Theme: Christ’s Return
I don’t know if you know anything about mobile
phones, or if you even have one. But there are mobile phone wars going on out there
at the moment between Nokia, the biggest phone company in the world.........
and the Apple iPhone.
And the Apple iPhone seems to be winning. Like
the wee boy who is always left after the teams are picked in the playground,
Nokia now seems to be many peoples last choice.
Mike Isaac who is an
expert on mobile phones, has written an article titled: How Nokia Can Stave Off
Irrelevance. What does he suggest ? Be Very, Very
Different, he says. Markedly different from
competitors........ from the mobile phone case,
to its colour, he advises Nokia to come up with a completely different design
from everybody else...... distinctive ”
You know, from this, we can learn a few things
about the age we live in. Today, shoppers, consumers will change brands and
fashions and designs, almost by the day. This is what this age is like. For
many, anything that is not absolutely new, made, sold today, is an irrelevance.
That’s the way things are for many nowadays.
So, its not
surprising that if they ever give it a thought you’ll hear many today say that
Christian faith is an irrelevance. Interviewed on the street, people will
probably say, I never go to Church: I
mean, look at today’s problems, the financial crisis, the banks, strikes........
science, laptops, iPads the
internet and all the rest..... what does Christianity
have to say to all that ? This age, always moving to the next new design, next
new thing........
This is the age we as the Church live
in............. but the Bible is quite clear, as the Church we must not get
drawn into this age or any age.........
Instead, there comes a call, to stay
different, to stay distinctive. From the gospel we heard this morning, a
challenge, a challenge from the Lord Jesus to us as the Church............ that
in an age like this, the Lord’s challenge to us, His command to us is: we are
to watch !
That’s the Lord’s challenge to us. Here is the
Word of the Lord Jesus:
32 "No-one knows that day or hour, not even
the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but
only the Father. 33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know
when the time will come. “keep watch - whether
in the evening, or at
It is this, among
other things that is to make us distinctive, different as the Church
the sense that the future is coming near, the time is
near when Jesus will come again..............
And so, it is not surprising to find that a
sense of this is to be found right throughout the New Testament, the
The New Testament declares it on almost every
second page,
that Jesus Christ is
coming again.
This was the air that the apostles breathed,
and the
the early believers
lived, looking towards the far horizon with expectation,
waking up at dawn they
wondered if this was the day.
if this was the last
day, dawning………
They, the believers, the Church lived in the
reality that Christ will return…..
that the time is
near.................
they knew that
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, the sorrows, of this earth will, be overcome completely.
So having this hope............said the
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 !
that’s what makes the Church
different, distinctive.........
that’s what makes the Church
stand out from all else...........
Twenty centuries have passed but as each year
passes the challenge remains for us as a Church. The challenge of the Lord
Jesus Christ, His Word is ‘Watch’ !
Once the Pharisees put a question to the Lord
Jesus,
It’s this ‘when will these things happen - ?’
they asked Jesus.....
We read of this in Luke 17: so the Lord Jesus
set it all out: the times past and times
present and future, the times of the kingdom.............
What would happen first ?
Well, Jesus said something very direct, brief,
short, to the point.
First, before all else, that He Himself would
suffer many things and be rejected
that as each moment of His
Holy Life passed, in lowly loving service,
an ominous, dark,
opposition from men, would grow towards the Lord Jesus
which, in the passing of
time would become more ruthless, more violent
read the gospels and you
will see the record of all this...........
what the prophet Isaiah
had said would happen, to the Servant of the Lord, Jesus,
when He came, that He would be despised and rejected, a
man of sorrows, familiar with suffering............
So, we see as
we look at Jesus that His suffering and rejection gather in intensity
until we come to the day when at the Cross, the pride of the world, the
opposition, the rejection, contempt for the kingdom, of the living God, all
these come to a moment of the most absolute sinful intensity the Lord Jesus is
crucified
But three days later, we see, out of death,
the triumph of the world, and its pride and power, God’s power
! He has raised His Son to life. The Father’s great Yes
! to the life of His Son Jesus, the perfect,
lowly, loving life of Jesus, who cared for, and who loved the outcasts, and the
sinners, and the losers, and healed the old, and the young, and comforted the
bereaved, and touched the leper, and
brought peace to the distraught..........sought and found the lost. The resurrection of
Jesus is the Father’s great Yes ! to the life of His
Son Jesus, the perfect, lowly, loving life of Jesus. And so this lowly, loving
life is shown to be greater than any other power or force in this world !
And then from the presence of the living God,
from heaven, the Risen Lord Jesus
sends, pours out the Holy
Spirit, so that receiving the Spirit we receive the life of Jesus in ourselves,
equipping us, renewing us from day to day......
the Lord Jesus sharing
His own life with us,
drawing us closer to Himself
and to one another......... by the Spirit.
Now, the point is this, all of this is no
secret, the Lord Jesus set all this out for us, told us how time, and the
gospel would unfold, shows us how it is
ordered, so that we can understand something of these times, times past, time
present.........
So what of times future ?
We read of it in Mark 13 this morning...............
Jesus
tells us: when
He comes, His
return will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one
end to the other, light, His light will fill the world from one end to the
other....... and He gives us this challenge as the Church........ to watch........
and what makes us
distinct and different is that, from the New Testament, from the word of the
Lord Jesus we know exactly the time in which we are placed,
from where we stand now,
Looking back, we see the Cross, and see that
Jesus Christ has taken the sin, the guilt and the judgment that was ours, and has dealt with it once and for all.
Looking back we see the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus, where life on a different plane from anything we know, or can guess
or imagine on this wearied, sinful, troubled earth, life began anew.
Looking around now we see with deep concern
now, how weak the Church here is becoming, how weak life in Christ looks when
compared to the great powers of the world. The massive indifference around us
of people today, how weak we feel ourselves to be. How weak love for others,
life in the Spirit, life in Christ seem in the face of the real world.
But we should remember where we
stand........Peter once said to a listening crowd
God has
raised this very Jesus from death, He has been raised to the right hand
side of God His Father… ….. know for sure, that this
Jesus, whom you crucified, is the one that God has made Lord and Saviour: and He is coming
again.
That’s the real future..........
and His word to us is
Watch..........
the reality is that He
will come again, and that today we are one day nearer that Day.
when the undending busy cares of life will be at an end, the labours and worries, the losses, the sorrows, the
sinfulness. That day what deepest joy to see the Lord Jesus whose Cross, whose
Resurrection, whose Spirit we know - but to see the Lord Jesus face to face !
in the world made new,
through Jesus Christ
There came a moment when the apostle Paul knew
his life was ebbing away
He knew the sands of time were fast running
out the irreversible years were carrying him away. But Paul’s attitude is
different. He looks beyond now, beyond the sands of time,
to the moment when all
the mysteries of life that troubled us will make sense,
where all the brokenness
that so damaged life, will be gone, healed for ever,
He looks beyond to that moment of meeting at
last with the Lord Jesus.........
Yes, he writes, now, in this moment we see but
a poor reflection as in a mirror,
then, we shall see the Lord
Jesus face to face,
but here and now,
the word of the Lord is
Watch ! “keep
watch - whether in the evening, or at