Word of Salvation – Vol. 45 No.47 – December 2000

 

Whose Day is it Anyway?

 

A New Year’s Eve Sermon by Rev S Bajema

on Luke 21:28

Scripture Readings: 1Thessalonians 4:13 – 5:11; Luke 21:5-28

 

Beloved in the Lord.

With the end of another year upon us, it’s an appropriate time to hear again about what the Bible says about the end of the earth as we know it.  The teaching in which Jesus deals at length with this particular event, in this chapter 21 of Luke, and also its parallel passages in Matthew and Mark, can give us the Spirit’s help in seeing just what this is all about.

It’s also, naturally, a passage that those believers use, too.  Congregation, as we read through these verses, we heard of the temple’s destruction prophesied, about various signs occurring, what would happen to the disciples and many believers, the fall of Jerusalem, and, then, the last part, including the text, about the coming of the Son of Man – Christ Jesus, Himself!

It’s in this verse 28, and in the middle of this verse, that there’s the central lesson for the Church then, and ever since then.  “Stand up and lift up your heads”, the Lord commands.  Commands – because that’s what these words are.  We have to do it!

But do what, exactly?  Well, stand up and lift up your head, of course!  Though that, congregation, could be precisely the misunderstanding.  We can easily take the verse before this quite literally.  I mean, that’s how it sounds, doesn’t it?  And so we would think of a specific time when these signs in the world around us are occurring, and how we are meant to respond at that time.

Allow me to explain.  The language, from verse 5 on, is distinctly apocalyptic.  Jesus is here speaking in a different way to His disciples.

It’s a way of communicating which we can have difficulty understanding.  For we haven’t been brought up as Jews in the first century.  Jews of that time, who not only knew the Old Testament well, but also who were quite aware of much apocalyptic literature since then.

It would be like another civilisation in two thousand years’ time trying to understand what this civilisation was all about.  Then they probably wouldn’t have computers anymore – things have changed.  Out there on the seventh moon of Saturn, Earth itself is a long way away.  Besides much of that rather complex computer chip technology was lost in the first of the three interplanetary wars.

Perhaps I’m being a little imaginative.  But I trust you get the picture.

Life in 30 A.D.  was quite different.  Not only by how they lived – also in the way their language conveyed their understanding of life.

If we forget that, then we miss the point of what Jesus is saying.  You see, this apocalyptic language then wasn’t concerned with the actual details as much as it describes a whole picture.  That’s why when we look behind the phrase, “Stand up and lift up your heads”, we get a surprise.  You see, this is not about somehow bearing up to this all, as though we have to grin and bear it.  When Jesus says in verse 26 that “men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what’s coming on the world”, He doesn’t mean a paranoia of people stockpiling basements full of food, gold and guns because they fear an disastrous event might overtake them!

Of course, that’s certainly what the unbeliever will experience!  The end time won’t be a nice time for them.  As indeed it is already for them, because they are really quite unhappy.  The natural disasters, diseases and violence, and all those other things, make sure of that.

For Christians, however, standing up and lifting up our heads is about the blessing this whole time is for us!  Yes, you heard it right – that time will be an encouraging time.  The root of these words speaks of both a bowing down before the presence of greatness and the gesture of being open to receiving from the Lord.

And then we can note that the time in which this openness of believers to receiving these signs of hope from the Lord isn’t of a particular date in time.  Otherwise the apostle Peter wouldn’t speak of the Lord’s coming again as being like a thief (2Pet.3:10), with another apostle, Paul, extending that description to being like a thief in the night (1Thess.5:2).

Congregation, this is Hebraic language.  With the same descriptions used by the Old Testament prophets, Jesus reaffirms what will happen in the time before He returns.  It’s true that some of that can be seen explicitly in the fall of Jerusalem just a few decades later.

But there are verses, too, like the prophets, which extend that picture of judgment in a broader sweep of the artist’s brush.  For Jesus knew well enough that for the other hundreds of years after Jerusalem’s destruction His Church would need His hope, too.

That’s what this is!  Hope!

The Lord’s coming back!  The signs are as sure and vivid now as they were in the year before 1000 A.D. and as they well could be before the year 3000 A.D.

