Col No.23 Facing the Advent

The eighth psalm speaks of the wonder of God in creation and what ultimately men and women are destined for. The psalm has a prophetic ring about it and it speaks of an age which is yet to be. The commentary on this psalm is found in Hebrews 2. After we've read Psalm 8, I want to read to you a few verses from Hebrews 2 in the New International Version of the Bible, but join me please in the reading of Psalm 8. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Who has set Thy glory above the heavens? Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength because of Thine enemies, that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Now, as I say in Hebrews 2, a comment is made about the future fulfilment of the last verses of that psalm. And from the fifth verse of Hebrews 2, we hear the writer saying this. It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking.

But there is a place where someone has testified what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him. You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honour, and put everything under his feet.

In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone in bringing many sons to glory. We turn again to Colossians and the third chapter.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. I know that this is the fourth time that I am bringing your attention to that last verse in Colossians 3, and yet even at the constraint of sounding a little rude, I don't apologize, because I think that nothing is more important in these days than that Christian people be informed and cling on to the hope of the second advent of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that second to the understanding of the doctrine of conversion in importance is this teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ shall physically return to this world and he shall set up his visible government upon it.

Now largely speaking, although the established church repeats the creed once or twice on a Sunday and during the weekdays, this idea of the return of the Lord Jesus is largely discounted, and I would argue that the church is as she is, and Christian people are as they are in their condition of spiritual anemia, largely because of the ignorance of this particular doctrine. We have almost conned ourselves into thinking in these days that the new Jerusalem shall be brought in by mandate of the United Nations, somehow by a tidal wave of international proportions, where democracy shall be the political philosophy of the world. We shall usher in the new age, and nothing, of course, can be further from the truth.

The Lord Jesus twinned both the concepts of optimism and pessimism in respect to the future of this world. He makes it very clear in the Gospel of Matthew that things are going to get worse, that this world and its present order, this world as she now is, is on a collision course, is doomed. In Matthew 24, Jesus said, Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For a nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows. And so he goes on. Not a very optimistic picture at all, or so it seems when you just read that passage of Scripture and attendant parallel passages.

You get the same idea in Paul's writings, it's permeating the whole of his epistles, this idea of the increase of iniquity, of sin becoming more concentrated. So he writes to the Thessalonians in the second epistle, Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day, the day of the return of Jesus, shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.

And so he goes on. Now, that does not mean to say that as Christian people we should turn our eyes from the affairs of this world and say, well, it's on a collision course with the purposes of God, therefore we've got nothing at all to contribute towards the upholding of law and order. We're not to be engaged in humanitarian action.

No, this would be opting out of our responsibilities as citizens. But we are to realize that things are pretty bad, and things indeed shall get worse. I'm not an addict to the media, but my wife will tell you that one of the programs that I consistently listen to, probably just because it comes at an appropriately convenient time on the BBC, is that which goes out under the name of Any Questions.

And amongst the panel in the rebroadcast yesterday afternoon was that Labour politician Shirley Williams, and the Labour Party lost a lot, I think, when she was not returned to Parliament. But she had this to say in respect of the world situation. She was commenting particularly on the refugee problem and the immorality of some of the nations involved in this in the Far East.

She said that we live in an increasingly brutal world. We are witnessing the breakdown of civilization. Well, they're taken from the lips of a politician, and there are many other social commentators that one could have referred to.

Are the very sentiments which the New Testament warns us of concerning what is to happen in the end of time. There is this pessimism, but over against that, there is also a glorious optimism. Things will get worse, proverbially, before things shall get better.

And the Lord Jesus Christ was telling his disciples and then by extension ourselves that when things start to move towards the final period of human history, the redeemed community is not to be terrified, not to be troubled, we're not to fear when this sort of thing happens, when there is the increase and advance of knowledge. When like cancerous growth you get activity in the industrial world, causing as a result of its evolution, those in the third world to get poorer and poorer, when there is an imbalance between the nations, when there is talk of war, when there are horrific weapons and the capability is within the hands of men and women to destroy civilization as we now know it, says the Lord Jesus, don't be over afraid. Why? Well, because the Lord God omnipotent reigns.

He is working out his purposes and the day is coming when the Lord Jesus Christ shall appear in glory, when he shall judge the world, when he shall cleanse and purge this old earth and set up his kingdom of righteousness, where the knowledge of God shall be spread abroad as the waters cover the seas. Well, here is the apostle in the fourth verse of this third chapter of the Colossians and he is underpinning what the Lord Jesus has said so often in his ministry. He is telling us about the return of the Saviour.

