Christianity—and the scene of the controversy leading to the need for the first Ecumenical Council.
Priscilla and Aquila, a couple of Jewish Christians who came to Ephesus from Rome, heard him preach and took him aside afterward and “taught him the way of God more accurately.” How polite they were not to confront him in front of the people he served! They did not embarrass him or create a scene. How teachable his spirit was that he received their instruction!
So what do we believe about the Holy Spirit? Of course, more specifically the question is not just, “What do you think or believe, but what access does the Holy Spirit have to your life and mine?”
We cannot see or touch the Holy Spirit. His voice to us comes silently as an inward impulse. Sometimes the Holy Spirit has given special gifts to heal, or the gift of tongues or of understanding something about the future, or the special gift of wisdom. But usually the work of the Holy Spirit in us who have contrite and humble hearts is as steady and unnoticed as the beating of our hearts or the breathing of our lungs.
The Apostle Paul used the term, “Walk in the spirit.” The Spirit of God living in our hearts enables us to “walk” amid the stresses and temptations of this life with a different impulse at work in us. We are taught an aggressive spirit as we grow up in this seething world. Go for all you can get. Look out for number one. Seize the day. But walking in the Spirit responds to a different impulse, a patient impulse from God that results in “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, adaptability, and self-control.” These are the “fruit” of the Spirit. We can quench this fruit and many Christians do because they have forgotten that a humble and contrite heart is fundamental to God having a home in our hearts. We can by force reject love, joy, peace…self-control.
I fear that the Holy Spirit is often claimed as the source of power He has nothing to do with at all. The voice of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as a strong feeling you have in church. The Holy Spirit is not the same as an emotional high in a religious setting. It is presumptuous and perhaps dangerous to claim the Holy Spirit has told you this or that. If you think the Holy Spirit has spoken to you, savor the information in your heart and do not boast of it. Quietly obey and you will know if it was information from the Holy Spirit.
How often has the Holy Spirit been claimed as the source of behavior or thoughts that are an affront to the majesty and holiness of God?
The Apostle Paul in Roman 8: 16, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God.” The Holy Spirit bears witness with the deepest part within us what is most important for us to believe. “You are my child.” When by faith we come to God and humbly respond to Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me and I will give you rest,” somehow God gives to us His Holy Spirit. It is in God’s hands to offer us quietly all it pleases Him to give us. Let us not ruin things by presuming to know what we really don’t know. Let us not ruin things by claiming the Holy Spirit as the animating force behind our biases and presumptions, thus bringing confusion to ourselves and to others.
It is enough, with our great forebears of the fourth century to simply say, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit.” And with this trust, let us be available for the work of the Holy Spirit, a work that can happen with those who are supple instruments for His use. The Holy Spirit may be like a wild goose, and is certainly like a dove, and like the wind, and like fire. But it is God’s to choose how He will be with us. I pray God finds us available for the indwelling and work of His Holy Spirit.
Let us pray: O Lord God, give to us in full measure your Holy Spirit. Find us fit homes in which He may live. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2005
The Kingdom of God
Deuteronomy 8: 11 -20 / Mark 1: 13-18
June12th, 2005
When Jesus stepped onto the stage of history to begin His work He announced: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel.” His cousin, John the Baptist was much better known than He was at this point. But he had been arrested and would soon be executed and would fade from memory as Jesus loomed larger and larger—but in an oddly quiet way.
He said “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” but the outward evidence of power that people looked for never appeared. Any Roman centurion with his sword struck more fear into the heart of Jewish man than Jesus ever caused in a child. So people through the centuries have wondered, “What did Jesus mean when He said, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand’?”
When Jesus stood on trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Pilate asked Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not from this world. . . For this I was born, and for this I came into the world.”
It was strangely disquieting to this Roman governor to have Jesus stand before him. Jesus was unarmed and had not even a little band of supporters sticking with Him. Pilate’s wife told him, “Have nothing to do with this just man.” Why should she worry about little matters like justice when Rome held all the trump cards, and her husband was the absolute representative of Rome in Judea? I wonder if she’d ever had such apprehensions before when a helpless Jewish victim stood before her husband’s cruel justice. What was there about Jesus, who stood there so helplessly that made her have a terrifying dream about him? Jesus would soon be beaten brutally and nailed to a cross. He was apparently powerless
The Bible that tells us of the absolute power of God does not hesitate to show us Jesus’ paradoxical helplessness before the passing power of Rome.