We ignore this apocalyptic language to our detriment.  Because those believers hanging their entire Scriptural prophecy on the tick of a clock in just a few hours will have a lot to answer for during many years ahead.  Not least of it will be a terrible misinterpretation of God’s Word.  I need to add, too, that those preachers and teachers so leading believers astray will themselves be held accountable.  Though, sadly, they’ll inevitably come back soon enough with whatever else they can make a dollar or two!

Dear believer, this time should be one we’re happy about.  The year 2001, like any other year, ought to see Christians at the forefront of whatever brings hope into this world – whether it’s supplying physical relief to the natural disasters in this world, challenging the ravages of the market-driven economy, or simply being the community in which people are loved and accepted because of what they, in God’s sight, are through Jesus Christ.

That’s standing up – that’s looking up!  For as the people of old stood and looked to the priestly blessing, as Christ’s disciples stood and saw His hands held out over them, so we, today, need to be found looking the same way!

Just think, if Jesus said to His disciples to stand and look up when these things began to happen, how much more shouldn’t we doing it now, when these things have been happening for nearly two thousand years!  And who said anything about the situation people are worried about now being what the end will really be like?

Mind you, each time these signs occur, and the more it does seem they do happen, and with even greater effect, Jesus tells us that it’s another part of unfolding what He’s doing for His people.

The phrase, “because your redemption is drawing near”, isn’t saying that what Jesus is about to do in His suffering and death won’t be enough, but it does mean that its effect hasn’t yet been completed.  The elect haven’t yet all been saved.  The Son is still working out His Father’s will.

When this prophecy will be fulfilled we cannot know.  On the day it comes there will be no mistaking it.  And especially in times of great distress and persecution Christians should believe the Lord will soon come.  That will be our strength – the hope which is burning bright in our hearts will shine forth the true Light into His world.

Congregation, this reference to redemption isn’t only about a liberation from sin or to a ransom.  This is rooted in the hope of the kingdom of heaven, which now in Jesus becomes clearly seen!

That’s why there is something extra encouraging we can learn from the year 2000.  It’s an insight from Tom Wright.  He mentions that, at the start of the 4th century A.D., before our present calendar system had come about, a Roman Emperor, Diocletian, attempted to introduce his own dating system, beginning with the year he had been hailed as Caesar, which was the year 284 A.D.  Now Diocletian was one of the worst dictators the Roman Empire had ever witnessed.  And as with another terrible bully-Emperor, Nero, his reign saw one of the worst persecutions of Christians ever.

One reason why he did this was because he not only believed he was a god, in line with what was believed of all the Roman Emperors – he was utterly convinced he was superior to all of the gods!  He was determined – not unlike a dictator of recent times – to start an era of greatness which would never end.  He might not have called it ‘The Thousand Year Reich’, but the motivation was exactly the same!

The Christians stood in his way, giving loyalty to a different Lord, refusing to obey him.  There was nothing to do but wipe them out.  It was one of this megalomaniac’s ideas to re-invent time to begin with him.  Like the French revolutionaries who thought enlightenment began in 1792, he was going to have anyone who ever came after him date themselves by him.

It didn’t last long.  But, two centuries later, there came along an obscure monk from one of the farthest and unknown parts of the Empire – a monk whose name today would be translated as Denis the Insignificant.  Denis declared that it was the reign of Jesus which mattered – not the reign of Caesar!

Jesus is Lord – not Caesar!  It was his calendar, based on the beginning date of the birth of Jesus Christ.  And we can take this difference even further.  For the power of Caesar – or any earthly ruler for that matter – can only be in death.  If you stand in their way they’ll kill you!  But the dating which we go by now is because of the rule of Jesus – the One who gives new life!  It’s Christ’s power of the resurrection which makes us celebrate that He was conceived and born.  Take Easter away, and you really do take time away!

Fellow Christians, we are to simply tell this world whose time this is.  Whose day or week or month or year or decade or century is it going to be anyway?  Whichever time that might be!  And that it’s dated from Jesus coming the first time reminds us clearly that He is coming that second time.  Then His purpose for those He’s brought alive has been done.

He is the Lord who has won.  And then so will we!  So, stand up and look up!  His day is dawning.  In one way it has already come – for we are His own who see Him now!  Though on the coming day all will see the Son!

Amen.