The Child Coming Again
The Child: Christmas 2025 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
When we began this Advent Season, I said that I wanted us to think of this time as the time of the Child.
Throughout December we’ve seen Jesus as the Child...
...promised by God...
...delivered by Mary...
...filled with the Spirit...
...born to die...
...and this morning, the Child coming again.
Many people love the Christmas season. The family. The friends. The giving and the getting. The music. The lights. The decorations. The manger scenes in front of homes, carefully placed on mantles, displayed on church altars—all depicting the reason we celebrate: the coming of Jesus as babe born in a manger.
But many who celebrate His first coming will not be so eager to welcome Him in His second coming.
The babe born in a manger is not really a threat to the average sinner.
Neither is the man who died on the cross.
But the sovereign king who will destroy all wickedness, He will be a threat to all who reject Him.
This past year on Wednesday nights, I was encouraged to think more on the return of Jesus as we studied 2 Peter.
In 2 Peter, the Apostle Peter wrote to prepare Christians for the false teachers that would inevitably arise in the church.
These false teachers would attempt to lead others away from Christ through various false teachings, but a big one was the false teaching that Christ isn’t going to return.
3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,
4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
This was an explicit denial of Jesus’ return for the purpose of embracing sin and leading others into.
But as Peter says in 2 Peter 3:9-10...
9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
We are going to focus on v. 10 and a few things that we can know about the return of Jesus, but before we do, let’s talk about what we can’t know.
Speaking of His return, Jesus said in Matthew 24:36...
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
It’s obvious from what Jesus said that we can’t know the timing of His return.
Not even the angels of heaven know.
Not even the Son.
But the Father alone knows the time when Jesus will return.
[ILLUS] This, however, hasn’t stopped many from predicting the timing of Jesus’ return.
The Jehovah’s Witness cult has been wrong about a great many things from their beginning in the 1870s.
And one of the things they’ve been repeatedly wrong about, like so many others, is the timing of Christ’s return.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have predicted Jesus’ return on at least six occasions—1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975.
The failed prediction of Jesus’ return in 1975 was a major embarrassment for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they have avoided giving specific dates ever since.
Of course, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only ones to have done this sort of thing.
There have been plenty of Baptist bozos who have suffered self-inflicted embarrassment because they tried to predict the date of Jesus’ return.
While their prediction won’t stop the Father from sending the Son if that is the time the Father has ordained, we should remember what the Scripture says...
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
And the instruction Jesus gave in Acts 1:7 would be good for us to remember as we think about the timing of His return…
7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority…
[TS] But even if we can’t be definite about when Christ will return, there are a few things we can be DEFINITE about...
Main Ideas
Main Ideas
#1: We can be definite about its certainty.
#1: We can be definite about its certainty.
10 But the day of the Lord will come...
[EXP] The false teachers dismissed the idea of judgment on sinners by denying the return of Jesus, but Peter says the day of the Lord—i.e., the day of Christ’s return—will come.
He did not say that it might come, but it would certainly come.
No matter what the false teachers believed and taught…
No matter what anyone else believes and teaches, Jesus will come again…
The return of Jesus is more certain than…
…the sun coming up tomorrow.
…your next heartbeat or your next breath.
…death and taxes.
[ILLUS] In the 1760s, Benjamin Franklin was living in London as a representative of the American colonies.
Already annoyed by British taxation, one day Franklin received a letter from a British official requesting that he pay a small tax on his London residence.
Franklin wrote back explaining that he was a colonial agent, not a resident, and was, therefore, exempt.
The tax collector wrote back, saying, “Sir, taxes are like death. They come for all men, regardless of where they sleep.”
Franklin found the reply humorous and even showed the letter to friends, saying that even when he tried to flee across the sea to avoid taxes, they still found him.
And years later, when someone asked him whether taxes were truly unavoidable, he said:
“My good sir, I have tried outrunning them. I assure you, they are faster.”
All of this is what led him to write that now famous line: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
And yet the return of Christ is more certain still.
[APP] It is certain because the Word of God promises it.
27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds.
16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
6 For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you,
7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire...
28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
7 Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him...
The certainty of Jesus’ return is definite because God’s Word repeatedly promises it’s certainty. Are you living in the reality of His certain return?
Are you increasingly turning away from sin?
Are you increasingly drawing closer to Christ?
Will you be ready when the Son of God comes again?
[TS]…
#2: We can be definite about its surprise.
#2: We can be definite about its surprise.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief…
[ILLUS] I was once playing basketball with some friends when I demonstrated a trick pass I had seen some famous player do.
I positioned my friend to the side of the hoop and told him that it would look like I was going to pass the ball behind my back to the other side.
I would, however, hit the ball with other elbow and the ball would come to him.
