Good News of the Kingdom

 Matthew 24: 14-31

Charles J. Tomlin, Easter Sunday, April 4th, 2021,

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Kingdom of God Series, 14 of 14

 

And this good news¹ of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.

 ¹⁵ "So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand),

 ¹⁶ then those in Judea must flee to the mountains;

 ¹⁷ the one on the housetop must not go down to take what is in the house;

 ¹⁸ the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat.

 ¹⁹ Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days!

 ²⁰ Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath.

 ²¹ For at that time there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.

 ²² And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.

 ²³ Then if anyone says to you, 'Look! Here is the Messiah!'¹ or 'There he is!' -- do not believe it.

 ²⁴ For false messiahs¹ and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

 ²⁵ Take note, I have told you beforehand.

 ²⁶ So, if they say to you, 'Look! He is in the wilderness,' do not go out. If they say, 'Look! He is in the inner rooms,' do not believe it.

 ²⁷ For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

 ²⁸ Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

 ²⁹ "Immediately after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.

 ³⁰ Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see 'the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven' with power and great glory.

 ³¹ And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matt. 24:14-31 NRS)

 

Happy Easter.  The Lord is Risen!   And this is, as today’s scripture says, ‘the good news of the kingdom of God’.

Interestingly, and most importantly for us,  Jesus spoke about this ‘good news’ being ‘preached’ when everything was still very much, bad news for him, and is sometimes, also bad news for us.  For Jesus, he was still headed to the cross.   One of his own disciples was about to betray him. 

For us too, we still suffer in the world too.  We also live in a world that can be sinful and brother can turn against brother.  The world of trouble, Jesus speaks about in Matthew 24, is still very much the kind of world we live in today.

     And in this text, as we will see, there’s still some bad news that may still happen in this world, in spite of the fact, that God’s good news is still being preached.   As I shared last week, we still live between God’s ‘already’ kingdom, which was established in the suffering love of Jesus Christ and the glorious kingdom that is still coming and isn’t yet here.  But now, in this in between time, we still have some very, very good news to share and to preach.

This good news is not only about Christ and Him crucified for us, and this message isn’t just that we are crucified with Christ.   This whole ‘crucified’, cross-bearing life, that Jesus died for, and we live in,  only makes sense if Jesus crucifixion and death was vindicated by God the Father on Easter Sunday.  

Only if Jesus lives, can we hope to live also.  Only if Jesus lives, can we risk our lives for love and bear the cross and boast, as Paul did, in the cross of Jesus Christ.  All our faith is vain, empty, useless and hopeless, unless Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.  And the good news is, Hallelujah, He is risen!  He is risen, indeed!

 

THIS GOOD NEWS...

The good news finds is foot-hold and its very foundation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  But this good news still goes contrary to what happens to people in this life.   It is news that you don’t read about in the obituaries, which mostly tell us about how a person has died.   In recent years, family members get to personalized obituaries these days, and they get to confess their faith in the most wonderful hope that their loved one had ‘gone to be with the Lord’ after death.   This is the good news, but it’s still based on faith and hope in Jesus, not only anything a Science book or the book of nature or physical reality can now tell us.   

           Last year I got to view the movie, for the first time,  The Case of Christ, which tells of the conversion to faith of the former Chicago Tribune reporter, Lee Stobel.  I’d read his book before, but I’d never had a chance to see the movie, and I thought they did a pretty good job putting the movie together.  Lee Stobel’s conversion was worth a Christian movie, because Stobel used to be very good, respected, award-winning reporter for a big city newspaper.   But their daughter had a close call with death, and a woman invited them to church,  Stobel’s wife wanted him to join her, but Stobel refused to go.   He didn’t just tell her, like many men do, that he wasn’t going,  but he also made fun of her going to church, and he tried to talk her out of going, even after she told him that she had come to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior, herself.

           In response to this, Stobel decided that he was going to prove all this ‘Jesus’ stuff wrong, especially the miracles and resurrection story itself, but after examining all the evidence, Stobel came to be a believer himself, finding much more that spoke for the incredible truth of the church’s resurrection story, than actually spoke against it.  

