Additional Scripture used in sermon: Daniel 12:1-13 and Hebrews 10:31-39
“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)
Good Morning. Our Bible readings today all mention signs. But we have to be careful not to place too much emphasis on the signs themselves. Signs are meant to guide us to a destination; they are not the destination themselves. The sign that points to Los Angeles is not the same as Los Angeles the city, and if we misinterpret the sign we can easily end up lost.
It’s the same with signs from God. Christian stores are full of books claiming to identify the end times based on signs in the Bible. Jesus said, however, that even he doesn’t know the day or hour of his return, only the father knows — and he’s not telling.
So, just in case you were expecting me to explain the prophetic signs and give you an approximate date of Christ’s return, well, your guess is as good as mine. But whenever that return will be, if we cling to our hope in Jesus, and recognize that those signs are here to reinforce our hope, then none of the signs will shake us.
People often talk about the “signs of our times,” so this morning I’d like to go over some of them.
The signs of our times are significant, and I’ve broken them down into six categories:
1. Signs of Despair;
2. Signs of Warning;
3. Signs of the Road;
4. Signs of Judgment;
5. Signs of Hope; and,
6. The Sign of the Cross
I. Signs of Despair
To despair means to be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation. I saw hopelessness displayed in full force a couple weeks ago as I was driving toward Coast Highway. While at a traffic light, I was reading the bumper stickers on the car in front of me. One of them had a drawing of a small child on his knees, hands clasped together, looking up. Next to the drawing were the words: “Nothing fails like Prayer.” Next to it was another bumper sticker that read: “The Next Logical Step is Atheism.”
To believe that there is nothing but this material world we live in — that there’s no God and no “us” beyond this life — is true despair. If we are a series of cosmic accidents that will cease to exist — a creation with no creator — then we have no purpose and our lives are absolutely meaningless.
In the early14th Century, Dante Alighieri wrote about the afterlife in an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. In the part about Hell, called Inferno, he described an inscription over the entrance to Hell, which reads, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
That sign also describes the hopelessness of atheism. The advertising of despair. The blatant shout to the world of believers, stating, “I HAVE NO HOPE, SO HOW DARE YOU HAVE ANY!”
I know that seems harsh. After all, we’re used to atheists having a “live and let live” attitude toward people of faith. But that has changed recently. People of faith, especially Christians, are considered dangers to society. Look at what’s been going on just in the past week:
Despite the president signing a Congressional bill into law authorizing the transfer of the Cross on Mount Soledad to the Department of Defense, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the Federal Government to prevent it.
TIME magazine’s cover features a debate: “GOD vs. SCIENCE,” reinforcing the notion that you can belief in only one or the other, but not both.
NEWSWEEK’s cover features an American flag wrapped tightly around a cross. The “Special Report” dissent by atheist Sam Harris, describes his view of Christians who believe in the Bible. He states, “Some of these people are lunatics, of course, but they are not the lunatic fringe…(and) … our infatuation with religious myths poses a tremendous danger.”
Even the techno-geek electronics magazine WIRED has jumped into the fray, with a current cover that reads: “The New Atheism — No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science. Inside the Crusade against Religion.” In that crusade, the New Atheists “condemn not just belief in God, but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil.”
They even propose the idea of an atheistic prayer — although I have no idea to whom they would address it — but they call it a prayer nonetheless:
“Here is the atheist prayer; that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.”
Instead of becoming despondent over these signs of despair, we should realize that they lead us toward the signs of warning.
II. Signs of Warning
In our Old Testament reading today, we heard about an upcoming time of great anguish, and that the faithful will be rescued. Daniel wanted to know when these things will happen.
Daniel kind of reminds me of children in a car on a long trip somewhere. They want to know exactly when they going to get wherever they’re going, and every landmark prompts a new chorus of “Are we there yet?”
