God our Father, as we now seek to
bring our lives once again into the light
of thy word and truth, we realize that
this is something we cannot do without the
promised help of the Holy Spirit.
So we ask that in thy mercy and
in thy faithfulness thou would once again fulfill
the promise of thy Son that when he,
the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will
guide you into all truth.
May that same gracious Spirit be our teacher
and guide taking our minds and thinking through
them thy thoughts, my lips and speaking through
them thy words and thy truth, our hearts
and lives and inclining them in obedience to
thy will, this we ask for the sake
of the same Jesus Christ, thy Son and
our Redeemer.
Amen.
This Sunday is the third Sunday in what
the Christian church calendar describes as the season
of Advent.
I wonder how many of you realize that
in addition to the purely secular calendar with
its months of January, February, March and so
on, many of whose names are derived from
pagan gods, there is a Christian calendar as
well that is called the Church Christian calendar
of the Christian year.
And that begins at Advent, before January, leading
up until Christmas.
And there the Christian church, and that includes
our own Church of Scotland, for in our
book of the service, the Common Order as
it's called, we have the various prayers that
are offered by the Church worldwide at the
different seasons of the year.
And on the first Sunday of Advent, the
second coming of Christ is referred to in
the prayers.
I won't read again the prayer that we
read this morning, but it's there.
I wonder how many of you realize that
the Bible speaks not only of Christ's first
coming in humility, the coming that we are
going to be thinking about particularly this coming
weekend of Christmas, but the Bible speaks most
clearly and most emphatically about a second coming,
not in mercy but in majesty and in
glory.
During my last spell taking worship before work,
I tied with the little group that meet
there each morning to get just a brief
glimpse of the meaning of the second coming
of Christ and the message of his return
by looking at some of the main and
more significant passages in the scriptures where that
wonderful hope of the Christian is referred to.
Tonight I want to take up again one
of these passages and to expand it to
help us to see just what is the
meaning of the second coming of Christ for
the Christian.
This morning we studied what is the promise
of his coming, and we asked three legitimate
questions that anybody would want to ask.
The first was when will he come, and
the second how will he come, and the
third why will he come.
But tonight I want to consider not so
much the promise of his coming as the
meaning of it for the Christian.
So many of us here are Christians.
What does this mean?
For those who are not Christians it means
something terrible.
I'm not going to deal with that.
I wouldn't like not to be a Christian
when Christ comes again.
But there are two verses in the first
epistle of John where John describes what to
him would be the meaning of the second
coming of Christ.
And I want to look at these two
verses 1 John chapter 3 verses 2 and
3.
Take in verse 1 if you like.
Behold what manner of love the father hath
bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God.
Therefore the world knoweth us not because it
knew him not.
And then the two verses that really are
the basis of our study tonight.
Beloved now are we the sons of God
and it does not yet appear what we
shall be but we know that when he
shall appear we shall be like him for
we shall see him as he is.
And every man that hath this hope in
him purifies himself even as he is pure.
Now what do we find here in the
mind of Saint John constitutes the meaning of
his coming.
And the main three fronts of what John
has to say center around first of all
what I call the expectation of his coming.
In verse 2 we have this little sentence
when he shall appear.
John does not write if but when.
Here is the certainty of the expectation of
Christ's second coming.
And when we consider the expectation of Christ's
coming there are two aspects that we have
to bear in mind.
The first is how important this hope is.
And its importance can be judged in the
first place by the fact that it is
given so large a place in the closing
stages of our Lord's earthly ministry.
It's in Matthew's gospel chapters 24 and 25
are devoted to this truth.
Now it's something we're all familiar with that
special importance can be ascribed to the last
words that a person has to say.
If I knew beyond any shadow of doubt
that I was fatally ill and that I
would not live more than 24 hours I
wouldn't talk in terms of trivialities.
I would say things and talk about things
that were vital.
Christ knew that the end was near.
In verse 2 of chapter 26 he says
he know that after two days is the
feast of the Passover and the Son of
Man is betrayed to be crucified.
And it was in that awareness that he
chose to speak again and at length upon
this feast.
And this hope is important for faith.
So many people have a sneaking kind of
a doubt that the Christian and with the
Christian God himself is somehow or other on
the losing side.
That by backing Jesus Christ we've backed a
loser.
There's a chorus that some of us used
to sing on the victory side, on the
victory side.
No fear can haunt me, no foe can
daunt me on the victory side.
With Christ within the fight we'll win on
the victory side.
A tremendous chorus.
And I know that it refers primarily to
personal victory.
But quite honestly many of us feel we're
not on the victory side as far as
the world at large is concerned.
That in backing Christ we're backing a loser.
Rather like that man I remember somebody telling
me about who fell asleep at an evangelistic
meeting.
And he woke up during the appeal.
