Sermon: Jesus on His Second Coming
The Baseline Prophecies
#1451A
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 10-Sep-18; 77 minutes
description: We all would like to know when Jesus Christ will return. The Day of Trumpets looks forward to this event, one which God's people have desired since God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden. Trumpets serves as the center-point of the Holy Days, a pivotal time when God's rule will replace the misrule of carnal human governments. The blasts of trumpets grab our attention, presaging the dreaded events at the end of the age. Nobody will be able to remain blasé as those events unfold. Thankfully, this time of chaos ushers in a time of order. The three Disciples whom Christ chose to witness His Transfiguration quickly learned from God the Father that they were to listen to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as the Word of God is the foundation of all knowledge, carrying more weight than the prophets and apostles. The formula, Kingdom of God "is at hand," can refer to 1.) Christ's presence as the King, 2.) His rule over His subjects, and 3.) a future event which has not yet happened. Only the Father knows the precise time of Christ's return, but the perennial message to all of God's called-out ones is to be eternally vigilant, busy overcoming, to the end that they may see Him in all His power and glory. Meticulously avoiding all distractions, we must be ready for His return, committedly living His way of life.
transcript:
"The end is near!" "Repent!" "Jesus is coming soon!" "Your King is returning!" "Prepare to meet your God!"
Well, perhaps in your mind's eye, you are seeing a crazed, bearded man in a sandwich board shouting this to passersby on a busy city street. Or maybe you are thinking of a street preacher standing on a soapbox on a corner telling everybody that the time is near. Or maybe you imagine a minister in a very nice suit and tie proclaiming this from the pulpit. Whatever the case, such preaching or warning of Christ's coming is still very common, and it is bound to increase as that wonderful day approaches.
Of course we believe that Jesus Christ will return in great power and glory to this earth sometime in the near-ish future. I say that because we have no idea. But we think it is close. The church has been saying it is close for 2,000 years just about. And still Christ has not come, but He will come to defeat His enemies and establish His Kingdom on the earth.
That coming of Christ, when it does come, is a major part of our hope. We want Christ to come. We yearn for Christ to come, because this world is terrible and we would like to enjoy the benefits of His Kingdom and put things on the right track. But the second coming of Christ has always been the center of the church's prophetic preaching and teaching. And it has been since the very beginning, from the founding.
Recall that just as Jesus was about to ascend into heaven there in Acts 1, just before Pentecost on that AD 31 Pentecost, the apostles asked Him, "Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" In other words, they were saying, "Are You coming back soon? We know You're going to leave, are You going to come right back and restore the Kingdom?" That was not the case. He did not come then.
In Acts 3, after Peter's Pentecost sermon, I guess this makes it his second major sermon, Peter preaches about God sending Jesus back again, inaugurating the "times of the restoration of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began."
So this pronouncement or announcement of Jesus' return has been happening since the beginning, the very beginning, as Peter said, "since the world began." And the church has taken it up as a major part of its work. And so from then on, from the very founding of the church, apostles, evangelists, and preachers have been spreading this good news both to the world and to the church. The hope of Christ's return appears on nearly every page of the New Testament, in many of the pages of the Old Testament, if we understand it correctly. And it is the last thought that we are left with as the book of Revelation closes, when Jesus says, "I come quickly."
And Christ's second coming is also the centerpiece of the holy days, which we believe is a template for the plan of God. Today is the fourth holy day of the year. Three come before it and three come after it. It is the pivotal event of all history, the time when humanity makes a great turn from disastrous self-rule, from wars that never end, from poverty, and all of the terrible things that men do to one another. From the horrible abortion and other things that we do because we have been cut off from God and have gone our own way. Christ's return is that pivotal time between that and the blessed rule of God over humanity.
Once Jesus Christ fully takes the reins of government on this earth over mankind, the repentance of the vast majority of humanity becomes possible. Right now He is working only with a few. But after that point, we could say the floodgates will be open. And beyond that, the second resurrection is possible. And the New Heavens and the New Earth is possible.
