When the predictions become reality
Commentary
Most of the time, I think the predictions of the Bible, especially those related to the coming of the end-time, are shrugged off as so distant that they have little effect on the thinking of most run-of-the-mill Christians.
We leave that kind of speculation to the fringe groups who love to play with passages of scripture that talk about such things, and are filled with images of the sun and moon turning to blood, and other-worldly horsemen rampaging over the earth, and beasts looking like something out of a special effects studio besieging this planet, filling whomever might be left alive with terror. We are more interested with, and confident in, preaching and teaching about this world and what God may be doing with it this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week or month, for heaven's sake!
Didn't Jesus say, "Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own troubles be sufficient for the day (Matthew 6:34)." So let's get on with those issues of life and death which are up close, and which we can do something about now!
Still, there is that haunting inner feeling that there is a dimension of time we ought to be concerned about, even though it is not front-page stuff in our newspapers or television nightly news. Everything comes to an end, that we know, but do not see as particularly ominous, especially when we are young. And though we keep it packed pretty well in the back of our consciousness most of the time, when we listen to, or read, passages like these thrust before us today, we are driven to look at them, and think about them and what they mean for us today, as well as for us when the end-time does come, before we die or after it.
As all three of these lessons proclaim, those days are not exactly idyllic, even for the believers in God. "By fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, upon all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many," Isaiah warns us. "Blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet," shall sweep the earth when it happens, the writer of Hebrews declares. People who have survived the ferocity of combat can tell you that the horror of it is so staggering in the fear and panic it creates, and embeds in the psyche, that they are never the same once it is over. And in the conflagration that will usher in the end-time most people will not be survivors, Luke reports. Locked doors, and orders to depart from him, will be given by the God who was forever urging people to come to him!
Sobering and threatening as this day can be, the purpose of it is to get us "grooved" to focusing on preparing for the inevitable and predicted. Tomorrow will not always come! Another chance to accept the proffer of God to let him gather us into the kingdom will not be laid before us times without end! "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon (Isaiah 55:6-7)."
OUTLINE I
Fire, fear or worship?
Isaiah 66:16-23
A. v. 16. The "coming of the Lord" is not always good news. That is especially so for those who have had no time for him prior to his arrival. It even can mean their destruction. Luther called judgment and punishment by God his foreign or other work. He is, at the center, a God of mercy. But it is on this other work that Isaiah focuses his opening words.
B. vv. 17-19a. God has an enormous memory as well as a gigantic heart. What we do is seen by him and remembered. Sinners often delude themselves into thinking that our misdeeds slip by undetected. But God knows their works and their thoughts. A gathering and reckoning time is inevitable, and foretold. Why do we not hear more about that in most of our Christian gatherings anymore? Is it out of date, or too other worldly to be relevant for those who live for the moment and excuse themselves from every corrupt act? It is a dangerous physician who will not warn her/his patients when a lifestyle is embraced that can kill them. God is too loving to let us go on without doing that.
C. vv. 19b-20. God is going to do all he can to save the wayward. He is dispatching those who will live to gather them and bring them to him to see his glory (in Hebrew cavod, "weight, power, which can be, and usually is, used for human beings rather than against them.") The sign he is setting to guide them, and the encounter God will have with them, are intended to turn their hearts to him so they can be rescued from destruction.
D. vv. 21-23. A new heaven and a new earth are being prepared for the new age after the end-time has run its course. In it all who have accepted the efforts the Lord has made to save them will remain before him, along with their descendants. That imagery is the Hebraic way of describing life that has no end. What a gift for those who are wise enough to get ready to accept it. What a tragedy for those who turn down the last chance they may have to enter it!
OUTLINE II
They, you and Jesus!
Hebrews 12:18-24
A. vv. 18-21. Not every road leads to the same place, nor are all sincere folks going to be saved. Jesus spoke about there being sheep and goats, those who would enter the kingdom and those who would be cast out. Neither would, at some future date after the end-time, have their status changed. There were, and still are, those individuals Hebrews says, entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. Minds made up, they need no Savior! They see themselves as having nothing to be saved from, or for. "So, knock it off," as I had a couple tell me as I sat in their family room, trying to get them to let Jesus reenter their lives. "We have learned to need nobody but each other. And we are doing very well, as you can see!"
B. vv. 22-24. But there are the others, whose names are enrolled in heaven because they have been sprinkled by the blood of the new covenant. They have held fast to the promise made to them by Jesus Christ that if they believe, hang on for dear life to assurances they have been given, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39)." To them, the assembly of the first-born, the end-time is a prelude, even if a trying one, to a glorious meeting with the One they have longed to see with all their hearts!
OUTLINE III
When the last will be first ... and forever!
Luke 13:22-30
A. v. 22. Jesus "went on his way through towns and villages, teaching...," Luke reports. And that was the latest demonstration of how intent and determined God always has been to get his message out that he loves, and wants to have close to him, all of his children. What loving parent wants less? Without all of the children close, even if separated by miles, the heart of a parent is never really full, or at ease. God is always the seeker and we the found! And he is continually on the road to close the gap between him and those who have put distance between themselves and their Lord.
B. vv. 23-28. But what of those who will not open the door for him even once God has reached them? And what will be the consequences for them if they persist in their recalcitrance until time runs out and they die, or the end-time arrives, with its cut-off of the opportunity to reconsider? Depart from me will be the words they will hear for the first time from the One on the other side of the door they have kept barred to him. Others, who heard the call to let him in far later than they did, and who answered it, will have a place with the persistent chaser-down of a God, while the first-called will perish. What a tragedy! What a suicide! And salvation had been at their door ... often.