And the evangelists had asked those that were
wanting to become Christians to put up their
hands.
And it was at that precise moment that
this man who had fallen asleep during the
address woke up.
He saw that the man sitting next to
him had his hand up.
So without knowing quite what it was all
about he put up his own hand.
And then he looked around and saw that
very very few hands were up.
So he whispered to his neighbor, I don't
know who we're voting for but I'm afraid
we've lost.
So often Christians have got discouraged as they
look at the impact or lack of impact
on the gospel and the world.
When they look at the condition of the
church that it's totally ignored.
They've gotten a hold of the idea that
somehow or other the gospel is going to
triumph until every person in the world is
a Christian.
I want to say that is not of
course the picture that Christ ever painted of
how things would go.
Instead he spoke of tares and wheat growing
together until harvest.
He spoke of leaven.
And leaven is always a symbol of sin.
Of leaven being hid in a measure of
meal until the whole lump was leavened.
Christ did say that the gospel had to
be preached in all the world as a
witness before the end would come.
But he never said that the whole world
would believe.
But simply that the whole world must hear.
God has quite other plans for the world
than simply the preaching of the gospel.
That is his plan right now.
But there's a more massive plan still.
And the second coming of Christ in power,
in glory, and in majesty, that second advent
is part of that plan.
So I would say how important this hope
is.
For faith we oughtn't to be surprised that
the world that has rejected God's revelation in
Christ is sinking more and more, lower and
lower, into the mire and into the muck
of human sin.
This is exactly what Jesus said would happen.
How important this hope is.
And the second thing to note concerning the
expectation of his coming, how ignorant our hearts
are.
And this is concerning the time of his
coming.
Nothing is clearer from the word of God
than this, that no man knows the time
of Christ's return.
We were considering this this morning when we
tried to answer the question, when will he
come?
And I pointed out how in Matthew 24,
from verse 36 on to the end of
that chapter, no less than five times does
Christ make it clear, of that day and
that hour knoweth no man, not even the
angels of heaven, but my Father.
John admits here a limitation in his understanding
of what that second coming will mean.
It doth not yet appear what we shall
be, but that does not affect the certainty
and the expectation with which that coming is
awaited, when he shall appear, John writes.
The expectation of his coming.
And this should be part at least of
the meaning of this truth in your life
and mine.
We should be expecting Christ to come.
To me that's one of the most tremendous
things in my faith in Christ, as I
look out on the world to realize that
what that old chorus says is true, that
God is still on the throne.
And that the question, the complaint, the charge
that men bring against God, why doesn't God
intervene, will one day get its answer.
Whenever the world gets in a mess, whenever
there's a war on a worldwide scale, men
always say, if God is omnipotent, why doesn't
he do so?
The answer is, he will.
The expectation of his coming.
So you and I as Christians should expect
this, and be living with that expectation in
our hearts.
When he shall appear.
And then the second thought that comes to
me as I consider the meaning of the
second coming of Christ for the Christian is,
first of all, the expectation of his coming
should be there, and the second, the preparation
for his coming should be there.
In verse 3, every man that hath this
hope in him, that is in Christ, purifies
himself even as he is pure.
The second coming of Christ, which is the
alternative to death, which every Christian faces, will,
like death, terminate in its present form all
the opportunities and responsibilities of Christian living and
Christian service.
It's said that someone once asked John Wesley
what he would do, how he would spend
the intervening time if he knew that he
had but 24 hours left in which to
serve his Lord, before having to render an
account of his stewardship.
To which John Wesley replied, how, madam?
Why, just as I intend to spend the
time now.
I should preach tonight at Gloucester, and again
at five tomorrow morning.
After that, I should ride to Tewksbury, preach
in the afternoon, and meet the societies in
the evening.
I should then repair to friend Martin's house,
who expects to entertain me, converse and pray
with the family as usual, retire to my
bed at ten o'clock, commend myself to
my heavenly Father, lie down to rest, and
wake up in glory.
What a wonderful thing to say.
Here was a man who was absolutely ready.
Was his life and service terminated by death
or by Christ's coming, it didn't make an
atom of difference to the way he'd spend
the next 24 hours.
Would it make any difference to you?
The preparation for his coming.
John Wesley was living a life in which
he was always and already prepared to meet
his Lord, either in death or if he
should come.
Seems to me that there are two things
that I would want to be true about
my life if Christ should come.
The first is, I would want to be
found busy.
In Matthew 24, 45, Christ speaks of the
task entrusted to the servant.
The faithfulness and diligence shown by the servant
who, when his Lord comes, is found busy
with the work entrusted to him.
In Luke 12, 35, our Lord says, let
your loins be girded about and your lights
burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that
wait for their Lord when he will return.
That when he cometh a knocker they may
open to him immediately.
In Mark 13, 34, our Lord speaks of
the Son of Man giving to every man
his work.