So what the Feast of Trumpets pictures is a hinge or a fulcrum of history and prophecy. We are right on the brink of this time when things will change, when things will tip, the balance will tip toward God, as it were. It has always been in God's favor, but from our point of view, it looks like things are going terribly. And they are only going to get worse, but for a short time, and then things will change dramatically with Christ's second coming. And because of this confluence of the Feast of Trumpets and the return of Jesus Christ, which it prefigures, this makes the Feast of Trumpets a big deal. It is a big deal to us. It is a big deal to God.
Please turn back in your Bibles to the book of Leviticus. We will touch base on this particular holy day. This is one you could put in your memory scriptures, at least in terms of how you can remember it. It is Leviticus 23, verses 24 and 25. So that is Leviticus 23, 24, and 25. That makes it a little bit easier, a mnemonic device.
Leviticus 23:24-25 "Speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it; you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord.'"
The significant part of this little passage is that this holy day is identified by the blowing of trumpets or the shout of a shofar, as it is particularly in the Hebrew. And this particular little detail, huge detail, presents the idea that the day is supposed to grab our attention. God wants us to sit up, to stand up, and to pay attention. Something big is happening. It is a what we might call a "listen up" moment. Be ready! Be prepared! Be prepared to act, to respond, to move.
You know, the blare of a trumpet, I do not care how far away it is, if it is anywhere within your hearing, it grabs your attention. Same with the shout of a shofar. Have you ever heard a shofar being played? It is hard to ignore and it reaches not just far and wide because its voice goes very far in terms of area, but that peal of a trumpet or the blare of a trumpet reaches right into the inner core of our being. It causes an almost visceral reaction in us so that we not only hear it, we feel it. It really wakes us up. It makes us stand up and take notice.
So what this tells us is that Trumpets is a day of proclamation, a day of announcement, a day of declaration. Something is happening. God wants everyone to know what will happen, the whole world, so that no one can plead ignorance. His voice goes to all the earth with this message.
Let us take a little trip through the book of Revelation. We will start in chapter 1 and we will hop, skip, and jump through this book. But I want you to notice something about the verbiage in the book of Revelation, at least in these particular verses. And maybe just as a side note or a side study that you can do someday, it makes for an interesting little Bible study to ponder all the places where the word loud or something similar appears in the book of Revelation. Because the return of Jesus Christ and all the events that take place around it are very loud. They are in your face. It tells us something about God and what He is doing.
Revelation 1:7 Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.
This one did not necessarily have to do with sound, but notice that every eye will see Him.
Chapter 11, verse 15. Of course, we have got all these trumpets that are blaring throughout with the trumpet plagues and that sort of thing.
Revelation 11:15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever."
Here you have a sounding of a trumpet and loud voices proclaiming this.
Revelation 14:6-10 Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people—saying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water. And another angel followed, saying, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb."
We are not done. Let us go to chapter 16.
Revelation 16:17-18 Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, "It is done!" And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth.
Let us move to this final verse in chapter 19, verse 6.
Revelation 19:6 And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"
The flavor of all these passages is that of an unmistakable, unignorable announcement. It is a proclamation that everyone throughout the whole earth hears. They cannot shut their ears to this great declaration of Christ's return, that He is coming! It will be, as I said, unmistakable. When they see the things happening, they know something is up. Even though they will be running to hide in caves and trying to do like little kids do, and they cover their eyes and say, maybe if I do this, He will not notice. That is kind of the idea I have always had of the people running away from God. He knows where they are and they will find out, they will know that He is returning.
Trumpets is a day that shouts out to us that God's great plan, and certainly this particular part of it, Christ's return, is not being done in a quiet, tranquil, uninteresting corner of the world. It is happening front and center, right in everybody's faces. It is loud! It is explosive. It is frightening. It is arresting and exciting. And it is going to be magnificent. And as we learned about it over the years, we come to understand that Christ's second appearing is a time of great opposites, a time of contrast. And in that way, because it seems good and bad, or however you want to put it, it can motivate everybody one way or another, negatively or positively, depending on one's perspective toward it. It does not matter which side the person stands on, this great thing that is going to be happening, this loud and unmistakable occurrence, will make people take a side or judge or react somehow. No one will just be blasé about it.
It is a time of war. But it is a time of war that brings peace. It is a time of death that opens the way for life—better life. It is a time of dread and anguish that ushers in hope and joy. It is a time of gloom, clouds, thick darkness but it ends in light and glory and abundant life. It is a time of destruction that will conclude with restoration and newness. It is a time of chaos and anarchy that ushers in order and law under the governing wisdom of God.
