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Our Coming King
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-07-21 21:03Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-07-26 21:03Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-ourck.php
We gather again for the Lord’s supper—communion. And we pause to give thought to heaven’s message for this day.
Paul said that in the communion service, “we do shew the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Let us consider this statement.
We Do Shew
This “we do shew,” or as the NIV translation has it, “You proclaim.” In particular in the communion service, we are showing or proclaiming the death of Jesus. Yes, He sacrificed Himself for us and that is in view, but especially His death is at the front. But before considering His death, we should be clear that in the communion service, we are proclaiming, showing, telling, embracing. We are communicating to each other and to ourselves. This is a community event. This is something we believe. We are participating in it. We are saying to each other and to al who see or hear of it, that we recognize as a part of the mission and goal of Christianity, a showing, demonstrating, proclaiming, telling, living of our faith such that Jesus’ centrality is ever with us. Christianity cannot be Christianity if Christ is not in it at the core. But this is not a theater or merely a place of performance for our self satisfaction. He calls us to be a community. We need the “we.”
The Lord’s Death
The blood of Christ is available for mediation only upon His death. His blood represents His perfect life of obedience. But we need to think especially about His death. The central feature of God’s plan of redemption is Jesus’ sacrificial offering and heavenly mediation, His work for us on the cross and in us through His High Priestly ministry. None of this would be available without His death.
Had Paul used the idea of “sacrifice” here, the heavenly sanctuary ministry part might have more easily been lost sight of. “Sacrifice” might have kept people focused on the crucifixion event. But using the idea of “death” instead, is bigger. His death makes possible His ministry in heaven, His sending the Holy Spirit in a new way (Acts 2:33). Sacrifice is more specific, death more general. We do proclaim the Lord’s death—all that went into it, all that flows out from it—until He come.
The High Priestly ministry must have the death of the sacrifice but equally it must have a suitable mediator and intercessor. Jesus is that Mediator, He is that Intercessor. His intercession is possible only because He is fitting for us. “He Himself hath suffered being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18), and He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15), even as He is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26).
Till
We call to mind, we display our faith in, the truth of the Lord’s death “till” He come. This concept of “till” is important. It reminds us and others that at present we hang suspended between comings. Jesus came, lived and demonstrated a righteous life, offered that life as sacrifice. Then He went to heaven to serve as our Great High Priest, at last to make the final atonement. We know that in 1844 this final atonement process began.
He Come
Today we are gathered to remember, to proclaim, to show His death, until He comes. Sometimes we forget that He is coming. He is coming on the right hand of power.
We look around at our world. Its ferment seems perpetual; its difficulties ever-worsening. The nation is bankrupted, troops thinned out, its economy unravelling. People round the world are angry with it. Jobs are tight. Gasoline is $4.00 a gallon. The world itself is in turmoil. Ice is melting. The globe is cooling—or warming, it is at least changing. Where will it all end?
He’s coming.
We don’t know when. He’s coming. He is Messiach and He is coming on the right hand of power. He is coming. To end all wickedness, to claim His children, to remake the world. He is coming to bring joy to every selfless heart. He is coming to embrace us and restore our humanity.
He is coming, yes, with vengeance for evil done to His world, His people, His children, His name. He’s coming to end the suffering of cancer, heart-disease, and every other ailment. No more bad knees, no more limping, no more dental crowns. No more political promises and pretensions in the name of the almighty state. No more jockeying and maneuvering for airtime. No more sound-bites. No more computer viruses. No more car problems. He’s coming.
The end of most of these things will actually be only a byproduct. It all goes back to the nail-scarred hands.
You see, because God our Father so loved the world, He gave His Son Jesus. He was given not so much that the wicked might be destroyed, although that will happen, as that so whoever would believe in Jesus would not perish but have life abundant here and now and forever.
God reached out to His broken creation to remake it. He had given freedom and with it the potential for wrong choice-making. With a little push, Satan had led humankind to choose to break it. With that they had been removed from the garden. But that was temporary.
God wants us to return to His garden. He is actively repairing His world. He calls Christians to cooperate with Him. He is coming on the right hand of power to deliver His people, but He comes even now to deliver them from sin. We should not forget that Jesus, even now, has scars in His hands. These scars are from His death, His crucifixion. They mark His absolute identification with fallen man. They show that when He had the option to come down off the cross and abandon an ungrateful people to destruction, He refused to.
If we will think of those nail-scarred hands when we are at the edge of sin, and ask for His help in time of need, He will send it. He will come to us individually on the right hand of power. He will come with authority and reign. Then Christ in us will show His death and our lives will show His life. A people who are Second-Coming people are a people who will show, proclaim, demonstrate, that their hearts are subdued to Christ.
And so, the communion service is a proclamation of Jesus’ death. But so is the believer’s life. Every day we may commune with Him. Every day He may come on the right hand of power. Every day we may show the Lord’s death—His sacrifice offered on the cross and His sacrifice made effectual through His high Priestly ministry. The communion service reminds us all that this is His will for us now. It reminds us that our King reigns now and gives victory now and will give victory to every citizen of His kingdom who will claim His rightful liberty won for him by Christ. Let’s do that today and be thankful. He loves us and gives us a fresh beginning. He holds one out for us all even now.
Thank you, Father. We know that it is not that we deserve it but that you give it. Soften our hearts that we may receive your precious, precious gift of Jesus. GCO
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