[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, we believe that Jesus will come again in glory to judge both the
quick and the dead.
And we believe this because Jesus, together with his apostles and prophets, have promised
it time and again in the Scriptures.
Now what do we make of it?
What do we say about it?
or maybe better, how does that strike you?
What do you think and
feel when you reflect on this truth,
that Jesus will come again to
judge the living and the dead?
There are, I’m afraid, a lot of
wrong ways to consider this.
That we doubt His coming,
that we dread His coming,
or rather, do we long for it?
Is it the object of our hope?
I just want to walk through some of these responses.
The first is doubt.
I think the world would chiefly come after us in this way, that when we confess that
Jesus will come to judge the quick and the dead, the scoffing world would say, yeah right.
Since the beginning of the world until now, everything has gone the same.
Nothing has changed.
changed, why would it change now? Today is an awful lot like yesterday, and yesterday
is an awful lot like the day before. Why would tomorrow be any different? This is the argument
of the scoffers, and it creeps into us as well. Even you hear Bible teachers talk about
it. They say, well, you know, the apostles thought that Jesus was going to come back
any day. And so we see that since it’s been almost 2,000 years that probably it’s not
going to happen. But look, don’t let the scoffers fool you. They also believe in an end of
the world. I mean it might be through an environmental catastrophe or it might be through the outbreak
of a deadly disease that will end humanity or it might be when at last the sun gives
up the ghost and explodes, or we’re hit by a comet or something terrible like that.
The scoffers also believe in an end, but they believe that this whole thing, that you and
all of humanity and all of planet Earth and all of our history simply ends in a fire,
that there’s no one to tell or hear the story.
Every worldview, every way of looking at the world believes that there will be an end,
it, but we say the end is the goal. It’s not destruction, it’s consummation. It’s not everything
falling apart, it’s everything just getting restored. St. Paul says it like this, that
the creation was held in bondage, not willingly, but for him who submitted it to bondage in
hope so that not only will you, but all of creation be restored by the Lord. And this
is the hopefulness that we have of the end. In fact, this whole conversation about the
last times and about the second coming of Jesus and about the end of the world and about
the Judgment Day is really about hope. Hope, we⦠and let’s maybe just set it up here.
I was going to bring it up later, but we might as well talk about it now. Hope is the story
that we tell about the future. And everybody has a hope. Everybody has a story that they
tell themselves about what’s going to happen later today, tomorrow, the rest of their lives.
all of us are kind of writing and rewriting that story, but here’s the difference. Here
is the⦠one of the most marvelous differences of our Christian faith is that we believe
that this story never ends.
St. Paul says it like this, writing to the Galatians, he says about the Gentiles that
they are without God in the world and without hope. And that means that even though they
think they might have a tomorrow and a day after tomorrow, at some point it ends for them.
At some point, the unbeliever thinks it’s all over. There’s a back page, and you’ll
get to that last page, and there’s nothing more to read, but not for you, not for the
Christian. Life is eternal life. You are immortal. You will pass through death to life, and life
eternal. In fact, we confess that every person will be raised on the last day and live forever,
either in bliss or in terror, but we have this hope that our life will go on, that we
will stand before the Lord in all eternity, that Jesus will come back and He will make
things right.
So we, with faith, look at the last day, but just because we confess the last day is coming
doesn’t mean we think about it rightly. So here is a couple of other ways to get it wrong,
and that is that I think we are tempted to dread the last day, or to maybe not long for
the last day. I was at the conservatory, assisted living or senior living place this
last week. We have a service there once a month, and I was talking to all the folks
gathered at the conservatory, and I asked them, I said, do you remember when you were
growing up and you would hear the talk in church about the second coming of Jesus, and
you would think, well, no, I’m not ready for that quite yet because there’s a whole
bunch of things that I still want to do. I want to graduate from high school, and I want
to go to college, I want to get a job, and I want to move out, I want to get married,
I want to have children and grandchildren, and I want to go to the beach in Mexico, and
all⦠you have a long list. And so, it’s like I’m excited for Jesus to come back,
but I hope it’s a couple of years away so I can check off some of the things on my list.
