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)
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.
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