Word of Salvation – Vol. 47 No.10 – March 2002

Look Up in the Last Days

Sermon by Rev A Esselbrugge

on Luke 21:25-33

Scripture Readings: Luke 21:5-24; Luke 21:25-36

Suggested Hymns: BoW: 24a; 335; 250; 513; 177; 531

Brothers and sisters, young people, boys and girls.

Don't you think it's an exciting time to be alive?  I know I do.  As I read the Scriptures, there are all kinds of indications to say that we are rapidly moving to that awesome moment when Jesus will appear again.  That time will see the resurrection of all the dead, and Jesus will come, riding upon the clouds of the air, accompanied by all His angels to judge the nations and all people who are alive and who have ever lived.

The Lord, God of heaven and earth is an unchanging God, He is the Rock of all ages.  Whatever He says, He does.  He has never in the past said a certain thing and changed His mind about it afterwards.  Our Lord is entirely and absolutely dependable.  So when He made promises, they have always been true promises.

When the people of the Lord strayed away from worshipping Him to worship idols and follow strange ideas contrary to God, He punished them each time because that was His Word.  When the Lord promised to bring His people out of slavery and into a promised land, so it was.  When from the very beginning He promised to send a Saviour to take us out of slavery of sin, Jesus came, and the Word was given and the Holy Spirit was sent to prepare the way of the Lord into our hearts.  From the beginning His promise has been that He would be with His people, to protect us, shield us, give us strength and carry us home, and so it has always been.

So when the Lord says, I will come back again and it will happen that when I come again I will do so on the clouds of the air and every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess Him as Lord, what do you think?  It will happen!  The Lord is true to His Word.  Or when He says to us here in Verse 32 that the Jewish race will remain until all the things He mentioned in these verses have come to pass, we believe Him, He is true to His Word.

We live now, in a time of expectation.  Will He come again in our lifetime?  Will we be alive upon this earth when He returns?  I don't know that, but the time is coming closer.  The indications are that He is coming.  This is what I mean by living in exciting times.  Now is a time for us to be sharing the Gospel like no other.  The Lord is on His way and we must make haste and get things ready and be ready ourselves for His impending arrival.  That's how I see it, and the way the Scriptures paint the scene for us.

But there's another view of this time.  Luke tells in Verse 26 that people also are afraid of the Lord's return.  In fact there will be people more in fear than just afraid, and their fear will be like an epidemic.

He tells us back in Chapter 17 that marriage relationships will be very brittle and fragile (17:26-27) – comparing the coming of the Lord to the time of Noah; and he also warns us that moral standards will slide and fall terribly – comparing things to the days of Lot at Sodom (17:28-29); and Daniel warns us that people will go everywhere to increase knowledge (Dan.12:4), and will have full heads but restless hearts and broken lives.  Remember, what the Lord declares is what comes to pass.

So, on the one hand these are exciting times; come Lord, come quickly; I can't wait for Him to come.  It will be awesome and glorious.  And then there will come the new earth and the new heavens and the Lord's people will dwell in a place where Jesus Himself is the sun and light because the radiance of His glory will mean there will be no need for a sun to shine.  On the other hand, there is also fear and trembling, and until He comes there will be a decline of morality and a steady but sure slide into godlessness.

How do we cope in such a time as this?  That's the question we're addressing in our verses here today, and you can see there how verses 25-30 speak about an awareness of certain signs.  There are certain indicators, pointers – or, as Matthew calls them, “signs of the times” – which we ought to be aware of and alert to.

So, even though the Scriptures tell us that no one knows the day, the hour, or the year when Christ will return, the Lord still informs us that we must, as Christians, always be alert and wide awake about temptations and Satan prowling about ready to pounce on us at any weakened and drowsy moment.  And when certain things do happen, then we ought to be especially alert to a great and wonderful possibility.  The Lord may return soon.

Looking at verses like we have before us today, or any of the parallel passages and others in the Bible, with a view to using the information there as a way to date the return of Christ, is a wrong and unbiblical use of the information we're given here.  The fact is that these things have happened before and people have jumped up and said, now is the time.

There's an earthquake, or a comet comes hurtling past the earth, or there's an intensification of wars between nations, or there's a change in the calendar from one millennium to the next, and people get all fearful and hyped up with end-time stories and predictions.  At other times, as the apostle Paul has warned, Satan uses pretend signs and wonders to mislead and distract people away from the Lord.

Some people have an idea that God only gave signs to keep us exclusively alert to the end-time.  But that's not what we see here or anywhere else in Scripture.  These signs mentioned in our verses are given to make God's people look to the Lord, but not specifically at the end of the world.  They are given to make us look back, not forward, but back to the great and most magnificent event in the entire history of the world.

We're to look back to when God came down to rescue us from the slavery of sin.  That, congregation, is an even more awesome, and even greater and more wondrous event than His second coming will be.  That God, the Holy One, grand and mighty in all majesty, power and glory, should choose to set His love on the unlovable, and save us from what we in determined steps have chosen to bring on ourselves – that is absolutely unbelievable, except that God has said He did it.

