SERMON: Jesus' End

 

Jesus’ End (November ADVENTures)

10:30 am, Sun, Nov 20, 2022 - J G White / FBCA

(Jer 23:1-6; Lk 1:68-79; Col 1:11-20) (using Aug 8, 2021)

 I was away for three days and three nights at a small spiritual retreat for Baptist ministers. When I stepped back into the office here, on Thursday afternoon, a poster on my door greeted me:

Welcome Back! You were missed.

I’m gonna keep this; it may come in handy. In fact, I can say here today, Welcome Back Donnie! And... just maybe... I can use it for Jesus, on His return. D’you suppose?

Welcome Back, Jesus: You were missed!

What do the prophecies about the Messiah mean for us now? And what will be the end of the Jesus story? Something big has been accomplished, yet more is to come. Zechariah of old sang, when he named his infant son, John, Let us praise the Lord, the God of Israel! He raised up a mighty Saviour for us, One who is a descendant of his servant David. This is what he said long ago by means of his holy prophets...

We Christians still look back into all the words of these ‘holy prophets.’ What do we find? We still find promises about ‘the End,’ including the return of Jesus Christ. We read words from before Jesus’ lifetime, and after, which may point to the future. Our future.

Jeremiah 23: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely... We work these texts a lot in Advent, about the Anointed One, coming from the royal line of David.

Revelation 22: the last page of the Bible; Jesus speaks. ‘See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the prophecy of this book.” “See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work.” The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

What does soon mean?

People ask about our five-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Amelia. She was born far too early, a one-pound micro-preemie, was on oxygen, and soon in her life had a feeding tube installed. She still has a feeding tube. ‘How long will she have that?’ we are asked. Well, when she was two years old, we hoped she’d be rid of it by three. When she was three, we figured she’d be off it by four. Now she is more than five and a half. When? Soon, I hope. Who knows? We don’t know. But we believe it will happen, some year!

Perhaps it seems a simple fact that the second advent of Christ will be in our future, be it soon or not. But, within Christianity there is more than one way to understand ‘Last Things,’ including the second advent of Jesus. There are two extremes in Bible interpretation, into which we may be on one side, the other, or somewhere in the middle. 

There’s treating the Bible text as a code, to be interpreted; and then there is treating the text as a lens, like the lens of your glasses, or a magnifying glass. 

One of you messaged me, recently, saying: I was thinking how there's been lots of discussion in our world about this over the last few years - covid, financial collapse, wars, unrest, drug addictions increasing, etc. As a result, some have turned to hoarding food, other necessities, etc.

What does it all mean, how is it connected, are these signs of the end? (TA)

So much of what we hear in the media, and in movies and such, sees Revelation and End Times stuff as coded messages. Secrets that experts can decipher. So we keep looking for clues about exactly how and when Jesus shall return.  

The four lunar eclipses of 2014 and ‘15 were, as John Haggee taught, a sign of the beginning of The END - see Revelation 6. The mark that the second beast gives people in chapter 13, needed for buying and selling, is the UPC’s on every product, or maybe a computer chip that will soon be implanted in each of us! And the locusts with scorpion tails of Revelation 9 are, as Hal Lindsay suggested in 1970, helicopters. 

In contrast with this sort of scripture interpretation, is treating the Text as a lens: use it to help us see, and understand our own age, among other things. It reads the apocalyptic literature in the Bible to get a sense of ‘the spirit’ of it, and put it to work in the present day. It influences us; it helps us see what is real and where things should go. 

So, the return of Christ becomes, in part, a lesson in how to stop bowing to the kingdoms that run the world today, and follow Jesus instead. The governments, the corporations, our economy, the media, and so forth, do not have the final say in our lives. Christ does, and someday the other systems will fall and He alone will reign on the new heavens and the new earth. 

We look for a fulfillment of, yes, even Jeremiah. Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says God. I will attend to you for your evil doings... The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely...

