©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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12/26/99
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The End Of All Things
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1 Peter 4:7-11
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12/26/99 THE END OF ALL THINGS
"THE END OF ALL THINGS IS AT
HAND!..."
Those are not the words of some nut on the radio,
or the television,
or the street corner,
or the internet.
Those are the words of the Apostle Peter,
written to the people of God
in the first of his two New Testament letters.
And his words do not stop there.
The next word in his writing
is the word "therefore...".
He says,
The end of all things is at hand; therefore...
From there he goes on to offer several specific
instructions to the Christian
in view of the fact that "the end of all things is at
hand."
Now isn't that great?
Here we are in a culture,
and in fact in an entire world,
with countless voices predicting all sorts
of catastrophic events
coming upon our world with the
onset of the new millennium,
and then here is Peter taking
those fears and those anxieties,
and bringing them right out into the open,
holding them up for all of us to see,
and, in fact, putting them into a single phrase, "THE
END OF ALL THINGS IS AT HAND!",
and then he follows that phrase
with specific instructions
about how the Christian should respond
to that news.
I don't want to get off track here,
but I can't let that pass without observing that
that's just the way our God does things.
All those things that scare us so much,
all those things in our lives
that make us want to run away and hide,
things like our sins,
and our past,
and our anxieties over the future,
He handles by creating for us
an absolutely safe environment
in the hollow of His hand,
and then He carefully brings them out
into the open
and then reveals to us
His answers to those things we
fear so much.
I know some of you are still afraid of your God,
hiding from Him,
unsure as to how He really views you.
But the Apostle Paul reminds us
about how it really is for the child of God.
Rom. 8:15 For you have not received a
spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but
you have received a spirit of adoption as
sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"
But let me return to the end of the world.
I cannot think of any better way
for us to spend our final hour together as a local
body of believers
prior to the onset of the year 2000
then by taking a few minutes
to look at those instructions
following Peter's affirmation that
"the end of all things is at hand".
For more than a year now
there has been a two foot long digital clock on
the wall of the Post Office
frantically ticking off the days,
the hours,
the minutes,
the seconds,
the tenths and even the hundredths of seconds
remaining
until the stroke of midnight
on the last day
of the last year
of the last decade
in the last century of the second
millennium.
Every time I stand in that line
and see that clock flying through those micro
seconds of time,
it makes feel as if there must be something
very important I have to do
before all the time is gone forever.
I occasionally have this urge to suddenly break ranks
from the Post Office line
and vault over the counter,
and then rip the plug of that stupid little clock
out of the wall
so that I can then bring the whole thing to
a screeching halt.
I've also wondered how much of my precious stamp
money
the U.S. Postal system has used
to install other such clocks
in other Post Offices throughout the
nation
so that others can also share
in this same sense of helpless panic.
I think what I have come to dislike the most about
that clock
is the way in which it subtly but powerfully
seems to prophecy
not the beginning of some great thing,
but rather the end.
When it finally completes its year-long sprint to 2000
AD
its little screen will, I suppose, finally go blank,
or at best just sit there with a string of eleven
zeros frozen forever on its display
until someone mercifully unplugs it,
rips it off the wall and chucks it into
the dumpster.
And in a strange sort of way
that count-down clock symbolizes well
many of the messages
being pumped into our society
from all sorts of different sources,
messages that have the power
to generate tremendous anxiety
in those of us who are subjected to them.
And remarkably,
even within the family of God
there has been a kind of terror-driven sense
of panic
evident in the words and thinking
of some leaders within the Christian
community,
a terror and a panic they have passed on to their
followers,
a terror and a panic that I want to talk
about
before we end this day and this year
together.
But before I get into that
I would first like to offer my own perspective
on where we are in the flow of history right now,
how we got here,
and how I believe it should affect us as
Christians.
I think it is obvious to most people
that we live at a unique point in history.
Before we meet together again
two major social events
will have taken place in our nation,
and, in fact, in our world.
First of all, our calendar will enter the third
millennium since the birth of Christ.
Now, I know that technically the new millennium
doesn't really start
until 2001,
and I know, too, that there was apparently some
mix-up when the calendar was first set up
and the birth of Christ did not actually take
place on the year 1 AD,
but in our minds
and in our practical daily living
when we start writing "2-0-0-0"
on our checks
and our letters
and our school papers
if feels very much like some great milestone has
been reached.
It feels like we have been allowed to witness
the completion of some great race,
or the end (or beginning) of some great
event.
Why else would we flood our culture
with clocks that frantically tick off
the seconds
and the micro-seconds before the big
event?
And one of the most popular slogans attached to this
momentous event is,
"ARE YOU READY FOR THE NEW
MILLENNIUM?"
Now, the truth is, no one knows exactly what that
means,
but all of us feel the urgency in those words.
We're not sure what it is we need to do
in order to get ready,
but we know whatever it is
we need to do it fast.
And then there is that other fascinating social event
that will also take place
at the stroke of midnight
on January 1, 2000.
