(This is part 6 of a series of Advent posts on what Christ came to do.)
This is the time of year when we tend to look at current
trends and try to extrapolate them into the future to guess what is to come in
the next year or decade. Such exercises can be intellectually interesting and
useful for planning, but they can also be somewhat discouraging. We look at our
own culture and see warning signs of troubles to come: moral confusion,
philosophical chaos, and educational decline. We look at the world around us
and see tyranny, poverty and disease. We look at the Church and see error,
heresy, and worldliness. Some even look at the natural world and fear
asteroids, earthquakes, and environmental disaster.
So perhaps this is also a good time of year to step back and
consider the big picture. Just what does the Bible say about the future of this
world, the future of the nations of this world, and the future of the Church?
Just what are the intentions of our sovereign God in regards to human history?
I John 4:14 And
we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the
world.
John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have
everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
One of the reasons Christ came in the flesh was to save the
world. God always does all His holy will, and if sets out to save the world, He
will save the world. The LORD of hosts has sworn, saying, Surely as
I have thought, so it shall come to pass, And as I have purposed, so it shall
stand... (Isaiah 14:24)
Some take the verses quoted above from John 3 and use them
to back one side or another in the debate over election or particular
redemption. But this issue is not the main point of these verses. These verses
are telling us that our infinite, eternal, unchangeable, wise, powerful, holy, just,
good, and true God, who is wonderful beyond any human comprehension, loves this
corrupt, sin-filled, finite, insignificant, foolish world and intends to save
it, change it, and redeem it. (For a brilliant sermon on John 3:16, read B. B. Warfield’s God's Immeasurable
Love, made available online by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church here, and
quoted below in blue.)
We need to have a perspective on world history, then, that
extends beyond our own century and beyond our own tribes and nations. Rather
than getting bogged down by the details of our own times, we should step back
from time to time and be refreshed by God’s stated intentions and promised
outcomes, and remember where the main thrust of history will take us.
Thus, then, it is that God is saving the world—the world, mind you, and not
merely some individuals out of the world—by a process which involves not
supplanting but reformation, re-creation. We look for new heavens and a new
earth, it is true; but these new heavens and new earth are not another heaven
and another earth, but the old heaven and old earth renewed; or, as the
Scriptures phrase it, "regenerated." For not the individual merely, but
the fabric of the world itself, is to be regenerated in that "regeneration
when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory" (Matt. 19:28) During the process, there may be much
that is discarded. But when the process is completed, then also shall be
completed the task which the Son of Man has taken upon himself, and the "world" shall be saved—this wicked world of sinful men transformed
into a world of righteousness. – B. B. Warfield
Even as God was making His covenant with Abraham to separate
the people of Israel to Himself, He stated His long-term intention of blessing all the tribes of the
earth through this covenant. …And in you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed.(Genesis 12:3) Of the nations, God tells us in Psalm 2 that they will
all be given to the Son as His inheritance. Psalm 72 says that all kings shall
fall down before Him, that all nations shall serve Him, and that all nations
shall call Him blessed.
In Daniel 2 we learn that God would one day establish a Kingdom
that would stand forever and fill the whole earth. John the Baptist declared
that the time was fulfilled and the Kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus compared
the Kingdom of God to a tiny mustard seed that grows into huge plant or a bit of leaven that
eventually leavens a whole lump of dough.
As to disease and suffering, Isaiah declares that one day
when a man dies at a hundred years of age, he will be considered a child, and people
will wonder what evil he had done to deserve such an early death. (Isaiah
65:20) As to oppression, the same chapter of Isaiah tells us that people will
inhabit the houses they build and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant,
They shall not build and another inhabit or plant and another eat. (Isaiah 65:22)
As this chapter is speaking of a time when there still is death and there still
is marriage and child bearing, it cannot be referring to the final eternal
state, but must be speaking of a time before the last days of history.
As to the Church, we are told in Jeremiah that there will be
a time when men will not have to teach their neighbors to know the Lord,
because they all shall know Him. (Jeremiah 31:34) Jesus says that the gates of
Hell will not prevail against His Church. (Matthew 16:18) To fully understand
the impact of this statement of our Lord, we must realize that it is not the
Church on defense here. The Church is on the offensive and the forces of
wickedness have retreated behind their gates--gates which will not prevail
against the onslaught of the Church.
So then, Christians, about what do we despair? We may see destructive forces of nature as the whole creation groans with the corrupting influence of sin. We may see
sin, destruction, and corruption in our nations and in our churches. We may see
progress knocked back in our generation by the wickedness of the world. We may
find ourselves laboring hard in the work God has given us to do with little
evidence that that labor is bearing any fruit. But our labors are not in vain.
God will weave our lives and the labors we do in His name into the glorious
tapestry that is His plan. We are not given details of every step along the way,
but we are given details of the final result. The Kingdom of God will be victorious in
history, and then will come the final resurrection and our eternal blessedness.
Praise be to God who does all things according to His holy will!
Surely, we shall not wish to measure the saving work of God by what has been
already accomplished in these unripe days in which our lot is cast. The sands
of time have not yet run out. And before us stretch, not merely the reaches of
the ages, but the infinitely resourceful reaches of the promise of God. Are not
the saints to inherit the earth? Is not the re-created earth theirs? Are not
the kingdoms of the world to become the kingdom of God? Is not the knowledge of the glory of God to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Shall not the day dawn when no man need say to his neighbor, "Know the Lord," for all shall know him from the least unto the greatest?
O raise your eyes, raise your eyes, I beseech you, to the far horizon. Let
them rest nowhere short of the extreme limit of the divine purpose of grace.
And tell me what you see there. Is it not the supreme, the glorious, issue of
that love of God which loved, not one here and there only in the world, but the
world in its organic completeness; and gave his Son, not to judge the world, but
that the world through him should be saved? – B. B. Warfield
Happy New Year to you, and Blessed Eternity to the world that Christ loves!
Comments