"God's New Day"

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   How many of you here this morning like to fly?  Please raise your hand.  I’m sure we all know people don’t like to fly and who absolutely refuse to fly.  These people feel if God wanted us to do that then he would have given us wings.  My predecessor here, Pastor Don Schrage, was one such individual.  I remember hearing him say on several occasions that he knew Jesus didn’t intend for us to fly because before he ascended into heaven he told his disciples, “Lo(w), I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”  But personally, I like to fly, though I have learned that while it’s the quickest way to travel, it’s not always the most dependable.  I especially discovered this several years ago when I was serving as a pastoral delegate to our Synod’s convention in Houston, TX.  After sitting through a week of all-day sessions and missing my family tremendously, I was ready to get on that plane and head for home.  But just minutes before we were to start boarding, a ferocious thunderstorm swept through the airport in Houston, grounding all outgoing planes and delaying all incoming planes indefinitely.  Then once the storm was past we received word that the plane we were supposed to take was among those that had been delayed and we weren’t sure when it would arrive.  Finally, after hours of waiting, during which time I actually wrote a funeral sermon since someone had died while I was gone, we boarded our plane.  But then we sat on the tarmac for what seemed like an eternity, only to be told that there was a mechanical problem with that plane and we would have to un-board and wait for another one.  After another seemingly endless wait, our other plane arrived and we finally found ourselves winging our way toward home.  But as we drew nearer to St. Louis our pilot announced that there were some major thunderstorms in that area and we’d have to circle the airport until we were cleared to land.  However, if it was too long, then we’d have to fly to Kansas City to get some fuel because we were getting low on it.  Thankfully though we didn’t have to do that and finally our wheels touched down on the hallowed runway of Lambert International Airport and we were home.  Well, not quite home because I still had a 2-hour drive ahead of me.  And once that drive was completed, oh what a great feeling it was to return to the comfortable and familiar confines of my home and my family.  But not nearly as great a feeling as will take place at another return that we’re going to be talking about this morning.  And that is the return of Christ to this earth.

   The Bible makes headline issues of this star-dropping, time-stopping, eye-popping event.  And no one describes it with more passion and gusto than Jesus in our text for today.  Listen to his words again as I read them to you from the paraphrase of the Bible known as The Message:  “Then the arrival of the Son of Man.  It will fill the skies – no one will miss it.  Unready people all over the world, outsiders to the splendor and power, will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven.  At that same moment, he’ll dispatch his angels with a trumpet-blast summons, pulling in God’s chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.”

   Jesus’ words there come at us like so many lightning bolts from heaven.  His glorious return to this earth will “fill the skies.” There will be a “huge lament” among those not ready.  He will come “blazing out of heaven.”  There will be a “trumpet-blast summons.”  It will no doubt be the climactic event in all of human history for it will be the singular event that brings an end to all of human history as we know it. 

   Our study of heaven that we’re engaged in right now in my current sermon series that I’m calling “Homeward Bound” really would not be complete without a good look at the first day, the inauguration day of all that awaits us in eternity.  So we turn our attention this morning to the day Christ comes.  And rightfully so, for this is a favorite subject of the New Testament writers.  Did you know that there are more than 300 references in the New Testament to the 2^nd coming of Christ?  That works out to an average of once every 13 verses.  Peter, Paul, John, James, and Jude all writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit make very pointed references to this important event.  The 2^nd coming of Christ pulsates through Scripture like a tidal wave through the ocean, drawing ever closer with each passing day.  And what exactly does Scripture say about it?

   Well, for starters, it says that all will witness it.  Revelation 1:7 says: “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.”  In our text Jesus says: “all the nations…will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.”  Now how can that be?  How can the people on the other side of the globe see Jesus at the same time we see him?  I don’t think that will be a problem at all, especially when we take into consideration all who will be accompanying him.  For example, Paul tells us in I Thess. 4:14: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”  What that means is that every believer who has previously died and who has been living with Christ in Paradise will be part of this triumphant procession.  But that’s not all.  For in Matt. 25:31 Jesus says: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.”  So Jesus will also be accompanied by all the angels.  Do you have any idea how many angels there are?  Though Scripture does not give us a specific number, in Rev. 5 the Apostle John describes seeing “thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand” angels.  Now 10,000 x 10,000 = 100,000,000.  But when you look at this passage in the Greek language it was originally written in, the number that is translated as “10,000” is muriades from which we get our English word myriad.  This word represented the highest number known to man.  So take the highest number known to man, multiply it by itself, and add thousands upon thousands to it and you kind of get the idea that there are going to be countless angels that will be attending Jesus when he returns.  In other words, there won’t be a spot on this earth from which the 2^nd coming of Christ will not be visible.  It will be, hands down, the most magnificent, the most spectacular, and the most visible event in all of human history.

