The Last Days and The Day
Notes
Transcript
Mission and Vision
Mission and Vision
We area continuing our sermon series beginning with the end in mind
AS we are kicking off this new year, we are setting our sights on what’s important
looking at the mission of God. What is the end goal. What is this all about.
Sometimes we get caught up in the minutia that we miss the bigger picture
Last week we talked about the end of the end
How the end goal, the consummation of the gospel is in Jesus living and reigning forever with the people of God
Heaven actually coming down and there being a new heaven and a new earth and there being unbroken communion with God
All things being made new
Today we are going to talk about the Last Days and the Day of the Lord…
Disclaimers again
This is an overview… we wont be able to go into detail.
We are painting with broad strokes
So the first thing you need to know is that the Last Days and the Day of the Lord are different
The Last Days are the days leading up to The Day of the Lord
So first lets begin with the end in mind… lets talk about the Day of the Lord
In order to know what the Day of the Lord is, we have to understand why it’s necessary
Back to the Garden
Sin entered the world… Sin fractured the relationship between God and his creation
From that moment God spoke of the time when the messiah would come and right the wrongs. That God would step in and bring unity back to the fractured relationship
Through the law and the prophets there are these allusions to The Day.. or the Great and Terrible day of the Lord
What the Holy Spirit inspired through prophets like Daniel, Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Joel, Hosea.
Is an image of that day when all evil all that is wrong will be dealt with. When the sin that broke into this world is going to be punished
Now we will be going into more depth about what that punishment looks like next week,
But the people of God understood that since God is good, and God is just, there had to be a reckoning for the destruction of God’s created order
The Israelites had a history that understood that God was a God of justice
He defeated Pharaoh and his armies, he sent he angel of death to set the people of God free from the oppression of this world and its power.
They saw God even punish the evil in their midst by sending them into exile.
There has even been the personification of teh world and its power and that is Babylon. Whenever you do read revelation and you see Babylon mentioned it is the personification of the ways of the world.
Babylon is the fleshly nature of man and all those who follow it. Those whose power is wrapped in corruption, oppression, death, political power, anger, immorality, wrath… This is babylon
But these little examples of how God was the God of justice and righteousness are all pointing to the day when Jesus comes in his Glory and completely destroys evil
What we see in our text is the image of the Day when Jesus comes to fully and finally defeat Babylon the great
What we know about the day from Daniel and Joel is that the Day of theLord is going to be a day full of wrath and darkness and the full power of God’s judgement
But this isn’t supposed to be a day of fear for the people of God
When Jesus comes in power and glory he is coming to destroy death and evil and the babylon of this world who has set itself up against theLord
For the people of God this is surely going to be terrifying… just because no one can be in the midst of so much power and not have the wobbles a bit
BUt it s mostly going to be a day where we get to be in the presence of our savior and get to see the victorious procession of the conquering king coming to set people free from the oppression of Death
So what about the last days? What will they be like...
Jesus tells us in Matthew
there will be false prophets and people claiming that they are the Christ
There will be wars and rumors of wars
there will be natural disasters
there will be persecution
The sun will be turned black and the moon
Paul tells us in Timothy that
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
Revelation talks about the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse… right this is what we are waiting for before we know that we know we are in the last days
WE see in
the first horse conquers
the second horse took peace so that people would slay each other (war)
the third brings shortage
the fourth brings death with a sword and with famine and pestilence and by wild beasts
What we see in the image of the last days looks eerily similar to what the world looks like today
I mean we sit here in the midwest of the US and we speculate about a future time when there will be war and famine and conquering armies marching into our midst and persecution....
But i wonder how distant this image would look to Christians in Syria, In Iraq, In Iran, in Darfur, the congo
We are living in the last days
What Paul says to timothy is almost a polaroid picture of our culture
Lovers of themself
These are the last days.
Year after year you see people pointing to things and trying to prophesy about when the last days are… the last days were initiated with Christ’s death and resurrection
Actually the first sermon preached at Pentecost… Peter preached a sermon from Joel
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.
Peter pointing to Joel was telling us that with the coming of the Holy Spirit we are in the last days… we are in that time between the justification and the consumation
Between Christ destroying the power of sin on the cross and then ultimately destroying sin and death on The Day of the LORD
This idea of us living in the last days could be a source of great anxiety for some
But for us believers this is supposed to be the fire that pushes us on to mission
We know the end goal is for the redemption of all mankind, of all creation
‘and we know that as the church we are called to participate in bringing about this redemption through proclaiming the gospel and living our our faith
And we know that our time is short
SO we don’t have time to live a half-hearted simi-christian existance
I know I’m jumping around a lot.. but like i said this is a survey of eschatology
Jesus tells us that no one knows the day or the hour. But in the end it’s going to be just like the days of Noah
People are going to be going about thier everyday life and then the end will come
And if you are familiar with the story of noah… the ones who were destroyed were the wicked and the earth remained and the righteous remained
Just as in those days… there will be people dragging thier feet about getting into the ark, they wont see the urgency.. there will be people with bills due, with hours to work at the job, with responsibilities at home… and they will never get to fulfill those responsibilities because that day will come like a thief in the night
So what should you be doing…
Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.
You don’t have time to waste
The time is short. You can spend all your life watching CNN or FOX and trying to dicipher when the end is going to come or you can understand that we are living in the last days and the only thing to do is to try to get as many people in the Ark as possible
Our Ark is Jesus Christ
And just like in the days of noah our God is merciful and he is longing that none should parish
He is warning people by allowing them to see the birth pangs of the end
But the Day will come… the question is not IF… the question is are you going to be found living out your faith. When Jesus returns is he going to find faith on this earth
Are you going to be working, awake, and being ready
If he were to come or call today.... would you be ready?
If not… I’m going to give you some time to respond
Anything that you need to confess do it
New years resolutions are usually given up before the end of January...
however you get a chance every day to renew your commitment to Jesus
Don’t get caught sleeping, don’t forget that there is urgency to the Gospel
A day is coming when it will be too late
But until then we celebrate what God has already done and the grace and mercy he has for us here and now to live in communion with Christ Jesus.
We are going to move into a time of holy communion, but before we do I want to give you some time to respond to God’s grace