My own second-coming approach is towards this second pole of the two. I don’t think the return of Jesus, and all the Bible words about it, are to be decoded, using events in modern Israel or the USA or China or Russia to fill in the details. I don’t look for pandemics, and wars, and people rejecting religion en masse as fulfillments of Bible prophecy. I do see Bible prophecy saying things about our world today.

I look for the Bible to influence me. To influence my imagination. To train my conscience. To alter my relationships. To inspire my apprenticeship to Master Jesus. To challenge my western, middle-class lifestyle 

So the words of Colossians 1 become beautiful, to me. Give thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son...

The end of the story of Jesus is about His ‘end’ in another sense: His goal, aim, and purpose. He becomes for us King, Lord, Master, Ruler, yes. He becomes the great Shepherd of the sheep. He gives light and mercy and justice. Things are made right. All is reconciled. All will be well. The glass is half full. Alleluia! Amen.

SERMON: Where Do We End Up?

 

Before my own sermon, a story by a preacher from one hundred years ago... The Roll with a Strange Name

A Parable of Safed the Sage

By the Rev. Eleazer E. Barton, 1921

There came unto our home, our Little Grandson. And be besought his Grandmother, even Keturah, that she would give unto him a Roll. And she would have understood him plainly, but he said that he wanted a Pyonder Roll.

Now Keturah can make Pocket-book Rolls, and Parker House Rolls, and Hot Biscuits, and if there be any kind of Rolls that are good, them also can she make. And when she serveth them with Golden Butter and Maple Syrup or Honey or Preserves, then would she cause the mouth of a Graven Image to water. But she did not know about any Pyonder Roll.

And the little lad said, I want the Roll that’s called a Pyonder.

Then did a Great White Light begin to dawn upon the mind of Keturah, and she said, Tell me the rest of it, my dear.

And he said:

When the Trumpet of the Lord shall sound and Time shall be no more,

And the Roll is called a Pyonder I'll be there.

And she gave unto him a Roll, and he was there.

Now I bethought myself of the Strange Mental pictures which our Grown-up words bring unto the mind of children. And I considered that our Heavenly Father knoweth that our minds also are but the minds of Little Children, and all our Mental Pictures of Celestial Things are limited, and that much which we learn of Divine Truth is even as the Pyonder Roll.

And I am thankful that we have our Pyonder Rolls, even our Daily Bread, and that the way of essential righteousness is so plain that a little child may learn it. And it is my earnest hope that when the Roll is called Up Yonder, I'll be there.

Where Do We End Up?

(November ADVENTures)

10:30 am, Sun, Nov 13, 2022 - J G White / FBCA

(Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19)

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth. So proclaimed a Jewish prophet, long ago.

It must have been twenty-five years ago, in Parrsboro, that I attended a Jehovah’s Witness funeral for the first time in my life. I still remember the preacher, that day at Smith’s Funeral Home, making the point that the deceased had not been hoping to get to heaven, but to the New Earth.

I find it a bit embarrassing that I had to go to a service from that sect to hear that biblical teaching made public. The new heavens and new earth image of Isaiah 65 is picked up more than once in scripture, including in our finale, Revelation 21 and 22. We just sang it in a hymn.

This is no strange doctrine, claimed only by cults and religious groups on the fringe. It is at the centre of Christian teaching. Let me quote from our Basis of Union. You know the Basis of Union? In 1905 and 1906 two Baptist groups in Atlantic Canada united together. We spelled out the doctrines we could agree upon in our Basis of Union. I’ll read three paragraphs, on Death, on Resurrection, and the General Judgment.

Death — At death our bodies return to dust, our souls to God who gave them. The righteous being then perfected in happiness are received to dwell with God, awaiting the full redemption of their bodies. The wicked are cast into Hades reserved unto the judgement of the great day.

Resurrection — There will be a general resurrection of the bodies of the just and of the unjust; the righteous in the likeness of Christ, but the wicked to shame and everlasting contempt.

