For the mercy seat that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, welcome to the service today.
We're glad that you're here.
I'm beginning a new series this morning.
My wife and I this afternoon are planning to get on an airplane and we're going to be
flying to San Diego to celebrate the first birthday of one of our grandchildren.
It's going to be a special evening down there.
I hope we don't hear what some passengers on a plane heard.
Some time ago the pilot came onto the plane, came onto the intercom rather, and he said,
folks, I'm sorry to tell you that we're lost, but we are ahead of schedule.
Now when I think about that statement, I think about the times we're living in.
We're lost, but we're going somewhere real fast.
What I want to talk about is where we're headed.
The series is entitled In Times Like These, and today I want to deal with the question,
are we living in the last days?
Are we living in the last days?
So I want you to get your Bible out because we're going to be turning to a number of texts
over the next 30 minutes or so, studying the Word of God regarding this theme of the last
days.
Perhaps it's the post-election emotion or maybe it's the uncertainty that we feel because
of the economic downturn, or perhaps it's because we read the newspaper and we see the
political situations in the world, for example, the deepening of the ties between Russia and
Iran, which happened again this last week.
You may recall that the vice president-elect told all of us that the new president-elect
will be tested early in his term.
I think he's exactly right.
You would have to expect that that will take place.
Maybe that will be Iran or maybe it will be Russia or some other place in the world or
maybe several of them.
But there seems to be some sense among people that something is about to break loose.
Do you feel that way?
Even more perhaps, there's a feeling that history is quickly moving toward its culmination,
its denouement.
We aren't the first generation to experience feelings like this.
But this sense that things cannot keep going on the way they are naturally intrigues us
with what the Bible says about what's coming in the future.
And so I posed the question this morning that I want to examine with you and the question
is are we living in the last days?
And right up front I want to answer that unequivocally, clearly, without hesitation.
Are we living in the last days?
Absolutely yes.
We are.
And I'm going to show you from the Bible this morning that we are in fact living in the
last days.
Now I'll explain that by asking some questions regarding this phrase.
The first question is this, where does this phrase originate, the last days?
Do we use this phrase because Joel Rosenberg used it in one of his novels several years
ago?
Well, the answer to that is no, I think it preceded Joel Rosenberg.
Is it because there was a film in 1999 called The Last Days that recounted some of the stories
of Jewish Holocaust survivors?
Now actually I think the phrase goes back further than that.
See the phrase goes all the way back in the Bible to Genesis chapter 49 and verse 1.
This is the same text, the same area of Genesis that we've been studying over recent months.
Genesis chapter 49 verse 1.
You see the Bible is the book of origins.
And when we want to find out where something originates we should go to the Bible to see
where this idea, this concept, this word, this truth originates.
And in the Bible the book of Genesis is particularly the book of origins.
It is the seed plot of many of the things that are developed throughout in the rest
of the Word of God.
And its first use is Genesis 49, 1 as Jacob blesses his sons.
He is an old man and he is about to die.
And the scriptures tell us that he gathered to him his sons and he said gather around
so I can tell you what will happen in the last days.
In the last days.
Then he goes on to bless each of his sons with something.
But he introduces this patriarchal blessing with the words I'm going to tell you what's
going to happen in the last days.
A good friend of mine, John Sailhammer, wrote the commentary on Genesis that's found in
the Exposers Bible commentary.
John is a scholar of Hebrew.
He is able to read 13, 14, 15 of these ancient languages.
Most Hebrew backwards and forwards.
And in the Exposers Bible commentary he makes a pithy statement regarding the last days.
And I've copied it in your notes so that you have it.
It says the same expression occurs in the Pentateuch as an introduction to two other
poetic discourses.
The Oracles of Balaam and the last words of Moses.
On all three occasions the subject matter introduced by the phrase the last days or
in days to come is that of God's future deliverance of his chosen people.
I want you to underscore those words because when you read the words the last days you
need to understand that its origins go back to God's deliverance in the future of his
people Israel, the chosen family.
John goes on to say at the center of that deliverance stands a king.
In Genesis 49 that king is connected with the house of Judah.
So you tell me who is the king?
Jesus.
The descendant of Judah who is the king who will one day deliver the chosen people.
Now the point is this that the phrase is one that looks toward the future.
