HOPE
Garth McKay
1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18; Revelation 19: 11-16; Isaiah 11: 1-10;
Paul says a lot in his ministry about faith, hope and love. He says that these three things abide (see 1 Cor 13: 13). He speaks to the Thessalonians, whom we have read of, about their “work of faith, and labour of love, and enduring constancy of hope”, 1 Thess 1: 3. I have been thinking about hope. How do we understand what he means by hope? The scripture we read in Thessalonians speaks of those who have no hope. It is a sad situation to have no hope, but Christians have hope, they are full of hope. Paul says specifically “these three things”, so hope must be an important thing to understand. What is it that you are hoping for? Scripture uses hope, not as something that suggests you have no idea about what is going to happen, but something that is sure and living in your heart. It is not like – ‘I hope it does not rain tomorrow; you have no idea whether it is going to rain tomorrow, that is not how it is used. You speak about hope as something sure – the hope of the Christian surely is that the Lord is going to come! That is what I want to speak about.
Is that your hope? We live in a day of faith, Christians have to use faith every day; to speak to Jesus you use faith. When you get down on your knees you are using faith to speak to God, and we get used to the idea of needing faith. I want just for a short time to tell you about a day when you will not need faith any more. It is a great gift that has come from God, but you will not need it for ever. The Lord is coming – what a message! What does it mean to you that the Lord is coming? This is going to test us because this is not just a doctrine; we do not just hold it as truth, we do that, but what I want to say to you tonight is that the Lord is coming. Jesus is coming back and the Man is coming! That is not ministry books or any of these things, but the Man is coming. This is going to test us about our links with Him. How well do you know Him? Because the Man who is coming is Jesus. This is not complicated; this is not complex teaching – Jesus is coming. There are lots of young ones in the audience, sometimes maybe you go to a meeting and find it hard to understand some things, but Jesus is coming. We sang at the beginning:
The night is far spent, and the day is at hand
(Hymn 194)
We are on the brink of something new. Why? Because Jesus is coming back. What does it mean to you? How long have you known Him? Maybe a few years, may be five years, ten, twenty, people here I can confidently say more than fifty years, they have known Jesus – and they have never seen Him. You are going to see Him, He is coming back. What a time! It could be tomorrow. This, I think, is hope. This is the hope and I want you to get interested, not just interested, but I want you to get thrilled by it because He is your Lord and He is mine. You know this that every one in this room has a special appreciation, something special about Jesus. Who is He to you? That is the thing. It is interesting here in Thessalonians, Paul does not give a lot of detail, different titles of His, He just says, “the Lord”. This is the great thing, “the Lord himself”, he adds that word to give emphasis to it, “himself” -“the Lord himself”, and the question is what does that mean to you? Who is He to you? Perhaps your appreciation of Him is a bit different from mine, maybe the great thing that you think about when you think of Jesus is a bit different from what I think, but the Lord is coming. This is for you to enjoy. This is yours, this hope is all yours. Maybe He is the Man on the mount of transfiguration who shone with the glory of heaven (see Matt 17: 2): maybe that is who the Lord is to you. Maybe it is Jesus of Nazareth, the Man who lived here so humbly, who served others in such a loving way. Maybe He is the good Shepherd, the One who gathers the sheep, or maybe He is the Man who hung on the cross for you. This Man whom you have never seen, you have given your life to Him, you have spoken to Him every day, you have trusted Him, maybe sometimes when you could trust nobody else; you trusted Him, you trusted Jesus and He is the One who is coming and you are going to see Him. He will not send an angel for this. For many other important things God sends His servants, sends angels; for this He sends no angel, the Lord Himself – “the Lord himself … shall descend from heaven”. We are on the brink of this, and what does it mean to you? You are going to see Him. You will not need faith any more. You are going to be set free from so much. You speak to people who are suffering in their bodies, speak to people who are old and advanced in years about this. They are going to be set free from all that, in an instant given a body of glory like unto His body of glory. What it means to them! How will it be to be set free from that, from the pain and suffering? How will it be to be set free from the struggle that we have every day against ourselves, against the flesh, against those things that God hates? How will it be to be set free from reproach in the world? The Lord is coming to set you free from all of that, but the great thing is that the Lord, Jesus, is coming. The youngest here can understand it, Jesus the Man to whom you gave your heart, your Saviour, the One who loved you and gave Himself for you, He is the One who is coming, the Lord Himself. The day of faith for you will be over. I think it is a wonderful thing – I get the feeling sometimes that my faith becomes a bit tired. Naturally, it is not easy for us to use faith, but we have to use it every day, it is a gift of God, but you will not need it forever. You should be thrilled with it, the fact that the Lord is coming and you are going to see Him – “the Lord himself … shall descend from heaven”.
