Lessons from Christ’s Warning on His Second Coming
(Message delivered by Pastor at the True Life Church 10.30 am Service, Aug 22, 04)
Text: Matt. 24:32-51
This is Christ’s third sermon on His Second Coming. We can learn some valuable lessons for our daily living from His warnings.
1. First is learn a parable from the fig tree. What is the fig tree? The fig tree is thought to be Israel. When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh.
Israel became a nation on May 14, 1948. She had a population of only 600,000. She is about the same size of Johore. Today Jerusalem itself has 600,000 and the whole nation has grown to 6 million. In comparison Singapore has 4 million. As we see from her growth that summer is nigh, we can learn from here that Christ’s Second Coming is near. It is nearer than you think.
Next Thursday Aug 26, 47 of us will be headed for Israel which is part of the Holy Land. We will be surprised by her many new constructions and developments showing us His coming is near.
2. Jesus says, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, (neither the Son, says Mark 13:32) but my Father only.” This statement forbids any speculation on the day and hour of Jesus’ Second Coming.
A few years back two Korean pastors predicted our Lord’s coming on a certain day misleading their followers to wait mistakenly for Jesus to come. We should object outright to saying such a thing, but be ready always to meet our Lord.
The teaching of the personal Second Coming of Jesus is right and this was taught by William Miller an American but wrong when he set a date 1843 for His Coming. He corrected himself to 1844 but failed miserably. But Millerism developed into Seventh Day Adventism because they also believed keeping the Jewish Sabbath with the personal return of Christ.
3. The Bible tells us of the generation of Noah’s day. Noah had hired countless workers to build his ark. It took 120 years. But none believed Noah’s God as to be taken into the Ark. Beware we who come to Church may be left out when Christ comes again.
4. In the Gospel of St. Luke, Jesus says, “In that night there shall be two in one bed, the one shall be taken and the other left.” Here is a case between husband and wife. Either the husband
or the wife shall be taken.
But in I Thess. 4:16, 17 Paul says, “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
When you come to Church, husband and wife together and go to bed at night and Christ comes to take us to heaven, which is call the Rapture, you and your wife should happily go together without going through death. If one of you is raptured and the other left, how sorry it will be. But Jesus in Luke has given the sad picture of either husband or wife left behind. If you come to church together you must be caught up together.
But I know of couples who no more love each other as when they were young. This is reflected in the many divorces that occur in their middle age. I hear of cases of husbands and wives sleeping in different beds and different rooms. As the Chinese saying goes, “Same bed, different dreams.”
5. Jesus says in Matt. 24:43-44, “But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”
Jesus has compared His Coming like a thief when you are caught unawares. Your house is broken in. Even living in the Parsonage is not safe. This thief broke into the house when my wife and I went to a wedding dinner. At about eleven we returned home but our bedroom door was right open. A thief had stolen part of the money kept in a drawer unlocked. Since that time we doublecheck the locking of door when going to bed at night. Hope our Lord’s Coming like a thief in the night will keep you awake.
6. Finally our Lord gives us no chance to relax while waiting for His coming. Should we become an unfaithful steward and be drunk and not doing our duty of distributing food to the household, the Lord will come suddenly and we are caught unawares. Then we will be drastically punished. We should be in readiness to open the door for our Lord at the first knock. We should not miss a Sunday in Church, least the Lord’s Supper, but keep witnessing to non-Christians about salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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THE GOSPEL OF LIFE:
Chapter VI
John 6:1-14
Lessons for the Ordinary from the Extraordinary
Do you know there is another instance of miracle mass feeding, viz., the feeding of four thousand with seven loaves and a few little fishes (Matt. 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-10)? In this case the multitude has not had food for three days! How long was it that the five thousand had not eaten? Read the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark and Luke). One method of Bible Study is to read all the accounts to form a composite picture.
In John’s Gospel, Philip is prominent as the “quarter-master”, but he had no solution to feeding such a great crowd – 5,000 men, not counting women and children. Andrew who stood out as the recruiter of Peter his brother is now seen bringing a lad who has five loaves and two fishes. Let us learn from Andrew to be a good fisher of men.
In the working of the miracle it is recorded that Christ first gave thanks. Commenting on this Calvin says, “Christ has more than once taught us by example that we should begin our meals with prayer. For all those things that God has appointed for our use summon us to praise Him as symbols of His infinite goodness and fatherly love toward us. And thanksgiving as Paul tells us in I Tim. 4:4 is a kind of solemn sanctification, so that the use of them begins to be pure to us. It follows that those who swallow them down without thinking of God are sacrilegious profaners of God’s gifts. And this teaching should be the more noticed, because we still see a large part of the world stuffing themselves like animals. By Christ’s wanting the bread given to the disciples to increase in our hands, we are taught that God blesses our labour when we serve one another.”
The picking up of twelve baskets of fragments teaches us the lesson of frugality. It is a sin to waste. Every grain of rice on your plate should be eaten! God is an Economist. And economy is the mother of prosperity.
God’s greater bounty should not allow us the luxury of leaving behind uneaten good food, like the excesses seen at Chinese wedding dinners. Let those who abound realise they must give an account of their surplus possessions, if they do not carefully apply them to a good purpose.
The Church of Nativity, Bethlehem, whose history dates back to Emperor Constantine, 4th Century A.D.
