And the Apostles Creed, while it's not scripture,
it is a collection of rules of faith,
rules of faith that were used particularly
as statements of confession at a time of baptism
in the early church.
So if you were going to become,
if you were going to get baptized,
you became what is called a catechumen,
which was that you entered into a time of learning
and catechism, that's where that word comes from,
where you were taught the foundations of the faith
through small little statements like this
so that you understood the step you were taking in baptism.
You understood the foundations of the faith.
And it begins, and while it's not scripture,
it is drawn from the confessions of scripture.
And so it is something that we can look at
and it's a summary of the tenets of our faith.
And a portion of it begins with,
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
died and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day, He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and is seated
at the right hand of the Father.
And then there's this statement,
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
What this tells us in the Apostles Creed
is that Jesus Christ came to earth,
conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
Then we've been reflecting on this
through the advent of Christ, through the last few weeks,
as we've covered wonderful counselor,
mighty God, eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
We've been looking at who this Messiah, the King,
might be, who is coming, who was promised.
And looking at these titles for this child
who was for us, or the Son who would be given to us,
who we come to know as Jesus Christ.
And He came on a rescue mission
to redeem and save His lost creation.
And He came in a way that was wholly upside down
and counter to what anyone expected.
They expected a conquering King,
a King riding in with great forces and great strength
to overthrow the oppressor.
And what they ended up with in Jesus
was one who came to suffer.
He came to suffer, He came to be crucified, to die,
and to be buried in a borrowed tomb.
He came to rise again from the dead,
to defeat our great enemy,
and to ascend to the realm of heaven victorious.
But if you know the Apostles Creed
and you know the foundations of the faith,
you know that the story doesn't end there.
The story doesn't end
because the next thing the Apostles Creed says
is He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
He will come again.
Every year for the last three years,
I've had the privilege of preaching
on the last Sunday of the year after Christmas,
the last Sunday as we head on out into the new year.
And when I was an associate and I was first offered this,
I thought, that's awesome.
I get to close out the new year, woohoo!
And then you read pastors' blogs and stuff
and you find out the last Sunday of the year
is one of the least attended Sundays.
And the pastor's exhausted from Christmas
and he wants a break.
And so if he has an associate, he's like,
I'm gonna give you a shot here, kid.
And then no one shows up, no, not no one.
We have a great crowd today, it's awesome.
I mean, we didn't know what to expect today,
and here it is.
It's awesome, it's great.
He will come again.
Acts chapter one, verse nine through 11 says this.
Jesus, having been crucified, died, buried three days
in the grave, rises from the dead,
and then appears over the course of 40 days
to his disciples and to many others.
And at the end of that 40 days,
Jesus gathers his disciples together
and he is going to ascend up into heaven
and he gives them final instruction.
And here's what Acts chapter one, verse nine
through 11 says.
After he had said all this, he was taken up as they watched
and a cloud took him out of their sight.
And while he was going, they were gazing into heaven
and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them.
They said, men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up into heaven?
This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven,
will come in the same way that you have seen him
going into heaven.
This same Jesus, who has taken from you into heaven,
will come in the same way that you have seen him
going into heaven.
Today, we are going to focus our time
on what we have called the last advent.
The last advent.
There was the first advent, the advent of Christ,
a newborn baby that we just celebrated.
But there's another advent, the last, a final advent.
And we're gonna look at three questions this morning.
What will it be like?
When will it happen?
And how should we wait?
What will it be like?
When will it happen?
And how should we wait?
The first one, what will it be like?
The author, Sam Storm, in his book, Kingdom Come,
talking about the second coming of Christ,
he brings together a lot of scripture
and paints this reality of what the last advent
will look like, and he says this.
The second coming of Jesus Christ is the personal,
visible, physical return of Jesus to this earth
to consummate the salvation of his people
and to be glorified in them and to inflict vengeance
on those who have defiled him and the gospel of grace.
As you can see in Sam Storm's statement there,
a kind of outline for what we're gonna cover right here
in this first point, what will it be like?
That his second coming will be personal,
visible, and physical, let's start there.
The first one, personal.
The second coming of Jesus will be personal.
Jesus won't be sending an angel
or some mystical representative
or any other representative in his place.
