Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Is The End Near?

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well, good morning to you. It’s great to be here at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church. You know, I started looking at the sermon title this week and I was wondering if anyone else thought it was a little ironic that my first sermon here was called “Is the End Near?” Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one. I started to believe that somebody was trying to set me up. Maybe they were. But today we’re going to get into this topic of the end time.

Let me start off with a little story. When my family moved to St. Louis, it was the first time that we had ever been apart from our immediate family. So there we were 1,300 miles away from our family in Arizona. So St. Louis kind of became the vacation spot for some of my family as they would come out and visit us and visit the kids.

One particular visit I can remember, my parents were coming out. And along the way, they would call us and update us on their progress, where they were in that part of the country that particular day. One morning, I believed they called up and they talked to my daughter on the telephone and they said, “We’re going to be there today and we have a surprise for you.” Isn’t it just like grandparents to do that? Right after she got off the phone, she was all excited. She was running to her brother saying, “They’re bringing us something!” And they were excited. They were always asking me questions, “When are they going to be here?” “When are they going to be here?” Every fifteen minutes, “When are they going to be here?” And that kind of went on for a little while and we stayed in the apartment trying to think of the ideas of what were Grandma and Pappa going to bring them from Arizona.

It got a little old so we had to get up for a little while. We got up and we went outside. We decided to wait for them at the door as it was probably around 8:30 at night and they still weren’t there. So we sat at the door initially and kind of just watched outside. But when the door opened, the kids decided they wanted to go out and play so at 8:30 at night, they’re out there running around on the grass. Then soon Kaitlyn gets on her bike, my daughter, and she starts riding around at night in our apartment complex. We knew they were coming. They said they were going to be there today but we got a little bit distracted. Tyson even got a little bit tired and he said, “You know what? I just want to go to sleep.” So I took him inside and I put him to bed. Finally, around 10:00, they roll into the parking space. They were probably a little shocked to see us out there at 10:00 at night waiting for them but excited, just as we were excited to see them.

The second coming of Christ is a little bit like this. We know He’s coming. We don’t know when but sometimes we get a little bit distracted by what’s going on in the world. Sometimes we get a little distracted by what’s going on in our own lives and maybe some have even fallen asleep. As we conclude this series of messages, What’s on Your Mind?, we get into the topic of the end times.

There are so many people who are concerned maybe about this topic, sometimes worried, sometimes a little bit afraid. Why are so many people interested in the end times? This is the way that I kind of like to think about it. We’re people who live in the middle. Let me explain what I mean by that. We were neither here when God created. We weren’t here in the beginning. And it’s not yet the end. So we live right here in the middle. People who live in the middle, they have these questions on their minds constantly about what happened in the beginning. What did it look like when God created the world? When did that happen? In some of those things, we can hear God’s Word and read it but there are always questions. Just as similar, there are questions about the end. When is Jesus going to return? What’s it going to look like? What’s going to happen to my family? What’s going to happen to my friends? All good questions. But these are all questions that we’ll never fully know the answers to until Jesus does return. But that doesn’t stop us from asking. It doesn’t stop us from pondering those big questions.

If we start to look at all the crazy theories that are kind of in our world today about the world ending, it can be a little bit frightening, a little confusing, a little bit scary. We lose sight of who is really in control. We lose sight of what God has said in His Word concerning the end times. And so this morning, I want to go over three foundational truths that we must remember when looking at the end times.

The first one, Jesus will come again. As we stood out there in St. Louis at our apartment waiting for my parents to come, we knew they were coming. They called us that day. They said, “We’re going to be there,” and yet we were distracted. We were distracted by what was going on as we were playing with one another. But Jesus will come again. I know this one sounds maybe a little bit easy and maybe it should, but we start to think about it. Jesus left almost 2,000 years ago. We start to think about it and we start to hear voices from the world saying, “He’s not coming back. Your Lord is not going to come back and take you to be with Him.” We don’t need to listen to those voices. We can hear from God’s Word that He is very certain concerning this. We looked at our Revelation passage today, Chapter 22. In that passage alone, He says, “I’m coming soon,” but in two other verses in that very same chapter, He says, “I will be coming soon.” So three times within one chapter, Jesus says, “I am coming soon.” When He says it three times, He wants us to listen. He wants us to hear it. He wants us to believe it.