And they all said, we remember those days, Pastor. And I said, do you think that now?
and they said, no. We’re ready. Now I do not think this is necessary, so it could be age
that fixes this, but I want to address this biblically. I think this is pretty important.
One of the problems is that we think that the eternal life will have something missing
that our life now has. Now in a way that’s true, because in life eternal there is no
suffering. There is no sickness. There’s no tears. There’s no sorrow. There’s no grave.
There’s no sin. There’s no death. There’s no devil. So there are things missing, but
the things that are missing are everything that you want to be missing. But life eternal
is real life. It’s not imaginary life. In fact, it’s realer than our own real life now.
I think sometimes we imagine eternal life and we say, well, I think I’m just going to
get bored in eternal life, because it’s the same thing over and over. This, dear saints,
is simply impossible. The richness of the resurrection and the richness of life eternal
is beyond our asking or even imagining, but we should at least know this. We should take
the⦠we should know that our eternal life is a physical life. Remember Jesus to the disciples?
devils. Could I have a piece of fish? Look, I’m not a ghost. I have flesh and blood.
Your eternal life is in your body, the same body that you’ve got right now, perfected,
freed from every disease and sin, but that body glorified to stand before the presence
of God. You will have that body in the resurrection. And so finally, this kind of agony of life
on this earth of temptation, of weakness, of boredom, all will be gone. This should
increase our longing for that day.
But still there’s some dread for the last day, and I think there’s maybe three reasons.
Number one, the way the Bible describes it is pretty frightful. I mean, did you hear
how Jesus described the last day in our Gospel reading? He said, in those days after the
tribulation, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will
be falling out of the heavens into the seas, the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
The last day is described by all accounts as a terrifying day. But this is why the Scriptures
come to us over and over and tell us that we, on that day, while everything else is being
shaken, we will not be shaken. This is the import of that beautiful psalm that so many
Many of us know Psalm 46, where it says, be still and know that I am God.
The context of that stillness is the last day, when the mountains are shaking and falling
into the depths of the sea, and when the nations are rising against nations, and when the whole
earth is melting.
On that day, when everything is falling apart, you will be held safe and still in the hands
of God.
Now you say, pastor, I don’t believe you.
I think when I see the mountains start to fall into the ocean, I’m going to at least
be afraid.
afraid. My knees are going to shake. I’m going to tremble. But this is the promise from the
Scriptures that you who have the Holy Spirit are already equipped for that day. You will
not be afraid. When that day comes by the Holy Spirit, you will stand up straight and
you will lift up your head to heaven. Like Jesus says, when you see these things happening,
look up because your redemption is drawing near. So you don’t have anything to be afraid
of. Wars, rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, all this other stuff, all the things
that are falling, and falling from the sky on the last day, you don’t have anything
to be afraid of. The Lord has promised that He will keep you safe.
But here, OK, I can make it to that day, but then what comes next, this is what really
frightens me. Because we know that what happens when the Lord comes back is that He comes
to judge the living and the dead, the quick and the dead, those who are alive and those
who have died already, and no one will escape His judgment. And I think this is frightful
for us for two reasons. Number one, we fear the judgment of those we love that do not
know Christ, that have not been baptized, or that have forsaken the gifts of baptism.
We are afraid for their sake for the judgment day, and we are afraid for our sake of the
judgment day.
Let’s take up our loved ones first. Jude mentions it in the Epistle lesson that the
Lord is using His Word and His Spirit to snatch people from the fire, and Peter mentions it
in 2 Peter, that this is the reason why the Lord has not come back yet. Those people that
you love, that do not yet know Christ, Jesus also loves. Jesus also died for them. Jesus
suffered for their sins in their place. And the Holy Spirit is working to call them by
the Gospel and enlighten them with His gifts.