He will return as Acts chapter one already said,
this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven
will come in the same way that you have seen him
going into heaven.
Now some have taught throughout history
that the end times events, all the end times events
that are to take place before Jesus is coming,
all of them were fulfilled in the destruction
of the temple in AD 70, a long time ago.
All of them were fulfilled, including Jesus' return.
Some have taught that Jesus already returned,
but, with a caveat, right?
He returned, but his return was a spiritual return.
It was in the hearts of the believers
and not a personal, physical return.
But this can't be according to scripture,
as we'll see in the next point, that it'll be personal,
but it'll also be visible.
His second coming will be visible.
When Christ returns, everyone will see him.
Everyone will see him.
You know, they used to say
the revolution won't be televised, right?
This might be televised.
If the cameras still work,
if there's not some electrostatic storm
that blows everything out, this might be televised.
But either way, everyone will know.
Everyone will see, it will not be hidden.
It will be a universally recognized event.
Universally, I use that in the fullest terms.
Universally recognized event, not secret, not hidden.
We see in Revelation chapter one, verse seven.
Revelation one, seven says,
look, he is coming with the clouds,
and every eye will see him.
Every eye will see him.
The highly influential cult, the Jehovah's Witness,
teach that the second coming of Christ
was an invisible spiritual event
that actually already occurred in 1914.
So long before most of us were born, most of us.
Jesus already came back in a spiritual, invisible way.
But Matthew 24 gives a very different impression
of what Jesus' return will look like.
In Matthew 24, there's actually
this great cosmic disturbance.
All of the created world is responding to it.
It's all responding to it.
Matthew 24 says, immediately after the distress
of those days, the sun will be darkened,
the moon will not shed its light,
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the powers of heavens will be shaken.
Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear.
The Son of Man will appear in the sky,
and then all the peoples on the earth will mourn,
and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds
of heaven with power and great glory.
You can't miss it.
You can't sleep through it.
You'll know when he comes back,
because it'll be personal, and it'll be visible.
And the final point is that it'll be physical.
When Christ returns, what will it be like?
It'll be physical.
Will Jesus be 15 feet tall, like a superhero?
Will he be a giant, like, you know,
like, whatever that giant, King Kong or whatever?
No, he's not gonna be King Kong, right?
Is he gonna be ripped like the rock,
you know, like he went away and hit the gym,
you know, worked on the striptease?
Is pectoid actually a thing?
No, okay, pectorals, thank you.
It sounds like something from a sci-fi film.
The pectoid's coming.
Back on track.
He's not gonna be 15 feet tall.
He's not coming as a superhero.
He's not gonna look like the rock all ripped out.
He's not gonna look like an alien.
He's not gonna show up on a spaceship.
No, he's going to return, and when he returns,
he will be in the same glorified body
in which he was raised from the dead.
The same glorified body in which he was raised
from the dead.
In fact, the Christian hope, the hope that we have
as believers involves the continuity
of the incarnate Son of God,
who still retains his resurrected,
although glorified body.
This is important to our faith.
Why?
Because the Bible says that he was the first fruits
of many, so to speak, he was the first who would come,
of all who would come after in the resurrection.
He was the first.
He was the prototype.
He's what we hope for.
He's what we aspire to.
He's what we anticipate becoming is what he underwent,
the glorification of his body.
And so Jesus returns in that same glorified body.
Our future bodily resurrection will mirror
Christ's bodily resurrection.
There were two heresies specifically that were rejected
in the early church, one, Docetism, and one, Marcionism.
These two heresies, Docetism and Marcionism,
both had similarities, but Docetism taught
that Jesus only seemed to have a body,
that he didn't actually have a body
because it was kind of out of the family of Gnostic beliefs,
viewed the material world as evil,
or the material world was evil and irredeemable.
It was something to be escaped,
and you escaped to higher knowledge,
or higher levels of secret knowledge.
And so either this was to be whipped into shape,
or beaten, or killed, or this was to be disregarded,
and so you could live all kinds of licentious behavior.
You could do anything to the body,
or anything in the body, because it doesn't matter.
It's all evil.
But when we attain that spiritual level,
that spiritual understanding, or whatever,
that Christ didn't have a physical body,
he only seemed to have a physical body.