So the time that this Feast foreshadows is a huge deal. And this holy day is designed to make us take notice, every year, it is coming. We do not know when, but it is coming, and we have to be alert and ready.
I want to pick out a principle from Mark 9, verses 2 through 7. This is from the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ on the Mount. I will go ahead and read verses 2 through 7, but I want the principle that is mentioned right there at the end of this.
Mark 9:2-7 Now after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,"—because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!"
That "hear Him" is what I want to focus in on. This is the principle I want us to take out of it. In comparison to Moses and Elijah, Jesus Christ is the one that we should listen to first. See, Peter said, let us make three, all equal, Moses, Jesus, and Elijah. And the voice came out of heaven right in mid-sentence, as you could see in other other accounts of this in the other gospels, basically shouting Peter down and said, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!"; making sure that Peter, James, and John understood the priority here. Who was the one who they should really listen to? Not that they should not listen to Moses or to Elijah, but who was the one that took precedence? My beloved Son, the Father says. That is the one to listen to.
That is the the principle I want to get out of this passage.
Other places He is called the chief cornerstone. You know, the apostles and the prophets, they built the foundation, but He is the chief cornerstone. He plays a critical part in that foundation. He is the keystone of the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. That is in Ephesians 2:20. Yes, they say important things, but they all are strengthened and pulled together by the chief cornerstone.
So today we are going to hear Him on the subject of His second coming and of the establishment of His Kingdom. I think a lot of times we tend to go here and there within the Bible and we have our little pet theories about what is going to happen then. But we have to start with what Jesus Christ said. That is the foundation of our knowledge. We had that in Ambassador College: The Word of God is the foundation of all knowledge. A lot of people look at that as the Bible, which is right. But going there for four years, I thought about that because I passed it every day, going to class. It was written there on the Merritt Building where Home Economics was. I never went to those classes, but I went to the speech classes that were underneath there and all the other ones in the science and the fine arts hall. And I thought about it. And to me, it meant Jesus Christ, the Word of God. He is the Word of God. He is the foundation of all knowledge. So that is something I took out of AC. I guess that it really affected me.
But His words are the starting point and the basis for everything else we read in Scripture about His second coming and about everything else. We could call what He says in the Gospels about it as our baseline of knowledge on the second coming. And what the apostles and the prophets wrote, though important and additive and helpful to our understanding, have to be afforded a little bit less weight than the actual words of our Savior Jesus Christ. We have to give His words priority. Maybe I can put it like this. It is the difference between the Word of God and being inspired by God. See, one is the source, the other one is next in line, you might say, out a little bit from that. So one is firsthand and the other is secondhand. Which is more reliable in a court of law, firsthand or secondhand knowledge? Well, obviously firsthand knowledge, firsthand eyewitness is better than a secondhand one that becomes hearsay almost.
So you have to think about that. When we try to interpret prophecy we should prefer Jesus' sayings over some obscure line in the prophets that we are not quite sure of. I have seen people in my years in the church do this. They will find something in, I do not know, the book of Hezekiah. (There is no book of Hezekiah, by the way, I am just making this up.) But they will find something and they will just base their entire idea of prophecy on that little thing and go way out and eventually most of the time they leave the church because they cannot let go of something that is not provable and is just their own speculation.
The apostles and the prophet's words fill out and they explain Jesus' baseline statements. So we have got to think of what Jesus says about His second coming as the bedrock and then everything else is built on that.
Let us go to Mark 1. We are here in the book of Mark already so just a few pages over. We are going to read a statement by Jesus. It was a favorite of Herbert Armstrong. He went to it often during his ministry because he was trying to make sure everybody understood that Jesus' ministry, Jesus' gospel was about the Kingdom of God.
Mark 1:14-15 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel."
Obviously Jesus' gospel was about the Kingdom of God. It is very plain here. You could go to many scriptures throughout the Gospels and find that He was preaching about the Kingdom of God all the time. He preached it wherever He went. That was His job. His job was to announce the coming of the Kingdom and urge people to believe His message and repent, to turn their lives around and to follow His teachings by obeying them.