John 14:3, He also says, “And I go to prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” He promises that He’s gone and He’s going to prepare a place and He will take us to be with Him. After the resurrection, Jesus spent a little bit of time walking around talking with people showing Himself to them, saying, “I am resurrected.” Then He spent some time with His disciples and He was upon that hill. Do you remember the last chapter of Luke and into the beginning of Acts? Jesus held His hands up in the sky as He ascended into heaven. The disciples continued to stand there looking into the sky and this is the story then from Acts, “Two angels appeared and they said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? The same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen Him go.’” These disciples standing looking into the sky believed that Jesus was going to return quickly. They didn’t think there was going to be hardly any time that passed before Jesus would return. And so it’s been that way since Jesus left. Every generation has believed that Jesus will return in their lifetime.

Martin Luther, a very notable reformer, believed that Jesus was going to return in his time. As the gospel was new in his heart, he went out telling people that good news of the salvation through Jesus. He was notably angry when they would not hear his message because he thought the world was coming to an end and that Jesus was going to return and they would no longer be able to hear that message. There’s nothing new under the sun. Every generation, every people have believed that the world is shortly coming to an end. And from the first century up until now, Christ followers have believed that Jesus could return at any time.

This leads us to our second foundational truth. No one knows when Jesus is returning. As we stood there in our apartment, thinking about our parents arriving, we knew they were coming. We just didn’t know when. That drive from Arizona to St. Louis can be a tough one. I don’t know if anyone has ever taken that trip from the Midwest to the west or vice versa but it can be a tough trip depending on the time of year. There could be all sorts of problems, traffic, weather, detours in St. Louis through their construction. Whatever it was, we knew that they weren’t coming when we thought they were. So it is with Jesus’ arrival. We know that it can be a little bit hard to establish the “when” of Jesus’ arrival but He does give us some clues.

This morning, we’re going to take a look at Matthew 24, if anyone has their bibles with them, they are welcome to open it up and look at Matthew 24 with me. But as we are going to continue, let me have a little bit of a background here on what’s going on before Matthew 24. In Matthew 23, Jesus and His disciples are in the synagogue. They’re being questioned by the Pharisees, all kinds of questions being thrown at Jesus and Jesus answering all of them. The disciples are pretty impressed. They’re leaving the synagogue with their heads held high and they’re saying, “Wow, look at this. Jesus has finally shown Himself and the power He contains.” And so as they’re walking along the road, they see the temple and they say, “Look at the beautiful temple, Jesus,” because they finally thought now that He showed His power and His authority, He was going to set up His earthly kingdom and guess who was going to be in control? The disciples. They were looking at that power but then Jesus continues where we’re going to be looking at here in Chapter 24. He says, “Do you see all these things?” He sets them up a little bit and then He drops the bombshell on them and He says, “I tell you the truth. Not one stone here will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down.” It’s pretty shocking for them. One moment, they’re thinking Jesus is going to be here to establish His earthly kingdom and, all of a sudden, Jesus said it’s all going to be gone, obliterated.

And then Jesus continues to walk. He walks for probably another half mile until He gets to the Mount of Olives where He was going to continue to teach. So the disciples are going to continue to question because they’re not happy where that’s at, so they start the question then starting in Verse 3, “Tell us then, when will this happen and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?” They wanted to know. They wanted to know the when. Jesus continues in Verses 4-14 giving some signs, “False prophets will come with a false message. Don’t listen to it.” And then again in 15-28, He reveals some specific events that will take place. In 29-31, He speaks of His return in great power and authority. We’re not looking too much at this because this doesn’t always speak to the “when” but the next couple of verses starting with 32 and 33, Jesus speaks of an instance here. So we can figure out two kind of general ideas about when Jesus may come.

So the first one, we know the general time but not the precise moment. Let’s look at the story in Verse 32, “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” So here we have an example from Jesus from the very nature itself. He says, “Look at the fig tree.” When the fig tree changes, you know that it’s going from spring time into summer time. He says, “Just like that, you’ll know the signs of when I’m coming.”