And the church, the early church,
rejected that and said, no.
Christ had a physical body.
He appeared to the disciples,
he showed the wounds in his hands,
he allowed them to touch his physical body.
He had a physical body,
and God intends to redeem the physical,
that he's not ridden off creation,
and we're all just gonna float away on some cloud
and become spiritual beings.
But God has intention to redeem creation
and remake it glorified.
Christ's return will be visible,
it will be physical, it will be personal,
but why is Christ returning?
Why is Christ returning?
Why is he coming back?
Why don't we just wrap it all up in some other way?
What are the reasons that Christ is coming back?
And there are three that I wanna give you this morning.
Three reasons why Christ is coming back.
The first one, as Sam Storm laid out,
is to consummate the salvation of his people.
Christ is returning because he wants to consummate
the salvation of his people.
We are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
We are sanctified by the work of the Spirit
to purify us and make us holy,
and in the end we will be glorified
when we receive our resurrected, glorified bodies.
And this together, justified by faith,
sanctified by the Spirit, and glorified in the body,
this together is salvation.
Sometimes we go for a cheap salvation,
a one of three salvation.
We believe salvation is justification by faith.
We believe that we're justified.
God no longer views us as sinners,
but he views us in Christ's righteousness.
Christ's right merit is given to us, and now we're free.
We're set free from that, and that's it.
That's salvation.
But salvation is so much bigger than that.
Salvation is justification.
Salvation is sanctification, and salvation is glorification.
All three of them is the package salvation.
My wife gave me this imagery
as we were talking about this.
She said it's like buying something on Amazon, right?
You purchase the item on the app.
The item is then shipped to you,
and then it arrives or it's delivered to you.
Now imagine that we're at the shipping stage.
We have pressed the button and we've bought it,
and then we looked on the app and it's in route,
it's in transit, it's in shipping,
and one day it will arrive.
It'll be delivered, right?
And this is the whole buying experience.
You would not be satisfied if you pushed the button
and it never shipped and it never arrived.
You would be satisfied only if all three
of those components are there.
Salvation is the same.
Salvation is not justification by faith alone,
and that's it, but it's justification by faith,
and then the Spirit works in us and sanctifies us
and renews us and begins to remake us
so that ultimately we can one day be glorified
just as Christ is.
This is salvation.
This is our hope, this is our inheritance as people of God,
and so God came, Christ will return
to consummate the salvation of his people.
In his return, we will see him and we will be like him.
We are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.
That's how someone smart has put it in the past.
We are saved, justification.
We are being saved, sanctification,
and we will be saved, glorification.
But Jesus also returns for point number two and three,
to inflict vengeance on the ungodly
and to be glorified in his saints.
To inflict vengeance on the ungodly
and to be glorified in his saints.
I'm gonna read a little lengthy passage
out of Second Thessalonians for you this morning.
If you wanna turn there, you're welcome to.
I don't know, do we have that on the board?
Nope, okay.
Second Thessalonians chapter one, beginning in verse three.
We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters,
and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing,
and the love each one of you has for one another
is increasing.
Therefore, we ourselves boast about you
among God's churches, about your perseverance and faith
in all the persecutions and afflictions
that you are enduring.
It is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment
that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom,
for which you are also suffering,
since it is just for God to repay with affliction
those who are afflicting you, and to give relief to you
who are afflicted along with us.
This will take place at the revelation
of the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven
with his powerful angels when he takes vengeance
with flaming fire on those who don't know God,
and on those who don't obey the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction
from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength
on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints,
and to be marveled at by all those who have believed,
because our testimony among you was believed.
In view of this, we always pray for you
that our God will make you worthy of his calling,
and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good,
and your work produced by faith,
so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you,
and you by him according to the grace of our God,
and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The second coming will publicly display Christ's glory
in his people and through his people.
Christ will be glorified, and he will glorify himself
through us and in us.
All the world, all the cosmos will see,
the children of light, the children of God,
come alive and see the object of their faith,
the person of their faith, the one they have trusted,
looking to the skies in joy and rejoicing,
and all those who have rejected God,
who didn't count it worth knowing God
and giving thanks to God, who have rejected
and won't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
they will pay the penalty of eternal destruction
from the Lord's presence and his glorious strength
on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints.