But there are a couple things here that are kind of interesting. Maybe you have wondered about them. Maybe you had them explained at one point in the past, but I will go ahead and do that right now. And that is these time markers here in verse 15: The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
Now "the time is fulfilled" does not mean that a set time has elapsed which is how a lot of people could take it, that this time is finally fulfilled. It is done. We have come to this time and the time that had been allowed to pass is now elapsed. But instead, it really means something a little bit more, to me, exciting, and that is it could be translated, The decisive moment has arrived. So you are not filling up a period of time, you are actually arriving at a certain specific time. Now Mark uses the perfect tense and by doing so, he indicates that this announcement is not about something future or even imminent. It is fulfilled, is fulfilled. It is done, it is right now. The fulfillment has already occurred. You will understand why in a minute.
Let us take this "is at hand" phrase. This literally means to come near, suggesting that a thing, in this case, the Kingdom of God, is about to be realized. Very similar to what we saw about the "time is fulfilled." The word that is used here in Greek is engizo. It is used of future events elsewhere in the New Testament. I was just going to flip to one here in James 5:8, you do not have to go there. I will just read it. It says,
James 5:8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
James here is using it for a future event. Peter also uses it in a very similar way in I Peter 4:7, of a future time, of something that is coming. It is close, but it has not come yet.
Now, Mark seems to be using it in a slightly different way because he uses it twice in the same way, at least it probably is the same way. He uses it one other time in Mark 14, verse 42. I will read this one. Jesus says as He is leaving the Garden of Gethsemane,
Mark 14:42-43 "Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand." [And look at the next verse] And immediately, while He was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, with a great multitude with swords and clubs came from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.
So in this particular instance, Jesus' use of it means that it is coming right now, immediately. And we can assume, being that it is in the same book, that Mark is using it in the same way in the first chapter as well, that the Kingdom of God is coming right now and immediately it comes. He is not talking about it being soon, He is saying now. So it appears that Jesus is saying here that the Kingdom of God is arriving immediately. He is not speaking about a future restoration of God's government on the earth with the millennial reign of Christ. But more specifically, what He means is that the King of the Kingdom is right here. He is here now. He is walking in your midst. He has stepped out on the stage and this act, his announcing the beginning of His ministry, is the opening salvo.
There is a French saying, "L'état, c'est moi." It means "the state is me." Louis the 14th said it. He was the king of France. So he said, "I am the state." Essentially, in a way, that is what Jesus is saying here. "I am the King of the Kingdom. I am here to do My ministry. The kingdom of God is right here, right now." So that helps us to find a little bit what the Kingdom of God means. The phrase in Greek, basileau tou Theo, can be translated various ways. It can mean "the kingdom," "the domain," "the kingship," "the rule," "the reign," "the sovereignty," "the royal power" of God. That is a pretty wide swing of meanings. A lot of connotations there. All the way from the literal domain of the king, the kingdom, the land, you might say, all the way to his abstract sovereign power. So a wide range of meanings.
Adding this to what we learned just in the last few minutes about the "time as fulfilled" and "the kingdom of God is at hand," Jesus seems to be saying with this pronouncement that the era of God's Kingdom is open. It is commencing. It is like when a business is open and they come out and they have this big ceremony and they cut the ribbon. This is what Jesus is essentially doing. This Kingdom, with My arrival, is starting. It is commencing. So with the start of Jesus' ministry, God's purpose is being fulfilled in a major way because the King was there. In modern lingo, we might say something like, the king has arrived, so let's get this party started. That is what He is doing. He is starting the process.
So while this tells us very little about the second coming, it does tell us when it started. His second coming actually started with His first coming. You have to have a first before you have a second. This coming and the pronouncement of His ministry and the actual ministry and all that He did within His ministry, including His death obviously, and resurrection and His ascension, they were all, we might say, the opening gambit of the Kingdom of God They were the necessary first steps for the second coming. To get the Son of Man's arrival in power and great glory to happen, you have to have all this background, all of these other things had to happen. All the teaching had to be given before we could get to that point.
Let us go back to Isaiah 61 because we see here, in a way, Isaiah tips us off—or God tips us off—that this is all one thing, one process. It all happens together. Isaiah 61, Jesus Himself quoted this in Luke 4. He said that,
Isaiah 61:1-3 "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of the righteous, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."
