Coming of the Lord 1975

From Matthew 24, verses 36 through 39. But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in until the day when Noah entered the ark. And they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Doubtless, there's never been a generation of believers who have been able to find it easier to accept our Lord's warnings and promises concerning his coming than this one. Because the atmosphere around us is heavy with foreboding. We look in all directions and we see signs being fulfilled.

We see in the Middle East, the city of Jerusalem becoming the focus of all kinds of pressures that are being really foretold. And now it's unfolding before our eyes. Famine, pestilence, and the threat of world chaos all the time facing us.

So that now it becomes quite easy to take him seriously when he begins to tell us about his coming and about the breakdown of all the order in this world preceding him. And we find that all our Lord's teachings begin to come into focus about his return. And we see the world as a sinking ship moving through the darkness.

And next to it comes this little rescue ship. And those who are willing to do so move from the ship that's on its way down to this ridiculous little rescue ship. And the two ships continue through the darkness toward the harbor, which is unseen.

And then suddenly day breaks like in a tropical dawn. All of a sudden it's there. And in that instant, the sinking ship disappears beneath the surface.

And the rescue ship moves right into a harbor of glory. And Jesus continuously says, watch. You don't know the day or the hour.

Teaches us the praise, thy kingdom come. Let your loins be good about you and your lamps burning, yourselves like men who wait for their master to return from the marriage feast, so that when he comes and knocks, you may open to him at once. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.

And yet, most people who respond to these warnings about the end at all seem to do so in a temporary way. They're like a man who wakes up in a hotel that's on fire and he hears all the screaming and the silence. And for about three seconds, he has a panicky stare in his face.

And then for some absurd reason, he falls back to sleep again. And how many people that we have known, and this has perhaps happened to some of us, you know, who are singing with dewy eyes, you know, we'll see the face of Jesus and then we'll leave a few years ago, you know, and now they've gone right back into the world with a vengeance and they're bitter and they say, they told us that Jesus was coming back within five years and he hasn't come yet. Well, it's one thing to go to meetings where you're aroused and shaken concerning the end for a few days, or to read books, and there are many that are going to get you worked up about this for a few weeks.

It's quite another thing to learn to live in the light of the continuous presence of the Lord who is on his way. Even while you have to move through the shadows all the time, you know, the Lord is coming and the hour is late and the ship is sinking. Those are all facts which everybody can say amen to with his head.

See, but to translate this into truth that becomes living for us, we have to come to the place, we have to bring ourselves to the place where we have learned to live in the light of the presence of the coming one now so that we draw our strength from him, our satisfaction from him, and we listen to him and we worship him and we adore him all the time. We don't know too much about what was going on in Noah's day, but of this we can be sure that there must have been something interior for Noah that enabled him to keep building that ridiculous ark on dry land and to be preaching righteousness all the time while everybody's making fun of him and laughing at him, making fun of his family. He goes right on doing this.

It would have been impossible for him to carry on like this if he had not somehow had a vision, you know, of the unseen glory of the coming judgment that was to come to this earth. Somehow he lived in that and we've been going into Elijah on Wednesday nights and we can see that Elijah breathed the same air everybody else does, ate the same kind of food, he dwelt and shared all that when there was no rain, there was no rain for him too. But Elijah, the difference with Elijah, the unique thing about him was that he stood before God and he learned how to do that.

And likewise with us, we have to get to the place where we're no longer every once in a while shaking ourselves into a wakened state so that we can, you know, once again begin to live the life we're supposed to live and then fall back asleep again. We have to get to the place where all the time we are standing in the presence of the one who is on his way. Ten virgins went forth to meet the bridegroom and all ten knew their Bibles and all ten apparently were born again.

Five were foolish and five were wise. The ones who were foolish had their lamps but they had no oil with them and the wise had oils and oil in their vessels with their lamps. In other words, the foolish had a vision of the coming of the bridegroom.

They saw that and it was a bright hope and it was a wonderful encouragement to them. But this did not last because it was based on a faith in a Lord who was out there but who was not in here. Whereas the ones who had oil in their vessels with their lamps had faith in a Lord who was both out there and in here and as they waited for the fulfillment of the promise, they all the time enjoyed his presence.

They worshiped him, they waited upon him, they were renewed by him all the time. They were like Moses and Elijah and Noah. You know, while they're waiting for their fulfillment, the unraveling of God's promises, they are at the same time experiencing God's presence.

And so we need to do the same. We need to draw on this present experience of the Lord all the time now. Don't expect some kind of an excitement to hold you.

You have to have an awareness of his presence right now as you go through these things. Before our Lord left to go back to the headquarters of the universe, he gave us two promises. One, I'm going to come back as the Messiah and I'm going to rule, I'm going to vindicate the word of God, and I'm going to put down everything that exalts itself against the glory of my father.

The other promise is that I'm going to come to you day after day, every day until that moment. Lo, I am with you always. I will not leave you comfortless.

I will come to you. Now, in order for us to be where we need to be when the first promise is fulfilled, when he comes in his glory, we have to live in that second promise. We have to continuously experience and worship and live in the presence of Jesus now.

Who is this oil but Jesus himself as he comes to us in the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the abiding presence of Jesus all the time, enabling us, you know, to constantly have our eyes on God and see everything that happens around us in terms of God. Now, when the midnight hour strikes, that oil is going to be scarce and people are going to be scrambling in all directions to find it. But now, at this moment, there has never been a time when the oil of his presence has been more available, more abundant, more eager to come to those whose hearts are open.

