Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 04 – October 1979

 

He Comes – As He Came

 

Sermon by Rev. W. J. Van Schie on Daniel 7:9-14

 

Congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ,

When was the last time that you thought about Jesus’ return? When was the last time that you prayed, quite sincerely and quite meaningfully, “Lord Jesus, come quickly”. When was the last time you really had this burning longing for Jesus to come back, very soon, as soon as possible. You know, when we look into the Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we notice that this is the kind of longing that the Biblical believers had. In the Old Testament people were burning with hope, looking forward to that great event when the Messiah would come. Just remember Simeon how he prayed to God that God wouldn’t let him die until he saw the Messiah – and then when the baby was put in his arms, he praised God, because God had let him see the great Messiah. A typical example of the Old Testament believer’s hope is the coming of the Lord. And in the New Testament we read repeatedly that the Christians were constantly thinking about Jesus’ second coming. It wasn’t very far from their minds, they were conscious of the fact all the time, “Jesus is coming back”, and they were longing for it, really longing for it. We can ask the question “what made the believers long that much” for Jesus’ coming. What made them so excited about the fact that Jesus was coming?

1. OLD TESTAMENT HOPE

(a) Great Kingdom

I’d like you to turn with me to the book of Daniel – Daniel chapter 2. With your Bibles there with you, I’d like you to follow through a number of passages with me which describe the hope of what these people were looking forward to. The first one we’re looking at is Daniel chapter 2, verses 44 & 45. We have here a small glimpse of what the people were looking forward to. Here’s Daniel, interpreting the dream of King Nebuchad-Nezzar.

Remember the King had dreamt about that big statue, and that rock that came rolling down the hill and had smashed that big statue and the King wanted to know what that dream meant. Now this is Daniel’s interpretation of that dream – verse 44: (Read from verse 44). What the people in the Old Testament looked forward to was a great kingdom, a tremendous kingdom; not just an ordinary kingdom, a great kingdom – a kingdom which would have power and majesty and authority which would crush all other kingdoms. There’s only room for one kingdom on the whole of the earth and that’s this one – this great kingdom, that’s going to dominate the whole earth. And it’s not a kingdom that comes into existence through the minds and power of men, or army, or through treaties and politics. No, it’s a kingdom that God is going to establish. As in the dream this rock rolled down the hill and crushed the statue with all its different elements, so God will crush the opposition. He will be the One who does it – He’s the One who’s going to bring in this divine kingdom, and it’s going to last forever. The people in the Old Testament were looking forward to that colossal kingdom where God rules the whole universe.

(b) Great King

I’d like you now to turn with me to Daniel chapter 7, where we have another glimpse of this kingdom, and how this kingdom is going to come into existence. Daniel 7 – I’ll read from verse 9 (read verses 9-14). How is this great kingdom of God – where God rules – going to come into existence? Through one man, the “Son of Man”. God is going to judge the earth, and He his going to judge His enemies and slay them, and ultimately Satan and all his followers will be slain. And then this King, this great King, is going to come, and He is going to establish the great kingdom. The people in the Old Testament times, when they heard prophecies like this, and there’s many of them, were very excited. Here was a small little nation of Israel tucked away in the Middle East – one of the smallest nations – and God had promised them that they are going to be a great kingdom with a great king.

(c) Day of the Lord

So what the Israelites did, they divided history into two segments. They talked about the present age, and they talked about the age that was going to come. The present age in which wickedness and evil ruled, an age in which God was despised, an age in which God’s people were rejected, and also despised. An age that couldn’t be salvaged. There was only one end for that age and that was utter destruction. But the people of God had a hope, and that was the age that was going to come – the next age, the next period of time. In that period of time the kingdom is going to come, the great King is going to come, and the Utopia of the great kingdom will be established. We have some very beautiful descriptions of this throughout the prophets in the Old Testaments. The desert will turn into a beautiful garden, springs, fountains, water in abundance. Fruit trees will bear an abundance of fruit, there’ll be no more war between men, there’ll be no more pain. There will be no animosity between man and animals, but they will live in perfect harmony. This is going to happen in the age to come. The point at which the present evil age would turn into the age to come was the point of one day, and that day throughout the Bible is called “the day of the Lord”. Oh, how the Israelites looked forward to the day of the Lord. Its present age will be finished, and the Utopia will be here: the kingdom will be here, and the king will be here – the day of the Lord would have arrived. Oh, they were so excited about that. Every Israelite knew about the day of the Lord, and what it was going to be like in the age to come, and they really longed for it. But then we turn to the New Testament and we find something very amazing.

II NEW TESTAMENT HOPE

(a) Great Kingdom

I’d like you to turn with me to Luke chapter 17, where we have Jesus talking to the Pharisees about this kingdom (Read Luke 17:20, 21). The earth-shattering phrase is that last phrase in verse 20 “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”. The Pharisees were asking Jesus, “what are the signs which will usher in that new age that will tell us this glorious kingdom and the King had arrived? And Jesus turned around and says, “Hey fellows, you’ve missed out on it, it’s already here!” “It’s already come and you’ve not seen it you haven’t recognized it.” “It’s already here, this great kingdom”. And we read throughout the gospel Jesus says this quite constantly, “the kingdom of God is at hand”, “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”. Jesus’ message was that when He came onto earth the kingdom of God was walking there amongst the people. He was bringing the kingdom of God to them. And the horrible thing was that the Pharisees didn’t recongnise this. They were looking for the great Utopia, they were looking for the great sign. They were looking so far to the big spectacular thing they couldn’t recognize it in Jesus Christ. Jesus was bringing in the Kingdom.

