6 – So when they met together, they asked Him, ‘Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel?’
7 – He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority.
8 – But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’
9 – After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight.
10 – They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.
11 – “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, Who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”
When I was about 10 years old the church my father pastored held a series of revival meetings. Now….in those days revivals were held annually-usually in the summer-and often lasted two weeks with services in the day time as well as the evening. The evangelist my father enlisted that particular year was a real “hell-fire and brimstone” preacher. I remember the night that he preached on hell that I gripped my seat for dear life because the conviction and power with which he spoke made it so that I could almost see the tile floor beneath my feet cracking wide open to reveal a lake of fire far below. His description of that horrible place made it easy for me to imagine it’s heat and even the smell of it’s sulfurous fumes. I could almost hear the agonizing cries of those who had rejected Christ….I was scared stiff by that sermon!
One night his sermon topic was the 2nd coming of Christ and-of all his sermons during that revival-this one caused me to have the greatest fear…..you see I was already a Christian and I knew I need not fear hell so I could easily dismiss those fearful feelings as not applying to me. But the end of the world….well, that was another thing all together.
From that night on, I became terrified of the day when Jesus would return and everything would be destroyed and life as I knew it would end. This fear of the 2nd coming so consumed me that it was constantly on my mind. Long after the revival was over I worried that each day might just be my last on this earth. I had trouble sleeping and when I did sleep I would often have nightmares about the 2nd coming. I remember one night the nightmare was so intense that no matter how much I tried to calm myself down, I could not go back to sleep. So while the rest of my family slept, I wandered the dark house wringing my hands…on the verge of tears and panic.
At one point I looked out a side window and saw a BRIGHT LIGHT in our neighbor’s front yard. My heart leaped and I couldn’t speak. I just knew THIS WAS IT! THE END HAD COME! JESUS WAS ABOUT TO DESCEND! THE SKIES WOULD SOON RIP OPEN FROM EAST TO WEST! I STRAINED TO HEAR THE TRUMPET CALL OF GOD…..
And then I realized that the “bright” light I had seen was not a light from heaven signaling the end of my world…it was just our neighbor’s porch light. That gives you an idea of just how afraid I was….My panic was so intense that it warped my perceptions. Well, the next day I was so upset that I called my dad at his office. He lovingly listened to me describe my fears and then he said, “Mark….I’m coming home from the office in about an hour just like I do every day. Does that scare you?” And I said, “No, Dad….I look forward to the time you come home each day. I can hardly wait to see you come through the door.” And he said, “Well, Mark that is just how it will be when our Heavenly Father comes back. It is something to look forward to son….not to fear.”
And with that statement, my anxiety about Jesus’ return began to fade. In subsequent conversations with my Dad, I came to understand that the 2nd coming of the Messiah was something for Christians to eagerly anticipate-not to dread. And the older I have grown….the more I have come to feel that way. In fact this particular promise of God has become my favorite of all His promises. These days I can hardly wait until the day dawns when Jesus will return to take me to that place where I will always be with Him….where there will be no more sickness or death or tears or good-byes…no more mortgage payments or deadlines or worries of any kind. So, I no longer have nightmares about the 2nd coming of Jesus. In fact when life becomes stressful I often daydream of what that day will be like. This wonderful promise is a source of strength and comfort for me.
And this is a promise that God has made repeatedly. Just as the Old Testament abounds with prophecies of Jesus’ first coming so does the New Testament overflow with promises of His return. Future events like the 2nd coming of Christ are mentioned over three hundred times in the New Testament alone. However, we should note that Scripture teaches that Jesus’ 2nd coming will be much different from His first. The first time He entered our world in a stable in an obscure village with only a handful of witnesses but when He comes back people all over this globe will see it. In Matthew 24 Jesus described His return and said, “…all the nations of the earth…will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.” (Vs.30) Revelation 1:7 says, “…every eye will see Him, even those who pierced him.” I Thessalonians 4:16-18 says, For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God…” So, there will be no doubt on the minds of anyone on this planet as to what has happened when the King of Kings RE-appears.