Here at the end of Jesus’ life the full paradox of Jesus kingship stares us in the face. Jesus’ kingdom was over all, and yet He stood apparently powerless before Pontius Pilate.
We have reason to ask today, “Where is the Kingdom of God?” That is, “Where is the control of God over this painfully troubled world?” The Nicene Creed says of Jesus’ kingdom, “whose kingdom will have no end.” But we may fairly ask, “When did it begin?”
The obvious signs of power are strangely absent from the Kingdom of God. Even in a religious sense, as Luke Timothy Johnson asked, “If Jesus is not even fully ‘my Lord,’ or in any manifest way ‘our Lord’ then how can we proclaim Him as ‘Lord of lords and King of kings’?”
The same kind of question has continually confronted God’s people. In the Old Testament Book of Psalms we read the devout claim, “The Lord is a great God, and a great king over all gods.” This was the God of Israel who was “a great king over all gods,” but who allowed other kingdoms that worshipped idols come in with their armies and destroy Israel and the Temple where He was worshipped.
This was the God of Israel who could not get His people to obey Him. Whereas God showed massive power in getting His people out of Egypt, performing miracles to convince the stubborn Egyptian king, once God brought Israel to their destined Promised Land, they lived out of control. God couldn’t get his own people under His control, it seems. Where is the Kingdom of God?
As the prophet Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way.” Israel lived out of control. And so it has been in Christianity. We call Jesus, “My Lord and Savior,” but it is fair to ask, “Who’s really in control of my life?”
We know that in the days when there were real kings in Europe, kings got what they wanted. The king’s word was law. You might not like what the king said, but you obeyed or he could have you executed on the spot, even if you were his wife—Henry VIII’s wives discovered.
When you put God in the place of king, it would seem that the level of power and authority maxes out. An earthly king used to have a lot of power. But God is and always has been all-powerful.
So it would seem that in the Kingdom of God everything would be exactly the way God wants it to be. But it sure doesn’t look that way when we look around, does it?
Where is the Kingdom of God?
Last week I presented an idea that came to me as I thought of the Second Coming of Christ. It is an idea that haunts me. I spoke of this life as a vestibule, a sort of narthex. When you came into church this morning you came by one of two doors. You came into a narthex, a vestibule, entryway, and then walked into this room that we think of as the sanctuary. None of us stayed in the narthex, the vestibule. If we stayed there even if the attendance was down, the vestibule would have become over-crowded. Our goal was to go into this room where we now are.
Well, you and I are now living in a narthex, a vestibule. And our destination is what lies on the other side of this vestibule. This vestibule offers us all sorts of challenges to believing in the power of God. We look out there at the world and see Iraq out of control, and Palestine’s cities living in continual apprehension that terrorist attacks will happen at any moment. Indeed, terrorism, the out-of-control use of immense death-dealing force, is in the hands of individual people even boys and girls. We used to pray that God might keep great enemy nations under control. But now we worry about individuals hiding bombs inside their clothes as they get on airplanes, or as they go into corner cafes. This vestibule we now live in is all we can see. It is scary. We can’t see into the big room where we’re going to live out by far the great majority of our lives.
This vestibule in which we live now has many religions saying, “I’m the real thing.” And most of these are more aggressively missionary religions than Christianity is. Numerical gains are happening for Christianity in Africa and South American, but overall Islam is making more converts. This is because they are more aggressive than we Christians are in making converts.
Never before have Americans had more freedom. The vestibule in which you are living out your life, and in which I am living out my earthly life, is so full of options that it’s hard to choose. While there are a lot of poor people, there are a lot of people with plenty of money to spend. Money means economic freedom, which means I am limited only by my health and what’s going on out there in the choices I can make. Patriot Acts try to keep us safe—but can go only so far.
But we all know that there are boundaries in which we live. Birth and death. It all begins with birth, a birth we did not choose. It all ends with death, a death we’d prefer to keep off as long as possible.
Birth and death are like the boundaries of a two-sided vestibule in which you and I live. And while living in this vestibule we are given the opportunity to see whether we will acknowledge the Kingdom of God as The real Country in which we live. The Bible says we’re sojourners, wayfarers, who have no continuing city. Jesus even says to us who love our families, “If you love your father or mother more than me, you’re not worthy of me.” God will not use the kind of force that human kingdoms, bosses, and communities exercise to get their way.
