Title:                                        Coping with the Delay           

Text:                                        Ps 6; Hb 10:19-25, 32-39; Jn 19:28-30

File Categories:                       Second Coming

Central Thrust:                        Exploring ways to maintain a realistic expectation of the second coming.

Ill:                                           Children waiting to open presents at Christmas

Hym:                                       203 This is the Threefold Truth

                                                626 In a Little While We’re Going Home

                                                217 The Church Has Waited Long

                                                415 Christ the Lord, All Power Possessing

                                                602 O Brother, Be Faithful

Theological Concern:              Sustaining faith in the second coming

Point of Immediacy:               Delay of the coming and Christmas

Probs in Comm:                      Trite?  Obvious?

Sermon in a Sentence:             Combining past, present and future is the best way to cope with the delay in the Second Coming.

Attribute of God:                    Reliable—but not in a hurry

Preached:                                070109 WWC Midweek Meditation

                                                070112  WWC Impact (Black Student Friday night service)

                                                070616  Choteau, MT church

Coping with the Delay

I.             The problem.

A.           Adventists have a problem:  we’ve been announcing Jesus’ return for over 140 years, Christians for over 2,000 years, and it hasn’t happened.

1.            When does this announcement lose credibility?

2.            We continue to pray for Jesus to come and interrupt the cycle of suffering, misery and death.

3.            How long can we be honest with ourselves and maintain our beliefs with no fulfillment to our assertions?

a.            We echo the cries of David in our Psalm.

e.g. Psalm 6:2-3 (TNIV)
2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?

b.            Compare that with Psalm 13:

c.f. Psalm 13:1-3 (TNIV)
1 For the director of music. A psalm of David. How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

B.           Jesus points toward a solution with words from the cross.

1.            Pray.

II.           Waiting.

A.           What is waiting like for you?

1.            Children waiting to open Christmas presents.

a.            On our way to Sabbath School DeAndre and Harmony (and family?!) said they couldn’t wait so opened presents on Dec 23!

b.            Story comes home to me—Found out Mike knew what I was going to get, so I begged, pleaded, pestered him to tell me.  He finally did.  Now, every time I see that old family movie I remember how I hate to wait.

2.            Waiting for summer to pass so could see BJB at our wedding.

3.            Waiting for rescue or healing or hope.

a.            E.g. Ken Barnes attempting to sail alone and non-stop around the world from the West Coast of the US.  Storm off Chile rolled his 44’ ketch completely over, 360 degrees, ruined his engine, broke off both masts, killed his generator and injured him.  Left him stranded and adrift for 3 days.

III.          Negative consequences of the delay

A.           Waiting is bad enough in itself.

B.           Even worse, waiting can corrode our confidence, sap reality from our belief system.

1.            How can one justifiably talk about a "soon" coming, 2,000 later?

2.            When does our faith become a fantasy?

3.            When are we living in a dream?  Refusing to accept reality?  Blinding ourselves so we don’t have to admit the truth?

IV.         Ways to cope.

A.           Assumption—Excitement.

1.            = Live in continual excitement, fully trusting and fully expecting, like a child anticipating Christmas.

2.            Positive.

a.            Simple, uncomplicated.

b.            “God said it, I believe it and that settles it for me.”

3.            Negative.

a.            Childlike lack of awareness of the meaning of time.

b.            e.g. Travel to grandparents’ in Montana for Christmas.  “Are we there yet?”

c.            Oblivious to the significance of the delay or its consequences.

d.            Naïve.

B.           Assumption—Distracted.

1.            = Hopeful but very busy with life.

2.            Positive.

a.            Lots of energy for life in the present.

b.            Optimism, involvement.

c.            Not riddled with doubts, but accept promises at face value.

3.            Negative.

a.            Can be too easily preoccupied.

b.            Idea of the Second Coming can become an unwelcome control over life’s exuberant experiences.

c.            We can resist and rebel against the constraints of Christian living.

C.           The norm.

1.            = Keep saying it but don't think seriously about it.

2.            Positive.

a.            Maintains the idea.

b.            Expresses an ethos, a way of looking at life and the world.

c.            Passes on that world view of faith to others.

1)            E.g. “Next year in Jerusalem” even though in many cases they knew it would never happen for them.

a)            E.g. Rabbi Shimon Felix, “Heed the Words:  Next Year in Jerusalem,” in Sh’ma, 2003 says this became the Passover mantra of the Diaspora Jews.

2)            Kept it alive for children and grandchildren.

3.            Negative.

a.            Ignore the passing of time, the logic of skeptics, the cynicism of unbelievers.

1)            Different from unawareness.

2)            If asked these would know, but wouldn’t think about it or its consequences.

b.            Can become a trite idea, spoken often but pondered little.

c.            Can become a stamp of orthodoxy.

1)            C.f. Shiboleth in the OT.

2)            Symbol of sanctity.

d.            Phrases like “the Lord’s coming has to be near, doesn’t it!” and “10 or 20 or however many years from now, “if the Lord doesn’t come,” can become euphemisms that may reflect shallow thinking.