You know….thoughts of Jesus’ return and all the events leading up to it….cause people to experience a wide variety of feelings. Some of us are uncomfortable at the thought….much as I was when I was a child. We are fearful of wars and rumors of wars and antichrists and Armageddon. Other people entertain feelings of denial. They would rather not deal with thoughts of Jesus’ return at all. Many are disappointed when they envision the end of the age coming before they have a chance to live out their lives. My daughter Sarah said something about that the other day. We were talking about my sermon prep for this message and She honestly admitted that she had things she wanted to do before Jesus came back. And, I don’t know about you, but I remember feeling that way when I was younger. Still other people are the opposite of afraid or disappointed when they think of Jesus’ return. They are emotionally obsessed with thoughts of the event….consumed with charts and codes and “you-better-believe-it prophecies.” So people experience many different feelings when they think of this promise that someday…perhaps even today….Jesus will return. Well, how does GOD want us to feel about this promise? I mean….how does HE want us to live in light of the truth of Jesus’ return? Well first of all….
1. I believe God wants us to be AT PEACE when we ponder the 2nd coming.
Our Heavenly Father doesn’t want those of us who are Christians to be afraid-like I was as a child. He wants thoughts of the fulfillment of this promise to bring us a deep sense of happiness.
Remember Jesus’ words from John 14 ? He was talking with His disciples about this subject and when He noticed their distress, He said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled…” Max Lucado writes, “Issues like the millennium and the Antichrist are intended to challenge and stretch us, but not to overwhelm [us with anxiety] and certainly not to divide us. For the Christian, the return of Christ is not a riddle to be solved or a code to be broken but rather a day to be anticipated.”
Now, how is it possible for us to face the end of time calmly? I mean, according to Scripture, the end of the world seems like a very scary time, no matter how old you are! The book of Revelation talks about a tribulation and a one world religion and earthquakes and calamities…how can we face all of that with any degree of calmness? Well, Christians can have a peace about all this because Scripture assures us that no matter what happens in the end times, when it is all over God will win. Referring to the day Jesus returns, II Peter 3:12 says, That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt in the heat….” But it goes on to say, “But in keeping with [GOD’S] promise we are looking forward to a NEW heaven and a NEW earth, the home of righteousness.” So, we can have a serenity about Jesus’ return and the events leading up to it because we know how the latter days will turn out. We already know the end of the story.
In his new book, When Christ Comes, Lucado tells of a time when, as a little boy, he sang in the Odessa boys Choir. In the second year of his membership in this group the choir was enlisted by a local junior college drama department to play the part of the Munchkins in their production of The Wizard of Oz. He was to assume the role of a member of the “Lullaby Guild” and he took his role very seriously. Now Lucado had never heard of The Wizard of Oz nor had he seen it on TV because, like me, he was always at church on Sunday nights when it was broadcast. And since they rehearsed apart from the rest of they cast (until the night of the dress rehearsal)-well, he thought the Odessa Boys Choir WAS the cast and that the parts they rehearsed was the ENTIRE story. He assumed the play ended with him and three other Munchkins stepping forward as he sang, “On behalf of the Lullaby Guild, we wish to welcome you to Munchkin Land.” So, imagine how he felt when they were finally on stage with the rest of the cast….and, after he sang his little solo….instead of applause and curtain calls…there came a puff of smoke and the cackle of a wicked witch running from stage right to stage left, cape flying and waving her wand menacingly! He said he didn’t have to ACT afraid! He was literally terrified! And of course he wouldn’t have been if he had read the entire script. But you know, we can make the same mistake in life that Lucado made on stage that day. If we aren’t acquainted with the end of the “script” we can grow fearful during the “play of life.”
Terms like “Armageddon” and “Lake of Fire” and “scarlet beast” ARE scary. Watching the news at night and hearing reports of the latest war breaking out or of the amazing increase of earthquakes and devastating freak storms never seen before can cause us a great deal of worry. In fact news reports like this match perfectly with Jesus’ description of the end times in Matthew 24:21 when He said, “…there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again.” Things like this can cause us a great deal of anxiety….
And certainly those who do NOT know God have reason to be anxious in these seemingly end times. But Christians have no need to fear….they need only read the end of the story which God has lovingly included in scripture. Because the “last act” says that we end up with God in the paradise of Heaven while Satan and his demons end up in a lake of fire along with the beast to be punished day and night forever. (Revelation 20:10 ) So God hasn’t kept the ending a secret. He wants us to see the big picture. He wants us to know that He wins. He wants us to know that the evil we witness on the stage of life is not as mighty as we might think. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation…” But He also said, “be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 ) Not “Will overcome” “HAVE overcome.”