He gave me a sort of “yeah right” look, but I told him that he needed to have his hands up.
Even so, when I went behind my back one way and then elbowed it the other way, the ball flew right into my friends face.
Although, I told him it was coming, the ball surprised him because he wasn’t ready.
When we say that the return of Jesus will be surprising, we mean it in that sense.
We don’t mean that it will be surprising because we thought it would never happen, and then suddenly it did; we mean that it will be surprising because, despite the promise of its certainty, it will catch so many people unready.
It will catch so many people like a thief.
[EXP] The warning about Jesus’ coming being a coming like a thief is mean to raise our alertness; its a warning meant to make us ready for His return.
43 “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
2 For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
3 While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.
4 But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;
5 for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness;
6 so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.
3 ‘So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.
15 (“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”)
In all these verses, the surprising or unexpectedly sudden nature of Jesus’ second coming is meant to motivate the readiness of His people.
They are to be a people ready to repent.
They are to be a people ready to walk in righteousness.
And they—we are— are to be a people enduring in this readiness. In Luke 12, Jesus said…
35 “Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit.
36 “Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.
37 “Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.
38 “Whether he comes in the second watch, or even in the third, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
39 “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
40 “You too, be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect.”
[ILLUS] In my teenage years, our church took some short-term mission trips to various cities—Charlotte, Detroit, Dallas, and other places.
Every year my friends and I felt like we weren’t spiritually ready to go on those mission trips.
Maybe we hadn’t been praying deeply or reading the Bible consistently.
Maybe we hadn’t been sharing Jesus with others.
Maybe we hadn’t been obeying the commands of Jesus.
No matter what it was, my friends and I would always say that the week or two before the mission trip was our time to get ready—to get prayed up, read up, or whatever we needed to do to be ready to go on the mission trip.
[APP] Perhaps that’s how some of us think about the return of Jesus. Perhaps we think they’ll be some opportunity to get ready when He comes; that we’ll get to say a quick prayer of faith or of repentance and then we’ll be good to go.
God’s Word says there will be no such opportunity.
God’s Word says that, rather than getting ready, we must remain ready by enduring in faith and obedience at all times.
This morning, would you say that you are ready for the return of Jesus?
Would you say that you are always ready for the return of Jesus?
Some of us are so deluded by pride that we don’t realize how unready we are.
Others of us sense in this moment that we need to begin drawing closer and closer to Jesus as the days go by so that we are ready for the day of the Lord.
Let us join with that group that is drawing close and closer to Jesus so that we will not be surprised at His coming.
[TS]…
#3: We can be definite about its destruction.
#3: We can be definite about its destruction.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
[EXP] If we are in Christ Jesus—meaning we turned away from rebellion against God and bowed the knee to Him by trust in His Son Jesus who died to pray the price for our sins on the cross and rose from the dead to make us right with God—then we have no reason to fear the day of the Lord.
As Paul said in Romans 8:1…
1 …there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
But although we who trust in Christ have no reason to fear, it doesn’t mean that that day won’t be terrifying to all that remains cursed by sin and death.
“...the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
Hold on to that last bit, “...the earth and its works will be burned up.”
The phrase “the earth and its works” refers not only to what is directly sinful but also to what doesn’t directly glorify God.
[ILLUS] Let’s say that we know a guy who works hard to provide for his family. He doesn’t complain; He works honestly and budgets his money wisely. Because of him, his family always has what it needs.
Would we say this is a good man?
Of course, we would.
Or let’s say we know a woman who supports her family with care and compassion. She encourages her husband and nurtures her children. She is tireless in her service, and because of her, her family always feels loved.
Would we say this is a good woman?
Or course, we would.
But would anything that this good man and good women did survive the day of the Lord?
If the good man and the good woman did all they did to the glory of God, then the intense of Jesus’ holiness will not consume their works when the earth and its works are burned up at His return.
[APP] Here’s how the Apostle Paul put this truth in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15…
11 For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
14 If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.
15 If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Brothers and Sisters, over the course of this last year you have done many good things.
You have served and given and shared and helped and comforted and taught and sang and visited and more…
…and you will have opportunity to do it all again in 2026.
But will any of it survive the heat of Christ’s holiness when He returns?
It will only if it is done for His glory.
As the English missionary, C. T. Studd said, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
[TS]…
Conclusion
Conclusion
In Acts 1, the disciples were looking on as Jesus ascended to heaven in a cloud. It had to be an astounding scene. As He disappeared from their sight, they were left gazing into the sky.
Soon two angels appeared and said to them…
11 They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
It hasn’t been my aim in this sermon to have of you staring into the sky waiting on the return of Jesus.
It has been my aim to remind you that He is coming; we can be certain of it; we had better stay ready it; and we do that by doing all we do for His glory.