Jesus confused people in His day for His refusal, most of the time, to use any kind of force to get what He wanted. We are surprised when He went into the Temple and knocked over the tables of the moneychangers, scattering coins all over and driving out the animals they were selling. We are surprised and say, “How out of character!” Because our picture of Jesus has no room for the kind of power our government will show to keep people in line or to subdue our enemies.
Jesus, in His time on this earth, used the gentlest kind of persuasion to get people to follow Him. He speaks to the will—the will that can say no or yes without coercion. To the twelve disciples He said simply, “Come, follow me.” No promise of reward. No threats. None of that. Just, “Come, follow me.” He apparently didn’t even say, “If you’ll follow me I’ll give you eternal life.” That would come later. Indeed, Jesus told them, “They will hate you because they hated me.” This is what will take place in the vestibule, Jesus let them know.
I’m not really changing the subject when I bring up the subject of God’s sovereignty and our freedom of the will. We think of God’s sovereignty as His absolute power. John Calvin, our grandfather as Presbyterians, was so amazed at the sovereignty of God that he taught elaborately about the Divine decrees. God decreed everything that happens, even your sins and mine. Nothing takes place, Calvin taught, without God’s specific decree causing it to happen--every leaf that flutters in the wind. We have no free will actually.
But I wonder if Calvin misunderstood something about the sovereignty of God because he thought too narrowly about this world as being the large sphere of God’s operations, when it is only the vestibule, the entry way, the narthex of God’s great building complex. Within this vestibule of life the big question you and I are answering every day is, “How will we respond to Jesus, our King, when He does not force us to do anything?” It matters how we respond. It matters if we obey, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” You are not my friends if you don’t. Grace may be wrongly understood as “no matter what.”
I am often perplexed when I realize how few and simple are Jesus’ commands, and that if we obeyed them we would be a happy people. But we’ve dithered about theological niceties, with our theories of justification and justification, grace and works. Meanwhile, in this vestibule in which we live, all Jesus gently pleads that we do is trust in Him, and then live a life of trusting Him. In this vestibule of life we are free to obey or not to obey.
In this entry way to eternal life God gives us freedom to choose. But God is sovereign over the big building; the great complex in for this little vestibule is our entryway. God put us in this entry way and asks, “What will you do with me in it?” It is your lab-school—time of experimentation with obedience and disobedience.
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” When He said, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” He did not command us to obey because it was important in this vestibule of life that we respond freely to His invitation. This life is only a small part of the great entity called “eternal life.” But it is important how we choose in this tiny entryway to eternity. God’s sovereignty is over all eternity—but in this tiny, brief vestibule of life, He gives us choices to make and act on.
Periodically we are given reminders of how passing, how temporary are earthly Kingdoms. When Stalin’s statue was toppled in Russia it was a remarkable thing because under Stalin, it had been a seemingly invincible reign of terror. When Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down in Baghdad, it was symbolic of the end of a terrifying regime. At their peak, Stalin and Saddam Hussein seemed to hold undisputable power. But Stalin’s body lies turning to dust, and Hussein languishes in a jail cell.
Our economic power hovers over all our lives. We confidently invest and spend even though 1929’s stock market crash took place within the memory of some of you who are sitting here today. We worry about tomorrow’s social security, when we know maybe we won’t even be around when a sixty-fifth birthday was supposed to arrive.
But Jesus towers over the wreck of time. His Kingdom will have no end. And it is your privilege and mine to live as though we believe this while we are in this small vestibule that we call “this life.” There are many things that addle us now that really are not very important. There was a saying I used to hear often, “Only one life, will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Jesus’ way is not to boss us around. He graciously shows us a way and invites us, “Walk in it.” He kindly shows us His truth, and says, “Now trust it is true.” He offers us a life, and patiently says, “Now live it.” And thus Jesus’ royal power shows itself in the hearts of all who will accept it, be they rich or poor, smart or not so smart, in this short vestibule that we call “this life.”
You and I will not live forever. My life may end tomorrow or ten years from now, as it is with us all. And what matters is what we do with Jesus’ statement, “The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in this Good News.” What are you doing with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the Good News of the never-ending Kingdom, for which this brief life is the entry way?
