Little Children, This is the Final Hour!

This is the sentence I preached on this past Lord’s Day at Grace OPC here in Battle Mtn.  I hadn’t intended to simply preach on this, in fact, this is rarely my practice, but I as I began looking at the phrase and the implications of it, I realized it had much to say to us.  Here are a couple of things I have been thinking about, and I hope they might encourage all of us to vigilance:

First, the phrase, “final hour” is only used here in John 2:18.    Here John tells us that we are indeed living in the last times.  This is described in other places as the “last days” (Heb. 1:2; Acts 2:17).  The point here that needs to be made is that we as the members of the church of Christ should see his coming as imminent, on our door-step, so to speak, at every moment of our lives.  So often we see history as moving toward the end, when it probably could be more described as moving alongside the end and with one move toward that end we are there.  Think of driving down the freeway with a car right beside you.  Switching lanes will bring directly into the path of the car.  And so it is with history and it’s relationship to the second coming of Christ.  It is not to be something we see as distant and far off, but at every moment close to us.

Second, this should lead us as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to live our lives with a sense of urgency, knowing that the return of the Savior and Judge of the world is at hand.  How much sweeter would our worship be on the Lord’s Day if we knew that it would be our last on this sin-ridden earth and we would see our Savior’s face soon?  Many of us know what it is like to wake up one morning and feel the looming deadline of a project, a paper, etc.  How much more should it be waking up knowing that the coming of our Savior is possible at any moment, any hour, any day?  How much more quickly would we speak to family and loved ones about the Lord who perhaps have never heard the name of Jesus on our lips?  How much would our summer evangelistic opportunities like VBS and Missions trips be filled with an urgency to see little children and their parents come to the Lord Jesus Christ?  How much would our service to Christ’s church, our service to one another take on a new energy and motivation knowing that the master could come back at any time (Mk. 13)?  I imagine for most of us, it would change us significantly, that we would readily rearrange our priorities, to bring them in line with the priorities of our Master.  But that, brothers and sisters is to be our attitudes precisely, and so we best get busy rearranging those priorities to bring them in line with the priorities of our Master.

But third, we might ask the question, “How do we promote this kind of thinking in our churches, this vigilance, this sense of urgency?”  First, though it might seem to go without saying, we must believe the Scriptures when they tell us what time it is.   We are to believe and respond to the Scriptures when they tell us that we are living in the last days and our worship, our service, our whole lives should be shaped by the truths of these reminders.  Second, we promote this urgency, this vigilance by prayer.  In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Thy Kingdom Come”.  This means, among other things that we desire that the kingdom of Christ, which is inaugurated by his coming would be brought to consummation in his second coming.  This means we must understand prayer not as informing God of something that he does not already know, but as something which changes us.  It changes our focus, changes our desires, changes our priorities.  This is why our confession so rightly describes it as a means of grace.  Third, we promote this vigilance by diligent service.  We are to work every day of our lives as if the coming of Christ were upon us.  When we work like this, with vigor, purpose, urgency, and when we do it together we promote this very attitude.  Perhaps an illustration…why do guys like to work out together, do projects together, etc?  Is it not because working together produces diligence, vigilance.  Likewise, when we labor in the kingdom of Christ together with this sense of urgency we promote this diligence, urgent service among one another and the kingdom of Christ is furthered.  Finally, and most importantly, we promote this attitude of urgency and vigilance by keeping the eyes of our faith fixed on Jesus, the author and protector of our faith.  He is at the right hand of the majesty on high, ruling and reigning and ready, Peter says, to judge all men.  You see, we cannot contemplate his second coming without remembering his first, and we can’t look back to his first without being catapulted in our minds toward his second coming.  So so whether we look back to his first or forward to his second we are to remember the one who endured the cross, despising its shame, and consider him lest we becoming weary in our souls.

This sense of urgency, friends, I am convinced is the antidote to the apathy that can so easily set in our churches today.  The answer is not found in seeker-sensitive worship, in piling programs up in the church.  It found in a mindset that sees Christ at our doorstep.  We need to re-focus, to re-focus on the great and glorious comings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We sing a hymn at our church and I will just close with the last stanza, “With that blessed hope before us, let no harp remain unstrung; let the mighty advent chorus onward roll from tongue to tongue; Christ is coming!  Christ is coming!  Come Lord Jesus quickly come.”

May that be our song, friends, from this day, this hour forward until that great and every present day of his coming!