Title:                                        Coping with the Delay  (revisions Jun 07)

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.

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?

C.           E.g. Farmer Astronaut move.

Astronaut, last name Farmer, dropped from the program when he left to be with his dying father.

Dreamed of going into space, built a rocket and capsule in his barn.  Mortgaged the farm, his cattle, missed payments.

Tried to buy solid rocket fuel for a single earth orbit.  FBI showed up in force.  Not being able to get the fuel, he couldn’t wait so he blasted off with make-shift fuel and crashed!

D.           Ways of coping.

1.            Can be separated into two groups:

a.            Fantasy/assumption

1)            Emphasizes the future.

2)            Marked by continual excitement or normative assumption.

3)            E.g.  “Next year in Jerusalem” which Rabbi Shimjon Felix says became the Passover mantra of the Diaspora Jews  and kept it alive for their children and grandchildren.

 (in a Sh’ma, 2003 article titled “Heed the Words:  Next Year in Jerusalem”)

b.            Reframing emphasizes the present.

1)            My life may end today and usher me into the future!

2)            Every moment may be my last.

3)            Good news:  (hymn)  “One sweetly solemn thought comes to me ore and ore, I am nearer home today than I’ve ever been before.”

2.            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)            Emphasize normal life experiences.

2)            Distract us from God.

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

4)            Deemphasize God personally and dramatically breaking into human experience.

IV.         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--

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

1.            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?”

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

a.            Suffering has continued ever since.

b.            So how could Christ say “It is finished!”?

D.           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.

E.           Experience the future.

1.            Because at that moment the conclusion became certain.

a.            [Some recent sports event.

1)            E.g.  2007 NBA finals, found in airport between flights.  Quickly lost interest—2nd quarter, but Salt Lake  was already so far ahead that it was already over.

2)            E.g.  2007 College Final football game on Monday night between Ohio State and Florida State.

3)            Ohio was heavily favored.

4)            I got started during the 2nd quarter.

5)            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 . . .”

F.            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.

V.          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?  Remember the Psalms from which we read?

1.            David

a.            —experienced the future in the middle of present misery.

b.            Trusted God’s promise 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.

3.            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!