General Judgement — There will be a judgement of quick and dead, of the just and unjust, on the principles of righteousness, by the Lord Jesus Christ, at His second coming. The wicked will be condemned to eternal punishment, and the righteous received into fullness of eternal life and joy.

Where do we end up after death, thanks to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Eventually, somehow, in what gets called the New Earth, with the New Heavens overlapping it.

It is a picture that is painted for our imaginations in scripture. It is a story, a vision. I think it is explained this way for humans of every generation, to point to whatever the experience will be. It is surely beyond words, and doctrines, and stories. Remember what we read in the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13: 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face.

When it comes to Christian doctrines, and orthodoxy, I want to be generous. So I think all the hopes and dreams people have of going to Heaven are pretty close to the New Heavens and Earth. We so often imagine heaven being like life here, but perfect.

Walk with me through those old prophecies of Isaiah 65 and see how the mysterious future is imagined in practical, earthly ways people can understand. Five things.

There will be No sorrow or distress. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress. I think, every day, I talk with someone who has reason to weep or be distressed. An older person lives with pain every day; a young person is in hospital with a brain bleed; someone is stressed out at their job; someone else is no longer on speaking terms with a family member. Some people call it ‘hell on earth.’ How we want to cling to a vision of heaven on earth, someday, somehow!

Revelation 21 declares that God will wipe away all tears and sadness, and things like death and loss and pain will be over and gone. Hard to imagine: wonderful to hope!

Two: there will be No short life. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. Folks in the Monday Bible Study Group (we have got to come up with a better name!) we have mentioned the long life spans of people in Genesis. Adam 930 years, Methuselah 969 y, Noah 950y. I cannot explain this.

In a lovely collection called, ‘Children’s Letters to God,’ one child wrote:  GOD,

I WOULD LIKE TO LIVE 900 YEARS LIKE THE GUY IN THE BIBLE.  LOVE, CHRIS

Maybe, it is not the living forever and ever that we want; we just don’t want to die and have others die. Such is the hope and the promise of the afterlife. Isaiah 65 points in that direction, a bit; Revelation 21 arrives.

Last week we heard more than once a quotation from Lawrence Binyon’s 1914 poem, ‘For the Fallen.’

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

Three: No labour in vain. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat...

Here, again, in Isaiah’s vision, is a very earthly, practical expression of hope and promise. We might claim the words in an expansive way. No good work will not be worth doing. No child-rearing will end with disappointment or disrespect or disaster. No community will decay or falter or become corrupt.

Though we may not literally expect to raise children in the afterlife, of have a job like preaching or construction or accounting, the satisfaction of accomplishing good work is a way of imagining the eternal future with the eternal One. A certain Rev. Dr. friend always wanted this poem read at his funeral: L’Envoi, by Rudyard Kipling, 1896. In part, it says:

  When Earth’s last picture is painted,

and the tubes are twisted and dried

When the oldest colors have faded,

and the youngest critic has died,

We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—

lie down for an aeon or two,

’Till the Master of All Good Workmen

shall set us to work anew!

 

And those that were good will be happy:

they shall sit in a golden chair;

They shall splash at a ten-league canvas

with brushes of comet’s hair;

They shall find real saints to draw from—

Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;

They shall work for an age at a sitting

and never be tired at all!

 Three: No unanswered prayers. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. Different hopes may spring from these words for different people. Simple, sure, direct access to God is one thing. Every blessing possible to every person is another beautiful hope. Answers to our questions – all of our questions – is yet another.

Phillip Yancey wrote a whole book about the question, “Why.” He called it the question that never goes away. I wish I had not given away my copy of the book! Somewhere, Yancey has said, “When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.” Also, he’s written, “Prayer is keeping company with God.” Amen. The eternal life, of heaven and earth, is definitely keeping company with God. I’ve always thought this surely means any questions or problems I see now will be nothing then.

Five: No danger or discord in all creation. Is. 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Have you seen the animated film, Zootopia? Yes, with our grandchildren we’ve watched it a few times. Picture a world of animals, talking animals, of course, where all the ‘former predators’ no longer eat meat. No animal eats another animal. The plot thickens with some predators start attacking prey. I won’t spoil it!

