THE COMING OF JESUS
Hebrews 10:37; 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17; Revelation 1:7, 22:12
I had a simple impression as to the two words that appear in the passage we read in Revelation 1; “he comes”. When we say, “he comes”, I am sure that everyone in this room knows to whom that refers. The One of whom it says “he comes” is the Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder if everyone in this room is assured of what His coming means for them. We are coming close to the time of year when the world will purport to celebrate the fact that He once came, but I do not think you will find anywhere in the world much occupation with the fact that He is coming again, because men at large do not want to consider what it means that He is coming again. What I would like to draw your attention to is the fact that He is coming soon, it is imminent and at the point at which He comes, the point at which He returns, things will be fixed for eternity. There is an opportunity now in the gospel to put your faith in Jesus and repent, but that opportunity will conclude when He comes, and He could come at any moment.
I was thinking that men, when they are conscious that they are near to death – perhaps when they are aware that they have an illness or are in old age – talk about getting their affairs in order. The question would be raised in the gospel tonight – are your affairs in order in relation to the coming of Jesus? He could come at any moment and your eternal destiny will be fixed in the moment that He comes. Perhaps it is already settled. May it be that every soul in this room knows that their eternal destiny is settled. But if not, know that it will be fixed soon, “For yet a very little while he that comes will come, and will not delay”.
The question might be raised as to why He is coming again. No doubt there could be many reasons drawn from Scripture for why the Lord Jesus is coming again but my impression for this occasion is that He is coming for three reasons. I do not suggest that they are exclusive, but three reasons for which He is coming are first, to claim His own when He comes for those who believe on Him at what we call the rapture; then subsequently at His public appearing, to take up His rights, and at that time also, to bring His reward.
When the Lord Jesus first came here, one of the reasons He Himself gave as to why He came to this earth was to “seek and to save that which is lost”, Luke 19:10. You think of the movements of the Lord Jesus – the One who created the world, the One who is, who was and ever will be God – entering into the world that His hands had made. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, John 1:1. That glorious One entered into His own creation in the form of a Man and He did so to “seek and to save that which is lost”, but that salvation only benefits those who know that they are lost, who repent and who place their faith in Him.
Why are they lost? Persons are lost because they are at a distance from God. Sin has brought in distance, man in his sin has brought in distance from God, and man is lost as away from God, destined for eternal judgment: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”, Ezek.18:20. But the desire of the Lord Jesus is to “seek and to save that which is lost”. Is there any one here who does not feel their need of that salvation? The Saviour is available to you. If you realise that you are lost as a sinner, if you acknowledge the distance that has come in, if you accept the judgment and the penalty that is due to you as away from God, then God has provided the remedy in the One who came to “seek and to save that which is lost”. You can lay hold of that remedy by repenting of your sins and placing your faith and trust in Him.
What did it cost? What did the first coming of Jesus involve? There was a cost to Himself, we are often reminded, in that He came to die. I suppose seeking and saving that which is lost would remind us of the lost sheep, and as the hymn writer puts it:
‘But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed;
Nor how dark was the night
Which the Lord passed through
Ere He found the sheep that was lost’.
E. Clephane (1830-1869)
Is every soul here affected by what Jesus did on your account? How dark was the night He passed through! You think of Him in the suffering of His pathway here, when men wanted to do away with Him; they would have put Him to death but His time had not yet come until that moment when He was delivered up into their hands. Think of what it involved for Him to “seek and to save that which is lost”. You think of what it involved for Him in the garden of Gethsemane when it says that He was “oppressed in spirit”, Mark 14:33. Mr Darby’s note says, ‘deeply depressed’ (footnote ‘f’). You think of what it involved for Him when Peter, one of those whom He loved, denied Him.