Let us pray: O Lord, Thank you that Your Kingdom is not as ours are, and that it is an everlasting Kingdom, and that in Christ you have made us a way to be in it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2005
The Second Coming of Jesus
II Samuel 7: 10-14
I Thessalonians 4: 13-18.
June 5th, 2005
The Gospel story announced to us in the New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary and ends, not with Jesus Christ’s ascension, which was our theme last Sunday morning, but with the Second Coming of Christ. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is a subject filled with mystery. The Bible teaches us very explicitly that Christ will return. Jesus told His disciples He didn’t know when it would be.
The teaching of the New Testament on this theme comes from three sources: from Jesus, from the Apostle Paul, and from the Book of Revelation. Since these sources do not describe something that has already happened, all we can know is that the Second Coming looms before us mysteriously as the final moment in history. It is a subject we should think about with great reverence, seriously, aware that it is an important ingredient regulating the outlook and behavior of a Christian.
Before looking at what the Jesus and the Apostle Paul tell us, let me say that I know there are various views of the Second Coming of Jesus in Christendom. There are many people who have rationalized away any literal expectation of Jesus’ Second Coming. It is a metaphor about the seriousness of life, nothing more. Already in the times when the New Testament was being written there were Christians who were cynical. “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.”
There are others at an opposite extreme who so focus on the Second Coming that they are preoccupied with speculating when it will take place. They are apt to buy a lot of literature about the Second Coming and put bumper stickers on their cars about it. There have some been some amusing moments in history when Christians who were certain they’d interpreted the signs of Jesus’ return acted on their interpretation. And they were embarrassingly wrong.
Others, among whom I count myself, take literally and very seriously the Bible’s teaching on Jesus’ Second Coming and realize that they have no idea when it will happen or even how it will look. A variety of opinions have attracted followings among those who try to understand the order of things at the end. But all who take seriously and literally that Jesus will come again realize that it means we should be doing as Jesus said, watching—which means living faithfully and gratefully so that whenever and however Jesus returns, we will be found faithful.
The benediction with which I end every service accentuates this outlook. “May the God of peace . . . make you faithful in every good work to do His will, working what is well pleasing in His sight.”
It was not a scare tactic on Jesus’ part to tell His disciples frightening things about the end times. Indeed, the Apostle Paul reminded early Christians of Jesus’ return as a source of comfort. At the end of I Thessalonians 4, where Paul explains the order of our resurrection when Christ returns, he writes, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
Similarly, towards the end of the great resurrection chapter, I Corinthians 15, after explaining the resurrection for those who can’t understand Paul writes cheerfully “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Though Paul writes of our resurrection when Christ returns as a happy event, he concludes by reminding us of the seriousness of life. “Be steadfast, unmovable--always abounding in the work of the Lord”…But now let us look closely at what Jesus taught us. I cannot this morning mention every passage bearing on this topic. I will look primarily at Matthew 24 and 25.
As Jesus neared the end of His time with His disciples He gathered them on the Mt. of Olives outside Jerusalem and told them some things of God’s plan that made them afraid. He told them the glorious Temple that stood at the heart of the city on the place where Abraham was believed to have offered up Isaac would be demolished, not one stone left on another. Those stones were huge. If you look at the part of the Western Wall that endures to this day you see how large those stones were. Those disciples who were in Jerusalem when this happened were getting old. In AD 70 the Roman General Titus so thoroughly destroyed the Temple that not one stone was left on top of another not only of the Temple but of most of the wall. Josephus watched this happen with despair. But the end was not yet.
Jesus told them of false Christ’s who would deceive and confuse people so that while thinking they followed the Son of God they were actually following a false Christ. He told of wars and rumors of wars, of earthquakes in various places—and that this would be only the beginning of birth pangs. The “birth” Jesus referred to was the new heaven and new earth. You and I have seen wars and rumors of wars; earthquakes too.
Worse yet would come. Jesus said, “Then your enemies will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. Not only that, they would betray each other. Wickedness would multiply. Most peoples’ love would grow cold. He didn’t say “love of God,” but “love,” which suggests a climate of hostility, of vengeance. The terrorism that has become the new scourge of the world makes us wonder if this is a sign of the end. The number of personal lawsuits filed in our land points suspiciously at the freeze of love.
Jesus told of other fearful happenings in nature: the sun will become dark; the moon will not give its light. Eclipses of an extraordinary kind will happen.
