Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 8, 2017 | Living At The End Of Time - Why Smart People Expect Jesus' Return

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October 8, 2017 | Living At The End Of Time - Why Smart People Expect Jesus' Return · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Living at the end of time.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Sounds so cool.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Ah, beautiful day outside.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: I heard that Judge Tommy Webb was great last week.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Huh?
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Because 25 of you texted me and said please stay away another week.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: And just not nice.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: So.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So I think I put it in your bulletin that three out of four Americans tell polsters that they believe Jesus Christ will return to earth.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: And over 50%, 52% of Christians believe it will happen in their lifetime by the year 2050, depending on which poll you listen to.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: That hasn't kept a lot of people from calling this a ridiculous and silly superstition.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: The late night Bill Maher types, you know, who've, you know, it used to be so much fun.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Late night used to all be funny, and now you feel like you're getting preached to and scolded half the time.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: But for instance, one website puts it this way: the ten most ridiculous things people believe.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: I think at number four is the second coming, goes like this.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: More than half of Americans believe the prophecies of the book of Revelation, including the idea that Jesus will return to take the faithful.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, atheists, and he is an atheist himself, pray, and he says the pun is intended.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Atheists pray that the faithful are right and that they will disappear and get out of the way of humanity's progress.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, come on.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones with a sense of humor.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Laugh a little bit.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: So the other side's always so serious.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: You know.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I came.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, open the book of 2 Peter.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Remote Corner of the New Testament.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: It's uh start at Revelation, maybe, go a couple pages left, or uh that won't work with if you have your cell phone.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Don't do the pages left thing on your cell phone.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: So um, but we're in a little book, three chapters long, and this is about the second coming.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Book's about the second coming.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And we've gotten to the second half.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: This is the second half, chapter one, and it answers this great question: why smart people expect Jesus' return?
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Why, if you believe that Jesus will return, that you're not silly, stupid, dumb, all that stuff.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Verses 16 through 21, 2 Peter 1.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: But listen, I know some of you weren't here two weeks ago, and uh uh and others of you, you know, I don't know how you could ever forget one of my sermons, but it happens.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: It happens.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna review really quickly what I said two weeks ago, okay?
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh the title of the sermon was Dress for the Party, and and uh 2 Peter 1, 1 through 11.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: And it was sort of Peter's reveal.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: It was this remarkable reveal that Peter did telling us something you won't find anything, you won't find it anywhere else in the Bible stated as coolly, as neat as he does.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: He says that when you became a Christian, God gave you an amazing gift.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: He puts it this way by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: You say, really.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay, a little embarrassing if you're struggling and losing to temptation or addiction.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: He does say, though, that God has given us and we receive this by coming to know him.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: So when you became a believer, he gave you this incredible gift.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Some people, and then he lifts what the gift was.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: It's all of these amazing Christ-like qualities.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: It's he said there was virtue and knowledge, and he gave us self-control.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: You go, really?
4:08
SPEAKER_00: And perseverance and godliness and brotherly kindness and love.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, you need to add these things to your saving faith.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: You need to add virtue and so forth and so on.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And he describes these qualities later as the divine nature, which I like to think of as Christ-likeness, which we're told many times in the New Testament that we're Christian life means living like Christ.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't like to think of it, I don't like to picture it as, you know, building, I don't know, blocks.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: I like to think of it, I told you this two weeks ago, as a wardrobe, as a gift that we got when we became a Christian, that God gave us this wardrobe and told us that we needed to put on.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: It was a wardrobe full of spiritual virtues, my Christ's clothes, and I need to put them on.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: That's what I think verses five through seven is about in chapter one.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And I'm cutting the whole sermon short, this is quick, you know, review of two weeks ago, that not only did he give us a gift of a wardrobe, but he also gave us another gift to go along with a first gift.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm calling it the batteries this morning.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: You know how you give your kid a truck for Christmas and he goes, where's the batteries?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: So these are the batteries, this is the motivation.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: I quote, Peter writes, and because of his glory and excellence, he has given us something else.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Also given us his great and precious P-R-O-M-I-S-E-S promises.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: These are the promises that enable you to do two things.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Number one, share his divine nature, that is, live like Christ, Christian life, and two, escape those temptations and addictions, the world's corruption caused by human desires.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So the natural question is, what promises are these?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: What are the promises you're talking about that have such motivating power?
