chapter 9. Ligon Duncan made reference to Donald Grey Barnhouse this morning, and those

of you who have the set of Barnhouse's expositions of Romans, in either 12 volumes, or four volumes,

or there may even be a one-volume edition. For all I know, I was given them when I was

in my early twenties, and I was always intrigued by the folly of the statement on the dust

jacket, which was that in these expositions, Dr. Barnhouse took the letter to the Romans

as the point of departure. Sadly, that is what often happens in pulpits, that the text

becomes the point of departure, and one sees this, I think more and more on television.

When I came first of all to work in the United States in 1983, I often thought about those

I saw, that a good number of them needed to see psychiatrists because they were mentally

sick and unbalanced people handling the Scriptures, and some of them so proved to be. It was an

astonishment to me that more people did not see that. But at least, what they were doing

in an unbalanced way was connected to the Scriptures. It was their point of departure,

and now what one often sees on television, although I do not often see it on television,

is people with huge Bibles on their laps, eagerly nodding their heads and taking notes

who have no sense whatsoever that what is being said has no connection whatsoever with

the book that is on their laps.

Dare I say that our ignorance of Scripture in the Western pseudo-Christian world has

made us one of the most, if not the most, religiously gullible societies in the face

of the earth. We just do not see it, and that is why to return to where at least I began,

that is why it is so important in days when people have itching ears and find teachers

to suit their own desires that we stick faithfully and manfully to the task. But as Paul says

to Timothy, "We keep the head," "Keep your head," he says, "in all things," and you remember

how he says to Timothy in words that very much have become a watchword of ministry for

me, "The thing to do is to keep your head in the Word, and whether you are in season

or out of season, with patience and careful instruction, teach the truth of God's Word."

You may know the story of the Welsh man who was brought up before the bishop of the Church

of Wales because he was preaching the Scriptures, and the bishop complained that he was always

preaching the Scriptures and he wanted him to stop, and the very wise and biblically

instructed Episcopalian minister said to the bishop, "Sir, I am not always preaching the

Scriptures. I only preach the Scriptures at two times." The bishop said, "Well, what are

those times?" He said, "In season and out of season."

Well, let us turn to Hebrews chapter 9, which is actually going to be my point of departure.

I am not going to linger with this passage, but it very much puts our thinking about the

last things and especially the return of Christ, on which I am going to focus all of our attention

this morning, into a wonderful biblical perspective:

"But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the

greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once

for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by

means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats

and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for

the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the

eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead

works to serve the living God."

And then the author goes on in verse 26 that if he had offered repeated sins "then he would

have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once

for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just

as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been

offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin

but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him."

Our Heavenly Father till we come to the end of our time together, we thank You for the

blessings You have poured out upon us through the fellowship of Your children and fellow

servants in the gospel, for the joy of worshipping and praising You together, for the interaction

of iron sharpening iron, as we have sought to sit under the ministry of Your Word, and

to encourage one another personally through that Word. We pray that by Your Holy Spirit,

Your Word will be a living Word to us today and that once again we may feel, as Your children,

that You are addressing us as sons and that You are displaying to us the riches of the

glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. This we pray together for His name's sake.

Like many of you, I am sure, in our church Sunday by Sunday, with probably many millions

of Christian believers, our congregation stands to confess the three appearings of Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 9:26 "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the

sacrifice of himself." Verse 24, "He now appears in the presence of God on our behalf." Verse

28, "He will appear a second time to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him." And

so every single Sunday, every member of the congregation stands to answer the question,

"What is it that you believe?" And we believe in His first appearing, that He was born of

the Virgin Mary. We believe in His present appearing, that He has ascended to the right

hand of the Father, and He there appears before the presence of the Majesty on High for our

sakes, as our mediator. We believe that He will come again to judge the quick and the

dead, and by His appearing, not this time deal with sin, but bring about the consummation

of our salvation, by His return in majesty and in glory.

We confess, as we learned very early on in the Acts of the Apostles, that the heavens

have received our Lord Jesus Christ until the consummation of all things, which rather

suggests to me that from the very beginning of the Christian church, from those early

apostolic messages, the return of Jesus Christ and the consummation of all things were seen

by the apostles as coterminous events. Where they fix their gaze therefore, essentially,

when they thought about what we call "the last things" was not upon the things that

were last but upon the appearing of the Savior who would come at the end of the ages.

It is, at least in my estimation, something of a tragedy that the Christian church has

so often lost sight of this that eschatology is, at the end of the day, Christology. So

often in our systematic theological textbooks, as in a sense may be understandable to us

logically, we have divorced eschatology from Christology and not understood that all eschatology

is but the consummation of Christology. Which is why the apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy

chapter 4 that the crown of righteousness is given not to those who have worked out

their eschatology, but to all those who love the appearing of Christ. That is to say the

Christ of the third appearing.

