New Signs of an old Story
I guess I will share with you that I can sometimes be directionally challenged. I don’t really get worried about being lost…I am not sure that most to the times I take an original route to some place that I would ever say I was really lost.
I have told ya’ll before that I have pretty much found the industrial section of every town I have ever visited. Renee on the other hand can get uptight if we don’t have an exact position of where we are. She is the one that reads the signs….Speed limit signs, what city is in what direction, which exit takes us toward our destination.
We are a country that depends on sighs and labels. Posted keep out, one way…
I went out on the internet to grab some pictures of some signs….
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There are plenty of traffic signs that can be more confusing than helpful.
Signs of all kinds are reminders of how we should act in any given situation. Our lives are filled with signs…indicators of things to be prepared for.
For weeks and perhaps even a month or longer we have started seeing sprouting of red and green tensile…signs of a rapidly approaching “Christmas season.” I don’t know if that gives you a spark of excitement or some level of worry. But it is likely to at least raise some level of awareness in most of us.
The Black Friday advertising and news reports were obvious signs to most of us of the approach of the Secular Christmas celebration only a few weeks away. This post thanks giving push seems to try to make us feel desperate to get out there and fight for deals on the must have items. Some physically…
Personally I get over whelmed. The avalanche of Christmas advertising makes me feel like I am in the middle of the ocean and don’t know which way to land.
I don’t know if I just give up or I become complacent and just go with the flow.
What can any of us do about it? Christmas is upon us. The signs make to approach of Christmas obvious.
Our lives are filled with all kinds of signs to direct and warn and to help us. It is pretty obvious that we all need to develop a common understanding and response to signs…
Traffic signs are an example of a category that the people within a community should agree on a meaning. We should have an agreement that a stop sign and traffic lights should have the same response from all drivers. Not just for the good of the individual but for all the other people on the road.
While we have a lot of signs directing our attention toward Christmas we are constantly bombarded with all kinds of other signs as well.
Not all signs are manmade. Right now when we go outside we are bombarded with a series of signs that tell us that summer is over and winter is pretty much here. The temp and the leaves blowing all around make a pretty clear statement as to what we can expect for the next few months.
I am guessing that some of you are looking at the decorations and wondering how the scripture this morning could have any direct connection to the birth of Jesus.
Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat. Today’s focus is not a look at history is it an examination of prophecy. It is looking at a source of information about the future of creation.
Somewhere over 2000 years ago people were expecting the messiah to be born. The majority of practicing Jews are still looking for that day.
However as christens we believe that that day happened long ago. We celebrate an approximate day that God broke into human time to fulfill the requirements for salvation. Yeshua was born. His name means both salvation and is a word that means Yahoshua is Lord who is salvation.
So, for some 2000 to 4000 years people waited for the arrival of the Jewish messiah.
The only problem is that because of the distractions of the day….it appears that the majority of people missed the signs. The long expected and longed for even moved into history with very little notice by mankind.
They missed the message of the prophets and they messed the message from the Son of God himself.
Somehow the poverty, the failure of crops, the natural disasters, the government problems the corrupt religious environment distracted the people.
Basically, the majority of people depended on the religious officials to tell them what was going on. To tell them right from wrong.
In general, they went to the synagogue to be told that they were God’s chosen people and that things would be OK.
They left their salvation up to the professionals. And for all kinds of reasons they missed the arrival of Emmanuel.
And they lived live of hopeless expectation….The messiah is coming…yeah..right….lived lives that might claim expectation but probably traditional instead of real hope….
Today we are looking at the words of Yahoshua, or our translation, Jesus to pick up on what He encouraged people to focus on. The reading comes from Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem. He is constantly feeding the disciples details and facts. In this chapter he starts speaking of the end of times. (signs of the end of the age)
Then our reading this morning seems to be the Reader’s Digest restatement of what Jesus is talking about.
“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
I will rephrase it to be even simpler. Bad events are going to happen; things are going to be so bad that people are going to be totally freaked out.
This clear and obvious change is the natural heavens; some series of clear impending doom of our planet will reveal that the Son of Man is coming back in a cloud with Glory and power.
That sounds to me like there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that things are going to change.
Most people will see the doom and lose all hope. However, Jesus tells us that is actually a sigh of the approaching redemption.
-- Redemption is good. Redemption if the fulfillment of God’s promises to mankind.
-- I am amazed sometimes at how many people are “worried about the end times.”
There are all kinds of Christian programs that take every war and disaster and fit the earthly events into some kind of timetable to the arrival of the end of days.
Somehow they feel it is important to warn the world and especially Christians that every day we are a day closer to the destruction of the world.