No one knows when Jesus will return again but He says, “Here is a sign.” And in Verse 36, He kind of goes over again for them saying no one is going to know the day or the hour. He said, “No one knows about that day or the hour, not the angels in heaven nor the sun but only the Father, as it was in the days of Noah.” We’ll get to that point in a second but Jesus says, “No one will know the day or the hour.” So when we start to look at our world and we start to see people saying, “This is the time. This is the place,” we don’t have to listen. We don’t have to hear them because they’re either a false prophet as Jesus was talking about here in Chapter 24 or they’re some deluded bible student out there thinking that he knows the way.

But fact No. 2, Jesus will return and it says it’s going to be completely unprepared. Let’s look at the story He tells in 37-41, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of man, for in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and given into marriage, up until the day Noah entered the ark and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of man. Two men will be in the fields, one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with the hand mill, one will be taken and the other left.” Jesus takes the example and then compares it between His day of coming and Noah’s ark experience. What was it like in Noah’s day? It was business as usual. While Noah patiently built the ark and warned of the coming judgment upon the people, they just laughed at him. They said, “It’s never going to happen.” They couldn’t believe that a worldwide flood would even be possible. For years and years, this continued as Noah continued to build the ark. People came and laughed at him, made him a joke, continued to mock him until the heavens opened and the rains came down. Then the people were running to the ark, knocking on the door, trying to get back in. This is how it says it will be when Jesus returns again. When He returns to the earth, unbelievers will want to be taken in death and judgment and only the believers will be preserved. Jesus is that ark of safety for all believers.

This leads us to our third foundational point. Keep watch and be ready. As we were waiting for my parents to arrive that evening, we knew they were coming. We just didn’t know when. We went outside wanting to show them that we were ready, that we were prepared for them coming. But we shortly got distracted. It didn’t take very long. It was probably in the back of our minds somewhere but, at the time, we were just distracted by what was going on. Jesus promises He’s coming soon. We’ve looked at that and we’ve seen that we can see some signs of His coming. But Jesus says this in Verses 42-44 of that same chapter, “Keep watch because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this, if the owner of the house had known at what time at night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready because the Son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him.” So note the two main commands in Jesus’ portion right there. He says, “Keep watch and be ready.”

So how does a thief come into your house? Does he call and make an appointment? Does he ask you for the best time to come on over? No, it says “The thief comes sudden and unannounced. After all, if you knew the robber was going to be there, you would be ready for him.” But Jesus says He’s coming like a thief in the night. When we least expect His arrival, He will be here. Therefore, we keep our eyes to the skies and we’re ready to meet Him face to face.

The question we had on the card from the people in the congregation, it says, “How do I stay faithful in a world that continues to crumble, that continues to fall apart? How do I stay ready? How do I keep watch?” With all the fear that’s going on around us, with all the questions that come, with all the signs pointing to the end times, how do we stay faithful? I think when we look at the Hebrews passage, Hebrews 12:1-2, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” So when we start to wonder about how we can stay faithful, we look at this verse and it says, “Focus on Jesus, the author and the perfecter” and He gives us that knowledge, that power to endure, the strength to be strengthened. He gives us the ability to live boldly as we continue to do the things that Christians have always done, praying, hearing and reading the Word of God and boldly going into our world and proclaiming the name of Jesus, our Savior, to those living in darkness.

It seems pretty easy to follow, right? We know it can be difficult but I believe God has equipped us for every good work. So when was the last time you thought to yourself, you woke up in the morning, did you ever think, “Jesus is coming today.” Maybe it’s been awhile since you thought about the second coming of Christ. Maybe you’ve become distracted by the things of the world. Maybe you’ve let that fear overtake you but there’s no reason to fear. Jesus says that He will give us that strength and the power to endure to the end no matter what happens. He says in John 16:33, “I have told you these things so that in me, you may have peace because in this world, you will have trouble but take heart. I have overcome.”

So when you look around and you see that the world is crumbling and you hear people saying, “The sky is falling, the world is coming to an end,” you can take heart knowing that Jesus is with us until the very end of the age. Amen.