Jesus said, “The one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.” This teaching is one of the reasons why missionaries go to every part of the globe to tell of Jesus.
Jesus emphasized how surprising would be the time when this would happen. It would happen as surprisingly as a thief comes in the night to burglarize a house. The family is sound asleep when someone hears a loud noise. A stone breaks the window and the quiet night of rest is changed into a terror-filled night as a thief breaks in to rob and destroy.
Jesus said it would happen in a time no one expects. It will happen as in the days of Noah. Then there must have been a lot of joking as Noah and his family built the ark and climbed aboard with all those animals. They shut the door and the rains started to fall. And suddenly the laughter changed to the sounds of fear. Jesus said His coming would be like what takes place in many workplaces. When the boss is away some people who are not conscientious fool around. But when the boss suddenly appears as they are fooling around, they are embarrassed. They are afraid they will lose their jobs.
Jesus went on to tell that His second coming had a lot to do with a judgment to follow. He told us what will be at issue in this judgment. We often remember part of Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and Goats, the part that stresses it is important for us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. But we do not often move on to the details of judgment Jesus told, and how severe is the judgment on those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. Jesus said that the Son of Man—which referred to Jesus Himself
will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life’.
Any of us who take this seriously realize it has much to say about our personal response to needy people. It also points to how important is the work of our Deacon Board in implementing for us as a congregation what is our task together in behalf of the needy. It is not just a good idea, a benevolent thing to do, but of the highest importance that we be significantly responsive to human need.
The capstone of Jesus prediction was that the “Son of Man would come on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to another.”
Jesus gave an apparent microscopic view of this gathering of God’s elect, illustrating it this way. “Two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left.” Actually, I believe these are parables of judgment more than of the mechanics of the 2nd Coming of Christ.
These two brief statements of Jesus have caught the imagination of many people today through the series of novels written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The Left Behind series starts with the moment of the rapture, as the Second Coming is often called. I read the first novel in this series this past week. LaHaye and Jenkins describe what it will be like on earth after the Christians have been gathered with Jesus at His Second Coming. All sorts of people disappear and society is in complete disarray. Airplanes crash, automobiles collide, babies disappear from their mothers’ wombs—because all children twelve and under everywhere get caught up in the Rapture. It is a time of utter terror. At the end the Anti-Christ from Eastern Europe begins to gather his forces against God for a seven-year reign of tribulation.
The first of these novels was written ten years ago. The series has sold millions of copies. I marvel that these novels have captured such widespread interest. Nowadays horror stories capture the interest of a lot of people. And this is how a lot of non-Christians apparently are reading this series.
If all of the novels are like the first one, the authors try to make plain how to become a Christian in the course of telling the story. I think it would be of interest for some of us who have read these novels to talk about them together. The plots are derived from the Bible, of course with a particular interpretation of what it means. The details are entirely fiction, but there is certain plausibility to the story. I recommend the benefit of reading Left Behind. I started out thinking it was pretty much pulp, but came to see that there is benefit in reading it. The novel reminded me that the Second Coming and what follows were important parts of Jesus teaching.
There are many details of Biblical prophecy about the Second Coming that I haven’t the time to describe here. But perhaps I will at a later time. What is important to emphasize today, as we prepare to take the Lord’s Supper, is that Jesus taught us that He is coming again. And it matters how we live as we wait for His return. My father had a sign above his desk in his study at home that said, “Perhaps Today.”
Ask yourself as you live from day to day, “Would I be pleased if Jesus returned as I do this?” There is warning in this question, but not only warning. If you and I live with our hearts filled with gratitude, with the attitude of “what may I do to build up my brothers and sisters in Christ, of how I can winsomely communicate to others our experience of one love of Christ” then the time of His appearing will be a happy one. Only those who have let themselves slip into unfortunate traps of dreary-living will be embarrassed. Don’t continue to do wrong. Don’t linger with grudges. Jesus far more looks forward to saying to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”
The question only you and I can answer for ourselves is, “Would I be pleased if what I am now doing were what I am doing at the time of Jesus’ return.” There is very good guidance in that question. I wonder how you will answer it? I wonder if it is evident how I am answering it.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we bless you for the promise of the return of Jesus Christ when there will be an end to all suffering, sin, and death. Grant us grace to so live so as to be happy at His appearing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)