Despite their persistence in wanting to be there already, they’re eventually told, “We’ll get there when we get there.” Daniel gets pretty much the same answer. “It will go for a time, times, and half a time,” is more of a riddle than an answer. And Daniel is told to seal it up in the book and go — that it will make sense to the people during the times he described.
Jesus also provides a warning sign in Mark, saying to watch out for false prophets who will try to fool even the faithful. So we’re keeping a sharp eye out for guys dressed like Jesus telling us when the world will end.
But most false prophets and false messiahs don’t work like that. In fact, most of them don’t even mention God specifically; they just offer to show us the stuff that God doesn’t want to tell us. Astrology is one that is pretty common.
This pseudoscience declares that our lives, personalities, desires, are affected and even caused by the gravitational effects of various stars, planets, and moons. It sounds plausible at first, until you really think about it.
According to Sir Isaac Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, all objects that have mass are attracted to each other. Mass is the measure of what an object is made. The greater an object’s mass, the greater its gravitational force.
The earth has a strong attracting force for objects with smaller mass (including the moon), and the sun has an attracting force on the earth and other planets in our solar system.
Distance is important also. A baseball dropped from your hand will hit the ground. The moon, which is about 240,000 miles away, still hasn’t gotten any closer over the years.
So, since all objects exert some gravitational force on each other, and closeness to each other increases the effect, your mother’s choice of a fat or thin obstetrician during your birth has more effect on your personality than whether the moons of Neptune are in the seventh house or not.
I got a Horoscope scroll the other day, to use for today’s sermon, and noticed comments like, “You will be operating in the creative realm often now” or “In December you will make some kind of emotional or financial commitment that will enable you to pursue a goal that’s become a top priority.” Both of those things are true; however, besides being quite vague, they happen to be for Scorpios and I’m a Cancer.
The scroll also has Lotto numbers to use. A quick math check showed me that with 12 separate Zodiac scrolls each month and only four Lotto drawings, a bunch of people will find their moons in the poor house if they take astrology seriously. Yet many people do.
After her husband was shot, former first lady Nancy Reagan consulted astrological charts for all the entries on President Reagan’s schedule. Horoscopes are listed in nearly every newspaper, and about 90 percent of all Americans under age 30 know their zodiac sign. There are more than 10,000 practicing astrologers in the U.S., and Americans spend more than $200 million each year consulting astrologers.
Just out of curiosity, how many of us could probably name the 12 Zodiac signs? Quite a few it looks like.
And how many of us could name the 12 Apostles? A lot fewer hands went up.
Signs of the end times have also grabbed people’s interest. We’ve got plenty of people today claiming to know when the end times are coming. In last week’s Sun tabloid, the cover story claims Christ will return on Christmas Day! It explains that the prophecy they found in a newly discovered Gospel of John the Baptist shows that Christ will return in the 2006th year of our Lord on the day he was born of a virgin.
They missed the part about December 25th not being the actual birthday of Jesus, just the celebration of his birth. So I’m not betting on a rapture this Christmas, especially since Jesus says just a few verses beyond today’s Gospel reading, “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.” (Mark 13:32)
There are signs, but they’re meant to show us that things have come to pass as God told us they would. We see signs accurately only after they’ve occurred. We usually misinterpret them when they’re still in front of us.
(Illustration)
I drive a lot on Interstate 5 and can relate to the story of a highway patrol officer who was on I-5 late one night, when the road was almost clear, except for one car in the fast lane, barely moving, an accident waiting to happen. The car was crawling along when the trooper pulled it over, and he noticed a short, elderly gentleman driving.
He asked the driver why he was going so slowly, and the man pointed to the blue sign on the side of the road and said, “It says 5.”
The officer shook his head and explained that “5” is the number of the highway and not the speed limit, and then he happened to glance in the back seat and saw two terrified-looking passengers, eyes bulging out, clenching the seats in front of them.
He asked them, “Are you OK? What happened?”
They replied, “WE JUST GOT OFF THE 1-0-1”!