Now, if you would go back to Luke, you would find that Jesus Christ ended what He said there in the synagogue after "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." But Isaiah shows that His first and second coming are all of one piece because it goes on to the "day of vengeance of our God." And then it goes into things that will happen in the Millennium.
So we are looking at what Jesus has done as a two-act (or whatever you want to call it) process. Everything has to come in its order. But He laid the important groundworks in His first coming so that His second coming would work, would do what it was designed to do.
Let us go now to Matthew 6, verses 9 through 13. This is the Model Prayer. But I want you to see here that Jesus was telling them that He would come again. That it would come in another day, another time, and that they would have to be praying for this every day. So He says,
Matthew 6:9-13 "In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."
After His remarks in Mark 1, where He said the Kingdom of God is at hand, He says here during His ministry a little bit later that He is going to come again, that the Kingdom will come. There will be a time in the future when He will come again, even though He was there and He was the King of the Kingdom, there would come a time later when He would have to return and He would bring the Kingdom with Him. Now verse 13, with all that talk about power and the glory, indicates that unlike the first time, it will be an appearance in power and glory and remain forever. That is what we are looking forward to.
So Jesus tells us it is a good habit to get into to pray for this daily. It is our great hope.
Let us go on to Matthew the 16th chapter, verses 27 and 28, and then we will take the first two verses in chapter 17 as well. Again, this is the time of the Transfiguration. But I want you to notice what Jesus tells them in the lead up to it and in those first two verses because He gives us some good indication, good information about His second coming.
Matthew 16:27-28 "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."
Now a lot of people have gotten tripped up on that verse because they think it means that these men never died or something. Jesus, and the way Matthew and Luke and Mark all put this, makes it very clear that He is referring to His transfiguration, not to His actual second coming. That they would see Him as He would be in His Kingdom.
Matthew 17:1-2 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.
This little passage of four verses gives us a lot of information about His second coming. The first little bit of information that we get is that He will come in astonishing glory. When He came as a man, He was just like you and me. He had two arms and two legs, and He walked about and He talked and He did all the things that humans do because He was human. He did not have the great bright face, like the sun. I mean, everybody would have known who He was at that point, I think, if His face had been shining like the sun.
But no, when He came the first time, He was plain. It says back in in Isaiah 53, that He was not necessarily comely or in any way handsome, extraordinarily, so that people would recognize Him. But He was kind of average. He did not stand out by His physical attributes. But when He will come again He is going to come—did you notice the wording there?—in His Father's glory! The glory of the Father, the Great God of all the universe. He is not going to be toned down at all. Something everybody will be able to see.
Secondly, it says He will come accompanied by angels. Not just one or two, a great multitude of angels will come with Him. It will be something that no one will ever forget—the glory of all the angels with Him. This great, I want to use a big term here, mass of angels and their glory. An army of angels with Him.
The third thing. It says He is coming to reward His people according to their works. And also we could put in here, if He is going to reward His people, He is going to punish His enemies. John 5:22 and 29, say that "All judgment has been given to the Son" and so once we get down to verse 29, it shows that when He comes, He will reward His people and He will condemn those who are evil. It says there that He will give eternal life to those who do good and condemnation to those who do evil. So He is coming back to hand out prizes, if you will, for those who have done well, and He is going to hand out punishments for those who have done evil.
The fourth thing it says here, as shown in His glorious appearing here before His three disciples, His face will shine like the sun, and His clothes will be white as light, kind of like the first one, but here in verse 2 of chapter 17, they got a glimpse of Him as He will be when He comes back, with His clothes so bright that it hurts the eyes to look at them and His face shining like the sun.
It is almost like He wanted to make sure that they understood this. He was coming in the glory of His Father and then He showed them with this transfiguration, the difference that was going to be between His first coming and His second coming, in His person. He wanted them to see the difference between Him—God—coming as a man, as a servant, giving up all of those prerogatives as God that He did and much of His glory, most of His glory, to come as a man, as Paul describes in Philippians 2:5-8. But when He comes again, all of that glory is going to be restored, and He wants them to really see and feel, if you will, the difference between plain Jane, servant-human, and glorious God and King. So they had this spark of foresight to what that will be, so they could pass that on to us of just how glorious His second coming will be.