5:52
SPEAKER_00: And the answer in this book is the Jesus is coming back promises.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So this book's all about.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus coming back, and he promises that Jesus is coming back, and these is supposed to be this incredible motivation that helps us live like Christ.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Now, forgive me, this is not really reverent, okay?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: But it's what I think of.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: I think of it as donuts in the morning.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I have these grandkids, I have three grandsons, and they and most kids, you know, you offer them ice cream, they think you're the greatest.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Ice cream's the best.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Not my grandsons.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: I bought them ice cream yesterday.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's because it was McDonald's ice cream and not really expensive, but but you know, that's nice.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: But donuts, donuts, absolutely freaking motivate them.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: They absolutely love it.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Anytime I want to be a good, uh, you know, anytime I'm looking for a shot, you know, of uh of of my baby's love, grandson's love, I go over with donuts and they go, Papa, you're the greatest.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: And and and and and their parents hate me.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so this week, this week we were on vacation somewhere, and so I walk down late one evening, you know, and I go down to find the Dunkin' Donuts and I bring back donuts.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, can we have them right now?
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Can we have them?
7:10
SPEAKER_00: No.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Say mom and dad.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Time to go to bed.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to go to bed.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: They never want to go to bed.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: But if you go to bed, guess what you get in the morning?
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Donuts.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay, off to bed they went.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: So, because donuts in the morning is this incredible promise.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: It's this great motivation.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: I told you, it's kind of blasphemous.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not a great comparison to Jesus' coming back.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: So I'll use a little bit better one.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, we didn't have donuts like this, but for me it was Christmas morning.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Because starting about now, about three months ago, my mother would begin milking the Christmas morning thing.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: She would start even in October, as we were slugging each other, six boys in a row, were always fighting, we're always blooding each other.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And so she'd start humming, oh, you better not out, you better not cry, you better not Santa Claus has come.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And we knew there was no Santa Claus, but somehow still the fact there was even a 0.003% chance there was a Santa Claus got us to stop beating each other up.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Because Christmas morning was the greatest morning of the year.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: We hardly wait for Christmas morning because it had all these presents and it was so much fun.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: So let's switch from donuts to Christmas morning.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: If you donuts don't do it for you, maybe you're on a diet or something.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: But Christmas morning.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that's going on in 2 Peter 1.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: That we have this, you knew you want to become like Christ.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to become like Christ even more than you do.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Plus, he's given you all you need.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: You just need to put it on, put on Christ every day.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And the motivation is think of Jesus Christ coming back.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: He's coming back soon.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: And these are the promises that enable you to share the divine nature, Christ-likeness, and escape this temptation.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So let me summarize.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: The second coming promises are the batteries that power us to put on the clothes of Christ every day.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: You say that's about as clear as mud.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Would you run that by me again?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: So here's a summary.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: You ready?
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Let me sum it up for you.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible, dear friend, it's impossible to pump yourself up to live the Christian life, the life of Christ in this world that's so chock full of temptations.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Knowing this, since God knew this, when we believed in him, he gave us the gift of Christ's virtues, which we should put on every day.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you say, is that all?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: No.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Then to motivate and empower us to put them on, God gave us the batteries, the prophetic promises of the future, something that we can look forward to.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: So listen, here's how it works.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Every day you look forward to the blessed hope of Jesus' return.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: You pray, come, please, dear Lord Jesus.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And you go to the wardrobe and you put on Christ.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: But if, if, and don't do this, but if, like that servant in the parable of the talents in Matthew 24, if, like that servant, you say, My master delays us.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Come, it's been so long.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: 2 Peter 3 actually talks about all the people that tell us it's been so long, he's never coming.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And if you succor to that, if you say my master, and you for then you'll forget the wardrobe.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: You'll you're not worried, not to even think about Christ, and you'll slip, like that guy did, into immorality.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: So Peter says, so that was the sermon two weeks ago.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, it took about seven, eight minutes.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: But he now says, This is this is so, so, so key to who I am, he says in the next four verses.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna always remind you about these things, even though you already know them and are standing firm in the truth you've been taught.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know what you're thinking.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: You're sitting there going, I know all this.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I've been a Christian for 40 years, I've been in this church forever, I know all about second coming.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And Pipe Peter says, I don't care.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna remind you about it anyway, because you because you need the reminder, even though you're standing firm and you're established.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And it's only right, he says, that I should keep on reminding you as long as I live for our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Get this, that I must soon leave this earthly life.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna work hard to make sure you always remember these things after I'm gone.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear that?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: The Lord told him he was close to death.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus talked to him once before about dying.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
11:30
SPEAKER_00: It was 30 years before.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: He's about 60 years old now, but when he was about 30, a little younger, by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus came to him one day.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: It's the last chapter of John, John 21, and he he explained to him that he one day he would be stretched out and he would be nailed up, thereby indicating what kind of a death he would die.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: He would die a crucifixion.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Tradition says Peter was crucified.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he was crucified upside down.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: I believe that tradition.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And we know it happened shortly after this that Nero in Rome crucified him upside down.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine, by the way, for 30 years knowing you were gonna die the most painful death on earth and carrying that burden with you?