And the oil of the presence of the Spirit of the living Christ hovers over this assembly right now, just looking for hearts that are receptive, that are broken, that are contrite, that are teachable, that are merciful. And wherever he finds any kind of hint of an opening, he comes and he will come to us. Jesus will come to us and manifest himself to us in the power of his resurrection here.

First of all, if we are willing to be buried and stay buried in our baptism with him on the day of Pentecost, at the end of Peter's sermon, they said, what shall we do, brethren? And Peter said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sin, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You know, and God is going to quibble about the amount of water or the formula, the words that are used, or the time it took place. The issue is, am I willing to allow my life to be brought under the death of my Lord? Am I willing to allow my baptism to become my death? Am I prepared to be buried with him by baptism into death, and to come to the utter end of myself, and to live at that end all the time? The problem with most of us is that we are not abiding in the covenant of our baptism.

You know, we're not down under the water. The one who should be dead under that water is very much alive, walking around and doing all kinds of things. He crawls out of his grave.

She crawls out of her grave every morning, and off we go again. And the Christ who should be living in us, we have left behind in that grave, and we have to make that switch. We have to come down into that death.

It means, Lord, here I am. I'm at the end of myself. I give up.

I abandon myself to you. I even turn my plans over to you. I just want to come to the place where you are everything to me, and I am nothing.

And so that these are no longer words, but so that this becomes my experience. The circumcision, total circumcision of the life. A cutting off of self.

That I know myself to be crucified with Christ. That it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. So that the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me and gave himself for me.

So that I can truly say, for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Secondly, we will begin to experience the oil in our vessels. The indwelling, burning, shining, renewing presence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, if we are willing to draw our satisfaction only from him.

The tragedy in the days of Noah is that people were marrying, giving in marriage, eating and drinking, all legitimate and good things. But they were making that their life. It was from this that they drew their satisfaction.

It was for this that they lived. Now Noah did those things too. He ate and he drank and he married and he gave in marriage.

But that's not where his life was. That wasn't his joy. His joy was gone.

And so with us, we eat and we drink and we marry and are given in marriage and all these blessings of our children and our grandchildren and all the rest, that's beautiful. But if that becomes my life, then my life is vanity. And now I'm called, and each of us is called, to turn away from trying to suck satisfaction out of this and turn to him, who's worth more than much fine gold and who is sweeter than honey in the honeycomb and who is our shield and our exceeding great reward.

And we begin to follow after Jesus for the same reason that Peter and the disciples did. They weren't chasing after Jesus to get saved. They didn't even know what that meant at that point.

They were chasing after Jesus and trying to be where he was because they knew that where he was was life. And they were hungry for that life. And they went where he was to obtain that life and to drink it in.

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have come to know and believe that you are the Holy One of God. God helped us to come to the place where we don't even move out into one day until we have first, once again, renewed our relationship with you. And he becomes life to us and we draw on that.

Now if we have to be late or whatever we have to do, if we have to get up two hours earlier in order to seek his face and don't move until we begin to know once again that he's there, what a change will come over our lives when he becomes our satisfaction. And finally, Jesus will visit us in the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that will absolutely satisfy and fill not only us but those who have to do with us because our cups will just run over. When we are willing to get bread to feed the hungry ones around us only from him.

Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him and he will answer from within. Do not bother me. The door is now shut.

My children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend yet because of his importunity who will rise and give him whatever he needs and I tell you ask and it will be given you.

Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you for everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks it will be open. And how especially true this is of our need for bread to get someone else.

Surely we're aware of the fact that we are surrounded by staggering needs. People are coming to us with problems that we can't even begin to understand much less cope with. They're reaching out and they're saying help me and we're looking to ourselves to see if we can find something to minister to those needs and if we're honest at all we find nothing there.

So what do we do? I see we have three choices. First we can fake it and pretend that we have a bread to feed their hungry hearts that we know very well we don't have and some of us are doing this and we're ministering out of our soulish energy to give that which will become for these people's debt. We drive up in front of their house and we open the door of our truck and it's empty and we go through the motions of carrying bread in there anyway.

Second thing we can do is sit down and mope over the fact that we have nothing. People are coming to you for help when you say sorry I don't I can't help you man you know and I don't have anything to give the bible study tonight. Sorry the lord hasn't given me anything today and we think that's a legitimate legitimate excuse there may be days when that's right but how many times people are coming to you and to me with crying needs and we come out with that I'm sorry brother I don't have it.

Or the third thing we can do realizing these these needs that are pressing on us these these voices that are calling out to us for help and that we have nothing we turn to our lord and we cry out for him for bread and to his body and we don't give them any peace until we get it he tells us to do this and how many of us instead of doing that we do everything else we're running around in circles we're going up and down we're giving advice to everybody and his brother we're everything except the one thing that will help us god help us to go and turn to him for the bread and knock on his door and don't quit knocking until it opens what are you doing what am I doing what are we doing with these needs that are coming at us are we indeed pastoring our lord for the living bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world himself and are we manifesting god's mercy to these people by giving them this bread or are we settling for something less or rushing ahead with something that we can try out of our own pens the lord whom you see will suddenly come to his temple the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight behold he is coming says the the only ones who are going to stand when he appears are those who are learning to stand before him now his spirit broods over us all closer to us than our own breath seeking for us to turn to open to break to admit the truth about ourselves and to allow the doors of our hearts to fling open to throw themselves wide and to stay open lord god how can we talk about a messiah who's coming with any authority bringing encouragement to anybody at all unless we are walking with that messiah now heavenly father show us those places in our lives where we are clutching on to doctrines and ideas divorced from the person of jesus himself experiences and gifts divorced from the person of jesus himself theories of church organization lord god bring us to the place this day where our eyes are open and we behold him who alone oh god is our life we ask it in his name