Paul says of the Christian that he has
been put in trust with the gospel.
1 Thessalonians 2 and 4.
What have we been doing about it?
If God has entrusted to you and to
me as Christians the gospel, what have you
been doing with it?
What about all the resources that have been
made available to every Christian?
The ministry of prayer, the presence and ministry
of the Holy Spirit, the word of God,
the truth of God.
What have we done with all these?
What have we got to show for it
all?
Are we busy?
It was Dr. Sanster who once asked the
question, when did you last lead a person
to Christ?
And then added, when did you last try?
I would want to be busy.
And the Lord comes again.
In the parable of the talents in Matthew
25 we are told that when the Lord
of the servants returned it was to reckon
with his servants.
What use have they made of the opportunities
he'd given to them?
The personality that you have is something that
nobody else has.
The people that you're in touch with are
people that nobody else is in touch with.
What have you been doing?
How busy have you been?
How many folks have you prayed for?
How many folks have you invited?
Right out there in the vestibule.
We always do it every Christmas.
We print seven thousand leaflets to be given
out.
I wonder how many leaflets you will take.
I wonder how many folk you'll invite.
The preparation for his coming involves being busy
surely in his work.
I would want to be busy and I
would want to be holy.
I would not want there to be anything
in my life that would grieve the heart
of love that there is in Christ.
I wouldn't want there to be anything that
would evoke his displeasure.
And this is the thrust of what John
writes here.
Every man that hath this hope in Christ
purifies himself even as he is pure.
The ethical implications of the second coming of
Christ, this truth is found again and again
in the context of the promise of Christ's
return.
Romans 13, 12, the night is fast spent,
the day is at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness and let us put on the armor
of light.
And in the passage we read from 2
Peter, that incredible passage that before the discovery
of the atom bomb must have been laughed
out of court as being ridiculous.
And nobody would laugh at what those words
say.
They're written 2,000 years ago.
The day of the Lord will come as
a thief and the night in which the
heaven shall pass away with a great noise
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
The earth also and the works that are
therein shall be burned up, seeing then that
all these things shall be dissolved.
What manner of persons ought ye to be
in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for
and hastening unto the coming of the day
of God, wherein the heavens being on fire
shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt
with fervent heat?
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such
things, be diligent that ye may be found
of him in peace without spot and blameless.
It's the preparation of love, surely is it
not?
Here's a girl and she's going out to
meet her sweetheart.
Tell me, does she not prepare herself with
infinite care for that moment?
I always remember when I was a curate
in Broadwater, my rector had been ill in
hospital and been away from home for several
weeks.
And then word came that he was coming
back.
And all the preparations that went on, the
whole house was spring-cleaned from top to
bottom, and the rooms that he would be
using received special attention.
Fresh flowers everywhere.
If I'd gone in and said, what on
earth's all the fuss about?
He'd say, well, Dad's coming.
I remember too, when as a young Christian
I was not sure if it was right
for me as a Christian to do certain
things and to go to certain places of
entertainment.
The counsel I received was quite simple.
If Jesus Christ came again and found you
there, would you be happy to be found
there?
Again, I recall reading of someone holidaying, I
think in Switzerland, being attracted by a beautiful
house with its gardens and grounds beautifully kept.
One day the gardener was busy near the
gate, and the visitor and the gardener engaged
in conversation.
The holidaymaker learned that the owner of the
house had not been there for a long
time, several years in fact.
But the instructions that had been left were
that the house was to be kept ready.
To which the visitor replied, well, you certainly
have carried out the owner's instructions.
It looks as if it'd be ready for
him if you got word that he was
coming tomorrow.
To which the gardener replied, no, not if
he came tomorrow, but we're ready if he
came today.
John would agree with that.
Preparation for his coming means that I would
want to be busy, and I would want
to be holy.
The expectation of his coming, I find that
here in these two verses, when he shall
appear.
The preparation for his coming, every man that
had this hope in him purified himself even
if he is pure.
And then the third thrust of the meaning
for the Christian, the expectation of his coming,
the preparation for his coming, and then finally
the transformation at his coming.
We know that when he shall appear we
shall delight him, for we shall see him
as he is.
And this thought had never grasped my mind
before until I was weighing up the message
for tonight, that the transformation will be twofold.
First of all, a transformation in the Lord
we love.
We shall see him as he is, not
as he was while on earth, but as
he is.
We face this thought this morning at Christ's
first coming to save.
There was, I think we can say in
all honesty, a partial revelation of the character
and nature of God.
It was a revelation in mercy.
It was adequate for faith, but it was
not complete.
At Christ's second coming there will be a
perfect revelation.
And having come to see the wonder and
the glory of God revealed in mercy and
in grace in the Christ of Bethlehem and
Galilee, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Calvary, we will see
a perfect revelation of him in majesty and
splendor and glory and power.