D.           Reframe.

1.            = Emphasize the uncertainty of life and expect transition to the next life whenever this one ends.

a.            Seriously addresses the doubts and uncertainties of our belief.

b.            Finds a way to express this belief in the context of the real cycles of life.

c.            Post Shannon.

2.            Positive.

a.            Its true.

b.            Always ready.

c.            Live each moment of life purposefully.

d.            The Second Coming is never more than my lifetime away.

e.            Moves immanence to my generation.

3.            Negative.

a.            Begs the question.

b.            De-emphasizes the dramatic, decisive and universal nature of the Coming.

1)            Jesus will break into human history.

2)            Jesus will return for all people at one time.

c.            Becomes an individual rather than a corporate event.

d.            Takes away some of the incentive to prepare the masses to meet Jesus since it will happen one at a time.

E.           These ways of coping share characteristics.

1.            Can be separated into two groups:

a.            Those that emphasize the past and/or future.

b.            Those that emphasize the present.

2.            All these ways and both of these groups have serious drawbacks.

a.            Those that emphasize the past and future can become

1)            Irrelevant

2)            Leave us stuck and unresponsive to the contemporary world.

3)            Entice us to escape or deny present reality.

4)            You’ve heard the quip suggesting that “Some saints are so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good!”

b.            Those that emphasize only the present can allow the present to:

1)            Distract us from God.

2)            Be overwhelmed with the misery and sadness of the present.

V.          Jesus suggested another way from the cross.

John 19:30 (TNIV)
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

A.           Compress the past, present and future.

1.            = Live as if it had already happened.

2.            With God, what was and will be is.

B.           Expressed honest description of the present.

1.            Jesus had endured a life of mixed pain and humiliation.

2.            He had been acclaimed by some but rejected by many.

3.            He had been falsely accused, interrogated, beaten with a whip of thongs and barbs until the muscles in his back were torn to the bone, His clothes were ripped off, He had nails pounded through his flesh and bones, and He was left bleeding and naked, sagging on the cross, fighting for every breath, weighed down by centuries of others’ sins and enduring the pain of separation from God.

4.            Now His human life of suffering, pain, and rejection was finished.  It was finished.

-PAUSE--

5.            But in another sense, God’s plan was not finished.

a.            More than 2,000 years later we’re still waiting for it to end.

“The church has waited long her absent Lord to see;

And still in loneliness she waits, A friendless stranger she.”

So wrote the Scotish pastor and hymn writer Horatius Bonar, over one hundred years ago.

“How long, O Lord our God, Holy and true and good,

Wilt Thou not judge Thy suffering church, Her sighs and tears and blood?”

b.            This struggle between good and evil was not finished at the cross. 

1)            Suffering has continued ever since.

2)            So how could Christ say “It is finished!”?

C.           Recovered and preserved the lessons of the past.

1.            Descriptions of God’s dealing with human beings.

2.            God’s plan of salvation anticipated in the devotion and ceremonies of His faithful people.

3.            Predictions of the coming of the Savior.

4.            These were finished.

D.           Experience the future.

1.            Because at that moment the conclusion became certain.

a.            Monday night’s college football game between Ohio State and Florida State.

1)            Ohio was heavily favored.

2)            I got started during the 2nd quarter.

3)            Quit watching by the 3rd quarter because the outcome was so clear.

a)            As Florida neared the goal line another time, even one of the announcers said “if they make this one it will lock up this game.”

b.            Monday night football—Don Merideth:  “Turn out the lights, the party’s over . . .”

E.           For God, what will be already is.

1.            Jesus endured the chaos of the present to fulfill promises from the past.

2.            Jesus survived the pain and misery of the present because he knew of future relief.

3.            He didn’tHHHH deny His present by running to the past or escaping to the future.

4.            He plunged into the present because of the certainty of the future.

VI.         Words of hope from the cross.

A.           “It is finished,” He said, and in those words he compressed the past, present and future.

B.           Allows us to remember lessons from the past, be honest about the present and experience the promise of the future now.

C.           How?

1.            David—experienced the future in the middle of present misery.

a.            Remember the Psalms from which we read?

b.            Trusted God’s promised for relief even when he was under siege.

2.            Easier for multitaskers than for linear thinkers.

a.            Sequences, order and timeliness important to linear thinkers.

b.            My Theology colleagues remind me that time was of little concern to the Middle Eastern ancients.

c.            We need to practice compressing the past and future into the present.

D.           Conclusion.  Hb 10:36 & 37

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

For,

“In just a little while,

he who is coming will come

and will not delay.”

1.            We can be faithful because we know the Creator God who will one day recreate beauty from betrayal, comfort from chaos, delight from disaster, hope from helplessness, peace from perplexity/panic, restoration from rebellion, trust from trickery, worship from worry.

2.            We can put up with the delay if we have faith in the end result.

3.            We can endure frustrations, hurts, betrayals, financial reversals, disappointments, illness, disease, suffering and death because we know this is not the end.  We have heard the LORD say, “It is finished.”

And with God, what was and what will be is—NOW!