It looks toward God's fulfillment of his promise to bless the whole world through descendants
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and a king who will descend from them.
One who will arise out of the family of Judah and he will specifically arise in order to
provide deliverance for the people of God.
That's the origin of the phrase the last days.
And so I ask the question how is this phrase then developed in scripture?
Now we can't possibly look at all of the uses of it.
We'd be here all day long.
So we're going to be selective and very brief but get the point across.
The phrase the last days is used especially by the prophets and we're going to look at
the prophet Isaiah first in the Old Testament.
You see the Bible is a book of hope.
It is a book of hope.
The hope of future deliverance.
The Bible assures us that God has secured the future.
You and I may wonder what's going to happen.
But we can be assured in coming to the Bible that God gives us a word.
He gives us a hope.
And we see this for example here in Isaiah chapter 2.
Now if you don't have your Bible with you I encourage you to bring it next week.
And if you don't have a Bible maybe there's one in front of you there in one of the seats.
We have some scattered around.
But in Isaiah chapter 2 the chapter begins by saying this is what Isaiah the son of Amoz
saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Verse 2, in the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as
chief among the mountains.
It will be raised above the hills and all nations will stream to it.
What we find here in this poetic expression is that there is a time coming called the
last days in which God's chosen people will be exalted above the other nations.
Like a mountain that is raised up above the others, the people of God, the chosen family
of God, the Jewish nation will be exalted above others.
Now we can go on through the chapter.
We don't have time to read all the text.
But in verse 3 it says that the last days will be a time for all nations of the earth
to join in the worship of the God of the Jews.
They will flow into Jerusalem and offer worship to the God of Israel.
The last days in verse 4 is said to be a time of worldwide harmony.
But if you skip on down to verse 12 and the verses following you see that the last days
is also a phrase describing a time for the wicked to be judged.
And so there is this dual theme that is interwoven in the last days.
It is the theme of judgment coupled with deliverance and the exaltation of the Jews and all of
the nation being at peace and bringing worship to the God of Israel.
Now we are going to skip over to chapter 13 of Isaiah and see a term that is essentially
parallel to the last days.
Look in verse 9.
Isaiah says, see the day of the Lord is coming.
And there is the phrase, the day of the Lord.
Essentially the same meaning as the last days.
The day of the Lord is coming, a cruel day with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land
desolate and destroy the sinners within it.
The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and so forth.
So here we see that the last days will also be a time of cosmic disturbances.
Things happening in the heavens.
Unusual events will take place.
Now this could have some allegorical meaning, some meaning of other things than the literal
heavens, but I think we ought to understand it literally as well.
But there will be unusual things happening in the heavens, in the cosmos, in the last
days.
Now this ties together actually with what the prophet Joel says.
So would you turn over a few pages to the prophet Joel.
Hosea, Joel, Amos.
He's trying to help you get there.
Joel chapter 2, famous prophecy.
One that is quoted in the New Testament, actually on the day of Pentecost.
Peter uses this as one of his texts.
Joel chapter 2 I begin reading in verse 28.
And afterward God says I will pour out my spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your old men will dream dreams.
Your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days.
So the last days will be a time of the pouring out of God's spirit on the people of God.
And then verse 30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and
billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
And so the last days is a time when the gates of salvation will be opened to anyone who
believes, not just the Jew, but everyone who believes will be saved.
Now those are all aspects of the day of the Lord as it's developed in the Old Testament.
As I say it's a very, very brief review.
We want to now come into the New Testament and pick up the idea.
I've already mentioned that in Joel chapter 2, or Acts chapter 2 rather, we have a quotation
from Joel 2.
And Peter says, what is happening here on the day of Pentecost?
These people are not drunk like you are imagining.
They are speaking other tongues.
Some of them have fire over their heads.
What you need to understand, he says, is that Joel 2 speaks about this.
And God says, I will pour out my spirit in the last days on people.
And he says, this is that.
Now we don't see the cosmic disturbances on the day of Pentecost.
So we look at this as a partial fulfillment.
So the spirit is poured out on the day of Pentecost.
Now I want to take you to a verse that will nail in your minds, if you're listening, the
fact that we are living right now in the last days.
Book of Hebrews chapter 1.