When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. And he's writing to that Christian community and perhaps they've been going through some great problems. Indeed, as we've been looking through the first and second chapter, we're aware of some of the pressures that are placed upon them.

And says the apostle, keep this very much at the forefront of your thinking that Jesus Christ shall return. Well, some of these things I've been touching on in the last three Sundays I've had opportunity to minister to you. And my purpose this morning is just to gather together, not to engage in any new teaching, but to gather together some of the sheaves that we have stacked in our memories already.

And just to underline one or two aspects of this teaching so that we shall easily bring it back to the forefront of our thinking, particularly in times of conflict and depression. So I want to lift out three particular aspects of teaching found in this passage and in parallel passages of Scripture for you to hold on to. How do you face the advent of Jesus? Well, how about this for starters, you face it with eager expectation, with an enthusiasm.

When Christ who is our life shall appear, says the apostle, then shall ye appear with him in glory. And one can imagine that his pen is really working hard across the page as he writes this particular piece of Scripture and as he underpins all that the Lord Jesus has revealed. Those early Christians really went through a lot of difficulty.

And you know, when they met one another on the street, they didn't do what the typical Englishman does. Well, what do we do? We say, well, not nice weather today, is it? And someone else says, no, it's not nice weather, and that's about the subject, the total subject of our conversation, filling in what we already know. Well, that wasn't the case with the early church.

Here's this lady coming down the road, her son's been taken off by the Roman authorities. Perhaps she's lost her husband because of the persecution that's broken out in Colossae. And so what does one brother say to her as he meets her? Maranatha, the Lord is coming.

And that would stimulate her, that would help to encourage her in the faith, the Lord is coming. All right, she faces these tremendous family problems, these domestic circumstances, but Maranatha, the Lord is coming. The whole thinking was permeated with the notion of the advent.

And as I shall seek to show you, if you really have a full understanding of scriptural truth in this area, it will revolutionize your lifestyle. Those people who say doctrine and religious instruction have got very little to do with day-by-day living, just fail to understand completely the whole emphasis of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul is concerned to educate Christian people about the physical advent of the Lord Jesus and to bring them to a position of holy enthusiasm and expectation.

Brethren, he says to the church at Thessalonica in the fourth chapter of his first letter and the thirteenth verse, I would not have you to be ignorant concerning them which are asleep. And he goes on in the sixteenth verse, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another.

Comfort one another with these words. When did you last comfort somebody with the fact that Jesus is coming again? If you dared to put Maranatha on the end of a letter that you were writing to a friend these days instead of yours sincerely, you might be a little afraid that they would think you were some religious nut, or you've got some phobia. But unfortunately for us, it is very much to our disadvantage that we have lost to some extent at any rate, even in evangelical circles, the idea of the physical advent of the Lord, which should inspire us and we should not be afraid of being thought fanatical or a little bit obscure mentally simply because the horizon of our thinking is filled with the concept of the return of Jesus.

Says the apostle John as he's writing one of his great letters of encouragement to the Christians, behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We don't understand the phenomena.

We can't possibly conceive just what is going to happen when the Lord Jesus returns. When there shall be this tremendous transformation in our own bodies. When those who come with the Lord Jesus shall receive their glorified body and be prepared for the eternal age.

We can't philosophize upon it. We can't bring it down to logical deductions, but we know this, that when he shall appear, then we shall appear with him in glory, and we shall be like him. When Paul's writing to the church at Rome, and I'm going to quote from the RSV because the scripture is clearer in this particular reference.

In the eighth chapter of that epistle, Paul makes a reference to the world as we now know it, the created world, and he talks about the world groaning. You might like to turn to it in the AV or whatever version of the Bible you've got. I'm on Romans 8 verse 18, and I'll go on to the 19th verse.

I'll read the 18th to give you time to catch up with me. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

Did you get that? What does it mean? That this natural world is waiting for the manifestation of the redeemed community. At the moment, they can't always tell who are Christians and who are not Christians, but all that problem shall be completely resolved when the Lord Jesus comes. And even inanimate creation, says the apostle, waits in eager expectation.

It cranes its neck. That's the idea in the original language, for the manifestation of the sons of God. I'm going to come back to that passage in a moment, so keep your finger in it, though you may lose one or two fingers with a number of references I'll be giving you in a short time.

But here is the idea. Have you got it again? Looking forward, straining your neck. The whole of the inanimate world is doing this, says the apostle Paul.

And here are we poor Christians, unworthy, and we're reluctant to talk to our neighbour about the advent of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus. Here's a fisherman, Peter, just to give you another reference, and he's getting really worked up about this idea of the coming again of the Lord Jesus. He talks in the last chapter of the last epistle, which bears his name, of the advent of the Saviour.