Let us go to Revelation 19 to see it from John's point of view here in this vision.
Revelation 19:11-16 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
So we see here what He hinted about in Matthew 16 and 17 fleshed out through His revelation to the apostle John.
Let us go back to the book of Matthew, chapter 19, verses 27 through 30. We can kind of see this as a kind of an expansion on His remarks there in Matthew 16 on the matter of rewarding His followers.
Matthew 19:27-30 Peter answered and said to Him, "See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we have?" So Jesus said to them, "Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. Because many who are first will be last, and the last first."
He puts a bit of a qualification on that so that people understand what they have to do, how they have to live. Like I said, this is an expansion on His comments about how He will reward His followers. Okay, what is all mixed up in here? What does that entail?
First, I want you to see that He calls the time of his return "the regeneration." It is a very interesting term, and it may seem odd that He would call it that. This word is palingenesia. It has the word genesis (genesia) almost in it. And it literally means "new birth." So He calls this time the regeneration, the new birth, or it could mean a new beginning because that is what happens when a baby is born. It is the beginning of the person's life, the baby's life.
This word has been translated various ways as "renewal," as "recreation," and as even "renovation." Here is an interesting one. It is the same word that Paul uses in Titus 3:5 as being born anew or born again. I do want to read that because just so you understand how he uses it there.
Titus 3:4-5 When the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared [he is talking about His first appearance there], not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
So Paul uses this term in Titus for the time of our conversion. He is talking about baptism there and the giving of the Holy Spirit to a person. Jesus, on the other hand, uses it in terms of His second coming. He calls His second coming the regeneration. Very interesting juxtaposition there. So through this term, Jesus could be referring to the time of the saints' resurrection to eternal spirit life. There is a regeneration that happens then. They are born anew, in spirit. Or He could mean the renewal or the remaking of the world after judgment. Because things are going to be totally new and different after He comes. And this seems to be kind of what He is talking about because the very next phrase says "when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory," but that could also apply to the time of the first resurrection as well because they all happened at that same basic time.
You can take it as you will, but it is a time of renewal. As a matter of fact, we could throw Acts 3 in here where Peter talks about the restoration of all things. It is the same idea. But he is talking about His second coming, not His first.
Otherwise, this passage informs us that as Christ will be the great King, the twelve apostles will judge Israel as kings. So as we saw in Revelation 19:16, Jesus is King of kings so the apostles become kings underneath Jesus Christ. They then use their power in judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And this gives us a clue if we read between the lines just a little bit. It is not that much of a jump that Jesus' Kingdom will be primarily over Israel, at least at the beginning. As a matter of fact, the Day of Atonement looks forward to the time when Israel is cleansed. Because if you notice how everything is mentioned there in Leviticus 16, it is talking about purging the sins of the nation of Israel. So it starts with Israel.
But Jesus does not leave His other followers high and dry. Oh yeah, apostles get to be kings, the rest of us just get to be schlubs in the Kingdom. That is not what He is saying here. Notice He goes on and spends a full verse saying that whoever has given up these things, He says houses or family members or lands, will be given a hundredfold more in the Kingdom. So the saints along with the apostles will not only receive eternal life and spirit bodies, but will be part of a great Family and receive lands and wealth and the power that comes from that.
Paul tells us in I Corinthians 6:2 that like the apostles, the saints will judge the world. In Revelation 5:10 it calls us a kingdom of priests. Or we shall be kings and priests. We have figured over the last few years that it is better as a kingdom of priests. But we might just say that we will have powers of both kingship and priesthood. So God gives His followers, or maybe I should put it more specifically, Jesus Himself gives His followers a great deal. Something to look forward to.
In the same vein, let us go to John 14, verses 1 through 3. Because it is just not physical things. Peter was in a way, when he was asking the question to Jesus there in Matthew 19, was saying, Hey, what are we going to get? What kind of physical power are we going to have? Or wealth? But John, he is of a different mind here and he is thinking more spiritually when he records what Jesus said to them in that last Passover oration. He says,
John 14:1-4 "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know."
Actually this is one of the few places in the gospel of John in which Jesus says explicitly that He will return. But it is here right there in verse 3, "I will come again," He says. And He adds some details that are very important.