We don’t have time to go into all the “evidence”, and furthermore, I think that normally examining the evidence normally does much more for people who already believe, to be strengthened in their faith, that to convince non-believers, but one of the amazing truths Stobel discovered, was the followers of Jesus should have simply fallen away, after Jesus died on the cross, but instead, they were strengthened, and they took the world by storm, preaching this very ‘good news’ that ‘this Jesus’ who was crucified, ‘God raised from the dead!”  

This is the core of the ‘good news’ of the church, that caused a crippled, defeated group of disciples to turn around and not only preach that Jesus was alive, but to also daringly preach that the suffering of Jesus on the cross, was part of God’s plan all along, as Jesus said.  It’s got to be the greatest ‘turn around story’ in human history, and there’s just simply no easier explanation than Jesus actually was raised from the dead. 

But what about us?  What about you?  Is this news still ‘good’ for you?   As Jesus said in his last major discourse about the coming kingdom and the Son of Man coming ‘in the clouds of heaven’ in ‘power and great glory’, this vision of Jesus of what God is going to do in the world, is all based on the very same power that raised Jesus from the grave on Easter.  Jesus’ resurrection is the ‘good news’ that continues to be preached ‘throughout the world’.    But this good news starts right here, right now, with you and I finding and knowing the truth of it in our own hearts and lives.

 

FOR AT THAT TIME...

But of course, the reason this ‘good news’ must be preached, is because the world is still has not yet fully heard nor, fully believed this message.   That was true in Jesus’ day, and that is true in our own, as well.   And this is what makes some of the rest of this passage, somewhat confusing for some people.  Many of the images and realities Jesus is talking about in this passage, is about things that were already happening in his day.  But there are also things Jesus saw that were about to happen in his world, that still directly relate to our world.   The good news is being preached, but this is still ‘good news’ in what is very often, a ‘bad news’ world.

           This is Easter, and our emphasis this morning is on the good news, not the bad news, so I’m not going to go into all the details of this text.   We can do that another time, but for now, we need to see how the ‘good news’ was being preached, and how Jesus was warning his own disciples to be ready, and to watch.  For even though good news was being preached, bad things could and would still happen in the world.

           Perhaps the most important warning Jesus was giving in this text, is to remind his disciples ‘not to be lead astray’ by false Messiahs and false messages about the end, that still hadn’t yet come.   Jesus also reminded his disciples that they could avoid a lot of grief in this sinful world, if they would follow his advice, and continue to ‘endure’ in both their faith in him and in their willingness to follow his clear direction about what to do when it looks like the end is coming.  

           Now, the end Jesus was warning his disciples about did come.  In less than 30 years after his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven,  the Jewish world fell apart, and the Roman army burned Jerusalem to the ground.   It was 70 AD.  And do you know what all that happened?  Because the Jewish world rejected Jesus’ message of peace and love for their enemies, and the Jewish war began, with the Jews taking a stand in opposition to Roman rule, which ended up being their ‘last stand’.   

This ‘ending’ was exactly what Jesus was warning about, when he said, that ‘this generation shall not pass away until these things come to pass.’   It didn’t even take Jesus to see what was about to happen, but Jesus did see it, and he warned his disciples not to take part in this resistance, and when the time came, and they saw armies approaching and this ‘desolating sacrilege’ standing in the holy place, they were to ‘flee to the mountains’ and ‘not turn back’ or they would be taken.     Jesus then tells them, ‘take note’, for “I have told you all this beforehand.” 

Now, I realize that there is more in this text, that can’t be explained by everything that happened in 70 AD, but most of it can.   And what it reminds us, today, dear friends, that even though Easter has happened, Jesus lives, and God raised him from the grave, we still live in a ‘Good Friday’ world.   The good news of the kingdom, doesn’t take away the sinfulness of this world, nor will it take away the fact that bad things can, and will happen.  And some of the bad things are still to come.

Last year, when the Coronavirus came upon our world, many people wanted to think it was a sign that the world was about to end.  Well, the truth is that the world is always ending, for someone, somewhere, and at the same time, its always beginning too.  As Jesus said in this text,  bad things will happen, but ‘the end is not yet’.  

I saw an interview last year, of a Japanese woman, who had survived the bombing of Nagasaki.   When you heard her tell her story, you wonder how she ever survived all that she was describing that happened to her, as a 12 year old girl.   You also wonder, how in the world she lived so long, after all that nuclear exposure.  But what was most amazing about her interview, was that she didn’t hold a grudge against the United States, but she was also a very strong advocate for peace, and for the end of all nuclear threats.   She was using her survival to preach a message of ‘good news’ in a world that is still threatened with very bad things that could happen, but don’t have to happen.