12:12
SPEAKER_00: And every night when you went to sleep, thinking about how you're gonna get nailed up and get crucified, and every morning when you woke up, that was hanging on your shoulder that you're gonna die, maybe today, the most horrible, painful death.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that?
12:27
SPEAKER_00: But you read this, and how does Peter handle it?
12:32
SPEAKER_00: It's like no big deal.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this amazing?
12:36
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even use the word death, he uses the word exodus.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a departure.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: It's just a, in fact, there's two incredible comforts in this.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: If you're close to death, if you've had a brush with death, a loved one brush with death, let me share with you two amazing comforts in this before we get to the main point.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that death equals TT.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: It's a temporary transition.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: The phrase here, Lord Jesus Christ has shown me that I must soon lay aside my tent.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: He says, He says, you know, that those are the words he uses, which are the same as the words Paul uses, you know, back in 2 Corinthians 5.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have an eternal building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Peter's saying.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, you know, my body is a gift from God, but it's just like a shirt, it's like a dress, it's like a tent, and I'm gonna transition, I'm gonna leave it, and and I'm gonna get a new one.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what an attitude.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, death is just gonna be a transition from one tent to another.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: One day I'm gonna have an eternal tent.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna really be cool.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first comfort.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: If you've been told by the doctor this month, this week, this fall, that you're there's nothing that they can do.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: You have cancer.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you that Peter knew he was about to die, and he says, it's just a temporary transition.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing he says is that death is not only a T T, it's a GT.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: It's a God thing.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: It's a God thing.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: This is just, I think this is just phenomenal.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: When he he says, um, he says, uh, so the Lord has told me I'm about to die.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: You know what the Lord could have told him?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: The Lord could have said, you know, Peter, remember back 30 years ago when you were in prison and then Herod was gonna kill you the next morning, and I sent an angel and he opened up the prison, he lets you out.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do that this time too.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a while.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Nero's wanting to kill you, but I'm not gonna let it happen.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Could God have said that?
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: He's in control, but you know what God said?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: God said, No, I'm not gonna do that this time.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: You're close to death.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: But the picture is clear that it's gonna happen.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna happen real soon.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna, it's not gonna be long at all.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's I mean, I think that's just amazing to think that evil never has the upper hand.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can find that in here.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: That that that when evil thinks it has the upper hand, one thing we know is that God's hand always is the upper hand.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point here, that God's always in control, and even when a death seems utterly and is utterly tragic and seems meaningless, that God doeth all things well, and his hand for his children is always the upper hand.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: So uh notice the response of Peter to this.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of casual, and he says, since this is gonna happen, since death is near, therefore I'm gonna always remind you about the second coming.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't have a lot of money to give you, don't have a lot of houses and property.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: My last will and testament is what?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a word of wisdom.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: It's the word of wisdom that Jesus Christ is returning soon.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Melody's dad, uh Jim Smith, really, really cool guy.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Loved hunting with him, loved everything of them.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: He died young.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: He died, I think, of his young mid-50s.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget the Thanksgiving being down there, and I'm me asking him, How come this great meal?
