Northside Church - Sydney
Living Hope – Week 3: Object of Hope
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well you've seen them before. They're on the sides of roads and they appear on the horizon as you're heading a hundred kilometres down the highway and often they're lit up. Now they're in LCD. I'm talking about billboards of course and look, question is what would you expect to see on a billboard? Maybe a guest jeans or how many kilometres until the nearest McDonald's as a good one. But this time it wasn't what I was expecting recently when I was in America driving their nav bands on in the car. Look up see a billboard it says on May 21st, this May 21st is Judgment Day. Jesus is coming back and I was seeking this week just my luck, my first ever sermon on the return of Christ and he's coming back on Saturday. So I figured it better be a cracker tonight because we haven't got much time but look it is it is a serious topic. It's one of the most central themes of the Bible, the return of Christ and last week we discovered that we are we're hope-based creatures and unless we have a hope, unless we have an ultimate hope then we are going to be eaten from the inside out like Chappelle Corby is in a jail in Thailand and this whole series is based on the premise that we underestimate the impact, the formative power that our believed in futures, our hope have on our present. We underestimate it and so that's what we'll be looking at last week. We looked at our need for hope tonight I want to raise two questions. If we need to have a hope what is that ultimate hope and off the back of that what hope is there then for the world. Now the return of Christ we see we're going to delve into it from reading tonight from the book of Titus which is not one that we read from all that often some of you might not have even known it was a book of the Bible you just probably thought it was someone that's not all that generous but from verse 11 and we are going to read through to verse 13. This is what I call the no Gary no passage, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and the worldly passions and to live self-controlled upright and godly lives in this present age. While we wait for the blessed hope here it is the glorious appearing of our great god and savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own eager to do what is good. Look what Titus says to us tonight is that our blessed hope is the return of Jesus Christ Jesus will be coming back and so in that sense the billboards are right when and where and how has been the speculation of many branches of Christianity over the years but how do you know there's a blessed hope the reappearance of Jesus and then in Acts chapter one verse nine the angels say to the apostles this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way that you've seen him go to heaven and so what we see is we know that the end of human history as we know it will be signaled by the return of Jesus it's a biblical fact and it's something we can have hope and assurance in it will be a royal arrival it's where God's glory will be revealed that a reality will be unveiled there will be a spectacle that will make Will and Kate's little shindig look like a party in a sand pit. Now is it me or is every time we think about the end is near we think about some crazy bearded guy that hasn't showered for a week with a billboard over the front of him walking up and down the street. I mean why is that if you notice how they've never really sort of shaved all that much why is that it's because how you view heaven will impact how you live hope and if this world doesn't matter if the world's going to end then why shave and so the question is when we ask about you know we can see that the blessed hope is that God is coming we must ask ourselves what is God coming to do and often the answer is that he's coming to take us to heaven that's where we start to get confused and as the great biblical scholar N.T. Wright would argue he's saying that that is where we've been misled and misconstrued and confused about the nature of heaven in the church. We think of it this way like C.S. Lewis says in Brooke Fraser wrote it into a song if I find desires in myself that nothing in this world can satisfy then I can only conclude that I am not meant for here and so we think as heaven is a place that we've got to go a way to we're not meant for here it's probably how most of the world thinks like Arnie's wife Arnie Swartz and negativity recently split up with unfortunately. Maria Shriver says that heaven in her children's book is a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk and if you're good throughout your life then you get to go and when your life is finished here on earth God sends angels down to take you to heaven to be with him. We think heaven is a place that we go to and where do we get that from? Bevelically we see in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 this language from verse 14 onwards verse 16 says for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will rise first and after that we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so will be with the Lord forever and so from that verse we see the origin of a lot of what we call rapture theology. It's a sort of theology that Jesus is coming back to whisk us away and it's going to be quick and we're just going to disappear be taken up into the clouds while everyone is left here and whole branches of the church and we wish we could have a whole another sermon to get into this whole branches of the church have become almost obsessed in its preoccupation with the return of Jesus when where how what's it going to look like when's it going to happen May 21st and in fact that's straight from the website of the group with the billboards they say in 2011 AD that's now May 21st judgment day will begin in the rapture the taking up into heaven of God the lick people will occur at the end of the 23 year great tribulation and October 21st the world will be destroyed by fire 7,000 years from the flood and 13,000 and 23 years from creation pretty specific and it's an interesting right throughout the Bible even Jesus himself says come on the son of man's not going to know when he's when it's happening but these guys have worked it out which is good news for us and particularly