I suppose if there were any burden that throbs through the New Testament message, it is this,

that when we think about the last things, we must never allow our minds to be diverted

from this principle that the last things, like the first things and the present things

for the Christian believer, are always first and foremost the things of Jesus Christ and

that the whole purpose of the teaching of the New Testament on the last things is to

fix our gaze and focus on the way in which our Lord Jesus Christ will accomplish the

work that He came to earth to do.

So the moment my eyes are diverted from the Lord Jesus Christ, that is the moment when

I have divorced eschatology from Christology and cut, as it were, the essential relationship

in the gospel between the kingdom of God and the ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

I say that for the very obvious reason that the teaching we are given in the New Testament

about the last things was never intended to make us arm chair theologians, but lovers

of the Lord Jesus Christ. Any investigation of eschatology in which I engage that does

not bring me to bow in further awe and reverent worship for my Lord Jesus Christ is, by definition,

an unbiblical eschatology. Since the first principle of satanic operation in the Christian

life is to divert you from Jesus, it should not at all surprise us how much more excited

and interested we can be sometimes, including in our preaching, about the last things than

we are about the exalted and coming Savior.

I say that because it is endemic in the Christian world, and it is not just the Christian world

out there, it is the Christian world in here. That it seems to be almost infinitely easier

for us to focus our gaze upon talking about this world, and about man, and about our experience,

and about systems of thought, than it is in exalting and magnifying the Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the plagues of our time in preaching is the extent to which men of consummate ability

and unusual skills of communication do very little more than talk about man and his need,

and his sin, and his plans, and how his life can be changed, rather than exalting the person

and the ministry and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have come to call that the "Find Waldo" hermeneutic. You remember Waldo, the little

fellow with the striped jersey and the funny hat, in the books with no words, full of people,

and the only purpose of reading the book, I do not know whether it was meant for children

or for adults, the only purpose of reading the book was to try to find Waldo in this

picture. My conviction is that is the dominant hermeneutic in the evangelical church, and

therefore when you expound the gospel the real question of interest is, "Where are you

in this gospel?" The answer to that question is, "You are nowhere in this gospel." This

gospel was not written in order that you might find yourself in this gospel. This gospel

was written so to magnify and glorify our Lord Jesus Christ that you might be found

by Him through the gospel and found in Him by faith.

You see, it is altogether possible even to engage in a systematic expository ministry

but to use the wrong fundamental principle and actually be talking about man rather than

talking about Christ, and your best energies and your greatest imagination has all got

to do with man who needs salvation and little to do with Jesus Christ who brings salvation.

If that is true generally, it is certainly most particularly true in eschatological matters,

is it not? That you do not, so often leave with a sense of the sheer, undiluted, majestic

glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, bowing down before Him, lost in wonder, love, and praise,

but either admiring the brilliance of the plan that the preacher has set before you

or scratching your head and wondering how these locusts turned into tanks, although

this is supposed to be the literal interpretation of the book of Revelation.

I want to say this to you who preach and teach with all my heart, because it is a scourge

of our time, that gospel ministers, including Reformed ministers, may be far better at exposing

the sinfulness of the human heart than we are at exalting the glory of our Lord Jesus

Christ. That is why, as we think about the last things, I want us to try and focus our

attention exclusively on what the New Testament has to say to us about the return of Jesus

Christ and in five ways. Number one, the promise of it; number two, the manner of it; number

three, the time of it; number four, the purpose of it; and number five, our response to it.

I will try and do these just as quickly as would be reverent.

First of all, "The Promise of our Lord's Return," remembering that every promise of God finds

its "yes" and "amen" in our Lord Jesus Christ. Here the important thing for us to notice,

since there is really not an author in the New Testament who does not, in one sense or

another, touch on the theme of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is so important

for us to grasp the context in which particularly our Lord Jesus Himself, and therefore, the

early Christian community that awaits the return of the Lord Jesus, it is so important

for us to catch a sense of the atmosphere in which the promise of His return is given.

For this reason, since we presume our Lord Jesus knew that none of those to whom He was

speaking would be alive at His return, since He presumably knew that none of those to whom

He was speaking would be alive at His return, what was the function of teaching them about

His return? Or to put it another way around, what actual, practical difference would it

make to your Christian life? What difference has it made to your Christian life today that

there is a promise of the return of Jesus Christ? Why is this such a big thing in the

New Testament? Well the simple reason is this, and actually becomes clear as I see in the

context, the atmosphere in which our Lord begins to unfold, with increasing clarity

to His disciples, not only that He is going to die on the cross, that He is going to rise

from the grave, but He is also going to return again. It is simply this, the promise of His

return is given to the disciples, not just because He is going to return. He did not

need to divulge that. There are many things the Lord Jesus Christ has not divulged to

us. There are many questions that the Lord Jesus Christ does not answer. So why does

He divulge that He will return again in majesty and glory?

Well the answer is this, He begins to teach His disciples this precisely in the context

of the increasing unveiling of the shame, the humiliation, and the rejection that He

is going to know in Jerusalem, and in Gethsemane, and in Golgotha. He wants them to understand

that this is not the final act in His work but that there will be, for their blessed