Word of Salvation – Vol. 29 No. 33 – September 1984
The End Is Near
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, v.d.m. on 2Peter 3:8-13
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 65:1-12, 17-25; 2Peter 3:1-13
Suggested Hymns: 192; 394:1,3; BoW 810:3,4; 370; BoW 805:1,3,4
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
The title of this sermon: “THE END IS NEAR!” sounds much like the grim warning displayed a century ago in the streets of swinging, frivolous London by gloomy sandwich-men who had it printed on a big board on their front and at their back:
“THE END IS NEAR”
However, now again in London you can hear similar sounds, hear it in the noisy protests made against the arrival of American cruise missiles on British soil; and you’d better not laugh too loudly about that, either! It is a matter for grave concern, also to us Christians, that the nuclear arms race knows no letting up and that the instruments of global destruction are piling up higher and higher! The end seems very near indeed!
Years ago the Australian writer Neville Shute published his book, “On The Beach”, in which he tells the chilling story of people waiting – in Melbourne, Australia – for the deadly cloud of atomic fall-out that killed all the rest of the world already and now comes drifting ominously towards their last corner of the world. He describes how the people (who all know that this is coming) then behave; how they wait for it.
Most of them just go on living, in fact they get into a mad rush to grab what they can, as long as they can. Live it up!
Death will come all too soon! That, indeed, seems very much the life style of our Western world! Live it up: Death comes all too soon! And was this not also the message of the sandwich-man: THE END IS NEAR!!
But how different is the way GOD says it in our text today!
On this Sunday morning we hear the God of heaven and earth tell us about it as joyful news, after having told it as a timely warning. And throughout there is His loving concern: “Why shall you die, my child?”
THE END IS NEAR
1. the end of the world as we know it;
2. the end of God’s patience; do you dread it?
3. the end of your exile; do you long for it?
4. the end of your rebellion; you may start it!
1. THE END IS NEAR, OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
Cruise missiles or not, the Bible says that it won’t be people who will bring the world to its end; and surely not before God’ time has come! Once before God brought life in the world to an end, in the flood.
That’s what Peter means when he says that the present world exists out of water. After the Lord had done that He had put His rainbow in the clouds as a promise: He would keep the place going, He would keep people going on it, in spite of their terrible provocation of His Holy nature. The world would continue to exist till the time would come for the fire, for the ultimate cleansing, the last purge. God’s patience has been awfully tested especially when people – His own people, would you believe – took His Loved One, His holy Son, to kill Him in slow torture on a cross.
But the day of reckoning will come. Not for ever will the Lord put up with the way we make a mess of things! At a time you do not know and I do not know, He will come and cleanse the place with fire.
If you are silly enough to sell your heart to the false gods of this age or any age you will see it all go up in smoke, and how empty then your hands will be! Nothing that we build up for ourselves away from Him will stay.
All that money can buy, all that our ambition can build up, our empires of achievement or even our dreams of love, none of it will stay.
All the things we lusted after or longed for, will be gone, in a moment. John, the apostle of love, ends his letter for that reason, with the warning: “Little children, keep away from idols, from false gods! They can’t do anything but let you down terribly.
Yet why does the Lord tell you all this? Not to make gloomy pessimists out of you! Rather, to call you to invest (now there is still time to do so) in treasures that will outlive that fire, treasures that will last forever!
For, believe it, such treasures do exist. The world as we know it will perish, but the world as God meant it and as He planned it will last; will at last come to pass: here! The end is near, maybe nearer than you think, of the world as we know it.
Secondly:
2. THE END IS NEAR OF GOD’S PATIENCE; AND DO YOU DREAD IT?
In Peter’s day there were the scoffers who said, well… you Christians have been talking for so long already about Jesus coming back!
Come off it, nothing happened in all these years.
Like in Noah’s days when the ark was being built. Sunny day after sunny day seemed to put the lie to all that judgement talk of the old fellow. But that is not God’s inability. It is only His patience!
What then, you ask, is He waiting for? I tell you: He waits that you turn to Him! That you repent of your evil ways; of your love for the idols; of your lust after sin and evil.
He wants that people, you too, shall turn to Him, and choose the life He gives. He wants that you, by the power of the Holy Spirit who can do that in your heart, shall begin to be sorry for your rebellion and hate whatever ways of life grieve Him.
Yes, that patience of God, that waiting and calling, is especially for you, children of the Covenant, people of the church. You could know and should know better than to live for the world.
Because just coming to church will not “get you there”, and having a minister or an elder for a father or a God-fearing woman for a mother, will not make you escape the fire!
A choice must be made, and the false gods must be rejected before you find yourself facing an unexpected judgement with these false gods in your arms and your Lord in contempt; or on a waiting list!
Especially in our violent days, so full of disasters and threats, God our Lord and Saviour who does not want the death of the sinner but rather that he turns to Him and lives, calls you (urges you!) to knock on His door and seek Him now that He still may be found. He calls you to choose life rather than death.
An automobile accident may bring you before the very gates of an unexpected, sudden death, this week. Nobody knows how much time we still have.
Jesus is not an automatic Saviour!
He must be believed, accepted and served as the Saviour and Lord you have learned Him to be.
But, you see, those who have seen Him in all His beauty and life-giving richness have a powerful reason to be glad when the Word says: THE END IS NEAR.
For, thirdly…
3. THE END IS ALSO NNEAR OF YOUR EXILE… YOUR BEING A STRANGER.
And don’t you LONG FOR THAT?
I know young fellows in our church who have trouble being strangers, like being foreigners in an Australian environment. But a Christian – the more he loves his Lord and King, and the more he hates whatever grieves Him – longs for the day that he may call this world home! For now he can’t! Not quite.
Isn’t it really too silly for words that unbelievers should protest louder than the Children of the King against what makes this world ugly, like a nuclear arms race, or injustice in any form or shape; that children of darkness should be more concerned than children of God’s peace and light about hunger and racism, violence and immorality?
How much at-home should God’s child be in a world where Satan still can make such a mess of things?
He, Who was crucified and raised from the dead, asks and urges you and me with Him to long and with Him to work for a world where justice will at last be at home again.
How can a child of the King be other than a stranger an exile where the King’s rights are trodden under feet? Speaking about rights! Speaking about protests!! But then you may ask: What can I do? What difference does “little old me” make in a place where such battles go on? Listen again: God says THE END IS NEAR. also THE END OF YOUR REBELLION AND FAILURE and God invites you: YOU MAY START THAT TODAY! If the world will end in such a way, YOU who know Jesus as the One who gives complete forgiveness and new beginnings you may by the power of the Holy Spirit (Who is in this world with all His power greater than all the power of the devil) start living the new life.
More than all the sermons put together that will show the people around us, like beautiful signposts to the New World, what God has started and what He will bring about. Holy living is not meant to be some pietistic kind of creeping away into a corner waiting like Jonah for the place to go up in flames. Holy life, joyful and positive, is an advertisement, a wedding feast invitation, to come into freedom and know the newness of God.
Remember: Christ is coming.
He Who came once, will come again. God’s princes and princesses, children of the King, call their fellow-men to prepare for His return. Because, when our ways ran dead, God’s Son became the Way. You can still turn around and begin to go that Way.
Peter in this letter calls you now. Do not wait but start today, in prayerful faith and obedience, to walk with Him, on a walk that truly will bring you HOME.
Amen.