churches of Christ conference because they could have an extra guest speaker this Saturday and he's good look either way people see heaven as a place to go in order to escape this world that's what comes out of rapture theology and here's a question tonight if how we view heaven affects how we live hope then what does the Bible say about heaven what does the Bible say about where we're going when Jesus is coming back and as I said the whole basis of this type of thinking that people get preoccupied with you could count the verses on your own hand first thessalonians chapter 4 revelation chapter 20 all this interpretation out of a tiny fraction the Bible what did the early Christians expect and that's why we're going to step back as David Brent would say you're not looking at the whole pie Jenny you know you've got to see the bigger picture the bigger biblical picture the entire story of creation and fall and Christ and resurrection can be summed up by Crosby stills Nash and Young in their remake of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock where they say we are Stardust billion year old carbon we are golden caught in the devil's bargain and we've got to get ourselves back back to the garden you see God's purpose is right from Genesis chapter 1 is right through the revelation is a unid you need directional rescue to take us back to the garden now whatever you think about that sort of theology and creation we've got to ask why and that's because that's where the relationship was Genesis chapter 3 verse 8 talks about Adam and Eve humans man and wife where they hear the sound of the Lord God as it was walking with them in the garden of the call of day they had they had had relationship with the father that's what the garden represented and God's overarching purposes has been to bring us back into relationship with him and so what we see is that the Bible's painting a picture none of us flying away but of God bringing heaven down to earth Jesus himself in the Lord's prayer he says your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and then of course Paul in Romans chapter 8 parts of the Bible that we want to skip over we we don't dare delve into it but he talks about in verse 19 of chapter 8 he talks it this way that the whole creation is on tiptoe with expectation longing for the days when God's children are revealed when their resurrection will herald its own life the creation's own new life when what happened to Jesus will happen to all of Jesus's people you see what the what the first Christians believed is what is going to happen to the what happened to Jesus at Easter is what is going to happen to the entire world new life resurrection new creation and in line of this the second coming of Jesus is not some sort of obscure branch of theology the people tacked onto the end of the New Testament instead it's the fact that it's God's overarching purposes that that's what he's in business for that the early Christians saw history as this universe but unit you need directional one way one direction type thing that was happening no reincarnation no cyclical sort of stuff no karma no doing good stuff and then you might get reincarnated as a dog or something like that if you didn't earn enough brownie points what I'm gonna try say look Jesus second coming is a bit like cricket a game of cricket you know you always feel like it's never going to end but at some point you can be assured that someone is going to pick up the stumps and that is what we call eschatology from a theological perspective it's a perspective it's not about heaven it's not about hell it's not about purgatory it's not about getting obsessed with these sorts of things here was is here's what it is in a nutshell the history is going somewhere under the guidance of God and the blessed hope is that God is coming God is coming Jesus as Lord and his judge and as judge in that sense not the negative way he's coming to put the world right and here's what I want you to show on this week here's what we're going to think about this is what we're going to reassess if you've been confused and you think like Maria Shriver that your destiny is to be sitting on top of fluffy clouds when you die that the Bible does not teach us at the end of the story that Jesus is coming to whisk Christians off to go to heaven as naked souls rather the Bible teaches us that God is coming to bring the new heavens and the new earth down to here down to earth and why is this significant because how you view heaven impacts how you view hope of the world if you don't have a view that this creation this earth that this life this existence is significant then why shave so if the blessed hope is God coming then it's also we said an item for me to borrow a phrase from my mentor Dallas Willard it's to complete his divine conspiracy God is coming to complete his divine conspiracy now the the great economist Karl Marx was one of the great world's economists was well known for his famous quote that religion is the opium for the masses and he was known for a lot of things in economics but people remembered him for that now what he meant was that he was saying religion's a drug for the matter for the masses we say religion's a drug for the masses as one commentator says for Marx the problem lies in the obvious fact that an opiate drug fails to fix a physical injury it merely helps you forget the pain and suffering and this might be fine up to a point but only as long as you are also trying to solve the underlying problems causing the pain and so similarly religion does not fix the underlying causes of people's pain and suffering instead it just helps them forget why they are suffering and gets them to look forward to an imaginary future where the pain will cease you see what he's saying there religion Christianity what he's saying that sense Christianity he's saying holds no cure to the deep-seated wrongs and pains and sufferings of this world and so the question you and I got to ask if Jesus is coming to finish his divine conspiracy how do you know how do I know that this hope that I'm talking about this future hope that Jesus is coming back how do I know that this is not based on just an imaginary future how's this not a stitch up how do we know that this is not make believe this is not some fairy tale this is not some Walt Disney