Y2K!!!!!
For the past quarter century
we have rebuilt the technological structure of our
world
upon computers,
computers that now govern significant pieces of
virtually every aspect of our lives.
And now we have come to recognize
that some,
and perhaps many of our computer systems
are potentially vulnerable
to a programming glitch that may cause
them to malfunction
because they are unable to correctly handle the
date change
from 1999 to 2000.
For more than a year now
our world, and especially the United States,
has been examining this potential problem
from every possible angle.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested
in seeking to correct the problem,
and thousands of hours of media time
have been invested in analyzing it to death.
People's responses to Y2K now range
all the way from those who completely reject the
thought that anything of any significance will occur
to those who have literally
sold everything they own
and used the proceeds to build
self-contained, armed, stocked, and fortified
fortresses
in anticipation of the end of the world as we
know it.
And through it all
there is only one absolute point of certainty
surrounding the whole Y2K phenomena,
and that point of certainty is this:
NO ONE KNOWS THE DEGREE TO WHICH
Y2K WILL AFFECT US.
No one knows.
And that statement is not intended to generate fear.
It is a simple statement of fact.
Whoever your own personal Y2K guru is,
and no matter how boldly or confidently he may
proclaim his ideas,
the truth is,
he does not know any more than anyone
else does what will happen.
After all the hype,
and all the fear-peddling,
and all the careful analysis,
and all the denial,
and all the talk is finished,
we simply won't know until we see it.
Now, of course it is not surprising that the arrival
of these two major social events,
the new millennium,
and Y2K,
have created a huge sense of anticipation
as we look toward this approaching New Years
Eve.
And there is no way I could let this pass
without offering my own perspective
for those of us who are Christians.
And for those of you who like outlines,
the rest of what I have to say this morning
will fit under three topics:
#1. I want to make a crucial distinction.
#2. I want to share with you a common mistake.
and #3. I want to let Peter offer us some rock-solid
footing.
And to start with
I want to make what I believe is a crucial
distinction.
You see, I believe all of this hype
about the new millennium
and Y2K has caused much of the Christian
world
to confuse two very different things.
We have confused social events
with prophetic events.
There are a number of prophetic events mentioned in
Scripture -
literal, historical happens,
predicted by the Spirit of God before they
take place,
revealed to us through His Word,
given to us as part of this total
revelation of Himself to us,
to provide us with both a basis for trust in what
He says,
and also to help us prepare mentally
for important coming events.
The birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah was a
prophetic event.
God told Abraham it would happen
before Sarah was even pregnant.
The release of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt
was a prophetic event.
God told His people it would happen
long before it took place.
The virgin birth of Christ was a prophetic event.
It was prophesied by God
long before it took place.
The crucifixion of Christ was a prophetic event.
It was prophesied repeatedly,
even down to details about the way in which
Christ's body would respond to the crucifixion,
and the way in which His body would be
handled following His death.
The resurrection of Christ from the dead
three days following His crucifixion was a
prophetic event,
told to us by God before it ever happened.
The still future rise of the Anti-Christ to world
leadership is a prophetic event.
The personal, physical return of Jesus Christ to this
world is a prophetic event.
But the calendar turning from 1999 to 2000 is not a
prophetic event -
it is a cultural event.
Our calendar was not given to us by God,
it was created by man,
and rather poorly at that.
Did you know that in 1582 our calendar
was ten full days off from the true lunar year
and that Pope Gregory had to offer an edict
declaring that the 5th of October
would be declared the 15th of October?
My point is simply this:
God does not thumb through His 1999 calendar,
see that we are nearly to the year 2000
and then decide on that basis that He needs
to plug in some huge event to commemorate the
day.
Our little human calendars
never have and never will govern His dealings
with us.
And Y2K is not a prophetic event either,
it is a social event.
No matter how hard we may try
to cram it into Biblical prophecy
it's not there.
Like all social events,
it will certainly be used by God
for His purposes in both His people
and His plans for mankind.
But it is no different in kind
from any other social event -
a political election,
or the crash of an airplane,
or a natural disaster,
or some medical breakthrough,
or anything else that happens in the
ongoing development of our society.
I am not saying it may not have significant social
implications.
But I am saying
there is nothing about it from a prophetic point of
view
that triggers the end of the world
and harolds the return of Christ.
When the clock in the Post Office
finally hits "00000000000"
from a prophetic point of view all it means is
that
on Monday morning, January 3,
the maintenance man for the Post
Office will have to take it off the wall and throw it
into the dumpster out back.
#2. And then, second, I want to mention a
common error in the Christian world.
I believe that once again this past year
many Christians have fallen victim
to looking at the Word of God through our
culture,
rather than looking at our culture
through the Word of God.
By that I simply mean
that because Y2K and the New Millennium have
become such huge cultural events,
many Christians have tried very hard
to make them into huge Biblical events as
well.
And the truth is, as far as we know,
they have no clear, specific prophetic
significance whatsoever.
