How To Be Ready For The Second Coming Of Jesus

Sermon for CATM - September 8, 2019 - How to Be Ready for the Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

This summer we began a series on first and second Thessalonians, New Testament letters by the apostle Paul addressed to the struggling church in Thessalonica.

We like to, often, preach through books of the Bible. This is because we believe it is crucial for followers of Jesus to continuously be reflecting on the Word of God, to really grow in our understanding of God’s Word AND most importantly in our application of it to our lives.

It’s our hope that you are engaging with God by reading His Word on a regular basis.

As a Christian you want God and God’s voice, which we hear through the Bible to be or become the main voice you listen to. As you grow and form your understanding of life, you want to do so with wisdom. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

With wisdom from God you can grow to thrive in this life and build resilience to be able to deal with whatever hardships may come your way in life.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Just so you know, this upcoming year we will be looking into the book of Revelation, the book of James;

we’re going to do a survey or overview of key Old Testament accounts; and we’re going to spend some time focusing on the I AM statements of Jesus.

We’re looking forward to exploring this all and together growing in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen.

So we continue our study of 2 Thessalonians. Some books of the Bible are easier to preach on than others.

First and second Thesaalonians are not among the easier-to-preach books.

Some of the subject matter is a real challenge to today’s modern culture, which - surprise surprise has veered off course from God’s Word in many ways.

And, also, some of the subject matter is just kind of weird. Today’s passage is kind of weird. And I get to speak on it. And I hope as we demystify it, God will speak to our hearts and minds.

When reading a book like Thessalonians or the book of Revelation, it’s important to develop a sense of HOW to read the book.

There are many “hows”. The ‘how’ includes ‘how’ and ‘why’ you understand the Scripture to have been written.

There are at least 2 views of this. One is that Scriptures like Thessalonians, including the one we’re looking at today,

are discussing events in the future of the original hearers and readers of the letters, but that those events have happened already and they are, for us, history.

So when it speaks of things to come we remember that this may have been upcoming in the relatively near future in the lives of those who originally heard the message of these books of the Bible. Those who lived 2000 odd years ago.

Another view is that they, or some of the Scriptures, have yet to be fulfilled in the course of time, and perhaps some of them were fulfilled before.

This is obviously true regarding the return of Jesus Christ which we still await. But subjects like in today’s Scripture text are not so obvious.

As you can probably imagine this gets confusing. It gets alarming because sometimes Christians take hard and fast stances.

- it’s either all yet to come, or it’s all happened etc - and they get pretty shirty about it. Like if you don’t agree with them, you must be a heretic.

What’s very clear in the Bible is that Jesus will be returning to gather His people to Himself.

If you know me, and if you know that Yonge Street Mission (and even if you happen to know my denomination, the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada), we’re not big on insisting that people think one way of the other about Biblical material that is disputal.

That is Bible passages that are really hard to understand and grasp.

That means we think it’s fine to hold different views on a whole lot of topics, as long as Jesus Christ and His sacrifice are front and centre and as long as we hold to a very high view of the Bible,

understanding it to be authoritative, in fact THE highest authority when it comes to matters of faith and how we practice our faith.

So we keep the main thing the main thing, and we give a lot of grace in areas where there can be a big variety of opinion.