So correct interpretation of signs is important. And we also see that not every sign is a warning. Some signs are meant to guide us along the road of life.
III. Signs of the Road
On any journey there are signs to look for along the road. One of the road signs we’re familiar with is “STOP.” In a car, that means to completely cease movement in the direction we’re headed. It doesn’t mean to just slow down a little. On our journey as Christians the STOP sign applies to our sins. We’re supposed to stop doing whatever it is the Holy Spirit convicts us of doing. Not just do it less, or do it when no one’s looking, but STOP it.
Another sign of the road is “DEAD END.” This means that the way we’re going doesn’t lead anywhere. Our sinful path leads only to death, nowhere else.
That’s why I’m thankful for another sign along my Christian journey: the “U-TURNS ALLOWED” sign. Because right now, no matter how far along a sinful path we’ve been walking, we can turn away from sin and head back toward God without any penalty. He accepts us as if we’d never gone off course.
But to do this, we have to pay attention to a fourth road sign: “YIELD.” We need to stop following our own will, and yield to the will of the God who loves us and wants to be with us forever.
Eventually, though, if we continue to disregard the signs along the road, we face the signs of judgment.
III. Signs of Judgment
The beginning of today’s Gospel told of God’s judgment against the Israelites a full 40 years before the second destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in A.D. 70. That was a pretty clear sign of God’s displeasure with his people.
When Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of the first temple and Jerusalem by Babylon around 586 B.C., well, that also was a sign of God’s displeasure with his people.
Do you see a pattern here? God’s judgment tends to follow prolonged sinning. Jesus and Jeremiah told the people of Jerusalem to repent and turn to God, but they didn’t. So Jerusalem and the temples were destroyed twice. Jesus has promised to return again in judgment.
(Illustration)
Warren Wiersbe tells a story about the days of the Old West. There was a horse bolting down the road with a wagon hitched to it and little boy trapped on the wagon. A young man risked his life to catch the horse and stop the wagon, saving that little boy.
Well, that little boy grew up to be a criminal and one day stood before a judge to be sentenced for a serious crime. The prisoner recognized the judge as that man who years before had saved his life.
He pled for mercy based on that experience, but the words from the bench silenced his plea: “Young man, then I was your savior; today I am your judge, and I must sentence you to be hanged.”
One day Jesus Christ will return and say to rebellious sinners, “During that long day of grace, I was the savior and would have forgiven you. But today I am your judge.”
But it’s not judgment day yet. There are still many signs of hope.
V. Signs of Hope
The Bible is our most obvious sign of hope. It is God’s word to us to support and guide us through whatever difficulties we face. It tells us that He is always with us and will never forsake us.
In today’s Psalm, we heard that God will not leave us among the dead, that he will give us eternal life and the joy of his eternal presence. In verse 9 he says, “My heart is glad and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope.”
Likewise our reading in Hebrews tells us that our faith assures our salvation, that in a very little while, Christ will return and not delay.
Our journey with the Lord is full of hope.
Today, through the sign of the Cross, Jesus offers us salvation. His death on the cross for our sins bridges the gap that stands between us and the gift of eternal life with God.
VI. Sign of the Cross
We can’t span that great divide on our own. But we don’t have to. If we accept the sign of the cross, our final road sign doesn’t have to be “Bridge Out.”
Our opening Collect today asks the Father to let us “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,” given to us in our Savior Jesus Christ.
Blessed hope. You see, despite these signs of our times — the signs of despair, warning, and judgment — we have a sign of salvation through the cross that renews our hope. That blessed hope of everlasting life.
And through the cross we can see a different sign from the one that Dante described. The sign of the Cross reads: “RECEIVE hope all ye who enter here.”
Jesus will return, and as we heard in the reading from Hebrews this morning: the righteous will live by faith. Our faith in Jesus Christ guarantees our salvation.
And that’s a good sign.
God bless you all.