Peter says it like this, don’t mistake slowness, as some are in the habit of doing.
God is not slow about fulfilling His promises, but long-suffering, not desiring that any
should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life, see?
So the reason why we’re still waiting for Jesus is because Jesus is still waiting for
those people that you are praying for.
So be confident.
it. But what about our own judgment? What about the time when it comes for each one
of us to stand before the glory of God and to face His judgment for what we’ve done
in the body, whether good or evil? What about that day when the light will shine on all
the things that have been done in darkness, when the thoughts are revealed of all people?
people. We know, you know that you are a sinner, that you’ve broken God’s law, that you’ve
failed to love, that you have served yourself, that you have lived a life of rebellion and
anger and lost in greed and laziness and bitterness and discontent and godlessness. You know,
and you know yourself too. You know that if there weren’t things holding you back, you
would have been ten times worse. You know, I know that we are guilty and for that reason
that day is frightful. Hebrews says it like this, it is truly a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God. But dear saints, this is why Jesus died. All of your
sin was placed on Him,
the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world.
All of your guilt, all of your shame,
all of your breaking of God’s law,
all of the terrible things that you’ve
done and that you’ve thought,
and that you’ve said,
all of the good and beautiful things
that you have failed to do,
all of the commandments that are broken,
all of it was on Christ
in His suffering and His death. And so the judgment against you has happened already.
And Jesus says it like this, it is finished. He has taken your place before God’s wrath
so that all of your sins are forgiven. And this is not just⦠look at every single one
of them. The sin that you’re thinking about now, the sin that you’re going to remember
later this afternoon and say, oh, well, what about that one? That one too. Every single
sin has carried away by Jesus, so that there is no more anger for God. This is how Paul
says it, talking about our life today and the judgment to come. There is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. That means that there is no condemnation for you, so
that the last day when you appear before God, there is nothing to be afraid of. Well done.
Good and faithful servant is what’s on the way. Can you imagine it? So we long for that
day and we look for that day with hope.
Now this, and we’ll kind of wrap up here, but I got a couple of things to say about
it because this is what Jesus wants us to do when he tells us about four times in the
gospel lesson, to stay awake. I love preaching the stay awake sermon because that’s the
one Sunday I can get on you guys. Stay awake.
But staying awake does not mean, this is not Jesus telling us to never go to sleep at night.
That would be sort of crazy. What does Jesus mean by staying awake? Here’s the problem.
To be ready for the last day is to know what we don’t know. My dad always used to tell
me this when I was growing up. There’s things that we know we know, and there’s things
that we don’t know we know, and there’s things that we know we don’t know, and there’s things
we don’t know we don’t know.” And I told him, I didn’t know that.
Jesus⦠Jesus wants us to know that we don’t know when the last day is coming. He wants
us to be aware of our ignorance. He says, nobody knows the day or the hour, not even
the angels, not even the Son, only the Father. In other words, Jesus wants you to know that
you don’t know when He’s coming back, and knowing that is what it means to be awake.
So that we’re ready to meet the Lord in the air, or we’re ready to serve our neighbor.
We’re ready to live in heaven, and we’re ready to live on earth.
We’re ready to face the judgment day, and we’re ready to face our family.
You see?
That’s what it means to be ready, to know that we don’t know.
It could be by the end of the day, or it could be by the end of the week, or it could be
by the end of the millennium.
We don’t know, and so we live in that readiness, in that hopefulness, and for that longing
for that day.
So I say to you, so I say to all, says Jesus, stay awake.
Stay awake in your prayers.
Keep praying for those who do not know Christ, that the Lord would bring them to faith.
Stay awake in your suffering, don’t let the devil attack your hope.
Stay awake in your faith, trusting in the Lord’s promise.
us. Stay awake in your worship, hearing the Lord’s words and rejoicing. And stay awake
knowing this, that the one who is coming back is the one who came already for you to live
and die for you. This is our confidence, and this is our hope. May God grant it for Christ’s
sake. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