In the ninth verse, the Lord is not slight concerning his promise, he says. And in the tenth verse, the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. But the twelfth is the one that I'm interested in at this point.

He spells out the attitude of Christian people towards this event, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord. This is how you should be, says Paul. Says Peter, getting really excited about it, looking for it, straining, craning your neck, wondering if today is the day when the Lord is coming.

How you to face the advent with an eager expectation. I am looking at the brightness, see it shineth from afar, of the clear and joyous beaming of the bright and morning star. Through the dark grey mists of morning do I see its glorious light.

Then away with every shadow of this sad and weary night, I am waiting for the coming of the Lord who died for me. All his words have thrilled my spirit. I will come again for thee.

I can almost hear his footfall at the threshold of the door. And my heart, my heart is yearning to be with him evermore. Then when Christ who is our life shall appear, so, says the apostle, shall you appear with him in glory.

How you to face the advent with an eager anticipation. And also recognizing this fact that is completely eclipsed from the thinking of many Christian people that at that day something phenomenal will happen in this world, in this universe. Not only shall we be glorified but there shall be the universal regeneration of the heavens and the earth.

It's Dr. Lloyd-Jones who says in one of his mighty epistles from Romans, as creation is tied to man, so that which happens in man is inevitably bound to happen to creation. I spent some time, did I not, in trying to show you that our conversion as it now is, our salvation as it now is, is not complete. I'm saved spiritually but my body still bears the marks of corruption.

It still deteriorates. I still need help in eyesight. Some of us need help in hearing.

And the older we get, the more problems we seem to have on the physical level. But the apostle says the day is coming when our body shall know redemption, when the laws of decay to which this body is subject shall be suspended, indeed completely obliterated, when we shall have a new and a glorified body like our Lord Jesus has. But did you not know this, my friend, that when the body is glorified, when the body is regenerated, renewed, so also shall be the world.

What happened when Adam sinned? Well, so many things, so many tragic situations were set into motion. But one that perhaps we overlook sometimes is this, that the inanimate world was affected by the disobedience of Adam. So come back to that place where you've still got your thumb or your finger in the Bible, Romans 8, and listen to what the apostle has to say from the 20th verse, and again I'm with the NIV.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope, that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the sons of God. What does that mean? The world is going to go through some cataclysmic process of change in a most remarkable way. Listen to what the Lord God says to Adam and Eve in respect of the world that He had created for them, Genesis chapter 3 and verse 17.

And unto Adam God said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life, thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for thus thou art, and unto thus shalt thou return.

The earth is cursed as a result of Adam's disobedience, and that world is to be purged by fire. We have not seen creation as it originally was, nor have we seen it, my dear friend, as one day it shall be. You may at times be brought face to face with the marvel of the Creator's handiwork which is still in evidence.

You may be moved by the mountains that are majestic in Switzerland, by the tremendous sunsets that they have there in the tip of South Africa. You may sometimes feel that nature itself resplendently conveys the glories of God. But there's the other side to nature, what the philosophers call distaleological surges, the earthquake, the floods.

There in the basin of the Ganges, the Bengalis, endeavoring to survive, knowing full well that ere long that river shall flood again and there'll be enormous loss of life. The eruption of a volcano, the earthquake which cannot be controlled. There is the law of decay and death, of pollution within our world, weeds which grow up all over the place and man has to battle against them, fungi, viruses, all these sorts of things.

They're within the inanimate world but were not there as God originally created it. Now, says Paul, writing to the church at Rome, this inanimate creation groans for its own redemption. I suggested that you get perhaps something of this even in the very cycles of nature.

From the death of winter you move into the new life of spring, then on into the glory of summer and it seems as though nature has arrived. This is what it intended to be. And then autumn comes and winter again.

Death follows life in an unending cycle, or so it seems. But the Bible says that was not God's original intention for this earth. And a new day is coming when this creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

If that doesn't stir your heart, then I don't know what will. Death, sickness, decay, all that contributes to the problems in this world are to be excluded. Says the apostle Peter, to go back to his letter, as he's writing about these things in the last epistle that bears his name, the Lord God shall create a new heaven and a new earth.

Listen to him in the eleventh verse of that second epistle and the third chapter. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved. What manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.

Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. There's a new day coming, a new day which is yet to dawn, when righteousness shall be seen around the renovated earth. Listen to Isaiah's prophecy and the thirty-fifth chapter, and there he makes reference in part to the conditions that shall exist.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Then shall the lame man leap as an heart, the tongue of the dumb sing, for in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert, and the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water. No lion, verse nine, shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon.

It shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Go back to the eleventh chapter, again still in Isaiah's prophecy, and what do you discover? You hear the prophet in the ninth verse, or rather in the fifth and sixth verses saying, the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed their young ones, shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

And so it goes on, and one could go through the prophetic scriptures picking out these passages which speak of a world that you have never experienced, that I have never experienced, and you go on into the Gospels and then finally through to the book of Revelation and you see John with his tremendous vision of God's tomorrow, speaking of an age in which death and Hades have been abolished, a time when the tabernacle of God shall dwell with men, when tears shall be wiped away, when there shall be no more sorrow, no more crying, for all the corruption and the things that have engendered to bondage and problem in this age as we now know it shall be finally and completely abolished. Hebrews 12 and verse 26 speaks of God shaking the heavens and the earth once again. There is to come this time of the renovation, the renewal of all things.

Why is this necessary? It's necessary, my friend, for this reason, that if the work of Jesus is to be seen to be glorious and finally complete, then all which sin brought about in terms of havoc and destruction has to be obliterated and wiped from the face of the globe. I've known in my heart the power of the Lord Jesus, praise be to His name, cleansing me from all sin. And one day this body which is still subject to the law of corruption and decay shall know a new body, a glorious body.

This earthly shall put on the image of the heavenly, this corruptible shall become incorruptible. But my friend, so shall be the case with the world. Paradise lost shall be regained.

That which was affected by the devil centuries ago shall be completely undone and what God intended for the human race shall be seen. There are those affected by spiritism in their theological thinking in the Christian church today who don't appreciate this. They believe in some sort of resurrection but we'll all be spooks, we'll all be phantoms, we'll all be ghosts, we'll live in some non-tangible universe.

But the Bible doesn't say that. It says that we shall have a body like unto His glorious body. It says that the world shall be renovated, renewed, recreated.

It says that the age that is yet to be shall be so wonderful that there shall be nothing to stop the tabernacle of God in the heavens coming down on earth so that there shall be heaven on earth. There's a new age coming, a new era which is to dawn. So says the apostle when he's writing to the church at Colossae.

Take comfort in these things. When He who is our life shall appear, so also shall we appear with Him in glory. Have an eager expectation and keep facing the advent with the thought of universal regeneration.

And as you can deduce from the apostle's teaching, and I spend only a moment or so on this, this whole thought will, this whole aspiration will control your lifestyle, motivate therefore your members which are upon the earth. The word therefore is the link word. How am I to live? Well, in the light of all that's going to happen, I'm going to die to certain things on this earth.

I'm not going to be controlled like other people are controlled in the materialistic rat race. I'm going to appreciate that the most fundamental things, the most important things in my life are the outworking of God's will. I'm going to take no shortcuts in the bringing about of God's purpose in my life, for those are impossible.

I'm not going to enter into any relationship which does not know the blessing of God resting upon it. I'm not going to be controlled or conditioned by merely the acquisition of material things. Rather, because I believe in the renewal and the regeneration of the heavens and the earth, I'm going to mortify my members which are upon this world, and I am going to live for the praise and for the honor of Jesus.

I think I'll stop there. I'm sorry there's been so much disturbance. Obviously, someone's been taken ill, but I trust that this thing which burns so much in my heart, which I'd have liked to have taken even more time in spelling out to you, has started to burn within your heart also.

Jesus may come today. Glad day. Glad day.

Is it the crowning day? I live for today, nor anxious be. Jesus, my Lord, I soon shall see. Glad day.

Glad day. Is it the crowning day? In the light of all these things, mortify your desires, and don't be conned into believing that this world, and even the relationships that possibly can exist amongst people in this world, are all that there is to live for. There's a new age coming, a new program which God has in His hands to usher in, and those who are Christian people acknowledge this, and they set their affection on things which are above, not on things on the earth, realizing that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, so also shall we appear with Him in glory.

Therefore, that shall be the controlling doctrine which affects our day-by-day living, and every relationship that we enter into. May you have grasped something of the burden of this message. Now, Father, as you confront us in your word with the incredible truth that even creation groans for that day, so we accord with the sigh of the universe, and we wait expectantly, eagerly, for the advent of the Christ, when every one shall see Him, and we who have been saved by His grace shall be glorified with Him, and prepared for the reoccupation of this transformed, renewed universe.

Father, it is beyond our comprehension to realize all that is in store for us. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. And we with the Apostle would say that we reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

So Father, help us to cherish this doctrine, and may it control our every desire and our every relationship. For Jesus' sake, amen.