16:36
SPEAKER_00: How come you're not eating?
16:36
SPEAKER_00: He says, I just don't feel right.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: He goes in shortly after that, and they say, You got cancer, you got a bad cancer, you got pancreatic cancer, you only have perhaps months to live.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And he fought it.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: He fought it like a dog, man.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: He he was for December he fought it through November, through December, into January, he fought it.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: He had the chemo, he did everything that he could possibly do to fight it.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: He got we got beans from Mexico, we got alternative medicine from all over the world, he tried everything else, and he fought that thing like absolute crazy, and then something happened.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: It was as if a switch happened, it was as if God told him what he told Peter.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: It's as if God said to Jim, said to my father-in-law, it's as if he said, it's gonna be soon.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, Jimbo stopped fighting.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: And he and he came to his wife, Jan, and my wife, Melody, is the post daughter with a list.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: He said, Here's a list of names, a list of names of all my relatives, a list of my friends.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to line them up, bring them arranged, bring them in my hospital room here.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna die, but I want to talk to them all.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: I will never forget when my appointment came.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was there at the hospital.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting out and I'm watching people go in one at a time and come out an hour later with tears on their eyes.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: None of them ever told me.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Like Jim said, I've never told anybody, including my wife.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: During those 40 minutes.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: But he challenged me to become the man I could be, and the husband I should be, and the father, and the Christian that God wanted me to be.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: And he gave me what he had, which wasn't money, and it wasn't houses, and it wasn't anything else, but it was something far more precious.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: He gave to me what Peter gave to his friends, his loved ones.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: He gave them a word of wisdom which would carry them through life and motivate and challenge them.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, Death is near, and I'll give you what I have, I'll give you the most valuable thing I have, and that is the charge to hold close, to cling to the return of Christ.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: And then it's as if Peter stops for a moment and he says, But you know how can you be confident that this whole Jesus return thing is true, that he'll come back, that it's not a silly legend, a made-up myth clung to by desperate religious fundamentalists, because people said that then the same way that they're saying it now.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And he answers that question, which is the question of this sermon in the last six verses, with two answers.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And he answers it first by saying, believe it or not, there was a preview.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he doesn't answer it the way you and I think you would answer.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you ask me normally, how do you know Jesus is returning?
19:34
SPEAKER_00: You know what I would say?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Same thing you'd say.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: He promised me.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: He said he remembered the last night before he died in the upper room, he said, I'm going to prepare a place for you.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: And if I go prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back and take you to be with myself to where I am there.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: He may be also.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: So he promised it.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: And then I'd say, and you know what?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Angels promised it too.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: If I was Peter, I'd say, I was there on the Mount of Olives, and Jesus went right up to heaven, and we're all there with our mouths hanging wide open.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Then angels came down and said, How come your mouths are hanging wide open?
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand?
20:04
SPEAKER_00: The same Jesus whom you've seen go up into heaven will so come back in like manner in the same way that you've seen him go up into heaven, he's coming back.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't, he doesn't use either one of those arguments.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Peter doesn't use those arguments.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: It's as if he knows that the mockers and the, you know, the ridiculers that they'll say, what, what?
20:26
SPEAKER_00: A guy who says he's coming back?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't trust that.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Angel's right, I'm sure.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: By the way, have you ever thought about why you believe what you do about Jesus and God and so forth?
20:44
SPEAKER_00: It's worth thinking about.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Is it because you've had a cool experience?
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe in prayer you felt like the Lord told you, or maybe, you know, he's changed your life.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I hope he has.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Years back, I was in my front lawn, and a couple of cool guys about age 20, suits on, riding bicycles, came up stop, started chatting with me about their religion.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: And it was uh I enjoyed talking with them.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: But I said at one point, I said, okay, now this just forgive me, it sounds a little weird.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: You say Jesus came back to South America, and you mentioned the tablets and Joseph Smith stuff, but you believe the Bible.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Where do you find that in the Bible?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and they open a Bible, they show up first, and Isaiah made me start laughing.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just, you know, it's snorting laughter, and because it's something about the root rod of Jesse and the rod of Jacob and so forth, and one was Christianity, and the other one was their religion, and so forth.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: That's that's really that that's the proof right there.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I know it's not really clear.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: I said, listen, here's what you need to do.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Need to pray about it.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I said, really?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: You need to pray about it, and the Lord will reveal it to you.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Pray about what He said.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: I said, I will.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe what you believe because you prayed about it?