Then as to His betrayal, He could say prophetically, “For it is not an enemy that hath reproached me – then could I have borne it … But it was thou, a man mine equal, mine intimate, my familiar friend … We who held sweet intercourse together. To the house of God we walked amid the throng”, Ps.55:12-14. You think of what it meant to Jesus when the disciples could not watch with Him for one hour. Again, He said prophetically, “I looked for sympathy, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none”, Ps.69:20. The first part of that scripture we would scarcely attribute to the Lord were it not there; it says, “Reproach hath broken my heart”, and that was in response to His sufferings at the hands of men. When they buffeted Him, when they spat upon Him, when they crowned Him with thorns – all of this He endured to “seek and save that which is lost”. That is why He had come, and nothing would divert Him from the path
But all of those sufferings pale beside what He suffered at the hands of a righteous God, when He bore in His body on the tree the sins of all those who would believe on Him. And although not deserved by Him, He also bore the judgment of God against sin. It was all borne in His body on the tree and without relief, borne for those who recognise their need of Him. When He was deeply depressed in the garden of Gethsemane, I think what it involved in part was the anticipation of God’s wrath against sin being poured upon His righteous head, that the judgment sword would be drawn (Zech.13:7); there would be no mercy for Jesus. There would be no mitigation of what He was to endure, what He was to suffer. He bore it all and His precious blood was shed so the lost could be saved and their sins be forgiven. Are you counted among the lost who are saved? Are you counted among those who can say that His precious work secured my salvation, that He came for me, He stooped into manhood then He stooped into death for me? He entered into death itself:
‘…How deep were the waters crossed;
Nor how dark was the night
Which the Lord passed through …’.
He entered into the very article of death itself in order that we might be delivered from the bondage caused by the fear of death. What glad tidings they are! What glad tidings that He came on your account and on mine.
One of the glorious things about the gospel is that believers can know that not only have their sins been borne by Jesus, but that the man that sinned has been removed from before the eye of God. It is not just that what we have done has been cleared, but also what we are in our natural state that cannot help sinning has been removed from before a holy God in the death of Jesus. The blood of bulls and goats could not do that: “Sacrifices and offerings … thou willedst not”, Heb.10:8. The only thing that could take away that order of man was the dying and burial of Jesus. So now, there is no condemnation for the believer, for God sees the believer as in Christ. If you accept Him in faith and repentance, you need have no fear as to whether the question of your sins, or your sinful state, could ever be raised again in condemnation, however weak you may feel or however often you may fail. Jesus bore the condemnation, and so there is no such thing as divine condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:1).
The gospel is a great test to us morally, because God’s delight is in the Man who has done His will and those who are after the same order. The Lord Jesus did not come to save what we are in the flesh and which can only sin. That order of man, which Paul calls “the old man”, was in principle crucified with Him (Rom.6:6). When the Lord Jesus died on the cross and was buried, He did away with that order of man altogether from before God. No sacrifices, no offerings, no blood of bulls and goats could make that order of man acceptable to God. After the passage we read, where it says, “Lo I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”, it says “He takes away the first that he may establish the second”.
So the test in the gospel is for me to accept what has happened to that old man. Jesus has come, He has fulfilled in perfection the will of God, He delighted Him in His every movement, indeed in His every thought. He is God’s Man. God has found in Jesus all that was lacking in Adam, all that was lacking in us, and that is the only order of Man that God could delight in, the One who has come, the second Man out of heaven. Then there are those who are made like Him. So the test in the glad tidings is, am I going to belong to that order of man? Do I accept that the first man that sinned against God has been done away with? Am I going to live, with the Spirit’s help, in the power of that Man? Am I going to exhibit the features that are seen in that Man? Because that Man having come, God wants no other kind of man.
We read in Thessalonians that the Lord Jesus will come to claim His own. Having come the first time to save those who were lost, He will come again at the rapture to claim those whom He has saved. His precious blood having been shed as part of His great redeeming work on the cross, every blood-bought saint is His and He will come to claim them. That is another great reason why He is coming and at the moment when He comes, He will claim all His own, those who are asleep and those who are living. There will be no one left behind who is covered by the blood of Jesus, and that coming of His could be at any moment. That is why I would like to impress on you tonight, perhaps more than anything else, that He is coming and at that moment, if your destiny has not been settled happily through faith in Jesus, you will be without Him for ever. So I trust that you want to be counted, if you are not already, among those who are bought by the blood of Jesus and who know that when He comes to claim His own, you will be among them.
As we have already noted, Scripture also tells us that He came to do the will of the Father. Earlier in the chapter in Hebrews where we read, it says “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body. Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin. Then I said, Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”, Heb.10:7. In Revelation 1, it speaks of how the Lord Jesus, that One who came to do the will of God, will come again to take up His rights and to be vindicated publicly at what we speak of as the Lord’s appearing. God will see to it that the One who came to do His will is fully vindicated. God has full delight in Jesus; we were reminded of it in the reading as to the Father glorifying the Son. He will make it known to the whole universe: “Behold, he comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see him”. All those whom He will come to claim, of whom we read in Thessalonians, will be with Him at that moment. What a glorious prospect that is.