The second coming will publicly display the glory of God
and be glorified in us, but it will also be a time
of righteous judgment for those who persist in unbelief
and refuse to obey the gospel of Jesus.
What will it be like?
That's what it will be like.
Personal, visible, he will return physically.
Why will he return?
He'll return to consummate the salvation of his people,
to bring salvation to its complete and wholeness.
He'll come to inflict vengeance on those who refused
to believe and perish in their sins,
and he will be glorified in and through his saints
on that glorious day.
That's what it will be like.
The second question, when will it happen?
How many of you know that in nine months of pregnancy,
it's what they tell you when you're having a baby,
nine months of pregnancy leading up to the birth
of the child, that's kind of a rough estimate,
not a concrete timeline there, right?
So my second born, or my third born, Nate,
we had the ability to plan for him to be induced, right?
He was late and they needed to get him going along,
so it's like, well, you pick a day and a time.
When do you want him?
When do you want him, right?
It's like, well, let's do Monday morning,
8 a.m. after we've had a couple cups of coffee
and we can head on down to the hospital.
That sounds like a perfect time.
Monday, 8 a.m. on January 21st.
Well, you know that little bugger?
He decided that Saturday at 10 p.m., I'm coming.
And you're going down to the hospital right now, right?
And the Lord's timing was perfect and Nate was born.
Not when we expected, not when we planned,
not when we picked the time or date.
Now concerning that day and hour, no one knows.
Neither the angels of heaven nor the Son,
except the Father alone.
As the days of Noah were,
so the coming of the Son of Man will be,
for in those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking and marrying
and giving in marriage until the day Noah boarded the ark.
They didn't know until the flood came
and swept them all away.
This is the way the coming of the Son of Man will be.
The Son of Man will be.
Life went on, eating and drinking, making merry,
getting married, giving in marriage,
all the way up to the point.
And then he came like the flood.
He will come.
Jesus goes on in Matthew 24 to compare his second coming
to a thief in the night.
How many of you guys have heard that statement before?
He comes like a thief in the night.
Jesus said, therefore be alert.
Since you don't know what day your Lord is coming.
But know this, if the homeowner had known
what time the thief was coming,
he would have stayed alert
and not let his house be broken into.
This is why you are also to be ready,
because the Son of Man is coming at an hour
you do not expect.
The time, the date, the hour,
these are hidden in God's sovereign will.
God's sovereignty, he alone knows.
We are not called to figure out calendar dates
or to look at the newest conspiracy theory
about when Christ will come
or what Nostradamus says about the end of the world.
The Bible tells us he will come when we don't expect him.
Like a thief in the night,
we are called to trust God
and to be ready.
So that leads us to our third question this morning.
How should we wait?
How should we wait, church?
There are at least four things
that we are gonna give attention to
while we wait for that second appearing of our Lord.
And our waiting is going to be active, not passive.
We're going to actively wait.
I don't know if you had kids,
maybe you have a spouse,
we won't point them out this morning.
But if you've ever, you know,
heading home to pick up your spouse or your kids,
and I'll be there in five minutes, right?
And you get there in five minutes
and you wait in your car for 10 minutes,
and you go in and you find maybe your son on the couch
with no shoes on, playing video games, right?
This is not active waiting.
Just so we're like clarifying here, right?
This is not actively waiting for your ride to arrive.
This is passively waiting.
And as we'll see, this may result in something bad
if you continue that pattern to the very end of time.
That's not how we are going to be.
We're going to be active, not passive.
How should we wait?
Number one, we should pursue Christ-like holiness.
How should we wait?
We should pursue Christ-like holiness.
Second Peter, chapter three, verse 11 and 12 says,
since all these things are to be dissolved in this way,
he was talking about how all of the things around this world
and all that we know will be dissolved or wrapped up
in that final day before God makes the new creation,
all these dissolved in this way,
it is clear what sort of people you should be
in holy conduct and godliness
as you wait for the day of God.
The day of God and hasten is coming.
It is clear what sort of people you should be
in holy conduct and godliness as you wait.
The apostle John in 1 John, he said it this way,
knowing that we will be like him when he comes,
that we too will be glorified,
those who have that hope purify themselves
just as Christ is pure.