This book written about 70 A.D., some 40 years after Jesus died, rose again, went back to
heaven and the day of Pentecost.
Hebrews chapter 1.
In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in
various ways.
But what does he say next?
In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.
Do you notice that the writer of Hebrews says, right now is the last days.
In these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son.
Now here's my point.
The last days, as the Bible defines them, refers to that period of time between when
the spirit was poured out, I should say the coming of Christ, His death, resurrection,
His ascension, and the spirit being poured out, and that time in the future when He will
come again to deliver His people.
In other words, the last days refers to essentially the last 2,000 years of time.
That's how I know we're living in the last days.
Because people have been living in the last days for the last 2,000 years.
You say, why it's called the last days when it's 2,000 years long or more?
The answer is because there was human history before us.
Did you know that?
Before this period of time, there was human history.
Thousands of years.
We don't know how many thousands of years of human history.
We don't know very much about that except what the Scriptures tell us.
All of those people were looking forward to something.
Even the prophecies were essentially, He's coming, He's coming, He's coming, and then
He came.
God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ.
He came for the express purpose of being our sin offering and opening the way for sinners
to come into the presence of a holy God through faith in His crucified and risen Son.
So that whoever believes on Him will be saved.
And then He went back to heaven and He sent the Holy Spirit.
And now throughout the last 2,000 years we've been saying, He came, He came, He came, and
by the way, He's coming, what?
Again.
He's coming again.
Just as He came the first time, He is going to come again.
And the Scripture, God Himself calls this period of time the last days because all of
that was the first days.
This is the last days.
But the question, the question is, is that all that the last days means?
And I want to suggest to you that it is not.
That is certainly the overarching meaning of the phrase.
But the Scripture seems to indicate that there is at the end of the last days an intensification
of things that have been true for the last 2,000 years as we look at it.
In other words, there is what might be called the last days of the last days.
You understand what I'm saying?
There is a culmination point when everything that's happened over the last 2,000 years
begins to come together into some cataclysmic, momentous culmination of it all.
And I want you to turn with me now to the book of 2 Timothy as we think about this aspect
of it.
2 Timothy chapter 3.
The Apostle Paul is writing his final letter.
It is written to Pastor Timothy who is leading, he is the bishop of the church in Ephesus
at this point in time, most people think.
And Timothy has some questions, he has concerns, and Paul writes to him.
And from his cell in Rome he says, Timothy, mark this, mark this.
There will be terrible times when?
In the last days.
You see the way Paul writes this, it's not only that now is the last days, but he seems
to be pointing towards something that's not here yet.
Paul didn't know when it would come.
In some sense it was already there even when he was in prison in 66, 67 AD.
But he's writing this in the sense, Timothy, something's coming.
Now we know it's been a long time since Paul wrote those words and it still hasn't fully
come.
But I want to say to you that what you and I are sensing in our spirit, I believe is
what Paul was talking about here.
And he begins then to unfold what the last days will be like.
He says people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love and unforgiving, slanderous,
without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
Does this sound like anything that you've been reading about or hearing about or see
around you?
Then he says having a form of godliness but denying its power.
In other words, as these last days come these things are going to be true and it's all going
to be in the cloak of spirituality.
There's going to be some form of religion that will support and tie all of this together.
It's a form of spirituality.
But he says it denies the transforming power of God.
And he says have nothing to do with them.
For they are the kind who worm their ways into homes and gain control over weak-willed
women who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil, always learning
but never able to acknowledge the truth.
Just as Janis and Jambres opposed Moses, so or to the same degree also these men opposed
the truth.
Men of depraved or perverted minds who as far as the faith is concerned are rejected.
Only one other time does Paul use that term, or excuse me, does the New Testament use that
term.
Peter uses it, 2 Peter 2, 12 in the same kind of a context of false teachers.
And he says they have been weighed in the balance and rejected.
They are reprobates.
He says but they will not get very far because as in the case of those men, the magicians
in the court of Pharaoh that are named here, their folly will be clear to everyone.
Now we don't have time to look at this in detail but I want you to notice that generally
Paul says the last days will be terrible.
The word literally means hard to deal with, stressful, savage.
This word is found only one other time in the whole New Testament.
It is found when Matthew describes the two demonized men at Gadara.