22:17
SPEAKER_00: If you do, that's fine, but you need to understand a lot of people around the world have prayed about it and came up with something different.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: A few years after that, I was in a park in New York City witnessing and one of the same parks ours teenagers were at this summer.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: And I was talking with an Asian girl about Christ and so forth, and all of a sudden she grabs my arm, she says, Come on over here, come on over here.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: And so I went with her, you know, over there, and all of a sudden I saw like 15 or 20 Asian kids, and they're all sitting cross-legged on the ground, all of them about 18 to 25 years old, and there was incense floating up, and they were all chanting a Buddhist chant.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: And she said, This is, you've got to do this, this has changed my life.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Why do you believe what you believe?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Is it because I hope Jesus has changed your life, but do you understand that there's all kinds of people around the world that say that there's folks in prison who've turned to Islam and now they've learned self-discipline and self-control and their lives have changed.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Why do you believe what you believe?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Notice that Peter doesn't say, believe in the second coming because you prayed about it and the Lord revealed it to you.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say believe in the second coming because it'll change your life.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: No, he says, I've got two really specific things for you.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Things that you can grab hold of, things in history.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And the first one he says is that there was a preview.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: He says it this way.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: He says, we didn't follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty for he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory, saying, This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: When we were with him on the sacred mountain, there was a preview, he said.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Notice, he says a couple of other things here too.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: First, he says, Is listen, Jesus returned, this whole thing isn't a religious myth, story, or legend.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: We didn't follow.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: He says, cleverly invented stories.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Back then, just as now, people say, nah, it's not true.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing he says is, Jesus' return isn't a take it or leave it thing.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: We told you about it at the very beginning because it's at the very heart of Christianity.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: But then he says, We've actually seen the preview.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: What's he talking about?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: It's he's talking about something called the, do you know what this is?
24:50
SPEAKER_00: The transfiguration, this weird, this mysterious time where Jesus grabbed not one, not two, but three, because on the power of two or three witnesses, things are established.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And so he grabbed Peter, James, and John, and didn't really explain to anybody, not even them, and he took them up north to the highest mountain in Israel at the very northern part of Israel called Mount Herman.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And they walked up the mountain, and there at the top, he said, You stay here.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, boom, just like a bomb exploding, all of a sudden, huge power and light.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: The words here are majesty and glory and honor and power.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, Jesus is absolutely radiating.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he is like all of those, you know, on the movies, these, these, these, these, you know, I don't know, Wonder Woman or whatever.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's the last one I saw.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: But you know, um, I like those movies, I confess.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so he's absolutely blasting forth majesty and glory.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And Peter and James and John are just falling down there going, wow! God from heaven saying, This is my beloved son.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Peter says, Let's all, let's build three little churches here.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Shut up.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Actually, God said, Listen to him.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: He's the man.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus afterwards says, By the way, I don't want you telling the other disciples what you saw.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: What?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna brag.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus says, I don't want you to share with anybody until after I'm gone to heaven.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Because this really isn't a show-off moment.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: This isn't a thing for you, this is for the church, this is for later generations.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: This is about, this is a preview of the second coming.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what this is.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: This is a preview.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: We were eyewitnesses of the preview of the second coming, a video clip.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Your child comes to you this month, a grandchild, whatever, and says, May, Daddy, can we go see this movie?
26:38
SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus and the manger.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: It's a new movie about Christmas.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Really?