Our Lord spoke of an accomplished deed. The battle is over. The manuscript has been published. The book has been bound! Things may get a little rough as we approach the end times but even Satan knows how things turn out. Revelation 12:2 says, “He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” So we CAN be at peace when we consider the day Jesus will return. There is nothing for Christians to fear when it comes to the fulfillment of this promise. And then, another thing God wants us to feel as we contemplate Jesus’ return is TRUST…
2. Specifically, He wants us to trust Him for the TIMING of this wonderful event.
You know, even though Jesus pointedly told His first disciples that the date or timing of His return was basically none of their business (Acts 1:7 )….for two thousand years many of His other disciples have repeatedly put aside serving Christ and sharing the good news of His love with a lost world so that they could take the time to attempt to calculate the day and the time that Jesus would return. My Dad once told me of a group of people in a Los Angeles suburb who gathered on a roof-top early one chilly morning in the 1960’s. The wind whipped the white-bed sheets in which they were robed and a newspaper photographer turned his camera toward the sky.
You see…they were there to greet the Lord when He came down from heaven because, according to their leader’s schedule, this was when the great event was to occur. Needless to say, after they waited until some of their group almost caught pneumonia and still there was no trumpet call from on high, they began to slip away to their homes. This all began when a self-styled prophet multiplied his own age by the number of his children, threw in the number 666 from Revelation, divided that number by the number of puppies in a litter their dog had, and came up with a date…on which He said the Lord would certainly return. The amazing thing is that, instead of getting this guy some help…some people actually believed him.
Now, however sincere these people may have been, they were flying in the face of Scripture. As we read earlier, it is not for us to know the “times or seasons.” According to Matthew 24:36, Jesus Himself said that He did not know the day or hour of His coming. Yet in spite of this some people like this crowd from L. A. have persisted in trying to know MORE than Jesus. The founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses set the date of Jesus’ return three times and today that group claim Jesus has returned but invisibly so no one sees Him. In the year 999A.D. many thought the dawn of the new millennium would be the beginning of the end of time. And as recently as a few weeks ago many others were wrongfully proclaiming that the world would end when 2000 rolled around.
Now, perhaps THE REASON so many of us are preoccupied with the exact date that this promise will be fulfilled is that, like little children, we have a tough time waiting for GOOD things. When my kids were smaller, one of the first questions they would ask me when we loaded up and headed off for a fun visit with their grandparents is “How much farther is it?” Now, how do you answer that question when you are dealing with someone who doesn’t understand concepts like time and distance? I might have said to Daniel or Sarah or Becca, “Well it is 115 miles from here to Dover, Delaware,” but miles mean nothing to a child. If I did they would have asked, “Well, what’s 115 miles? How far is that?” And, at this point I could go technical and say, “Well a mile is 5280 feet so 115 miles equals 607,200 feet,” But four words into that sentence and they would simply say again, “How much farther?”
Because the mind of a child is blissfully free of things like mile markers. They don’t understand things like that. Well at this point I could get creative and speak in terms they DO understand and say something like: “The trip to Grandmom’s will take as long as it takes for you to watch ‘Cinderella’ two times.” And for a few minutes that would work but sooner or later they ask again and sooner or later all parents eventually say, “JUST TRUST ME. You enjoy the trip and don’t worry about the details-like how long it takes. I’ll make sure we get there okay.” And we mean it. We don’t want our kids to sweat the details. And this is just what Jesus has done for us.
Just prior to His crucifixion, He told His disciples that He would be leaving them. In John 13:36 He said, “Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” Peter spoke up and asked, “Lord why can’t I follow you now?” And then in a reply that reflects the tenderness of a parent to a child Jesus said, “Don’t’ let your hearts be troubled. TRUST….trust in God and trust in Me…..I will come back and take you to be with Me so that you may be where I am going.” In other words Jesus was saying, “You do the trusting and I’ll do the taking.” And that is exactly what God wants us to do. You see our minds are not equipped to handle concepts like eternity. We’re not “old enough or wise enough” to understand a world with no boundaries of space and time. So God asks us to trust Him for that. When it comes to Jesus’ return, He wants us to leave the timing to Him. Now this does not mean that God wants us to forget about His return…..you know, put it totally out of our minds. NO, in fact a third feeling or attitude that He wants us to embrace as we contemplate His return is….READINESS….
3. He wants us to live lives in such a way that we are ALWAYS READY for His return.
You see, if we knew He would come say….August 14, 2005….then many of us would probably ignore the things of God until August 13, 2005. No, God wants us to live as if Jesus could return at any moment. Matthew 24:42 says, “Keep watch, [BE READY] because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” In his book, The Road to Armageddon, Charles Swindoll shares about the days that he worked his way through college in a large machine shop. One of his co-workers was a man named “Tex.” Now…working in a plant like that meant that his time was governed by the shrill blowing of a huge whistle. It would blow to tell him when to start work and another time to remind him when it was time for lunch, and again at the end of the day to inform all employees that it was QUITTIN’ TIME.