story how do we know that we go and do all this church stuff only to get punked when we die Ashton Kuchter at the other end saying you got punked you know how do we know that this is not a can not some sort of conspiracy and the answer to that is that the real conspiracy the divine conspiracy is already taking place that God has sinned his son undercover to restore the world from the inside out it's the Marty McFly principle you know you guys know it by now you've heard me preach long enough if ever I get the chance I'm taking Chris Bailey a camera and I'm rewriting back to the future from a biblical perspective because there is so much in that Marty McFly not in back to the future to he wakes up and he is woken up in an alternate world something has gone terribly wrong and he as he eventually works it out with doc at a point in the movie he realizes that he's arch nemesis Biff in the future has taken the Grays Sports Almanac back to Biff his younger self in 1955 and as a result Biff had the results for every horse race from 1955 through to 2015 and Marty suddenly realizes that as a result of this injection into the world of this evil thing the Grays Sports Almanac the wonderful creation had begun to fall and falter under the rain of Biff and now the once beautiful hill valley was full of casinos and bikeies and all sorts of degradation in there and Marty realized that the only way that he could fix it was not to just totally blow the whole place up but Marty had to go back to 1955 to write the wrong that had been done for either Grays Sports Almanac and to begin to create a new creation back to the way 1985 was meant to be rebock pumps and all like what I'm trying to say is Jesus is like Marty McFly he's come back from the future he's come back to well AD 55 or closer around there whatever it might be but he's come back to change this alternate world this fallen world from the inside out he as the ultimate Adam has come back to set the world right and to pay the price for this fallen world the sin the sin that has infected this world you see we see lots of things happening in the life of Jesus he's welcoming sinners he's helping the sick either blind can see the lame can walk and the question is why was Jesus performing these miracles was it so the Sunday school teachers would have something to tell the kids and put up on the whiteboard and overhead projectors when I was at Sunday school you know well no it's because Jesus was embodying a glimpse of God's intended future that's what was happening in the person of Jesus perfect love sick healed blind can see lame can walk and the question is what would Jesus's miracles Jesus's miracles were a glimpse of the new creation and and and what we see is a glimpse of heaven beginning to impinge on earth you know why would Jesus do this if the whole world was going to junk why would Jesus call Lazarus out of the cave if this was all for nothing if all this was going to get wiped away why would he heal the the young girl that was sick why would he honor the faith of the centurion if all of this matter didn't didn't really matter from that great perspective no it was because Jesus was demonstrating and I'll put it as demonstrating that this world is not some divine etch a sketch and that in the fall some kids gotten in there and made the whole picture a bit fuzzy and disgusting and at some point in time God is just going to get the etch a sketch and shave all the shake all those little magnetic bits up and down and clear the whole lot that's not the way that God views his creation Genesis once as he stepped back and he saw that it was good and I hope that is as you enjoy his creation you you feel the same way you look in other words God's future was arriving in Jesus Christ and so his disciples stand amazed each day saying who the flip is this that can command even the water and the way it's this guy that has power over creation you see our problem is we we domesticate Jesus we see these miracles and we just write them off we don't allow the reality of the the new creation of rush into our present from God's future we say that his miracles are just a way to prove his divinity and we just call him some sort of special magic man who was able to do this sort of stuff instead of realizing that Jesus was a demonstration of God breaking into the present and part of the reason why Christianity took off in this way is because people saw it Mark 2 heals a paralytic in front of all the religious leaders of the day and it says here in Mark 2 chapter 12 guy gets up takes his mat walks out of there walks out in full view of them all and this amazed everyone and they praise God saying we have never seen anything like this before who is this guy you know what this historical figure of Jesus does it blows Marx's philosophy out of the water this this is no imaginary future this is no imaginary future instead like the book of John says his whole purpose in chapter 20 verse 32 he says Jesus performs all these miracles and I'm telling you this we can't include them all into the Bible but but he did this and we're telling you because we want you to believe and John chapter 1 he says and we beheld his glory we saw it we were witnesses to it and so what it means is in Jesus your future has arrived look Jesus is not just some opiate for the masses but a glimpse of the real solution to the pain and the suffering of this world he makes all things new and he's making all things new as we speak you want to keep wondering about whether miracles still happen today as a pastor some of you as Christians though the greatest miracle we've seen happen here each and every day is the miracle of salvation the miracle of transformed lives the miracle of the Holy Spirit moving into people's lives the stories the testimonies of people who said I was different but once I accepted Christ in my life I've never been the same again that's the miracle and I wonder Paul can use the same sort of language in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that if anyone is in Christ they are what they're in new creation Jesus is ushering in the new creation this is not an imaginary future it's happening right in front of our very eyes God is at work in the person of Jesus Christ and the blessed hope is not that just Jesus is coming but Jesus has come and has begun to tangibly