#3. And then, finally, I would like us to close off
this year
by looking at what may well be
the most relevant statement we could ever
find about the end times.
It is a statement obviously targeted
to a world like ours,
a world caught up in an end-times frenzy.
And it is also the best passage I could ever offer
to illustrate the difference between
viewing the Bible through our culture
and viewing our culture through the
Word of God.
The passage is found in 1 Pet. 4:7-11.
We've already seen the first phrase of the passage:
The end of all things is at hand;
therefore...
Then, following that affirmation,
Peter goes on to give us 5 specific instructions
designed to equip us for dealing with that
truth.
We won't spend long on each of them,
but I do want us to at least get a feel
for the solid ground he's offering us.
#1. And the first instruction he gives us,
in view the fact that the end of all things is at hand
is this:
"...be of sound judgment and sober spirit
for the purpose of prayer."
Now isn't that great!
The very first thing Peter says to us
following his statement that
"the end of all things is at hand"
is to invite us once again
share whatever we're going through with
our God.
But he puts some qualifications on that call to
prayer.
He says we are to choose to be of sound judgement
and sober spirit.
Do you now what that is?
That's his way of saying,
"Fellow Christians, use your head! Don't ever
let yourself get pulled into the kind of fear-based
panic
that characterizes the rest of the world."
The first question we are always called to ask
ourselves
is not, "What's going to happen?"
or "What do the authorities say?"
The first question any Christian with sound
judgment asks is this:
"Who is my God?"
Is He some wimpy little man-made deity
who knows nothing about computers
and finds Himself totally out of his
element with this modern world?
Or is He the creator God of all that is,
who laid out the blueprint for all of human
history
before man ever set foot on this world,
or before there was a world for us to set
foot on.
This is the God with whom you share your life and
your concerns,
and when we approach Him
with our end-of-the-world concerns,
we do so with sound judgement
and sober spirit,
knowing there is nothing even remotely out of His
knowledge
or out of His control,
and our future,
just like our present and our past
rests securely in His hands.
And then Peter makes his second recommendation:
1 Pet. 4:8 Above all, keep fervent in your
love for one another, because love covers a
multitude of sins.
His second recommendation gives us a priority,
a point of highest focus.
If we truly believe that our time is short,
and the end of all things is at hand,
the highest priority for the child of God is not
self-preservation.
It is using who we are
and whatever God has entrusted to us
to meet the needs of our fellow Christians.
And right now one of the greatest needs in the Body
of Christ
is strong, solid reaffirmation
of the true nature of our God,
and of His eternal commitment to us,
and of His absolute sufficiency for us
in the days and weeks and months ahead.
I have no idea what opportunities
our God will give each of us in the weeks ahead
to show practical love to our fellow
Christians,
but I do know those opportunities will form the heart
of the greatest works He will ever accomplish
through us.
We don't need any more fear peddlers
running around the body of Christ.
We've had more than enough for this millennium.
But we urgently need many more Christians who,
above all keep fervent in their love for one another.
And from there
Peter gets even more practical.
1 Pet. 4:9 Be hospitable to one another
without complaint.
And you know what that means, of course.
There is no place in the family of God
for an isolationist mentality.
God carefully placed us within His family,
and then called us to learn how to live as a
family,
doing whatever we can
to meet the needs of those He brings
into our lives.
And he goes on:
1 Pet. 4:10 As each one has received a
special gift, employ it in serving one
another, as good stewards of the manifold
grace of God.
I don't know what gifts God has entrusted into
your care.
Don't try to put names on them.
The truth is, it doesn't matter.
Just think of them as being
whatever resources,
or skills,
or abilities,
or insights God has entrusted to
you.
Peter simply groups the gifts into two broad
categories:
1 Pet. 4:11 Whoever speaks, let him
speak, as it were, the utterances of God;
whoever serves, let him do so as by the
strength which God supplies;
But the goal of those gifts is obvious -
they are to be used for the greater health
and growth,
and strength of those around us.
But the final statement I want to leave us with,
and the one I see as the heart of everything Peter
wants us to know
given the fact that the end of all things is at
hand,
is found in that last statement in this
passage:
so that in all things God may be glorified
through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the
glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen.
There is one great, central message
that must be the centerpiece
of everything we do,
and everything we say,
and everything we believe
given the fact that the end of all things is at hand,
and the great central message is this:
Our God,
the One we worship,
the One we follow,
the One we trust
is the One who has glory and dominion over
everything and every one forever and ever.
We have no small God,
and because we have no small God,
we also have no basis for fear,
or for anxiety,
or for dread.
We are the people of God,
and as such
we approach this next week,
and this next year,
and this next century just as we
approached the last one -
knowing that our lives
and our futures
and our absolute security rests not in our
ability to protect and guard our little empires,
but rather in the fact that who we are
and what happens to us
and through us is determined by the
Almighty God of the Universe.
And in Him there is no basis for fear.