First, He will receive us to Himself. This is actually the last one, but I put it first here. What He means is that He will take us with Him into His own home. Actually, it is even more specific than that. He is really talking about that He is taking us into His Father's home, or maybe even more specific than that, into His Father's Family so that we will always be with Him, which is another part of it. But it is very important for us to understand that it is not just that He comes back and He gives us all these things. He receives us into Himself. Elsewhere we are told in Revelation 14:4 that the saints, or the 144,000 specifically there, will be with Him forever and will go wherever He goes. And so this, when He returns, He is going to take the saints and make them a permanent part of His entourage, of His Family, of His household, however you want to put it. And so we are being put into a very superior position. This is a huge honor that we will be brought into the King's household, into the King's very Family.
Two, He tells us that His Father's house has many mansions. In Greek this is more correctly "many rooms" or dwellings. You know, in a great house, like a palace, you would expect there to be many rooms for guests and family and whatnot. Of course, we know that these rooms are for the family. So the sense is here by what Jesus says, is that there is plenty of room for all God's people in His Family. It is not limited in any great way. God has a big enough wingspan that He can embrace us all. He can take us all in. So we do not need to worry about there ever being a lack of room for us.
There is also the sense here in this many mansions phrase of permanency, even eternality. That it will be forever. It is not that we will ever be kicked out at all, but those rooms are for us forever. That position will be ours forever. Elsewhere Jesus talks about no one being able to take the people that God gives Him out of His hands. It is the same idea here. That once we are given these rooms they are ours forever. We will be with Him forever. So, these are not the temporary dwellings that we talk about in relation to the Feast of Tabernacles. These are permanent dwellings in the house of God. Remember what the last verse is in Psalm 23? Let us read it. And this is the sense that we can get out of what Jesus is saying here.
Psalm 23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
So that is basically what Jesus is telling His disciples there, that once we are in the Family of God and that time comes after His return, we will be there, always, in God's house.
The third thing that He says in this passage in John 14 is that He tells us that His time, in our perspective now, now that He is at the right hand of God as our High Priest, His time is spent preparing a place for us. That is part of His job as our High Priest. Perhaps more correctly, we could say He is preparing us for the place. The place already exists. God's house is open for business, as it were. But He must make us compatible with it. So He has a position in mind for us but we are not ready to take up that position. And so He spends His time now making sure that we have what it takes that when we are installed in that position, we will know what to do. We will be ready for it. He has certainly prepared the way for us through His own work as our sinless Sacrifice and Redeemer. He has done His part. That is a finished work. So now He keeps on working, but His work is on us to make us holy and blameless before God. We have to be like God to be in His house. That only makes sense.
Let us just pick up Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13. It is a well-known scripture.
Philippians 2:12-13 [This is what is going on.] Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
His good pleasure of the position where He is going to put us. And so He is preparing us for that by working in us.
Now Peter in II Peter 3 tells us that we can hasten that day. Notice what he says. He is looking forward to the return of Christ and the Day of the Lord, as he calls it there in verse 10.
II Peter 3:11-12 [he says] Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?
He is saying here that if we put on holy conduct, do what is pleasing to God, we do our little part in hastening that day. We are preparing along with God for that time.
Let us get back to Matthew the 24th chapter. I bet you wondered when I was going to get here. Because this is where we would think one would go to first to talk about the return of Jesus Christ. I saved it for last because I was going through the book of Matthew from front to back, not back to front. But this is the Olivet Prophecy. And I want to read about 11 or 12 verses here.
Matthew 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
Well, this has been the work of the church throughout time, since Jesus inaugurated the church of God back in AD 31. Verse 21, we get finally to the great Tribulation.
Matthew 24:21-27 "For then there will be great tribulation, such has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore if they say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out, or 'Look, He is in the inner rooms!' do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be."
That is what I was kind of getting at early in my sermon here, about how loud and noticeable it will be. It is like lightning that comes and flashes, you see and you hear. So it will be obvious.