usher in the new creation so the Jesus that lived and walked in first century Palestine was the embodiment of God's planned future in the present the word became flesh and they saw it that's a blessed hope not a god just who is coming but a god who has already come so finally that means for us if the blessed hope is that God is coming if the blessed hope is also that God has come in the person of Jesus then it means that we've got work to do means we've got work to do Christians the question I could ask you tonight if you're a believer in Jesus Christ what are you waiting for I love that scene in Acts chapter 1 verse 9 it tells us about chapter 1 the way that Jesus was teaching with his disciples for 40 days they were hanging out with him meeting fish the bodily resurrected Jesus and they're hanging out with him and then suddenly obviously it's time for him to go and they're there and he ascends into heaven and you can imagine the mouths are still sort of open as they look at this that says then suddenly an angel appeared it says men of Galilee why are you staring into the sky and that's what we said at the beginning of the sermon the Jesus that has gone up into heaven the same Jesus has been taken away from you will come back the same way that you've seen him the question is what are you waiting for because the question is how do we wait are we going to spend every day calculating exactly when he's going to come back exactly how many days away from the creation we are and how close we are are you going to get so caught up in our assurance that we're sort of sitting around like we do with popcorn waiting for the movie to start come on let's just get on with it I like first things first we need to see all of this is part of the bigger picture of the kingdom of God God's kingdom coming now here presently invading into this worth earth as a divine conspiracy and the book of Acts shows us that the greatest of all of God's miracles through Jesus his ascension as the bodily resurrected Jesus into heaven the ascends showing that what he's showing there that heaven and earth are now joined in him and then he sends his spirit empowered witnesses so they too can be part of this heaven and earth coming together until Acts is at time when Jesus is going to come back and complete the story that's what it's saying to us the ascension is not the beginning and the end but the end of the beginning and now we have a picture the risen Jesus seated at the right hand of the father all authority on heaven and earth not will one day be given to me by daddy he says all authority has been given to me and chapter seven of that verse seven of chapter one is that wonderful phrase in which he says to the disciples and now I'm giving it to you go be my witnesses Jerusalem Judea and to the ends of the earth go what are you waiting for and what I love about it is Paul says it has a wonderful way of explaining it in Philippians chapter three verse 20 that you'd miss if you don't understand his context he says join me in following my join with others in following my example brothers and sisters as you take note of those who live according to the patent we gave you for as often told you before and now say again even with tears many live as enemies of the cross of Christ the destiny is destruction their goddess their stomach and their glory is in their shame their mind is on earthly things that's what I love what he says here he says but our citizenship is in heaven and get this we eagerly await a savior from there the Lord Jesus Christ who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so they'll be like his glorious body do you hear what he was saying there citizens of heaven we await his return from there from from heaven what is he talking about what does it mean to be a citizen of heaven and earth something oh that that means that we're going to go off there one day it doesn't Paul saying in present tense we await a savior from heaven and when Paul uses the word citizen it's exactly what he means because when you look at the context of his time when back in his world the the Roman world when the Romans created colonies when they want went often and in conquered other towns it was never the expectation that the members of those towns would come back into Rome you can imagine the gridlock that would be happening back in Rome it would be worse than New York and so for someone that's living in Philippi or or Corinth they would be a citizen of both Rome and Corinth and their task was to bring the culture and the life and the influence and the legal system from Rome to bear upon the culture in which they were citizens of and so you see the point of being a Roman citizen in that colony it was that you would be real you'd bring Rome to that colony here it is put that context in terms of citizens of heaven and earth he's saying we're citizens of heaven but we're a resident on earth as citizens of earth as well what he's saying is we should be people who should be bringing the culture of heaven to wherever we should be stationed the workplaces and the social groups and the families we are to be the people who are so soaked in God's thinking and God's purposes and God's way of looking at the world that when we're in our towns or in our villages we are bringing the values and the agendas and the hope of heaven into the earth where to be citizens of both that's our role Paul met that now how one word flash mob I don't know if you know what a flash mob is but it's this new craze that is tightly sweeping the earth at the moment particularly on the digital stratosphere it basically it's when a whole group of people get together and they organize to meet up in a place train station in a department store and to and to suddenly spontaneously begin doing some form of dramatic act or dance or whatever it might be and they just appear out of the crowd out of nowhere and people got no idea what's going out on around them flash mob it's this real new concept look as I finish up here tonight is what I want to say here's my cool idea this what the Lord gave me this week he just placed flash mob on my heart and I thought come May 21st this Saturday I'm not muck around Jesus could come back then in which we're going to have a party on Sunday church is going to look like nothing we have ever seen before and we're