May it be that every soul in this room will be with the Lord Jesus when “he comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see him”. The whole world shall know that He is the One in whom the Father has found His delight, and all shall bow before Him. God will vindicate the One who did God’s will “even unto death, and that the death of the cross” (Phil.2:8), the One who not only exhibited in His manhood here everything that God required, but also provided the basis on which God could express His love to men and could find an answer to that love. So again I would say, let us all be counted amongst those who will be with Him when He comes publicly. It speaks here of those who pierced Him, those who will wail because of Him. But for us as believers, the solemnity of this should come home in the glad tidings, the awfulness of the position of any who were told in the gospel of the Father’s thoughts about Jesus, told of what He means to God, told of the salvation that is available in Him because of what He accomplished when He came – and yet they will have passed up that opportunity to have Him as their Saviour, to have a place with Him for ever. May there be no one here who will be in that position.
The Lord Jesus also said at His first coming that, “I am come that they might have life, and might have it abundantly”, John 10:10. Are we in the enjoyment of that life now? Life is found only in Him: that is true as to the deliverance of the saved sinner from judgment to come but true life now is found only in Him. Are you experiencing that life now? I was reminded in the reading of the comment that has been made, that God enters into His inheritance when we enter into ours. So the question is raised in the glad tidings: having been secured and having been delivered from eternal judgment, as I trust all here are, knowing that you are one of those who will be claimed by Him when He comes, are you in life now? Are you responsive to Him? You remember that parable when the man goes away and leaves money to his servants, saying, “Trade while I am coming” (Luke 19:13); not ‘while I am away’ but “while I am coming”. So the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus should arrest our hearts as to what He will find when He comes in those whom He has secured. What has been stored up? What trading has been done in His absence? What enjoyment have we experienced of the life that is found in Him? What answer is there to the One who has suffered to save us? That life can only be enjoyed, and that answer, the trading, can only be done in one power and that is the power of the Holy Spirit.
When I was thinking of the Lord Jesus coming, I was reminded of the scripture where He says, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”, John 14:18. It no doubt speaks to us of the experience we can have of His presence while we wait for His return, but it says in the next chapter, “It is profitable for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you”, John 16:7. You might say, Why, having come to this world, has Jesus gone back into heaven? Why did He not remain? He says: “It is profitable for you that I go away”, in order that the Spirit should come, that there should be a power to live true to Him, a power to enter into life and to “have it abundantly”. These things are known only by the power of the Holy Spirit and that power is available. God would give; you need only ask. So there is the power to trade while the Lord Jesus is coming.
Surely even if we only have a small appreciation of the way Jesus has gone, all that He has been prepared to do for us, all that He has endured, the shedding of His precious blood, His going into death, His sufferings on our account – surely there should be a desire to provide something for Him in His absence, something which He can claim, something in which Jesus can have His joy, some feature of Himself. This is a greater exercise for the one who is speaking to you than any other, but as an encouragement, in the last scripture we read, He says, “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward with me”. Is it not enough to be with Him? Is it not enough to know that our salvation is found in Him? It is enough for us. The Lord Jesus takes such delight in those who belong to Him, individuals who are desirous of standing for Him in very testing circumstances, being faithful to Him in the time of His absence, that He says that He comes quickly and His reward with Him. It is a further challenge linked to His coming, that there might be something that He can reward in those whom He will find when He comes.
I feel tested by what I have said, but Jesus came to “seek and to save that which is lost” and if you are lost, you can be found. You can be found tonight if you put your faith and trust in Him. He came to do the will of God and because He has done the will of God, God is satisfied eternally with that precious Man and with all who belong to Him. There can be no condemnation for those who are covered by His blood. He came that we might “have life, and might have it abundantly” Surely, if we love Him, we will long for His coming. He will come to claim His own – may it be soon! Then this word is an encouragement; “I come quickly”. But do not forget the warning, that if He comes and your eternal destination is not settled by then, it will be fixed at that moment. A gospel preacher asked when I was younger and I have never forgotten it; if Jesus came at this moment, would you be left sitting among the handbags and empty chairs? Let us all believe on that precious One and value more all that He has done for us, and let us all be here faithful to Him so that when He comes to claim us, there will be that which He can reward.
May it be so for His name’s sake.
Preaching of the gospel, Sunbury
28 November 2021
Glen M Barlow