That is very suggestive, that the end times will be times that will be demonized.
That the energy and the oppression that will come as a result of it being the end times
will be originated in the demonic world.
Now demons have always been here but in the end times they will become especially agitated
and active.
And in some sense restraint is taken off of them so that they will be very, very active
in culture.
And notice socially or culturally how Paul describes things in the last days.
He uses 18 different descriptives.
These are not complete.
I'm sure these are suggestive only but he describes here how people will be and how
they will treat one another.
What he describes essentially is a cultural collapse.
You see God has created human culture under government as a means of a natural restraint
upon the sinful impulses of people.
And when that culture collapses the restraint is gone.
And people become more free to do whatever pleases them.
And that's the kind of a scene that he paints of the last days.
I'm just going to kind of summarize these and draw some of the similar ones together.
He says in the last day there's going to be a lot of love going on.
But it will be love of oneself, the love of money, and the love of pleasure.
Or we might say entertainment or what pleases me.
These things will become the loves of people and in essence he's saying they become the
deities of the last days.
Self, money, and pleasure.
People will worship these and love these things.
Warren Wiersbie writes in this universe there is God and there are people and things.
We should worship God, love people, and use things.
But if we start worshipping ourselves we will ignore God and start loving things and using
people.
That is exactly where we are today.
The self-worship he says will feed pride and arrogance.
And there will be a verbal abuse, a verbal contempt, a blasphemy against God.
People will see themselves as God and therefore will not think twice about mocking the God
of heaven.
Ridiculing the God of heaven.
This breakdown will reach into the family.
There will be an arrogant disobedience to parents coupled with a lack of gratitude for what
children have.
And that will leak out into the culture.
He seems to describe here an entitlement kind of mentality.
Whether it be the children of a family or the citizens of a nation.
You owe me this and I will have it.
That is the last days.
And in this time nothing is holy anymore.
Nothing.
Including marriage and the family.
He says it will be a time without natural affection.
And the language there is talking essentially about the family.
Parents in relation to children.
Children in relation to parents.
Without natural affection.
The natural affection will be replaced by what is unnatural.
And I don't need to tell you how much unnatural affection that there is going on in our culture
today.
And the people of California have spoken about that again.
And I think we are probably not in the battle there.
Because the last days are a time of unnatural affection.
There's an unwillingness to forgive in the last days.
Or to be reconciled.
People will demand their rights.
They will demand their own ways.
They will make false accusations and slander others.
There will be lack of self-control.
And this is evidenced by brutality.
That is animalistic.
It is like wild animals.
People will despise what is good and they will honor what is evil.
It reminds me of what Isaiah the prophet said to the people of his day, woe or judgment
to those that call good evil and evil good.
In the last days people will be traitors.
Who will think nothing of betraying others.
Betraying their nation.
They cannot be trusted.
He says they are rash and reckless.
They are puffed up with self-importance.
And get this, all of this is in the context of religion.
Whether it be the worship of self or the worship of some perverted form of Christianity.
He's talking here about people who are spiritual and religious in their search.
But they reject the truth and therefore they are turned to the what?
To the lie.
He's talking about an apostate kind of religion and kind of Christianity.
And so he goes on then to describe spiritually what the last days are going to be like.
They have a religion of sorts but they are not the lovers of the true God.
There's an outward form of spirituality but there's no connection with them to the transforming
power of God.
They're like those Egyptian magicians who imitated God's miracles through Moses.
They are counterfeits.
If you'll allow me to quote Warren Wiersby again, he says Satan is an imitator of what
God does.
He counterfeits.
The religious leaders in the last days will have a counterfeit faith and their purpose
is to promote a lie and resist the truth of God's word.
They deny the authority of the Bible and substitute human wisdom and philosophy.
Some of you brought me clippings from the paper.
A couple of weeks ago he said, look what churches are saying here in Santa Clara Valley.
They're saying no to Prop 8.
These are the churches that the Scripture is talking about here and they're like.
Churches that have departed from the faith and who are dependent upon human wisdom and
human philosophy, not the truth of God.
Wiersby goes on to say they deny the authority of the Bible, they substitute human wisdom
and philosophy and in their attempt to be modern they deny the reality of sin and people's
need for salvation.
Reprobate is the word Paul used to describe them.
