45 min
End-Times Living Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons
-
- Christianity
Passage: 1 Peter 4:7-11 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Thriving in ExileI remember when I was a young teen, walking through a park in a big city and seeing a guy standing on a box holding up a sign that said something like, “the end is near.” And I was pretty sure that this guy was crazy.
No doubt the fact that he looked like he hadn’t showered in a couple of decades helped me form that conclusion, not to mention the fact that he was just standing on a box holding up a sign. But what was on the sign was perhaps the craziest part to a lot of people.
This was pre-Y2K, pre-9/11. Here we were, on a sunny day, with normal people walking around going about their normal lives, and this guy thinks the end is near. What could be more crazy?
But this week, I thought about that guy, and wondered, “What if he’d just been reading 1 Peter?” I’m sure Peter would have a thing or two to say about this guy’s methods and presentation, but Peter sure seems to agree with the message on the sign. “The end of all things is at hand.”
If that’s true, we want to know what that means. And then we want to know what we’re supposed to do about it. Thankfully, Peter is very clear on that second part. But before we get there, we want to back up, looking at the whole Bible, to try and understand what Peter means by “the end of all things is at hand.”
The end is near! So… (v. 7a)
The Old Testament Scriptures paint a picture of history with two major eras or ages in it. There is this present age, and there is the age to come. At some point, the Jews understood that this age was going to be completed, and the age to come would arrive and go on forever.
One of the markers of this present evil age is death. And so one of the great events that would mark the end of this age and the beginning of the to come was a great resurrection of the dead, like we read about in Daniel 12:2-4. Resurrection = end of the age.
So when Peter and the other apostles went that first Sunday to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty, and slowly came to terms with the fact that Jesus is alive, what was one of the realizations that he and the other apostles were dealing with? They were dealing with the reality that the age to come had already dawned and was breaking in this present age. The end-times resurrection had already started. They were living in the last days.
That’s the perspective of the whole New Testament. Since the resurrection of Jesus, we’ve been living in the end times, already beginning to taste the first-fruits of the age to come.
Peter said this on Pentecost, when he explained to the crowd what was happening. “But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh’” (Acts 2:16-17). We saw this perspective in 1 Peter, back in 1:20, which told us that Jesus was “manifest in the last times.”
The last days are upon us, because we’ve been living in the end times since the resurrection of Jesus. He is ready to judge the living and the dead, like we saw last week. All we’re waiting is for the gospel to go everywhere it needs to go. All we’re waiting is for the full number of the people of God, chosen before the foundation of the earth, to be gathered into the fold. And when the work is done, then the end will come, when Christ returns and judges his enemies and reigns forever.
When you really get that, it makes a difference. When you understand that history is not just endlessly meandering on, but is headed somewhere, when you understand that we are all hurtling at a rate of 24 hours a day towards an eternal appointment with the Lord Jesus Christ, when you understand that this might all happen a lot sooner than any of us think—that makes a difference in how you look at your life and how you evaluate...
Passage: 1 Peter 4:7-11 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Thriving in ExileI remember when I was a young teen, walking through a park in a big city and seeing a guy standing on a box holding up a sign that said something like, “the end is near.” And I was pretty sure that this guy was crazy.
No doubt the fact that he looked like he hadn’t showered in a couple of decades helped me form that conclusion, not to mention the fact that he was just standing on a box holding up a sign. But what was on the sign was perhaps the craziest part to a lot of people.
This was pre-Y2K, pre-9/11. Here we were, on a sunny day, with normal people walking around going about their normal lives, and this guy thinks the end is near. What could be more crazy?
But this week, I thought about that guy, and wondered, “What if he’d just been reading 1 Peter?” I’m sure Peter would have a thing or two to say about this guy’s methods and presentation, but Peter sure seems to agree with the message on the sign. “The end of all things is at hand.”
If that’s true, we want to know what that means. And then we want to know what we’re supposed to do about it. Thankfully, Peter is very clear on that second part. But before we get there, we want to back up, looking at the whole Bible, to try and understand what Peter means by “the end of all things is at hand.”
The end is near! So… (v. 7a)
The Old Testament Scriptures paint a picture of history with two major eras or ages in it. There is this present age, and there is the age to come. At some point, the Jews understood that this age was going to be completed, and the age to come would arrive and go on forever.
One of the markers of this present evil age is death. And so one of the great events that would mark the end of this age and the beginning of the to come was a great resurrection of the dead, like we read about in Daniel 12:2-4. Resurrection = end of the age.
So when Peter and the other apostles went that first Sunday to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty, and slowly came to terms with the fact that Jesus is alive, what was one of the realizations that he and the other apostles were dealing with? They were dealing with the reality that the age to come had already dawned and was breaking in this present age. The end-times resurrection had already started. They were living in the last days.
That’s the perspective of the whole New Testament. Since the resurrection of Jesus, we’ve been living in the end times, already beginning to taste the first-fruits of the age to come.
Peter said this on Pentecost, when he explained to the crowd what was happening. “But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh’” (Acts 2:16-17). We saw this perspective in 1 Peter, back in 1:20, which told us that Jesus was “manifest in the last times.”
The last days are upon us, because we’ve been living in the end times since the resurrection of Jesus. He is ready to judge the living and the dead, like we saw last week. All we’re waiting is for the gospel to go everywhere it needs to go. All we’re waiting is for the full number of the people of God, chosen before the foundation of the earth, to be gathered into the fold. And when the work is done, then the end will come, when Christ returns and judges his enemies and reigns forever.
When you really get that, it makes a difference. When you understand that history is not just endlessly meandering on, but is headed somewhere, when you understand that we are all hurtling at a rate of 24 hours a day towards an eternal appointment with the Lord Jesus Christ, when you understand that this might all happen a lot sooner than any of us think—that makes a difference in how you look at your life and how you evaluate...
45 min