If we know we will be glorified,
if we know we will receive that resurrected body,
that glorified body, free from the power
and presence of sin, free from everything
that has ailed us or anything that has kind of tied us down
or like chains around our legs, be it sin
or just the physical nature of the way things are,
we will receive a body like him.
What do we do while we wait?
We purify ourselves.
Everyone who believes that, everyone who has that hope
purifies themselves, that's what John said.
In other words, it will be true of us
so we must begin actively pursuing it today.
It will be true of us when he returns
so we must begin actively pursuing it today.
We live into that future reality today.
Here's another way of putting it.
Those who hope to be like Christ
will pursue being like him now.
Those who hope to be like Christ then
will pursue him being like him now.
Pursue Christ-like holiness.
Put to death the sin in your life.
If there is sin tangling you up, tying you down,
but you hope in the Lord and you hope
in his glorious return and you hope
in the day of the Lord, put to death the sin now.
That's what you're supposed to be doing while you wait.
Pursue holiness, pursue godliness,
pursue the sacrificial life of Christ now while you wait.
Those who hope to be like him then
will pursue being like him now.
The second thing is endure suffering with joy.
Show of hands, how many of you guys like suffering?
Anyone?
No?
No, okay.
No suffering, right?
You don't like suffering.
I don't know if you've ever had a church experience,
maybe some of you come from a background in church
where the particular brand you were a part of
likes to claim promises.
Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Claim that promise.
I claim it, whatever it is.
Very exuberant, if I was more exuberant,
I probably could do it too.
You guys ready to claim a promise?
It's for all of you who are in Christ.
It's just awesome.
You will suffer.
Do you know how many times that's repeated in the Bible?
Do you know how many times it's repeated and promised
that if you are a disciple of Christ, you will suffer?
That's your promise.
Claim it, name it, and then claim it.
That's a promise.
You will suffer, suffering is a promise
to anyone who will follow Christ.
Jesus put it something like this.
How could you expect to not endure suffering
when I have endured the greatest suffering?
If you're following me, where are you following me to?
I went to the cross.
Where are you going?
If you're not encountering suffering,
you must be on a different path
because my path took me to the cross.
Suffering is promised for the Christian life
and it's both a temptation for us
that the evil one likes to capitalize.
Will we doubt God's goodness?
Will we doubt God's love?
But it's also a test that God can use
to prove the steadfastness of the faith
that he has birthed in us and that he's growing in us.
It can be a source of encouragement as well
to see I am holding fast even down to the last wire
as I'm crying out to you.
Just read Job, read the first seven chapters of Job.
Talk about suffering and crying out to God.
How we understand suffering though matters.
If this is going to be a promise of those who come after him,
if this is the Christian life,
we must understand it differently
than most of us probably do.
We need to understand it
in the way that the Bible understands it.
Listen to how Peter, one of Jesus' disciples
and someone who suffered immensely for the gospel,
listen to what he says, dear friends,
don't be surprised when the fiery ordeal
comes among you to test you
as if something unusual were happening to you.
I love that part.
Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ
so that you may also rejoice with great joy
when his glory is revealed.
Rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ.
I love that word share.
For any Greek nerds out there,
that word share is the word koinonia.
Koinonia is a word that we translate fellowship
or partnership.
Fellowship with Christ in suffering.
You wanna sit down for a good meal
and a good fellowship time with Christ?
Go suffer for him.
A great amount of fellowship with Christ.
You want a partnership, you wanna align with him,
you wanna work toward the same goal,
it'll be in suffering.
And when you're suffering, you're sharing with Christ.
You're taking your share of suffering.
Are we grateful when we get to bear our share of suffering
with Christ knowing that he suffered so greatly
for our salvation?
While we wait for his glory to be appearing,
as Peter says, if we will share in his suffering
and rejoice in this time,
then how much more will we rejoice with great joy
when his glory is revealed in us at his second coming?
How much more glorious will we,
how much more will we be like,
that's my mind now, I suffered with you,
I suffered for you.
I shared in your suffering, Paul counted it a joy
to share in Christ's suffering.
Peter believes that if we understand suffering right,
we can rejoice as we suffer,
so that we can rejoice with great joy
when his glory is revealed in Christ's second coming.