26:42
SPEAKER_00: You say, I haven't heard of this.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a donkey named Bo, and there's a sheep, and there's a dove, and it's really cute.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be great.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Why, we haven't heard of this.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: No, it really is.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how do you know?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Because we saw the preview.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've seen it, it's a really cute preview.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I think everybody ought to go.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about advertising in the movie.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you it's a cute preview about the animals, you know, who went to the first manger scene and then they overheard Hared and they tried to warn, you know, Mary and Joseph, but but but since donkeys can't speak English, Mary and Joseph couldn't understand.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can see all this in the preview.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And there's a preview, and your child is exactly right.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: If you see the preview, you know the real thing.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: The show is gonna come.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's saying.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: We were there.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: We saw the preview.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing, the last three verses, he says that the other thing is that they are prophecies.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Saw the preview, and we've also read it in TV guide.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: I forget that.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: That's not a really good.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: No, but he says, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: They saw it, and that confirms what they already knew from the Old Testament, to which you'll do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place till the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Three things about light there.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: The prophecies are like a lamp shining in a dark place.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: And in the future the day will dawn and the morning star will rise in your hearts.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: These prophecies, Peter's thinking of the Old Testament prophecies, like the Son of Righteousness will rise with healing in his way.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: These prophecies that we can trust.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: We can trust Peter.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: He was an eyewitness, he saw the preview.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: We can trust prophecies because the other 300 prophecies about Jesus and the Old Testament have all come true.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: We can trust these things.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And he says, these are these are lamp prophecies.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a dark world, we live in awfully dark.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Don't we live in a dark world?
28:45
SPEAKER_00: We live in a dark world.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that's crusted over with lying and violence and hate and deceit and all kinds of evil stuff, and this world is dark.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And these prophecies are like a lamp shining.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: And back then, of course, all they had was an oil lamp, these little Roman oil lamps.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And so there wasn't much, but it would help.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, today, I mean, we've got all kinds of light.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: We've got cool flashlights and we've got cell phones that we hold up at concerts, and we got headlights, we got searchlights, we got street lights, we got this last week.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: We're at a place where we could show the children uh the lighthouse and so forth.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the promises, the prophecies of the second coming are like.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: They're like a lamp shining in a dark world.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been someplace where you didn't have a night light?
29:32
SPEAKER_00: It was a hotel room that was strange to you, wake up in the middle of the night, and decide get up, go to the bathroom, and something, and you walk right into the door or something because it's dark and you don't know where you're going.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, young people don't know about that.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: But you know, um I knew about it this summer because um I told you I went down to the Grand Canyon, bottom of the Grand Canyon, about 25 other guys, and it was cool.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And a couple of the nights the stars were out, and so it was so bright.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: There's a picture, you know, of one night with the Milky Way, but most of the time, you know, the clouds were over, and it was so dark, and with two days to go, my flashlight batteries gave out.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we're sitting around the campfire and we're talking till late, and then you gotta go find where you put your sleeping bag, you know.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Which is fine for everybody else.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: I was too proud to ask to take anybody else's flashlight, which would have been mean to them, because then they would have fallen over a rock and run into the bush like I did and stepped in the anthill and then fallen over on the sand.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just what happens when you when you don't have any light.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: But we do have light, don't we?
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Because the second coming promises are like a lamp to our feet, and they're like a light to our path.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Until the day when something amazing is going to happen, when the dark night will be over permanently and the day will dawn.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: There'll be light outside of us, and they'll also, and this is weird, I don't understand this.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: The morning star will rise on our hearts.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: There'll be light inside us.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were young and you stuck the flashlight in your mouth?
31:06
SPEAKER_00: Kind of made.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm telling you, this is really irreverent this morning.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, that's not what this is about, but somehow there's gonna be some light inside.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even maybe with no makeup at all, you're gonna glow.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's we're all gonna glow or something.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look like we look now.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: We'll be recognizable, but we'll have these eternal bodies, and we'll somehow have a morning star rising.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Revelation tells us to him, I will give the morning star, he says later on in Revelation.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: God calls Jesus the morning star.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: So he's gonna rise inside us and we're gonna have a glow.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Jesus even told his disciples, quote, at the end of the age, my righteous ones will shine like the sun in my kingdom.
31:56
unknown: Wow.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Won't it be great when the light overcomes the darkness finally?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: That's last week.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: The darkness was really thick, and evil raised its ugly head and shot using 23 guns and upper story of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Started shooting people, just killing people, ended up killing almost 60 people, wounding over 500.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: The darkness was thick, evil, was raining.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: It was a horrible.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you and and the rat tat to how one gun had been modified with a special, you know, um, to to turn it into an illegal, really, uh uh an automatic weapon.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: And and to hear, you know, you heard it.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that chilling, the videos of hearing the pap the gun just mowing people down?