   So all will witness it.  But, and this takes us to our 2^nd point, not all will welcome it.  In our text Jesus says: “Unready people all over the world…will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven.”  The day will be a normal day like any other day and people will be doing normal things, engaged in normal activities, completely unaware of what is about to transpire.  Makes me think of the vacationers on Thailand’s coast who on Dec. 26 of 2004 were enjoying a sunny day at the beach.  They’d spent the morning putting on sunscreen and bouncing beach balls and maybe body surfing, absolutely unaware that a tsunami was moving in their direction at a speed of 600 mph generated by an earthquake that took place miles beneath the ocean’s surface.  In a very similar way, Jesus tells us that most people in our world will have spent the day of his return completely unaware of and oblivious to his coming.  In Matt. 24:37-39 he says: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

   So the great sin and tragedy of so many people today is not that they enjoy life, but that they enjoy this life so much that they fail to ever think of and prepare for the much greater and better life that is yet to come.  They’re easily distracted by the things of this world.  Kind of like what sometimes happens when a little child goes to the zoo.  Here there are all these great animals to see – lions, tigers, bears, elephants, giraffes, zebras, and so on – but you know as well as I do that a little child can get easily distracted and before you can say “Look at that rhinoceros,” they can find themselves enthralled by a little ant that happens to cross their path.  So there they are focusing upon this tiny insect when there are much bigger and greater things for them to see.  And you might even say to them, “Hey, enough with the ant.  We didn’t come to the zoo to look at ants.  We came to the zoo to look at the animals.”

   How many times do you think our Heavenly Father wants to say the same to you and me?  How many times do you think he wants to knock us upside the head and say, “Hello!!! Enough with the ants!  Enough with these small and petty things that don’t matter one bit in the grand scheme of eternity.”  Indeed, the big mistake of far too many of us human beings is that we have settled for the small at the expense of the large.  And someday, just like the people of Noah’s day, those who have done so will die regretting it.  C.S. Lewis once said: “God is going to invade alright.  And when that happens, it’s the end of the world.  When the Author walks onto the stage the play is over and it will be something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your sides.  It will be the time when we discover which side we have really chosen.”

   So when Christ comes again, all will witness it but not all will welcome it because they will be unprepared, for they will have allowed the things of this world to take precedence over those things that matter for eternity.  I guess we could call that the bad news for today.  So you want to hear some good news?  Listen to this, my friends: you can be among those who will welcome it for you can be prepared.  You can be ready.  In fact, so ready that while Jesus tells us in our text about the huge lament that will be heard that day coming from the unprepared, to those who are prepared he says in Luke 21:28: “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  What a stark contrast will be seen and heard between the ready and the un-ready, between the prepared and the unprepared!

   So the million dollar question that we need to consider as we bring this sermon in for a landing is this: How can you be ready?  How can you be sure where you’ll spend eternity?  And the answer is really pretty simple.  Jesus put it this way in John 14:1-3: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms…I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  So how can you be ready?  Trust in Jesus as he invites you to do there.  But trust him with what?  Well, trust him with every sin you’ve ever committed.  Trust that when he died on the cross, he died for you and that his death was big enough and sufficient enough to pay for your sins.  Trust that when he rose from the dead his resurrection was big enough and sufficient enough to defeat death itself.  Trust that he truly is what he claims to be a little bit later in that John 14 passage when he says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Yes, entrust your entire eternity to his care, my friends, and you can be sure that when death snatches you from this life your Savior will be there for you to get you safely home.

   Recently I learned something that I found to be quite interesting about the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and that is that he planned his own funeral.  Of course, being part of the British government, tradition dictated much of what would take place at that event.  And part of the funeral would be the playing of TAPS at the close of the service.  A bugler perched high in St. Paul’s Cathedral would play that song that signals the end of the day.  Winston Churchill had no problem with that, but he broke with tradition when he added an interesting twist which included a second bugler.  Once the first bugler was finished with TAPS, Churchill left instructions that the second one should reply with Reveille, the song that marks the beginning of a brand new day.  I like that because when Christ comes again, Paul says in I Cor. 15 the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, never to die again.  And a new day – what I’ve called in my sermon title for today, God’s new day – will begin and it will last for all eternity.  The question is: Are you ready?  Are you prepared for that day and that moment?

Amen.