(b) Great King

Now I’d like you to turn with me to Mark chapter 14 where we see another example of this. Here we find Jesus before the Sanhedrin, and He’s on trial for His life. The high priest has heard the testimony of a number of witnesses and they couldn’t get two witnesses to agree, so the witnesses’ testimony was not accepted. The high priest gets upset, and he comes off his position, and he comes down and stands in front of Jesus. (Read Mark 14:61-64) The high priest went crazy. He tore his clothes off his back, and he tore them in pieces to display his anger and his anguish. Why did the high priest go crazy? Because Jesus said, “I am the Son of man”. “I am the Son of man who sits at the right hand of power”, “I am the Son of man who is coming with the clouds”. The high priest knew his Old Testament very well, he knew that Jesus was quoting Daniel. Jesus was talking about Himself as being that Son of man of Daniel, that Jesus was that great King, that great Messiah of the Old Testament. Here He was on trial for His life. He made it very clear. This was His claim “I am the Son of Man”.

“I am that God-King, the Messiah”. Then they sentenced Him to death. That’s why He died, no other reason. You see the New Testament Christian, the New Testament believer was looking at the kingdom, in Christ, The New Testament Christian was also the King, in Christ.

(c) Day of the Lord

And in Hebrews 1:1 & 2 we read that in Christ the last days had begun. In times before God had talked to the people through prophets, through poets, through the kings, through the judges, through many different ways, but in the last days, (and that little phrase ‘last days’ means exactly the same thing as ‘the age to come’). In the last days to come God sent Jesus. The last days are here. The age to come has arrived in Jesus Christ! This is incredible. You see the Christian of the New Testament wasn’t looking forward so much to the future of Jesus’ second coming. He wasn’t looking forward to the Utopia beyond so much. The New Testament believer was looking at Jesus Christ as He came. He was bringing in the kingdom, He was the great King, and the day of the Lord had arrived when He arrived. The tremendous hope, and the tremendous longing for Christ’s second coming was based on the fact of Christ’s first coming.

Oh yes, there’s a problem; there’s a question that becomes very obvious – had the Utopia really arrived? Has evil been crushed? Does God rule? Is the victory ours? Has evil been banished? Has the judgment already come? The New Testament believer would answer, “Yes!!” In Christ all these things have already happened! Christ crushed evil. He won the victory. He took the sting out of death. He will be the criteria for judgment of the whole earth. He’s won the victory, the resurrection, and through Him God rules everything, because He had more power and authority. In Christ it’s already happened. Now we can illustrate this – from something our ladies use. In your kitchen you have, I’m sure somewhere in one of your cupboards a little bottle of flavouring which is called essence. Some essence can be also a colouring. And I’m sure the housewives here in church tonight will know that one little drop of essence, one little drop of that flavouring permeate a whole cake. Or if you took a teaspoon of that rich red colouring and dropped it in the bath, the bath full of water, the colour would spread very quickly throughout the whole water. That little bottle in concentrate essence form is very potent. You could say that in essence there is enough flavouring maybe for a hundred cakes, or two hundred cakes, The actual flavouring is already there. It just has to be poured out and be applied to everything else. And in the same way when Jesus came the first time, in essence, the second coming was already there.

What He did in the first coming will be exactly the same as in the second coming. In the first coming it’s in concentrate form. In the second coming it will be applied to the whole universe. And that’s why the New Testament believers were so excited!, that’s why they longed so much for Jesus’ coming. That’s why they prayed, “Lord Jesus, come quickly”; they could see what a great king He was. They could see what a great Messiah He was; they could see what a great Redeemer He was, and what a great victory He had won. They could see everything that He had done, And because they could see it so clearly, in looking at Calvary, they were looking forward to the day when He would come and display it to the whole universe. Everything that’s going to happen at the second coming, had already happened in essence at the first coming.

CONCLUSION

When you think about the second coming of Christ, do you try to picture in your mind what it’s going to be like? What do you do? Do you get all the little bits of information from Revelation and from Thessalonians, from 2Corinthians and other Bible passages, and put them all together like a jigsaw, and try to build up a picture of what it’s going to be like? You know, if you do that, and look at the finished product you will note some very beautiful things, but it will be like a picture incomplete. It will be a picture out of focus, If you are relying on that picture to give you longing, then you’re not going to have much longing or much hope. But if you do what the New Testament Christians did, and you look back at Jesus’ first coming and see what kind of Redeemer He was, then you can say that’s the kind of Redeemer He’s going to be. And you can look back and see what kind of victor He was and you can say that’s the kind of victor He’s going to be. And if you look back and see how human He was in relating to people in their needs, then you can say, “Well, that’s what kind of King He’s going to be.” Don’t look to the future so much to give you hope and longing. Look to the past, at Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. That will give you inspiration; that will give you longing; it will make you burn for His second coming.

Can you pray “Lord Jesus, come quickly”. Do you long for His return that much? Are you willing to have Him come and interrupt all your plans? Look at Jesus Christ – see Him in His first coming, and you’ll long that much for His second coming. He came as a glorious King, as a glorious Saviour, and He will come exactly the same way. Behold, He comes as He came.

Amen.