Be pursuing Christ-like holiness.
Endure suffering with joy.
Number three, be gentle.
Be gentle.
The certainty of Christ's return
should shape our conduct today and every day.
Because Christ could come at any moment,
we don't live in a panicked or self-centered pursuits,
but rather we display to all the calm,
gracious and gentle spirit that comes from that knowledge,
that our salvation is secure in Christ,
and with his appearing,
he brings our salvation to completion.
And that changes the way we live our everyday life.
Philippians chapter four, verse four,
said, rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again, rejoice.
And then he says, let your graciousness or gentleness,
they're interchangeable,
let your gentleness be known to everyone,
the Lord is near.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone,
the Lord is near.
This gentleness is not weakness,
it's the strength of someone
who firmly anchors themselves in God's promises,
free to respond in love instead of in fear.
Our consistent gentleness as we walk through this life
becomes a witness of hope to those around us.
Showing them that we truly believe
that the King is coming again,
and we're ready for his arrival
by living as he taught and as he commanded.
In our first service, we had Michelle Cooper,
who is a Starbucks store manager,
and she has a lot of employees who work for,
I think 14 of them work.
And if any of you guys have ever worked on a team,
and you had managers or owners over top of you,
you know that there's a little bit of a difference
in the work quality when the owner is on site,
than when the owner is not on site.
Anyone experience that before?
I remember working at McDonald's,
I remember everything went out the window
when the manager left,
and then you really quickly got everything back together.
Our owner, our manager's away.
Christ has ascended to the right hand of the Father.
He intercedes, he sends his spirit to guide and lead us,
but he will come back one day.
And if we have that hope,
and if we are doing what we're supposed to do
while we wait,
then we don't wait with anxiety or fear for his appearing.
We don't wait for him to show up
and worried about whether or not he shows up
at the wrong time when I'm doing the wrong thing.
Imagine that my friends.
The God of heaven, the King of heaven,
Christ, the one who died and bore our sins,
arrives while you're looking at that.
Or arrives while you're messing around
where you shouldn't be messing.
Or you're laying around where you shouldn't lay.
He arrives, the King of all heaven,
to find you not pursuing Christ-like holiness.
Not settle gentleness of the joy of knowing
that you're right with your maker and you're pursuing him.
But instead you're caught up in sin,
and the King of heaven, the sky split.
If that doesn't terrify you, you don't believe in Jesus.
If that doesn't terrify you,
the reality that the sky could split open
while I'm in the middle of looking at pornography,
and the King of all the universe could show up,
and would I be ashamed or would I be joy-filled?
That should terrify us.
But if in that moment we know,
I've turned my eyes away from that,
I've renounced sin, I've put sin to death,
anything that crops up in my life,
anything that I know is sin,
I wanna get it out because I wanna pursue
Christ-like holiness.
I wanna be ready when he comes back.
I don't wanna be ashamed.
I don't want my head to hang low in the air.
I don't wanna be ashamed.
I don't want my head to hang low when he comes back.
I don't wanna be like, no, God, not yet.
You caught me at a bad time.
I wanna be ready.
I wanna be rejoicing.
I want that settled joy to be gracious
and gentle to everyone I know,
because I know the Lord is near.
Which leads us to our final point.
Be found faithful, my friends.
When Christ returns, what should we be doing while we wait?
We should be found faithful.
Over and over again in the New Testament,
we are called to be watchful, to be awake,
to be ready, to be alert.
And in Matthew chapter 25,
Jesus tells the parable of 10 virgins.
These are 10 virgins,
and he tells the parable of 10 virgins.
These are 10 ladies who are part of a wedding processional.
They're a part of a wedding feast or a festival,
and their job is to have lamps,
and they take their lamps to meet the bridegroom
when the bridegroom comes for the wedding.
And this is a picture of being ready
for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
And Matthew chapter 25 tells us that five of them were wise
because they brought extra olive oil with them
to their lamp, while five of them were foolish
because they carried no extra supply.
And when the bridegroom was delayed
and their lamps were burning,
they fell asleep as they waited.
And then around midnight, a cry went out
announcing that the bridegroom had arrived.