Swindoll noticed that Tex was ready to go home before anyone else. He would always have his lunch box and coat handy and was out the door at the end of the day before any one else. One day he asked him about this and Tex replied, “Sonny, let me tell you something. I STAY ready…to keep from GETTIN’ ready. I STAY ready for quittin’ time.” And we need to live like Tex — ALWAYS ready for the time when, not a whistle but a trumpet will blow to signal that it is “quittin’ time” on earth. C.S. Lewis said, “It is the second coming of Christ that is the medicine our condition especially needs. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.” God wants us to always be ready for His return, which leads to the fourth way that God wants us to respond to the fact that Jesus will return one day…
4. He wants us to serve Him with an attitude of URGENCY.
Remember? Immediately before Jesus ascended to heaven He commissioned us to,
“be His witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8 ) So we have an critical task to complete before He returns….and the clock is ticking. In John 9 Jesus said, “We must do the work of Him Who sent Me while it is day. Night is coming, when no one can work.”
There IS an urgency here. In a very real sense we are on a sinking ship. So we must use every possible opportunity to share the good news of God’s love. In II Timothy 4:2 Paul says that we are to share our faith “in season and out of season”…when it is convenient and when it is not. Evangelism must be a priority in the life of every Christian. You see when the day Christ finally DOES dawn we will NEVER regret having attempted to share our faith with someone who is lost. Thanks to Steven Spielberg most of us have heard of Oscar Schindler. During WWII this German businessman used his factory as a haven for 1100 Jews….people he saved from Hitler’s gas chambers. At the end of the Spielberg’s film there is a scene in which Schindler prepares to leave his factory running from the advancing armies of the allies. And, as he leaves, the Jewish factory workers line both sides of the road to thank him. One presents him with a letter signed by each person, documenting his deed. Another gives him a ring, formed out of the gold extracted from a worker’s tooth. On it is carved a verse from the Talmud, “He who saves a single life saves the world entire.” At this point they presented him with a gift he showed emotion for the first time in the film as he leaned toward Isaac Stern, the factory foreman, and says with a low voice, “I could have done more.” Pointing toward a car he could have sold, he says, “That would have released ten prisoners. The gold pin on his lapel would have bribed an official to release two more. In that moment, Schindler’s life is reduced to one value. Profit is forgotten. The factory doesn’t matter. Only one thing counts….People…only people. And when Christ returns we will feel the same. We won’t wish we had attended more meetings. We won’t regret that we didn’t own a bigger house or get a bigger promotion at work. All that will matter is people. We’ll wish we had witnessed more, worked harder to lead more individuals to make that decision that makes anyone READY for Christ’s return.
So, Scripture is clear as to how God wants us to feel about the return of His Son. He wants Christians to be at peace. He wants us to draw hope from this promise. He also wants us to trust Him for the timing. He wants us to live in such a way that we are always ready for His return. And while we are waiting, He wants us to do all we can to lead more and more people to a personal faith in Christ. Now, before Jesus ascended to Heaven He gave us a tool, time-piece of sorts to help us mark the days until He comes back. I’m referring to this ordinance that we call the Lord’s Supper. It is an amazing time piece for it takes the past and the future and it binds them together. Remember Jesus said that, “As long as we eat of this bread and drink from this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death UNTIL HE COME… As we begin this ordinance, let me encourage all Christians present today to join us. Even if you are not a member of this church, join us in this time of remembering the past and anticipating the future. If you are His, this is Yours.
THE CELEBRATION OF COMMUNION
You know that evangelist that led the revival at my dad’s church when I was a kid, DID pose a very important question at the close of his sermon and I want to pose it to you today not to scare you but to make you think. If Jesus were to come today….January 9, 2000…would YOU be ready? Are you absolutely certain that there has been a time in your life when you have said, “I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, I take the gift God has offered. I believe He died for my sins. I believe He rose from the dead and I want to give Him my life.”
Because unless you have done this-unless you have made this commitment-then the return of Jesus IS something to be feared…even dreaded. So, if you have never prayed that prayer then I encourage you to do so today. And if you do pray that prayer, I invite you to walk forward and tell me about it so I can share that good news with all our people. God may be tapping some of you on the shoulder, leading you to make other decisions, to join this church or recommit to living your life in a more godly way. Whatever decision you have to make we encourage you to share it with us by walking the aisle as we sing.