He Will Come Again

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. When you have a small congregation like this, maybe it's scary for people who might be new because, like, you don't just get to come to worship. You end up being plugged into a family, and there's so many different levels of that. I love it. Usually in a church like this, I've done this a couple times when I was at LSU, back before many of you were born. Yes, I know that for sure. This, well, what? A thousand years ago. Yes, I knew Methuselah personally. But we did that. It was such an active congregation because everybody knew they had a part, and we were part of the body of Christ. I love that about a place like this. Not that we want to stay, you know, small necessarily, but I don't mind it, really, not at all. There's something good about it. Anyways, welcome. We're in this series called Credo because maybe you don't know it. I mean, it doesn't make the headlines, but this is the 1,700th year, older than me, of the Nicene Creed, which was 325 A.D., formed at the Council of Nicaea, and the whole Christian Church came together in this statement, and we're kind of taking it chunk by chunk throughout. We are midway. This is Sermon 5, Message 5. We're midway through it, right at the center of it, and then we've got four more sermons or messages after it. And so you can actually follow along with the notes, and it is working this time. The QR code will take you to it on the You version of the Bible, or if you've got your Bible with you and you want to do it that way, Matthew 24 is where we're going to focus mainly on, although we'll be kind of skipping around in the New Testament on this subject. So the Creed section that we're looking at today is just simply this phrase, He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end. Wow. Hans Schwartz wrote a monumental work called On Eschatology, and he diagnoses, I think, our time and place really well. He says, We live in an apocalyptic age. An apocalyptic age is a period in which we presume to be close enough to the end of history that we can discern which unalterable course it will take. A lot of people. I'm not asking you, but let me tell you, just on TikTok and everywhere else, right, everybody thinks we're coming towards the end of the world. Many people, probably, if I would do a survey, would believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetime. Now, of course, I'm not being too snarky, but there have been a few other time periods in the world that people thought the same thing. But we do live in an apocalyptic age. But I would argue, what does that mean for us today? Usually it means this in the movies and the media. It's doomsday thinking. Zombies to nuclear fallout. Wars to global natural disasters. And I would argue, if you look at, I don't know how many, hundreds of movies are either apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, and they are filled with survivalism and despair, not hope or renewal. Do you notice that? They're not really upbeat in any form. Daniel Wojcik, in his book, writes it this way. Until recently, the end of the world has been interpreted as a meaningful, transformative and supernatural event. During the last half of the 20th century, however, widespread beliefs about a meaningless apocalypse have emerged now compete with traditional religious apocalyptic worldviews. So when we're talking today, he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, kind of the end of the world stuff. I have to understand that the background that most of us have is thinking of a doomsday kind of approach to it, like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be terrible and I'm scared of it. So let's set it out from the beginning. The Bible is not a doomsday clock. It's not used to predict or promote catastrophe. Jesus' second coming is really to right all the wrongs in this world, to bring God's glory to earth, to ultimately fulfill God's intention from creation and bring it to fulfillment. And the fact that every false promise and every false kingdom and every country and corporation, every empire and ideology will come to an end, but Jesus' kingdom will have no end. That's what we're talking about. So we're reading now and you can follow along in Matthew chapter 24. It's called the eschatological discourse. I know. Yeah. He talks about the last times in Matthew 24 and 25. And in it, we're going to see what Jesus has to say about all of this. So if you want to look it up or if you just want to follow along on the screens, we'll be in Matthew chapter 24, verses twenty three to thirty five and then again at forty two through forty six. Then if anyone says to you, Jesus says this, then if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ or there he is. Do not believe it for false Christ and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if poss...