going to experience praise and worship that I'm sorry to say even Mikey Thomas can't live up to if Jesus comes back on Saturday if he doesn't might I suggest that we as a church start a kingdom flash mob or a wonderful conversation to have if we simultaneously at 12 o'clock 12 noon on Saturday wherever you might be on the soccer field at a wedding hanging out watching the TV with your brother or sister shopping with friends what if you had the opportunity to say hey I saw a billboard that said that the world was supposed to end today and Jesus was coming back it's 12 o'clock I'm not sure if he's here yet but seeing as we're here might I have the chance to tell you about the hope that I have in Jesus Christ what would it look like if Northside community church this Saturday had a flash mob of hope in each and every one of our lives what if we all got on the Twitter sphere what if I'm on Twitter Sam hadn't what if we got on the Northside community churches Facebook and we started Twittering back all the incredible moments that we had with family and friends and non-Christians when we decided to hey the Americans think that the world is going to end today but I want to tell you about the hope that I have in Jesus Christ I do believe he's coming back someday but he's already doing something in my life it could be a great starter to a conversation how can we be citizens of earth flash mob that's flash mob but this Saturday guys may 21st 12 p.m. Northside community church a flash mob of hope because what's the alternative why do you sit you're going to sit there looking at the sky no the same Jesus being taken up in the heaven is going to come back so go shoe you've got a job to do that's what the ascension means for us and so in that way the gospel says to us it doesn't say Jesus has died and been raised again and therefore we're going off to heaven into the clouds it says the gospel say to us Jesus has been raised therefore new creation has begun and would you like to be a part of it and that is his invitation to you tonight if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ new creation where God's spirit is injected into your heart and he transforms you from the inside out please the offer is open to be part of his divine conspiracy so as N.T. Wright says so far from sitting on the clouds playing harps as people often imagine the redeemed people of God in the new world will be the agents of his love going out in new ways to accomplish new creative tasks to celebrate and extend the glory of his love the question I raised tonight is what is the ultimate Christian hope and second what hope is there for change rescue transformation new possibilities within the world in the present you see your view of Jesus has everything to do with how you are going to live the present how we're going to do that as a church and so if heaven is just a nice place to go and we die then we're no different from the rapture crew you know if we think Jesus is coming to whisk us into heaven then our message will be to the world Jesus is coming back I'm on the right train you better get on board and then whoever's running the world now the politicians or presidents they can do whatever they want now it doesn't matter much there's no personal there's no political agenda other than escape escape into a spiritual reality escape into our churches escape into our Christian language escape into our Christian thinking but if you begin to understand what the second coming means as the first Christians did in the New Testament if you begin to understand it that way then it means that Jesus is the king of kings and he's the lord of lords and part of the point the doctrine of second coming is not to make us careless about our political agendas it's not to make us careless about our next or neighbors and the lives that they're living the return of Christ is a way of saying that Jesus is coming back to bring perfect justice perfect peace perfect wisdom perfect love to a world that is hurting that is the message of hope that you can give a friend this Saturday at 12 o'clock as part of our flash mob what is the ultimate Christian hope what hope is there for change rescue transformation new possibilities within the world at present here it is as long as we see the Christian hope in terms of going to heaven as long as we only see the Christian hope is something in which we get whisked away as a salvation that is essentially away from this world then the two questions will appear totally unrelated one have anything to do with each other but if the Christian hope is for God's new creation for new heavens and new earth and if that hope has already come into life in Jesus of Nazareth then there's every reason for us as a church to join the two questions together what hope is there what hope is for the is there for the world the world will not experience that unless we link the two may you think about it may you chew on it may you join the flash mob this Saturday and if Jesus comes back I'll see you next Sunday in heaven let's pray father god it's a tricky topic we can't possibly cover it all in the space of 25 30 minutes tonight but I just pray now father that through the power of your holy spirits our hearts might begin to break for a world that believes that they're headed for an imaginary future father I pray that you move in each and every one of us tonight to reimagine what it really means for us as a church and what the resurrection means is we move into that in the latter part of this series father that we are called here as your agents on earth empowered by the ascended Christ himself to continue to bring light and hope into the hearts and the homes of friends and family and the people of this world so lord the task seems like there's a lot ahead of us but in the presence of the risen Jesus in the absence of his physical presence father we rejoice that you are right with us through his spirit right now and so is his empowered witnesses lord we ask that you take us into greater depths and darknesses within the world in order to shine that light of hope the people who so desperately lead it father in this time now the quiet time will you reveal to us who that might be where that might be and ultimately as we may stitch the two together ultimate hope and hope for the world we pray this now in Jesus name amen