Oddly enough every year, month, day and hour they are getting closer and closer to be being correct.
I am a fairly simple guy. As I understand this existence, God created this world for his reasons and purposes. While He seems to have a partiality for mankind, this creation is about God .. not us.
The concept of some kind of an end date set by God for the project is no secret. It is documented in scripture. And in today’s scripture Jesus tells us it is coming.
God is always active, always moving forward, always involved in His creation and working toward one goal that we know of.
Te Goal: God will establish his rule over every living creature.
God is consistent and unchanging. His plan is defined in OT prophecy which included events in heaven and on earth as a sign of His action.
At the birth of Jesus there were signs in the heavens and on the earth. The star shown in the heavens and the choirs of angels sang. The shepherds received the word from the angel, “This shall be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
At the end of Jesus life, darkness covered the whole earth and the curtain in the Temple was torn in two as signs of his death. Signs in the heavens and on earth.
So Jesus tells us, there will be unmistakable signs that will identify the end of times.
If you go back to the beginning of Luke 21, you discover that among the signs of the end times are that Jerusalem will be destroyed, that there will be wars, earthquakes, famines, and false Messiahs. There will be persecution of Christians because of their faith. This is the time when Christians are urged to be faithful and continue their witnessing until the Good News has been preached to the ends of the earth.
This is where I get confused listening to some of the end time preachers. The stuff they use as evidences are real and have been happening for some 2000 years.
Religious teachers have been predicting the return of Christ based on wars and earth quakes and, and hurricanes and no one has actually been accurate in their predictions so far. However, it seems that people are hungry to have some kind of special knowledge about the future.
Christians react to the revelation of the signs of tribulation and by listening to the shows and buying the books. The audience of the prophecy message is basically people that are believers.
The announcement of the end days message is repeated year after year and while is coming most of our culture is tired of hearing the Christians cry wolf.
To our sinful fallen culture the message of the end of days is disregarded as a fear tactic. Some kind of manipulation tool. It is ignored ad being a pessimistic judgment on people that believe differently and not as a real coming event.
Instead of hearing the message that will draw them toward salvation they are told of judgment and eternal persecution.
And the general reaction is…yeah right….how do you know.
-- I am not suggesting that the details are not true….what I am conflicted with is how that that kind of evangelism matches with Jesus entering into the world and his methods of drawing people to himself.
-- It sure sounds like I am trying to ruin your Christmas spirit. Believe me that is not my intent. If anything I want to shake you free from some to the things that keep you from feeling real joy in the celebration of the birth of our Lord.
Here is the key that I hope will release you from . The information about the end of the age is not something that we are expected to keep up with per se. It is a simple fact. A fact that we can’t do anything about directly.
So what if the point of Jesus telling his disciples about it. 3 simple reasons:
First, it helps believers to have faith even while facings normal hardships and ultimately ion the end times.
Second, we as the body of Christ must be aware that this world will pass away. That knowledge lead to understand that we must always be ready. For our selves, for our families and that our work as the body of Christ is to invite others to a personal saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Third, it is not our place to worry about God’s timing. We should not directly worry about the details.
Oddly enough the end of days is not going to be revealed only to believers…EVERY ONE is going to know it is coming. It is going to be as clear as the sings that indicate the spring and winter are coming and going.
For many in our culture it will be a time of distress and fear. Jesus tells us that the end time are when believers will hold their heads up because of the faint in the promises of God. While most of the world will feel loss and pain believers expect relief.
We should long for the return of the son of man instead of fearing the event. The end of times should not weight us down or drive us to drink to escape our fears and anxieties.
The ready and willing to live as Christ helping other to find comfort, peace and hope.
--Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season that looks in two directions at the same time. We look backwards to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but we also look forward to the time when he will return to earth to set up his kingdom. The first Sunday is always the day that we look forward to the end of history and his final return.
We are all waiting for the Second Advent of Christ, when Jesus will return to set up the new heaven and the new earth. We are all wondering when that will be, but we know that it will happen on God’s timetable and not ours. It seems to me that if we are more concerned about the first Advent of Jesus and do our best to live the faith we profess, then we won’t have to worry about the Second Advent because it will take care of itself.
If we live as Christ calls us to live now, then whenever the Second Advent occurs, we will be ready.
Being ready….that is the point of the season of advent. Advent is the seacon we remember the reason for the season, the birth of Emmanuel. The Good news of Jesus Christ. And it is also the season of invitation. Invitation ot hope, joy peace and love which the first coming of Christ established and which the second coming will make complete and perfect.
All glory be to God.