As we get to November 15^th, a day when the human population is estimated to reach 8 billion, and our warm, stormy fall goes on and on, we may wonder about the renewal of all creation hinted at in scripture. It is a beautiful vision we can keep, and that can guide.

So, are there things you would add to your wish list for the afterlife? Something other than these five?

1.    no sadness nor anxiety,

2.    no death in life, ever,

3.    no more doing anything that’s pointless,

4.    all questions answered, and

5.    all at peace among all living things.

We could explore a lot more what the journey looks like, from this life to the next. Later, later.

What was it Safed the Sage said, at the end of his little story? And I considered that our Heavenly Father knoweth that our minds also are but the minds of Little Children, and all our Mental Pictures of Celestial Things are limited, and that much which we learn of Divine Truth is even as the Pyonder Roll.

Sermon(s) When Is The END?

 

When Is the End? (1) Glorious Future

November ADVENTures

10:30 am, Sun, Nov 6, 2022 - J G White / FBCA

(Haggai 1:15b – 2:0)

Is your glass half full, or half empty? That’s what I asked my staff at our meeting last week. There are a lot of ways to play with this image. In the end, I decided that I see things this way: the glass is full!

A thousand times in the Bible, and a dozen different ways, there is a message of hope. Things will be better. Everything will be fixed and made right. One day. These Bible hopes are held, even as centuries and centuries go by. The Bible is strangely optimistic.

One picture that is painted a dozen times is of The Temple. After an early point in biblical history, the promises and hopes of a great House of God take centre stage. God speaks through the voice of the prophet Haggai, for instance. 3 Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?

For centuries, the Jewish people had their hopes set on having one temple, one place, as the focus of where God and heaven met earth, and touched the people. With Moses and the people camping for forty years, there was a holy tent, the Tabernacle. In the Holy Land, once they had kings, Solomon saw to the building of a stone and wood temple. It was spectacular! It was destroyed in about 586 BCE by King Nebuchadrezzer and the Babylonian empire. Seventy years later, the people get back to Jerusalem, and build the Second Temple – not quite as grand as the first. Hence the words in Haggai today.

9 The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.

Did that Temple become so amazing? No, not quite. And this second temple got destroyed about forty years after the time of Jesus, 70 CE.

Yet all the scripture language fills the Christian imagination with hopes... even hopes for the end of all things. That’s why we read these texts now, and in Advent. The Temple and the City (called Zion or Jerusalem) still fill traditional Christian hymns.

Glorious things of thee are spoken,

Zion, city of our God.

    City of God how broad and far

Outspread thy walls sublime!

I'm just a pilgrim in search of a city,

I want a mansion, a harp and a crown.

Like the Garden of Eden, the Temple in the Holy City is the place where God and the heavens meet humans on the earth.

The unfulfilled hopes of Haggai, long ago, are given a new promise in Revelation. Remember the final scene of the New Holy City that comes down. And what does that vision hold? 22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

The Bible pictures of a splendid future Temple are pictures, simply pointing to being with God, forever. It is a glorious future. The glass? More than half full.

 

When Is the End? (2) When Is the End?

 (2 Thess 2:1-5) Children’s Time

My second little message is a children’s sermon.

Here is one of my favourite clocks.

It is beautiful. It makes wonderful sounds.

It helps us know what time of day it is, right?

Preacher and the peppermint...

Before there was a clock in the church, or watch.

Put a peppermint in his mouth.

When it was done, it was time to end the sermon.

One day, he talked, and talked, and talked...

Oops,.. a button was in his pocket!

 

Now, let me offer the grown-up part of this segment: When Is the End? Again, this week, I found professor Rick Durst's online summaries helpful. He gives a helpful view of four contemporary ways that Christian scholars think about The END.

1. Radical: Albert Schweitzer wrote and suggested Jesus was an 'end times prophet,' proclaiming an immanent change, but got it wrong. By sacrificing Himself, Jesus did not manage to force God the Father's hand to make the end of the world happen.

