August 15 2010    Reading:  Luke 12.49-59

 Theme: The Last Things

The future......... If you were a TV interviewer asking people on the street what the the future... might be like,

most people, I suppose, would say global warming.

Hardly a day goes by but somewhere in the news, TV, radio, or the papers there’s something about the changes in the future in the earth’s climate …………rises in sea temperature, melting ice caps, islands disappearing, deserts getting dryer, rivers rising, floods and so on. Probably global warming is what the future means to most people

Well, the Bible speaks quite clearly about the future, and declares that time will not just roll on and on into the future, forever, that time has an end, time will come to completion........

and that is in God’s hands............

in Luke’s gospel, in the reading we heard this morning that is what the Lord Jesus is speaking about.

As we have been hearing over the last two Sundays, our relationship with God, Jesus teaches, is fundamental to life. Everything else in life is placed and ordered around this relationship.

Human life has a centre and at that centre is the living God.

Jesus, you will remember, tells the story of a rich man, who on the strength of the profits he expected after a bumper harvest one year, made plans to knock down his farm and build a new house, and a whole complex of storehouses, new buildings. In the story however, that night was to be his last, as God called time on his life. This is a story about a man who had riches, possessions, but nothing at the centre of his life....... no relationship with the living God. This is why, it turns out, this very rich man is very poor.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus goes on to explain how, when God is at the centre of life, life should be lived. What is life like when God has come to be at the centre ? Well, in the course of many parables and instructions this is what the Lord Jesus teaches us...

And very often Jesus does this by setting our normal everyday life and the way of God’s kingdom,

side by side.

The Lord invites us to see normal everyday life in the light of God’s kingdom and its ways.

The normal everyday course of life is contrasted with the way of life that God calls us to.

Everyday life is held up, put into question. Jesus shows us that everyday life is not the only way of living,

there is a more real, a more true way, of living in God’s kingdom........... with God at the centre of our lives............

To live in God’s kingdom, the Lord Jesus declares, is to have a different outlook, a different perspective, a different take on the future

We find this already in the Old Testament:

In the Word of the prophet Amos:
One of a group of shepherds, from the desert round Tekoa, Amos comes to deliver the Word of the Lord in a simple, plain, clear, direct message.
At a time of great prosperity in Israel, the rich getting richer, great trade with other countries, and luxury goods were imported by the boatload,
Amos comes right from the desert on the very edge of rich, green, fruitful Israel
with a message directed against men and women who have forgotten the living God

a message in three parts:
a time is coming, says Amos, which will bring troubles and great cataclysms for the earth that’s the first part: then Day of the Lord will come, that’s the second part: and beyond this a new heaven and a new earth will replace this age, there will be a new Jerusalem, and a new king, that’s the third part

It is this day of the Lord that Jesus is speaking of in Luke’s gospel........

The Lord says to the crowd: "When you see a cloud rising in

the west, immediately you say, `It's going to rain,' and it

does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, `It's going to be hot,' and it is. 56 Hypocrites!

You can look at the earth and the sky and predict the weather; why, then, don’t you know the meaning of the present time ?

In everyday life, people knew so many things so well, by habit. People could tell from the weather, when it would rain, from the wind, when it would be hot but when it comes the unfolding of God's purposes,

they haven’t a clue......... don’t see anything............. that’s the problem, says the Lord

And, you might say, this has been the problem of the Church for a very long time,

and is still the problem........

in the midst of everday life, when it comes to the unfolding of God's purposes,

we don’t seem to see anything.............

we seem to know very little of the Day that is approaching...........

when Jesus will come again........ as He promised in John 14.3

I will come back and take you to Myself

so that you will be where I am.....

Once, the disciples said to Jesus ‘Tell us when all this will be, and what will happen to show that it is the time for Your coming and the end of the age.........’

Jesus said:

On the one hand, ‘the time is near '

but on the other ‘you do not know what day your Lord will come’

On the one hand, the time‘is near'

but on the other, in the teaching of Jesus, ‘things must happen but they do not mean the end has come’

The time is near

On the one hand, the time‘is near'says the Lord Jesus -

but on the other, ‘things must happen but they do not mean the end has come’

Let’s think about this:

the time is near when Jesus will come again..............

a sense of that is to be found right throughout the New Testament, the Early Church is immersed in it………

a keen sense, a longing, for the return of Jesus Christ……

The New Testament declares on almost every second page,

that Jesus Christ is coming again.

This was the air that the apostles breathed, and the Early Church,

the early believers lived, looking towards the horizons with expectation,

looking to each dawn to see if this was the day.

if this was the last day, dawning………

They, the believers, the Church lived in the light of that day, when Christ would return…..

because the time is near.................

Yes, in the Church, we are sometimes threatened by doubts, fears, we grow wearied, we worry about things, we are alarmed at the indifference of the people outside of the Church, the growing contempt for the Church and the treasures there are in Jesus Christ - we look at the state of the Church and then look at ourselves

and wonder, just how long we can keep going

but the message of the gospel is this:

Christ is coming and He is near ! He is surely coming ! and if the day when the Lord Jesus comes again is near, then our troubles are not endless.

the violence, the injustice, death, of this earth will, be overcome completely.

So having this hope............

we must continue to endure, to work, to keep going through all the changes and chances

because Christ is coming and He is near ! He is surely coming !

on the other hand,

says Jesus, ‘things must happen but they do not mean the end has come’

so there is still time...........

This means there are still days ahead, and time enough for our faith to grow, for us to come to know

yet greater things about Jesus Christ, there is still time enough for our trust to deepen within us

There is still time enough for us to work and continue to work

to pray for the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and His people to

be renewed. The harvest, you see, is bigger, far bigger than we think,

So big that we don’t have enough helpers to reach those men and women who are longing and ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ,

So, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews says:

let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. ......He did not give up...........Think of what He went through,, how He endured such opposition...............so that you will not grow weary and lose heart,

Do not let yourselves become discouraged and give up.............

AMEN.