Look to that.  Look to the Lord.  Look to His grace and mercy and His sovereign glory – that's what the signs are to do first of all, before they draw our attention to Christ's coming again.  Look to Him on the cross and risen again, and determine what that means and what He means to you there, before you look to Him coming again.  Unless He has come in all His saving power into your heart by way of the cross and the resurrection and cleansed you of all your sin, His second coming will be a fearsome and terrible thing.

In these verses Luke mentions a certain category of signs.  In various parts of God's Word other signs are mentioned.  There are signs that show and reveal the grace of God, for example, in the proclamation of the gospel to all nations.  Then there are signs indicating opposition to God, which we see in a falling away of people from faith in the Lord and the coming of the anti-Christ.  And then there are the signs that Luke mentions, signs indicating God's judgment: wars, earthquakes, and famines.

These signs aren't, strictly speaking, about the end.  Jesus warns us in Matthew 24:6 about these particular signs, that when they take place people mustn't be alarmed because “the end is not yet”.  What these signs mean is that they point towards the end and provide a kind of promise that it will come, but don't immediately think the end is at hand.  These things must happen and come, because God has said they will, and they are given as a confirmation of His greater promise: He will come again.

So, when we see the oceans surging and nations in perplexity about this, and people fainting from fear, will that be because of global warming and the polar caps melting?  I don't know, but from our verses here I do know this, because the picture painted here for us is particularly vivid.  When the sun becomes dark, the moon also will cease to reflect light to the earth.  And since the sun and the moon exert a potent influence on our planet, just think of the tides of the oceans, is it any wonder then that the oceans will also be deeply disturbed?  And people will be terrified.

How will we cope?  Remember first that the signs are about making us look back, back to Jesus as He first came.  They make us look and realise Jesus will come again.  He will come upon a cloud and in great glory.  This will be the final great sign and signal that He is about to go out to meet His people.  He will come to gather His people to Himself and they will be with Him forever.

When you see these things, as they begin to occur, look up!

So much of the world's concentration is on things technological and global and in communications.  Things have accelerated so far and so rapidly that the technology to monitor every one of us in our day to day activities and habits, and especially our financial transactions, rests in your wallet or purse right now.

Most of you have credit cards and pay your bills by phone banking or the internet.  All of that is closely monitored by various institutions around the world.  Massive industries are spawning everywhere to track and monitor people either in financial transaction or on video monitors in shopping centres or public precincts.  People are so focussed on this and keeping their eyes down, that when the seas begin to surge and the sun and moon behave strangely, and the sign of Jesus signalling His return as He rides upon a cloud, these warning signs aren't even noticed.  There is still fear, but people no longer know what they are afraid of.

Well, congregation, look up and stand up, because Jesus is on His way!  As we said before, no one knows when Jesus will return.  But we do know this, because God has told us and God is true to His Word, the final tribulation, the shaking of the earth and the intensification of the terrors of evil, will be of a very brief duration, to be followed by Christ's glorious return.

And when He comes, then we will be fully redeemed from the slavery of sin.  The price has already been paid at the cross.  We have already known the glory of God in the face of Jesus in our souls, and then God's people will be with Jesus forever.  Pain and crying, death and mourning will cease and the glory of God will surround us.

Look up congregation.  The Lord is coming.  Now is the time to reach out to others and urge them to look up with us.  You know how it goes, when a group of people look intently and with great interest at something, others want to know what it is they are looking at, and so they join the group until the group becomes a crowd.  That is how we're to live our lives, so intent at looking to Jesus and in His service, that others want to know what it is that we're looking at, and they, too, come to see Jesus.

Three times Luke impresses on us that the time is near: at the end of verses 28, 30, and 31.  Keep looking up to Jesus, He's the Saviour, He's the Lord, He's our Saviour and our Lord.

There's one further lesson for us here that offers us the means to cope in these last days.  It's there in verse 33.  I urge you all to develop, have, and maintain a daily devotion, a praying and reading over God's Word.

God's Word has endured through this entire troubled world.  Wars, famines, persecutions and floods, earthquakes and fire have swept across this entire planet sweeping all things and people before them, but through it all God's Word has remained.  Here is the foundation of our faith.  This is what builds faith and keeps us from sin.  So, congregation, read it and read it more, and read it again!  Pray that God will open your heart to receive Him, His Word, His Son, who is the Word of life.  Pray over the Word that you will see more of the wonder of the glory of God and His wonderful grace.

There's how we cope when the world is crumbling in fear and terror.  We look up.  We remember that the signs are about making us look to Jesus and the cross.  We take up the Word of God, which can never pass away, and read it, and we're careful to gather around it in public worship because we need the blessing of other believers.

The time is near, congregation.  There's no question about it.  It's the Word of the Lord Himself.  I know some of us want to use church as some kind of vitamin pill.  We only use it when we think we're in need of it.  Some don't want to make any real commitment to the Lord by an active involvement in the church, or worse, in a daily reading and praying over His Word.  Well, I say to you, the time is near, and the time to look up to the Lord Jesus is now!

Amen.