Matthew 24:28-31 "For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles [or the vultures] will be gathered together. Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
So here we have Christ's signature explanation of the time of the end and of His second coming. His description of His return takes all of about three or four verses, which is kind of interesting. He really does not talk all that much about it. All the rest of the stuff in this chapter is about conditions that lead up to it, things that will be happening in the church, attitudes of people. The seals are all mentioned there in the beginning 10 verses or 11 verses or so there. So He is talking about a lot of stuff that comes up to the edge of it and then talks about His second coming with a few words.
We find out that He will return at the end of a time of great tribulation and war. It talks about the eagles being gathered there with the vultures. That is what He tells us to look for. It is a time of great war after a time of a lot of anguish and want and chaos and confusion in the great Tribulation. That will be a time in which many people will be telling, will be proclaiming that Christ is coming or that He has already come and He is here or there, and we are supposed to concentrate here on the truth. Because He gave us these warnings so we do not get tricked into following somebody who does great signs and wonders and says that Jesus has come or He is over here or over there. We need to keep our minds concentrated on the words that He told us so we do not end up being deceived.
So He tells us finally, when He gets to it, that He is going to come with suddenness and with loudness and with brightness, like a lightning strike. There will be heavenly signs and it will seem like earth and maybe even the whole universe is rolling up and collapsing. Then He tells us that most of the world; unlike us, we will be cheering, I am sure, we will be so happy that it has finally come. But most of the world will mourn. Most of the world will think that they are done for. Many of them will be. But they know that Jesus Christ is coming back to judge them. And as we saw in another place, He is coming with a rod of iron. He is not coming as Mister Nice Guy to those who have rebelled against Him and displeased Him all this time.
But He will come with the clouds of heaven and light up the darkness and the gloom that has fallen on Planet Earth. A great trumpet blast will sound, and people will see all the angels that come with Him go out to gather God's people to meet Him in the air. And we will return with Him in great glory. But you know, Jesus is not quite finished telling us about His coming because He is concerned about us. Please turn to Luke 12. He is worried that we are going to wander off, wander off the path. Get confused, get deceived. So He wants to warn us that we have got to keep our eye on the ball.
Luke 12:35-38 "Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning [be prepared]; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat and will come and serve them. And if he should come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants."
So He gives us a hint here that it will seem like He is delaying His coming. It is not delayed at all. He will come exactly when He is supposed to, but to us it seems like He is coming late. He should have come back in 1984, or He should have come back in some other time in our past, and He has not done it yet. But we have to keep being faithful and being prepared.
Luke 12:39-48 "But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." Then Peter said to Him, "Lord, do you speak this parable only to us, or to all people?" And the Lord said, "Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, that he will make him ruler over all that he has. But if that servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,' and begins to beat the menservants and maidservants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself to do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
In this passage and in others, Jesus goes out of His way to make sure that His disciples understand that no one knows when He will return and so our only defense is to be ready and watching all the time. Only the Father knows, as is said in other places. I take from this that He does not want us to get hung up on the timing of His return. He just wants us to take care of business. That is, He wants us to take care of spiritually growing and producing good fruit. That is our job. That is what we have been sent here to do, or called to do.
Another thing, the good piece of advice is, do not worry about those things you cannot control. You cannot control what the world is going to do. You cannot control most everything. You can only control yourself and what you learn and what you do with that learning. Whether you are faithful or not, that is what you can control. So if a person is stuck on when is Christ coming, he will not be focused on holiness. He will not be focused on what is right and good, what is pleasing in God's sight, and that is what God wants him to do.
So here He stresses our attitudes and behaviors. That should be what is most important to us. He wants us watching, that is, being expectant and vigilant and prepared. Making sure that we are pleasing in His sight, that we are doing what He wants. That is the only rational way to act and to be. If we do not know when He is going to return, it makes the only sense to always be ready. I know that is hard, it is stressful. It makes us push all the time. It makes it seem like we are always in a gun lap. But it is important if we want to be a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, to be ready whenever He happens to return.
We say, "Hey, your reward depends on being watchful." How foolish it would be for us to squander our Master's grace and goodwill by sloughing off, losing faith, and worse, like He shows here, by mistreating and abusing our brethren. That is dumb. That way lies destruction.
So we have our work cut out for us, people. Christ is coming back soon. How soon? We do not know. But in hope of His arrival we must always daily diligently apply ourselves to God's way of life. And so much the more as we see the Day approaching.
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