Perhaps, that the best way for us to read this great text from Jesus too.   We certainly shouldn’t make it a self-fulfilling prophecy that only bad things are going to happen, and it’s only going to get worst.  It might get worst, before it gets better, but I still think our world can make a choice to fulfill anything we might imagine that Jesus has predicted.  

I personally think Jesus predicts very little in this text for us, except in general ways that sin and ‘wars and rumors and wars’ will continue, especially if people continue ‘hell bent’ on refusing the saving, redeeming, and resurrection power of Jesus Christ.   Yes, the world can still ‘go to hell in a hang basket’, but I don’t believe it has too.  I don’t believe you have to go to hell in a hang basket either.   Isn’t that why Jesus interrupted this world with good news, and here warned his be ready, to watch, and read the signs and know how that one day, some way, the same Lord whom God raised from the dead, would return in power and glory.   Be ready. 

 

WITH POWER AND GREAT GLORY

           This brings us back to the ‘good news’ message that must be preached from this text.   The good news is being preached, that God raised Jesus from the dead.   The good news is also being preached, that no matter what happens in this world, that you can still be ready and recognize the signs of the times.  You don’t have to go into the future blindsided, but you can prepare yourself, because God raised Jesus from the dead, and gave us the greatest sign of who is the true Messiah and Lord of all.

           But the final ‘good news’ of this text, is how this same Jesus who was once buried in a borrowed grave, and then was raised, only to pass on a message to rule this world through human hearts, is one day, as Jesus said, will appear and ‘come on the clouds of heaven’ with ‘power and great glory’.  

           Now, before I conclude this message of hope of Jesus’ return in ‘power and great glory’, I want to remind you, just as I said, that this can mean, at least two things, not only one.   This is why some people get confused about ‘last things’ and map out how Jesus is going to return to this earth, two times, instead of one time.   Well, the truth is, Jesus was talking about exactly that.  Jesus was talking about ‘the Son of Man’ returning in ‘power and great glory’, not only one time, in the future, but Jesus appears with ‘power and great glory’ many times.   

This ‘appearing’ at will, is something only a resurrected Lord can do.  Don’t you remember, when the disciples were locked in the upper room, after his crucifixion,  Jesus suddenly appeared to them, as if he walked through walls.   Don’t you know, that when two of his unnamed disciples were walking with him on the Emmaus road, that they didn’t know it was him, until they broke bread together, and then he disappeared, just like that.   Don’t you also know that when Jesus ascended into heaven, after showing himself to many witnesses, that he didn’t get in a space ship and blast off?   No, Jesus simply moved into his other reality, the reality of ruling over all our hearts ad the one, true, resurrected Lord, who no sits at the Father’s right hand, and live with us through the work and presence of the Holy Spirit.

No, this resurrected Jesus isn’t just coming, he’s still here.   Even when we die, he comes for us, because he has prepared a place for us.   This Jesus is coming again, but he’s coming again and again, and he’s right here, because he lives is us, who are his body here on earth.   This very ‘power and great glory’ was revealed to Stephen, when he was murdered and martyred for his faith, and as he died, the saw the ‘heaven’s open’ and he saw the face of Jesus receiving him.   Jesus continue to reveal himself and he continues to come for those who are prepared, and have faith in him.

Which brings us to the final word of this text, which is part of the ‘good news’ of the Easter message too.   The kingdom is coming.  The king is coming.  The king is already here.   But one day, this king will send forth his angels to gather all ‘the elect’.  All those whom God has elected to save, and all those who make also elected to follow Jesus and be ready in him.   This is also what this Easter message is about.   Can you see it?   Because of Easter, it’s not bad news that Jesus will one day fill this earth with the glory of God and everything in this world will be ‘transformed’ like Jesus’ own body was transformed, but it’s good news; good news that God’s power and great glory is being revealed to us today, on Easter, so we can all be ready when God’s great tomorrow comes.   Today, is Easter.   This is God’s good news sign to us today, so that we can get ready for when tomorrow comes.  Are you ready?   He’s coming, and what’s even more amazing, is that he’s already here.   Amen.