When He comes, what is He going to do? It says, “with an assembling shout” -I feel very measured standing here talking about this because this event is so glorious I feel almost unable to speak of it because I will not do it justice. I have spoken about three words so far, “the Lord himself”, and then it says, “with an assembling shout”. We have often read this, there will be a shout, of course there will be a shout, a shout of glory when the Lord Himself descends from heaven. What a movement of a Man of such glory and greatness. When He descends from heaven surely there will be a shout. It speaks also of the “archangel’s voice and with trump of God”, but there is an assembling shout. What is the assembling? What does He assemble? The Church, all of it complete in a moment. What we are thinking about is glorious. Think about all these divisions, differences, things that we cannot reconcile. If you go down the High Street of any town you can see the divisions, I am not talking about different religions, I am talking about Christianity, professing Christendom, and how it is all divided up, because we cannot agree. Are you able to put the differences right? There is a big movement – it is the called the ecumenical movement – to bring all the churches together, and we must be careful about making a tirade against that, because its motive is right, but they are not able to do it, and you are not able, and I am not able. I can tell you that I have tried to help, and I am not able for it. The Lord Himself with an assembling shout will do it in an instant, and there will be none left out. He will not work in a corner, not in one little small part of the church, it is all assembled in a moment, “an assembling shout”. His church is ready and complete and ready to go to Him. How glorious! What a day to hope for! There are many who have friends and family who are not available to them because of these difficulties. Jesus will resolve them in a moment, He will do it for you. The key is the coming of the Lord. How much He will do! That assembling, we hardly know the power of that. When you try and do a little bit yourself, try and resolve some of these differences and find how difficult it is, you will realise the power of the assembling shout. He will gather the church to Himself; no one else can do it, the Head of the church, Himself will come and He will do it. Are you thrilled about the hope that we have? This assembling shout – the church could be complete and together tomorrow if the Lord comes. We are not talking about any interval of time here, it could be tonight, He has the power to do it. The key is in the Man, the key is not just truth that we hold as doctrine, all of these things have their place; the key is the Man and the youngest here can understand that and get hold of it. This is not complex. We are talking about the Man, Jesus, the Lord, and when He comes what He will do in His wondrous power.
“Shall descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first”. Where does the glory of this event stop? The dead in Christ arise, the tombs are opened – see the power of it. I sometimes shake my head at myself that I just go on in such an apathetic way, I get up in the morning and I give no thought to this but we are on the brink of it. The tombs are going to be opened, more than we can imagine, because He will not leave the dead. It says, “the dead in Christ shall rise first”, the glory of what Christ will do when He comes. “Then we, the living who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air”. The Lord does not come to the earth, He comes into the air at this time to gather the church to Himself. So you are going to go up – I just want to try and get hold of the reality of this. I want you to believe that this is going to happen. You are going to be there. If you have put your trust in Jesus, trusted in His blood, you are going to be there and you are going to be caught up. “We the living who remain” – that is how Paul spoke because he expected it every day and we should be like that. We should class ourselves as “we the living who remain”, because we should be expecting Him to come. We expect it to happen any moment and we are going to be caught up together “with them”, that is those who have died. Death is no hindrance to the Lord, He has taken care of that. We are going to be caught up with them, with our bodies of glory, all the fleshly side is going to be left behind. Paul says, “For this corruptible must needs put on incorruptibility, and this mortal put on immortality”, 1 Cor 15: 53. Death will have no more influence over that condition and we are going to be caught up. We are going up together. This is the great message; it should make us joyful. Just think, you are going to be there; this is going to happen, the Lord is coming and you are going to go up. If you go out in the night, in the dark and look into the sky, look at the stars, you get drawn into it and you forget your surroundings and you are looking at the glory of creation – but when you do that, think, the Lord is coming – do it, try it, because somehow when you are there it becomes more real to you. I am going up because the Lord is coming. It is a great thing, what does it mean to you? This is our hope. It says, “So encourage one another with these words”, how encouraging! I always think the word seems a bit of an understatement, “encourage one another”, let us get the thrill of it in our hearts that we are going up, the Lord is coming and He is coming to take us. That is the reason He is coming. If it was something else He might send an angel, but it is you, and the Lord Himself is going to come.
