Word of Salvation – Vol. 32 No. 21 – June 1987
The Beginning Of The End
Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Acts 2:17-21
Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21, 32-37
Singing: 124; BoW.702; 394; BoW.602; 398
The world in which we live today is full of noise! Machines roar and rattle. Protesters shout and bellow: THIS IS WHAT WE WANT AND WE WANT IT NOW! There is the ominous crack of shots and the dull boom of bombs...! Loudspeakers roar slogans or thump you senselessly with the beat of rock...! Must we now hear, today, that all this unrest also came into the church? Is not the church the place of peace and quiet as Jesus promised: "You shall find rest for your souls"? Yes, but not the peace and rest of the cemetery! We expect too much of the church and of the gospel, the kind of stability, the status-quo which leaves things as they always were: "Don't rock the boat, please!" In fact, many people think that's the main thing the church does: keep things comfortable as they always were.
But God is not like that at all! He is the Lord of Life! In the language of my youth you could use "LIFE" when you meant "noise". "Boys, stop making all that life!" mum would say when she meant: "Be Quiet!" Because when God starts making the new world which Jesus paid for with His death and resurrection, and when He begins that by making a new people then also in His church it is getting mighty lively! The Spirit roars in with signs of storm wind and flames of fire whooshing all over the place, and the message of Jesus' Victory crackles forth in the new crisp notes of tongues never spoken before! And then Peter comes with this boisterous quote from the prophet Joel: “We have now come in the last days,” he roars, and there is thunder and lightning, and spectacular nature phenomena all over the place...!
Some time ago we remembered the Allied Invasion of Europe during World War II, 40 years ago. I well remember that sunny June morning when the news went from mouth to mouth: "They have landed" and we knew, "this will be the beginning of the end". The beginning of the end of the misery of Hitler's regime! We felt elated and festive and I am sure the oppressed French people there in Normandy did, too: everything was better than to stay under the murderous Nazis. Still for them it was going to be a hazardous time: there was gunfire and bombing, there was shooting in the streets and many of their homes would be reduced to rubble! It would be deadly for many... but the calm, the rest, that terrible rest was over: AT LAST SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING!
THE LAST DAYS will be full of the noise of battle: the devil isn't going to take it lying down that his realm is invaded and will be put to an end.
But at last SOMETHING IS HAPPENING!
The signs Joel saw long ago when his nation Israel had sinned itself almost out of existence, and which Peter quotes now Jesus has paid the full price for all believers' sins – are happening on both sides of the generation gap: Young people get up from their backsides; they see visions and are full of hope. And oldies dare to dream dreams again; not the useless day-dreams drifting back to days long past, but the dreams of things about to happen, the dreams that make a poet sing and a grandfather tell his grandchildren of beautiful things to come. The future bursts open with great deeds of God, and His message goes over the world in the clarion call of prophecy as missionaries and evangelists tell people to get ready for the Kingdom. All of creation sings along with this new thing. The sun darkens and the moon becomes like blood. It is a fearsome and frightening thing but then who had thought that God's Grand Invasion of the world would merely result in "pie in the sky when you die by and by "?
The Spirit comes down to finish what was started at the Cross and on the Day of the Resurrection, and even then rocks already split asunder and the sun hid her face! The best periods in the history of the church... have they not always been those times in which the storms of the Spirit have been blowing and Reformation and Revival brought people back to the Lord, back to their Saviour, back to the Bible? The Last Days...no, they will not be easy, they never were.
It won't be a dull show – and that became clear already in Jerusalem. We may think that we've got it all nicely wrapped up here, with some money in the bank and our homes paid off, but God has different ideas: as one Christian poet puts it:
Thus shall the day of glory be
white weddings in the morning
mothers feeding their family
until...without a warning...
a furious tremor shakes the earth
this all-divine intrusion
breaking the ground and giving birth
to terror and confusion.
The all-consuming flames of vice
the smoke of our endeavour
explosion of our own device...
God pulls the final lever.
The day turns rapidly to night,
our strongholds disappearing,
the moon is rising... but her light
like blood! Around us fear and...
the rumbling sound of stone on stone
all that we built is falling!
Alive we hear the dying groan
until a Voice is calling...
The Lord calls each of us by name
we move our feet to greet Him,
we may be wounded... blind... or lame,
disabled - - we may meet Him!
Invitingly He takes our hand
to share His celebration.
We'll live like new in His new land
A liberated nation!
That's how it goes in our text: Out of that storm of those signs of the Last Days, out of the chaos and frightening tumble of all that we had built as towers of Babel behind God's back, there arises the clear clarion call, the mighty music of the invitation not to die as we had deserved but to live!
WHOEVER CALLS UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD...! that is THE VICTORIOUS LORD JESUS WHOSE RISING FROM THE DEAD MAKES ALL THESE THINGS HAPPEN --- whoever calls on His Name WILL BE SAVED!! For whoever calls to Jesus to forgive and heal, for whoever calls upon Jesus to be his Saviour and Lord, for whoever cries to Him out of the misery of his sin and death, "Lord, save me, I have sinned!" there comes the miracle of a new Day, a new Life, a new Beginning by grace bought on that cross. The last days are the beginning of the end; the beginning of the end of death.
For God's Invasion is liberation. At last prisoners can be free, and for no one thus crying to God will it ever be too late! Hungry people get food that will last them through death, and thirsty people will get a living water that will last them through eternity. Even a death bed loses its terror for such people, and love drives away all fear. Tremendous things have happened and we know and see that they still happen today! Whoever wants tame, dull and much-the-sameness from the Spirit community called Church of Jesus, is at the wrong address. If things are as they should be, at least. You won't have an easy life if you really go for the Christian life, but you will hear the Voice, and God will put things upside down... or rather upside up again at last, and that is peace at last. Then He may lead you through the depth but there you see visions just the same. You may lose your life — only to find it better. Our time is full of unrest and noise... and it is getting worse. But it has to, because God, who sits on the throne, has sent into the world the Unrest-maker, the Great Disturber... strange, it is He who has the shape of the dove that told Noah in his storm-tossed ship that a new world was growing outside over which arched the coloured splendour of God's Rainbow of promise. A new world is a-coming and you will be a singing and rejoicing part of it... if only you turn away from your rebellion and sin, your idolatry of money, your trust in false gods which will all burn up, and call on Jesus to be your Saviour and your Lord! Then you will be saved as Lot was when Sodom burned all around Him, and the path where you walk is the highway to glory.
Brother, do not stay where you always were. Do not stick to the old pattern that had become as comfortable as an old slipper! The Spirit is driving on towards new heavens and a new earth where at last there will be justice. We are in the last days! Death is on its way out! The gunfire tells of the liberator's landing. He is here! It's the beginning of the end!
Alleluia!
AMEN.