He wrote to Timothy in his first letter and he said the Spirit clearly says that in the
later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught
by demons.
Those are the days we live in folks.
Those are the days we live in.
By looking at the character of the times we know that we are living in what the Bible
terms the last days and I think the last days of the last days.
Because the last days right now are building toward this culmination that we can all feel
in our spirit.
Now what does living in this particular period of time mean?
I have three ways of answering that and I will do so quickly.
Number one, it means we are greatly privileged.
Greatly privileged.
Not all generations can live in the days that you and I live in.
I remind you of what Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he said these things happen to them,
people before this age as examples and were written down in scripture as warnings for
us.
For us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.
Out of all of the millions and billions of people who have lived in human history you
and I are privileged to live in the last days.
And I believe this generation sitting here this morning, perhaps even in my lifetime,
will see the culmination of this age.
You and I are brought into the world for such a time as this.
As much as Esther was born to be the queen of Persia and save her people in those days.
And so I say to you don't be troubled by the times.
Rejoice.
We are greatly privileged to live as we do now.
Our God is with us.
And I believe this, if it's true that people in heaven can see us, I'm not sure it is.
But if that is true, I believe this, that they are standing in heaven looking at us
today saying, oh I wish I were alive right now.
Because you see they can see the whole panorama of God's plan and they see where you and I
live and they say oh my goodness to be alive in the world at this period of time.
We're greatly privileged.
That brings me to the second point and that is that we have greater responsibility because
we live now.
Jesus said to whom much is given what?
Much will be required.
We have great privilege.
But we have great responsibilities.
And I'm going to talk more about those next week, God willing, in my message.
Let me just close by saying thirdly, we live in the last days and we have a great hope.
Because some of us may actually be alive when Christ returns for His church.
But even if we are not, we know He's coming and His coming is soon.
Paul writes to Titus and he says, God's grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly
passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, the last
days, while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and
Savior Jesus Christ.
While we wait for the hope, hey folks, the word wait there is not a passive waiting.
It's not a sitting in the rocking chair kind of waiting.
It's an active waiting, an eager waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ to appear.
And I know there are people who kind of put this down and they say, oh people have said
for a long time He's coming.
Yep.
And when you say that you're fulfilling God's word in Peter because Peter says people are
going to say that in the last days.
And there are others who say, oh well we don't know when He's coming or what the events are
going to be like or what the order of things is.
So let's just not even think about it.
How unbiblical is that mindset?
We are to be looking for Him to return.
My wife doesn't leave me very often and I'm very grateful for that.
But she did last January for a few days to help our daughter who was giving birth and
she needed some help with the two children who were toddlers.
And so Jeanette went back to Minnesota and left me alone in California for a few days.
Now you men, you've been here.
During that time, oh boy, I can do what I want to do.
I can eat dinner in front of the television or I can go out and get it if I want.
If I get dirty dishes I just leave them in the sink, right?
If I drop something on the floor, oh well, I'll get it later.
I'll straighten up around here eventually.
Isn't that right?
That's the way it is.
But then I remember, oh, she's coming.
She's coming.
And on the day that I expect her to come, I go to the sink and I start scrubbing dishes
and I make that pile of dishes disappear and I get the vacuum out and I sweep the floor
and I straighten up the magazines because she's coming.
And I want to tell you something, he's coming.
He's coming.
And the Scriptures tell us the one who has that hope cleans up his life.
So we need to have that hope burning brightly in our hearts and every day when we get up
say, Lord, perhaps today.
Perhaps today.
God help us to live with that burning brightly in our heart as we wait for the coming of
the great God and our glorious Savior Jesus Christ.
Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for your word this morning.
Thank you for its assurance to us and how it teaches us and ministers to us.
And I pray, Father, that there be somebody here who doesn't know Jesus that in light
of the days we're living in, he or she would come to know him and trust the Savior and
have that relationship with you and your power working in their lives.
And I pray that all of us who know Jesus will look for Jesus and expect him to come and
understand the days we're living in and be assured that we are on the side of victory.
No matter what happens in our world, we know that Jesus is coming and the victory is ours
in him.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Team sing for us.
Hallelujah.
Praise God.
Isn't it just an amazing thing to know that we have a great hope in our Father?
No matter what may be.