I want to speak about Revelation 19 because I want to fill this out by saying that when He comes for us, when He comes for His church, when the assembling shout is heard, He will appear to His own only. But He will come again after that and He will come publicly. The reason I am going on to this is that I feel for myself that this is something that I have not given enough thought to, because Christians should rejoice in this too. What the young ones can take account of mostly is that He is coming for them, and that is a wonderful thing and we should take that as the first thing, the greatest thing, that He is coming for me and we shall be forever with the Lord and in one sense that is all you need to know. You cannot ask for more, you cannot ask for better, there is no better place than to be for ever with Him.
I just go on to this because I believe that Christians who have a place for Christ in their hearts should rejoice in the day of His vindication on the earth, because He comes back to the earth – at this point He will come back to the earth, the place where He was rejected, the place where He was slandered and cast out, crucified, the Lord will come back to that. This is the same Person, but here it does not say, the Lord. I think it is different. This is not an appearing only to His own, this is an appearing to the whole earth, to the world and He comes in, “he judges and makes war in righteousness. And his eyes are a flame of fire”. This is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. I ask you, if you are a Christian should you not rejoice in this, this majestic appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, the same Man whom I have just spoken about, the same glorious Man? But this is the coming of which Peter says, “the great and gloriously appearing day of the Lord” (Acts 2: 20). This is what this is and it is a thing to rejoice in. I think this should be part of our hope that Jesus is coming back here. It is not a case of vengeance, we are not looking for vengeance, but we are looking for our Lord to be justified here on the earth where He was cast out, and He will do that. He is coming back to take up His rights. He said Himself when He was here, “they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory”, Matt 24: 30. This is God’s great Administrator coming to take up His rights and to set things right on the earth. If He can take care of all the things in the church as He will do when He comes the first time, He will take care of all those differences, all the problems; this time He will set right everything in the world’s system, everything on the earth, He will do that too. The glory of Jesus has no end because He is able for everything in the church and He is able for everything outside of it. The first time He comes He takes care of everything in the church and He takes what is true to Him to Himself, and the second time He will take care of everything else.
You might say that is an easy thing to say, but just think of it, think of the glory of it, the problems that there are in the world. I was thinking of the Government and all the different secretaries they have, a Home Secretary, a Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, Education, Health, all these things, every one of them has their hands absolutely full with problems they cannot solve. What does it await? It awaits the coming of Jesus. See how the glory of the coming of Jesus just unfolds as you think of it. He is the “King of kings and Lord of lords”. This is the glorious return of God’s King, the Man of God’s choice, to take up His rights on the earth, to get the acknowledgement of all. The scripture we often quote, “every knee should bow” (Phil 2: 10), every knee will bow before Him – God will see to it. Think of the things that men did to Jesus that have gone unanswered. In a way they have, for so many years, but it will not always be so, God will have to say to it. That is my Lord getting His vindication. That is when my Lord is justified on the earth and I rejoice in that. When He comes this time what does He do? It says, “he judges and makes war in righteousness”, that is the key, righteousness. He will bring in a reign of righteousness such as has never been seen on the earth before. The key to it is Himself, He is “the King of kings and Lord of lords”. No one else can do this. I suppose the world’s history is full of leaders, full of men who have assumed offices and in so many cases they have been shown not to be equal for the office, and the weakness of kingdoms has come through that, come through the weakness of the ones who have been appointed to lead them.