And the five who were wise, they got up,
and they took that extra oil,
and they poured it into their lamp,
and they trimmed their lamp wicks,
and they were prepared to then usher in the bridegroom
into the wedding feast, into the banquet
with five lit lamps.
And the five who were foolish, they weren't prepared.
They weren't prepared at all.
They didn't have extra oil.
Their lamps had burned out.
And when they got up, they begged the other five,
let us borrow some of your oil.
And they said, well, we can't let you do that
because then our lamps would go out.
You need to go find some other oil.
They go to buy oil somewhere,
and while they're away, the bridegroom arrives.
The bridegroom arrives and takes them in to the feast.
Later, those five foolish virgins return,
and it says that they came to the door,
and they said, Master, Master, open up for us.
Open up for us.
And the master replied, truly I tell you, I don't know you.
And then this is how Jesus wraps up that parable.
Therefore, be alert, because you don't know
either the day or the hour.
So the final thing I wanna cover as we're closing here is,
how do we get ready?
What does it mean to watch or be alert?
And notice that both the wise and the foolish virgins,
they were both asleep.
And there was no criticism for their sleeping.
So that's not the problem.
To watch does not therefore mean
some sort of artificial getting up at night,
looking out the window constantly,
paying a lot of attention to any end time conspiracy
that pops up.
That's not what waiting and watching means.
But I love the way that John Piper explains that scripture.
He explains it this way.
He says, to watch or to be alert
means to do your own thing.
Means to do your job really well for Christ's sake.
They all had assignments.
Have your lamps, have your oil,
respond to the announcement when it's given,
light the way of the bridegroom in.
The five did their job just the way they should,
and they entered in.
They were morally, spiritually,
and you might say professionally awake.
They did their job the way God meant for them to do it.
So that's what you find all over the New Testament.
The master has given all of us assignments
for while he's gone.
Gifts, resources, abilities, money, opportunities,
relationships, spiritual disciplines.
All of those are spheres where we do our job
with faithfulness and diligence.
Do your job well.
Whatever that may be according to your gift or calling,
do your job well for Christ's sake.
Be found faithful.
Be found faithfully executing the job or the assignments,
the calling or the gifting that God has given you.
Don't be asleep, don't be distracted.
Don't be doing what you shouldn't be doing.
Be doing what you have been given to do by the master
to do until he returns.
Each one of us have been given a calling.
Each one of us an assignment.
Each one of us giftings and talents to use for the kingdom.
And when the king comes, when the sky runs open
and the king returns, each one of us
should be found doing those things.
And when we're found doing those things by our king,
we can hold our head up high and rejoice as Christ returns,
knowing that we were ready.
We were alert.
We were ready for his return.
Be found faithful.
I invite the worship team to come and join me on stage
as we prepare for communion in a moment.
But there's, I guess in closing, a hymn that we have sung
for many years, it was out of the 1800s,
by Horatio Spafford called It Is Well With My Soul.
And there is a verse in It Is Well With My Soul
that every time I sing it, I get a little choked up.
You guys ever heard of the word Maranatha?
Maranatha is an Aramaic term.
It's used in the Bible in multiple places
and it means, Lord, I am so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry in multiple places and it means Lord, come.
There was a cry of the early church
and our brothers and sisters who came before
that they cried out for the day of the Lord to come,
that God would return.
That he would fulfill his promises.
That he would consummate our salvation
and he bring about the end of all of the sins affects
and usher in the new kingdom.
And so our forebearers in the faith
used to cry out Maranatha.
Lord, come.
Maranatha, Lord, come.
Horatio Spafford wrote this in one of the verses to it
as well with my soul.
And Lord, haste the day when my faith will be sight.
Lord, haste the day when all of my hope and my longing
and my yearning will be sight.
The clouds be rolled back like a scroll.
The trumpet shall sound, and the Lord shall appear.
Even so, it is well with my soul.
Haste the day.
I promise you, if you are caught in sin's entanglement,
you can't pray that.
It's not a prayer you want to pray.
You don't want them to come.
You don't want them to catch.
Be free.
Live holy lives so that you can join with our forebears
in the faith and say, Lord, haste the day.
Lord, come, Maranatha, God, come.
And you will find me like a faithful servant
doing what you left me to do as I prepare
for that last and final advent.
Haste the day.