The Day Of Christ Jesus Series

Philippians 1:3-6

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,

6 being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Anticipation! Anticipation can be good agony or bad agony!

Anticipation of vacation - Is that a good agony or a bad agony?

Do you have good or bad anticipation if you’re a kid and you’ve done something bad that cannot be hidden from your parents and they are due home soon?

What about anticipation of the weekend?

If you’re a TV watcher what about anticipation of seeing the season premier of a show which left you with a cliff hanger episode?

What about the anticipation of surgery and a hospital stay?

What about the anticipation of eating your favorite meal?

What about the anticipation of that last pass in Super Bowl 42?

What about the anticipation of the day of Christ Jesus?

When we see the phrase, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” What do we imagine in our brains?

Do we understand what it is? What is “the day of Christ Jesus?”

How does that make you feel when you hear “the day of Christ Jesus” or “the Day of the Lord?” Excited? Anxious? No feeling at all?

Do you understand what “the Day of Christ Jesus” is?

Well, we get some very good clues from the Bible and that’s the place we should be looking for all of our spiritual information, right?

“The day of Jesus Christ” is distinct and different from “the day of the Lord.”

The “Day of Jesus Christ” refers to the return of Jesus to earth while “The Day of the Lord” refers to a time of judgment.

So, today we will be taking a look at “The Day of Christ Jesus”.

Luke was a physician and also an investigative reporter and historian.

One of the very first things he writes about in the book of Acts is the ascension of the resurrected Christ into heaven. This piece of Scripture also give us a clue about the future return of Christ to earth, or, what the apostle Paul is calling “The Day of Jesus Christ”.

In the very first chapter of Acts verses 1-3 and 9-11 when he reports

“In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen.

“After His suffering, He showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

(Now we jump to verse 9)

“… He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”

So we see from this Scripture that Jesus, having been raised from the dead ascended into Heaven, He will return from Heaven and when He does it will be in the same manner in which He went to heaven.

After He ascended into Heaven He sent the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity to draw us to Christ, to extend God’s saving grace to us and to sustain us in salvation until Christ returns. Jesus is not now physically present here on earth in any form. Jesus will not be physically present with us here on earth until He returns which will be on

“The Day of Christ Jesus”. This is also called “The Day of the Lord Jesus” in 2 Corinthians 1:14 and “The Day of our Lord Jesus Christ” in 1 Corinthians 1:8.

There is a saying which is a warning to preachers that goes like this, “A Text taken out of context is a pretext for proof-texting.”

What this is saying is that if you remove a Bible verse from its context you may very well be doing so in order to prove that the verse is saying something other than what is actually intended.

For instance, one day way back in the 1980’s I was listening to a call-in radio show where they were discussing homosexuality and someone called in and said that in the Biblical passage where the woman caught in adultery (also a sexual sin) Jesus simply said, “neither do I condemn you.” So, based on this Biblical text since adultery was not condemned by Christ neither should we condemn homosexuality.