It has always interested me that here in this section in Revelation it says, “And he has upon his garment, and upon his thigh, a name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords”. I think the fact that it is on His garment is the office that He has been given. Who gave Him the office? God did. God has chosen Him “to head up all things in the Christ” (Eph 1: 10), He is the Man of God’s choice, God has chosen Him above any other, He is worthy of the office. He has given Him the office, so the garment has on it, “King of kings and Lord of lords”, but the name is also on His thigh and I think it means that He is suited for it. He is through and through the King of kings and Lord of lords and this is His glorious return when He appears to the world and He will take things up and He will set things right. Just as a small note, I want to point out, “the armies which are in the heaven followed him upon white horses, clad in white, pure, fine linen”, when He said we will be forever with Him, that was a real promise because here you are. The armies which are in the heaven, they are the saints, because once He has taken you to be with Him you will be always with Him, so when He comes you will be with Him. You will share in His glory and rejoice in it. I think this is part of our hope.
I want to refer to Isaiah because this chapter in Isaiah is prophecy but it speaks about this reign of righteousness, “a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots”. He is talking about Jesus. He is talking about the Man who is going to reign on the earth, because that is what He will do, He will reign here for a thousand years. A reign of perfect righteousness and Jesus is the One who will reign, He is God’s great Administrator, the Man of His choice. It says, “with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity the meek of the earth”. There will be no flaw in His judgments in that time. Never any flaw – think of that; think of these leaders and how some of them have been exposed. With Jesus there will be no flaw, a reign of perfect righteousness for a thousand years. What a demonstration of God’s glory in a Man. I want to go on to, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatted beast together, and a little child shall lead them”. Things are going to be very different. It says “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain”. That is what is says about this time on the earth. It goes into illustrations about the creation itself, it says, “the lion shall eat straw”. I find this a wonderful thing. I think it is fascinating to think of it that during this reign the very rules of creation that we speak about as nature will be changed. The world is going to be a different place, “They shall not hurt nor destroy”. It speaks about the little child, “the sucking child shall play on the hole of the adder, and the weaned child shall put forth it hand to the viper’s den” – children doing these things with no worry about harm. What do we want in the world today, those of us who are parents particularly, what do we want? We want our children to be safe. Under the reign of Jesus things will be so different, no harm will come to these children. It is wonderful to think of it, what that wonderful reign will be. A reign with a power for good that has never been known before, a reign of righteousness, of benign influence upon the earth, it is like the tree of life in Revelation producing its fruits and the leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations (see Rev 22: 2). This is what the reign of Christ will be like. It is like Joseph in Egypt; if anyone had a problem, if anyone needed something, the word was “Go to Joseph”, Gen 41: 55. I wanted to say a word about that, that this is the reign that the coming of Jesus will usher in and the key to it is in verse 10, “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, standing as a banner of the peoples: the nations shall seek it; and his resting-place shall be glory”. The key to all of this is the presence of Jesus, the source for the power of everything that I have spoken of tonight, is the presence of Jesus. Any problem, any situation that cannot be overcome Jesus can give you grace for it for a time, but He will resolve it finally by His coming. Everything that the world faces now, every problem, every threat, every danger, the Lord can give grace for it to go through for a time, but He will resolve it finally with His coming. This is our hope and He is coming.
I just wanted somehow to help us to feel the thrill of it in our hearts that He is coming and to see something, just a little, of the power and the glory of the things that He will do when He comes. Go back to the time when He will first come, the dead in Christ shall rise first. Just read the words and then think, the dead in Christ, the tombs opened, the power of these things has affected me.
I finished at the end of Revelation where He says, “Yea, I come quickly”, and I trust you would all join with me in just saying, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus”,. May He bless the word.
DORKING
8 March 2003