Do you remember how Paul, writing in 1
Corinthians 13 ends on this very note, now
he wrote, we see through a glass darkly,
but then face to face.
It's like the difference, I suppose, between courtship
and marriage.
The experience of the girl into whose life
a worthy love has come will know her
lover well enough to trust her love and
her life to him.
But she doesn't know him, as she will
know him after marriage.
Then she comes to know him in a
closer, deeper, richer life than ever she'd known
before.
And if he's truly worthy, her heart will
be overwhelmed with all that his love now
has come to mean to her, and all
that his love now longs to do for
her.
The second coming of Christ is after all
likened to a wedding, is it not?
And heaven is the setting for what is
called the marriage supper of the Lamb.
With the church as his bride, a transformation
in the Lord we love.
All I know is that whenever I read
in the Bible of men seeing anything at
all of the glory of God, it shatters
them.
Read about it, if you like, in the
first chapter of the book of the Revelation.
When John saw Christ, and we read, he
fell at his feet as one dead.
We shall see him as he is.
The transformation that is coming is going to
be first of all in the Lord we
love.
We shall see him as he is.
But the transformation that is coming will not
only be in the Lord we love, but
in the lives we live.
We shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is.
One of the wonderful things about the second
coming of Christ is the transformation in ourselves.
We'll have a new body, a different kind
of a body.
We shall be changed.
We read about it in 1 Corinthians 15.
Tremendous passage at the end of that.
Tremendous chapter on the resurrection of the body.
Behold, I share your mystery, writes John.
We shall not all, writes Paul, we shall
not all sleep in death, but we shall
all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye of the last trump, for the trumpet
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, this
mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on
incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, death is swallowed up
in victory.
O death, where is thy king?
O grace, where is thy victory?
Thanks be to God which giveth us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We shall be changed.
A new kind of a body and a
new kind of a nature altogether, the deliverance
we shall find from the fallen nature, the
sin within.
Then and then only shall we be free.
We shall be changed, says Paul.
We shall be like him, says John.
The Bible has a for this, it's the
word glorified.
First of all justified, then sanctified, and finally
glorified.
Paul speaks of our suffering with Christ, that
we may be glorified together.
He tells us also in verse 30 of
that eighth chapter of Romans, whom he justified,
then he also glorified.
The transformation of his coming.
And then and only then, thank God, we
shall be free from sin within forever.
Our salvation will be complete.
We're not free of that indwelling sin while
we are here on earth.
You come across some folk who claim they
are.
I always wish I could just have five
minutes with the wife or the husband, and
I'd get a check up on that.
That's not true.
Not one of us is free.
There's nothing in the Bible, there's nothing in
the Bible that tells us that the sinful
nature within is eradicated.
There is no blessing, there is nothing that
you can get from God that will remove
that.
Not on earth, not in this life.
But when he comes, we shall be changed.
Either at death or at his coming.
We shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is.
What then is the meaning of the second
coming for the Christian?
First of all, there will be the expectation
of his coming in my heart.
And then there will be the preparation for
his coming in my life.
And then there will be the transformation of
his coming, of the Lord I love and
of the life I live.
When he shall appear, we shall be like
him, for we shall see him as he
is.
And every man that hath this hope in
him purifies himself, even as he is pure.
Is it any wonder that elsewhere in the
The best bit of news that could ever
come to a world that is rushing headlong
to despair and into the dark.
But the final word is not in Moscow,
it's not in Peking.
The final word is not in New York,
not in Washington, not in London, not in
Paris, not in Bonn, not in Rome.
The final word is not with man at
all.
The final word is going to be with
God.
When God's time come, and only God knows
that time, then when God's time come, he
will.
Won't you be glad?
Won't you be thrilled?
What a wonderful, wonderful hope that is, that
when he shall appear, we shall be like
him, and we shall see him.
O God our Father, we thank thee for
this wonderful truth that is in thy word,
that undergirds our faith when we see things
seemingly going so wrong.
Help us to realize that there is a
throne, not on earth as yet, but in
heaven, that that throne is occupied and filled,
that one day the royal edict will go
forth, and human history as we know it
will be brought to a halt and to
an end, and a new era will be
initiated.
We cannot understand, and we do not know
all that's involved in this, but we do
know that one day he shall come.
Grant that we may be ready for that
day.
Help us to be busy, so that we'll
have something to show.
Help us to be holy, so that there's
nothing in our lives to grieve, or to
disappoint his love.
And prepare us for that day when we
shall see him as he is, and we
shall be like him, with a new body,
a new nature, and a new life to
live.
Grant us to live knowing that he may
come anytime now, perhaps tonight, maybe not for
a long time, but help us to live
every day as if it was the day
when he shall appear.
We ask it for thy blessed sake.