33:03
SPEAKER_00: And the and the and people at this concert running and screaming, darkness and evil.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, however, there was there were lights.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: There was, there were, there were points of light.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: There were people, there was, there was the guy, the stranger, who jumped on top of Amy and Crystal.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: They never found out who he was, jumped on top, shielding them.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: They'd fallen in the melee, and he shielded them with his body.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Amy said later, I can't believe it.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: An utter stranger was willing to take our bullet to die for us.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And then there was the off-duty nurse who'd come from California for the country music concert who ran off but then came back and just went around while the shooting was going on, caring for the wounded people.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: When asked, why would you do that?
33:59
SPEAKER_00: She said, I'm a nurse.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I just felt like I needed to.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: And she says, I saw these off-duty cops who were running and sh and shielding people with their bodies.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And then there was a couple who drove their car right there in the middle, their pickup, actually, and loaded wounded people on and drove them away to the hospital.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Astounding.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: And then Jonathan Smith, that 30-year-old, who they say saved up to 30 people and took a bullet in his neck for doing it.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: It took hundreds of heroes to save hundreds of people.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Only one evil man to kill that many.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: But I love what one of my favorite writers, a Jewish fellow named Ben Shapiro, wrote this week in an article called The Power of Good.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: He wrote, on the one hand, it's impossible not to lament the extent of evil.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: A man attacking those who harmed him in no way, possibly gleefully murdering people attending a concert, makes us wonder at the rot that can infect the human heart.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, we must also celebrate the heroes.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: We should see the incident as proof of just how much light infuses America from its citizens, how many normal people run to help each other when evil strikes, when darkness threatens to divide us.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Someone several years back talked about America as being full of thousands of points of light.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: It's true whenever evil strikes.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: People who shine at times like this, to overcome the darkness just one by one in small ways, and you and I can be points of light in this dark and evil world.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: Peter is saying one of the best ways to be a point of light in this world is to point to another light, to point to that lamp shining in darkness, the light of the promises of the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who one day will, like the sun, dawn over the whole world and get rid of darkness forever.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Won't you tell people about that?
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize yesterday noon in the Atlanta airport that Jeremiah Devine had been at the same spot that my wife and I, and children and grandchildren were at yesterday, that Friday night.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah had been in the Atlanta airport and he'd seen the same saxophone player that we enjoyed for well over a half an hour.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: An African-American guy, not all that big, got a couple saxophones.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: He was amazing.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And he was a point of light.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain what I mean.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: He would put on these, you know, music, you know, tape music background.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was George Michael, and there was Michael Jackson, there was Beatles, and so forth, and he would play his saxon.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: It was just phenomenal music.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, to my absolute shock, in a way that just brought the tears out of my eyes, he put on background music, and with hundreds of people around in the Atlanta airport, he started playing the splendor of the king.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: He played a second coming song.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: The splendor of the king, clothed in majesty.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Let all the earth rejoice, let all the earth rejoice.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: He wraps himself in light, and darkness tries to hide and trembles at his voice, and trembles at his voice.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: How great is our God.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: How great is our God.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: How great is our God.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Be a point of light in this dark world.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And one of the greatest ways to be a point of light in this dark world is to point at another light, the light of the promise of the return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: We're so pleased, Father, that we get to sit around the table at this moment with your son Jesus and to think of to think of him and how he shone so brightly in this world for those 30 years.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: And then died in darkness to bring us light.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Lord bless us as we remember him in this moment.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: Now listen to me.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Men are coming forward, but listen to me.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: Men, would you come forward to serve?
39:06
SPEAKER_00: But let me tell you, if you have any question at all, any question at all about what Jesus did for you on the cross, I want you to picture lying on that field in Las Vegas.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I want you to picture knowing that your death is targeted, that you may die soon.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, someone dives over you and protects you, protects, takes away your death with his body.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus did for you on the cross.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: He shielded you from the targeted bullet that would kill you eternally, the bullet of Satan.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: He took your death with his body and with his blood.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Remember that as you celebrate the Lord's table this morning.