2. Realized: everything has already happened and been fulfilled, with the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. Lots of cartoonists have a scene with some fellow in rough robes, and a beard, holding a sign that says 'The End Is Near.' But one cartoon had the fellow declaring 'The End happened in 70 AD.' All the Bible end of the world stuff happened back then, within forty years of Jesus' lifetime.

3. Inaugrated: already, but not yet. The End started when Jesus was raised from the dead. It is here now... but more is coming, much more to come. I think, to be simplistic about it, this is where I am, how I deal with what gets called Biblical prophecy. We are in the Last Days, of course, because the Last Days started almost 2000 years ago.

4. Futurist: all of these prophetic promises must be fulfilled, and we need to watch for that. It is all starting to happen now. So many evangelical preachers and scholars take this view. Perhaps on TV you have seen Jack Van Impe, or David Jeremiah, or John Haggee?

Well... more about The End next later, and Sunday, and the one after that.

 

When Is the End? (3) Our Resurrection

 (Luke 20:27-38)

Third mini-sermon: Our Resurrection. How does our afterlife happen? Our standard statements of faith in Christianity say things like this: I believe in... the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body: and the life everlasting.

This seems to tie two things together: dead people (the saints) being somehow still available to us here, and dead people coming back to life later. Nowadays, so many of us seem to want the best of all worlds. A beloved one dies, and we want that person to be

1.    in heaven immediately, with loved ones.

2.    nearby here, ghost-like, seeing us, helping us.

3.    in their final resting places: cemeteries, ashes in urns, or nicely scattered in a favourite place.

4.    ready to rise up at the return of Jesus and meet Him in the sky.

Our Christian hymns are all over the map on this subject. Oh when the saints go marching in,

          Lord, I want to be in that number.

Some glad morning, when this life is o’er,

I’ll fly away.

When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound

And time shall be no more,

And the morning breaks eternal bright and fair

When the saved of earth shall gather

over on the other shore

And the roll is called up yonder I'll be there

Today, we heard Jesus answer a trick question, posed by some of his fellow Jews, who were of a specific group that did not believe what other Jews did, that there could be a resurrection of dead people. ‘Who is married to whom, in this theoretical afterlife?’ they asked Christ. ‘It’s not like that – relationships are not the same in the resurrection.’ Read farther into the New Testament, and you discover that the early disciples of Jesus we awaiting a resurrection after death. 1 Corinthians 15 is a whole page or two answering questions and misunderstandings they had.

I was asked a very important question recently: “At the rapture, the dead in Christ will rise. Does that mean our loved ones are sleeping and not in Heaven now? I find it comforting to believe they are there already.” (KF) Almost everyone seems to find that comforting, and so many try to believe that. That the dead are not resting somewhere, waiting to arise, they are already together in the final destination.

We are going to have to keep our thoughts in conversation with all the Bible teachings about Jesus’ resurrection and ours. 

God is the God of the living, Jesus said. We are ‘children of the resurrection.’ But this also includes the reality that those who died before are still alive, like Abraham, Isaac & Jacob. ‘Asleep in Jesus’ we can say.

What does John McCrae’s famous poem suggest?

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

Next Sunday we shall explore our afterlife in greater detail. Until then, let us pause to meditate upon these things.

Hats off to Don Miller!

Well, it only took THREE attempts, but the Rev. Donald Miller was finally, festively, and funnily celebrated, thanked, and retired! October 30 at First Baptist the special service was conducted, with the Rev. Nelson Metcalfe preaching. It was grand, and very appropriately comedic, at points. 

Then we enjoyed lunch together downstairs, with some delightful speeches.

Yes, this is the preacher, Nelson, and the retiree, Don.

Did I mention the Open House two days before, at the Lion's Hall? That was a joyful time also - and the speeches there were hilarious, as well as poignant. CONGRATULATIONS, Donnie! All the best in whatever is next. :)