We leave that kind of speculation to the fringe groups who love to play with passages of scripture that talk about such things, and are filled with images of the sun and moon turning to blood, and other-worldly horsemen rampaging over the earth, and beasts looking like something out of a special effects studio besieging this planet, filling whomever might be left alive with terror. We are more interested with, and confident in, preaching and teaching about this world and what God may be doing with it this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week or month, for heaven's sake!
Didn't Jesus say, "Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own troubles be sufficient for the day (Matthew 6:34)." So let's get on with those issues of life and death which are up close, and which we can do something about now!
Still, there is that haunting inner feeling that there is a dimension of time we ought to be concerned about, even though it is not front-page stuff in our newspapers or television nightly news. Everything comes to an end, that we know, but do not see as particularly ominous, especially when we are young. And though we keep it packed pretty well in the back of our consciousness most of the time, when we listen to, or read, passages like these thrust before us today, we are driven to look at them, and think about them and what they mean for us today, as well as for us when the end-time does come, before we die or after it.
As all three of these lessons proclaim, those days are not exactly idyllic, even for the believers in God. "By fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, upon all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many," Isaiah warns us. "Blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet," shall sweep the earth when it happens, the writer of Hebrews declares. People who have survived the ferocity of combat can tell you that the horror of it is so staggering in the fear and panic it creates, and embeds in the psyche, that they are never the same once it is over. And in the conflagration that will usher in the end-time most people will not be survivors, Luke reports. Locked doors, and orders to depart from him, will be given by the God who was forever urging people to come to him!
Sobering and threatening as this day can be, the purpose of it is to get us "grooved" to focusing on preparing for the inevitable and predicted. Tomorrow will not always come! Another chance to accept the proffer of God to let him gather us into the kingdom will not be laid before us times without end! "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon (Isaiah 55:6-7)."
OUTLINE I
Fire, fear or worship?
Isaiah 66:16-23
A. v. 16. The "coming of the Lord" is not always good news. That is especially so for those who have had no time for him prior to his arrival. It even can mean their destruction. Luther called judgment and punishment by God his foreign or other work. He is, at the center, a God of mercy. But it is on this other work that Isaiah focuses his opening words.
B. vv. 17-19a. God has an enormous memory as well as a gigantic heart. What we do is seen by him and remembered. Sinners often delude themselves into thinking that our misdeeds slip by undetected. But God knows their works and their thoughts. A gathering and reckoning time is inevitable, and foretold. Why do we not hear more about that in most of our Christian gatherings anymore? Is it out of date, or too other worldly to be relevant for those who live for the moment and excuse themselves from every corrupt act? It is a dangerous physician who will not warn her/his patients when a lifestyle is embraced that can kill them. God is too loving to let us go on without doing that.
C. vv. 19b-20. God is going to do all he can to save the wayward. He is dispatching those who will live to gather them and bring them to him to see his glory (in Hebrew cavod, "weight, power, which can be, and usually is, used for human beings rather than against them.") The sign he is setting to guide them, and the encounter God will have with them, are intended to turn their hearts to him so they can be rescued from destruction.
D. vv. 21-23. A new heaven and a new earth are being prepared for the new age after the end-time has run its course. In it all who have accepted the efforts the Lord has made to save them will remain before him, along with their descendants. That imagery is the Hebraic way of describing life that has no end. What a gift for those who are wise enough to get ready to accept it. What a tragedy for those who turn down the last chance they may have to enter it!
OUTLINE II
They, you and Jesus!
Hebrews 12:18-24
A. vv. 18-21. Not every road leads to the same place, nor are all sincere folks going to be saved. Jesus spoke about there being sheep and goats, those who would enter the kingdom and those who would be cast out. Neither would, at some future date after the end-time, have their status changed. There were, and still are, those individuals Hebrews says, entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. Minds made up, they need no Savior! They see themselves as having nothing to be saved from, or for. "So, knock it off," as I had a couple tell me as I sat in their family room, trying to get them to let Jesus reenter their lives. "We have learned to need nobody but each other. And we are doing very well, as you can see!"
B. vv. 22-24. But there are the others, whose names are enrolled in heaven because they have been sprinkled by the blood of the new covenant. They have held fast to the promise made to them by Jesus Christ that if they believe, hang on for dear life to assurances they have been given, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39)." To them, the assembly of the first-born, the end-time is a prelude, even if a trying one, to a glorious meeting with the One they have longed to see with all their hearts!
OUTLINE III
When the last will be first ... and forever!
Luke 13:22-30
A. v. 22. Jesus "went on his way through towns and villages, teaching...," Luke reports. And that was the latest demonstration of how intent and determined God always has been to get his message out that he loves, and wants to have close to him, all of his children. What loving parent wants less? Without all of the children close, even if separated by miles, the heart of a parent is never really full, or at ease. God is always the seeker and we the found! And he is continually on the road to close the gap between him and those who have put distance between themselves and their Lord.
B. vv. 23-28. But what of those who will not open the door for him even once God has reached them? And what will be the consequences for them if they persist in their recalcitrance until time runs out and they die, or the end-time arrives, with its cut-off of the opportunity to reconsider? Depart from me will be the words they will hear for the first time from the One on the other side of the door they have kept barred to him. Others, who heard the call to let him in far later than they did, and who answered it, will have a place with the persistent chaser-down of a God, while the first-called will perish. What a tragedy! What a suicide! And salvation had been at their door ... often.
