AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH December 30

AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH December 30, 2007

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

THE NEW YEAR 2008

Fashioning time

Is not my line

For it is the writ of God;

But treading in time,

and watching the line

is the Mission splendid of mine.

CHASM OF TIME AND MOUNTAIN OF ETERNITY

HALF-HOUR IN SILENCE, MOMENT TO DESTINY, MISSION TO ETERNITY

THE NEW YEAR 2008

Fashioning time

Is not my line

For it is the writ of God;

But treading in time,

and watching the line

is the Mission splendid of mine.

No, no one is going to go as a missionary to eternity. God is already there, and sin is not. However we who are saved by Jesus Christ, are sent as if missives, things sent, to eternity. On the other hand, those who make of time a chasm, in the raging depths of which the black waters of things that happen are ready to consume, find little of meaning and nothing of destiny, except its lack as something formed, being a formless end, deep down, where things mean little, except judgment.

Above this chasm stands, somewhat to one side, a mountain. Here the light is so intense that you can see what is coming and going. Sometimes the eye is a little dim, but the perspective is so clear that it gives that sense of rejoicing that when you are riding a lively horse, grips the heart; for your going is sure, your steed is strong and the sight of things is splendid.

To be placed on this mountain, the mount of God's own righteousness, you need to enter through the Park gates. There is no monetary charge, but you have to leave your travel documents there. That includes the passport to self-rule, the driver's licence for taking any road you like, and the identification disk, which is re-issued, under a new name.

That name specifies forever who you are: a servant of the Lord, a child of God and a secured soul on mission to eternity. All your ways now have scent and savour, for they are sent ways, ways drawn from the sentences of the word of God, spiritual ways.

To be sure, you may slip and do damage: there is no insurance on this mountain, as if you were a robot; but if you DO slip, you are likely to find it an expensive process, like a batsman who through carelessness lets down his team, so that a match is lost. You have so to grow in the light and to learn the stability of your footing on its assured ways, that slipping is not so much a way of life as as signal to seek the Lord, like a coach, to improve your play.

Today, we plan to consider together the unfolding of history, whether for the mount or the chasm, as seen in Revelation 5. It includes the half-hour delay when one of the coming chapters of life on earth is released for human consumption, as seen in Revelation 8; the moment of destiny when Christ returning, brings judgment to the hearts of those who do not know Him and have no excuse for not doing so, as in Revelation 1, so that they mourn, and finally, the seal of everlasting joy which covers the heads of those who are His, pilgrims in the light, as seen in Isaiah 51:11.

I HALF AN HOUR THAT WEIGHS

It is a matter of time, and a message of eternity that the New Year brings. Time ? Take the time when there was to be seen a monumentally important scroll in heaven, and though many were the godly persons about, none could open it. It seemed that history itself, the tasks of time, would be voided. Too terrible, too weighty were the onsets to come; who would even dare, or care for that matter, to have them shown ? None could open the seals on the scroll of time.

Then after a time, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb, the self-sacrificing offering for sin, that altar for sin who deletes its guilt in death for His people like a magnificent Physician in chief, takes the scroll and breaking the seals, lets the history which flows then on as Revelation's words proceed, take its place. It is traced, and how much is judgment, but so much is testimony to truth and a testament of courage and faith. These two sides co-exist, their topographies in space very different, one in the raging waters of the chasm, the other on the lustrous heights of the mountain of God's own righteousness, entered at the Park entrance, at Calvary, by faith which being given the new site for eternal life, begins living it at once! (II Cor. 5:17ff., I John 3:9).

When we come to the 7th seal on that scroll, and it is opened, there is a pause for half an hour, heaven itself observing this silence. It envelops not only the death of the Lamb, on which all hope and the gift of righteousness rests, but that of those to come who overcome in faith, as they tread their mount and resist the assault on it made by doctrines of devils, legions of the lost and the furies of the maddened. This we see in the overview, the survey in Revelation 12:

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,
and they did not love their lives to the death.
Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them."

As we see in Revelation 12, Satan in his adversative adversities does not stop even at the endeavour to invade heaven (12:7); but thrown to earth (12:9), he seeks to scurry up the mount.

Just after the record of the half hour silence, however, we read of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascending up, and realise that both good and evil, tribulation and consummation of good are to come. Indeed, amidst the judgments, at the 7th trumpet which announces a further group of events following the seventh seal, we read the magnificent words encompassing what is to come and revealing the divine purpose:

"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ,
and He shall reign forever and ever!"

God sees past the trembling to the truth, the prelude to the end (11:15). Indeed, Rev. 6 reveals saints in heaven awaiting the divine consummation, but they must wait till each one on earth is found. Rev. 7 reveals the array of those coming triumphantly through these trials to the benign blend of mercy and peace with the Lamb, and then, the half-hour silence portends the approach of ultimate judgments and ultimate rescues to divine mercy.

Despite such judgments, in various phases, some exposed in Rev. 6 and 8, many are far in heart from what is to be revealed. As the end approaches, Revelation 9 reveals more of the combination of natural disasters as man misuses this earth and divine judgments, as God exacts His fee for cheating; but the carnage continues for the lost, the "rest of mankind" outside the sealed ones, these " did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts."

One of the chief of the last named is that of the name of Christ, used to buttress the imaginary christs which men constantly make,

	without the supernatural,
	without miracles,
	without regenerative power,
	the clown,
	the revolutionary,
	the liberal democrat

and so forth. Pinching truth, they make cramped christs, who do not convict them of sin, since they have made them after their own image, as if they were not afraid to play God!

The silence as these things are in view is very terrible, pregnant with grief, courage, faith, sacrifice and judgment. It is well to imitate it in one's own life, in prayer, seeking and praying for the Lord as the sun of His righteousness shines on His mount, and one pursues one's way.

2 THE MOMENT THAT SPEAKS

But the time comes when the chasm is invaded by light, and its raging waters are seen in their putridity. You see this in the initial thrust of Revelation 1, where Christ is revealed as "the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead and the ruler over the kings of the earth."

Now the questions asked are answered, the faith required is consummated in sight, and the continuous prevarications and procrastinations of unbelief, whether formalistically disguised or direct, are exposed. Now it is like the case where there was a last rocket ship to leave the earth, in the novel, Moment of Truth, by Storm Jamieson. WHO is to take that place ? In fact, there has been ample room for centuries, but many have not taken it, and now their post in the chasm is no longer notional, for it is clear and sure, and cannot be denied. Since to deny the Lord, to be ashamed of Him, is to have Him ashamed of you, at this point, many in one moment, see their position, and wail.

Hearts hardened, they find themselves paralysed in pollution, and though it is possible someone may call even then, yet the curtain is falling, and life's love lost, becomes the greatest loss of all, for its Lord is that love, and without Him, there is neither love nor vitality.

It is the depths. It is better to consider this moment on this side, now, rather than finding experimentally the searing of time, then!

Thus we read in Revelation 1:7: "Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen." In II Thessalonians 1, you read of the fiery results of incandescent life without Christ, as in Revelation 19 of His coming, the Word of God, to confront and to judge, according to truth (cf. Romans 2). You can burn up rubbish (Matthew 3:12), but life is not for burning. It is for godly administration, with the very energy of God available in man reconstructed and active in and for Him (Ephesians 3:16, Romans 8:10-11).

3 THE MISSION THAT SMILES

Such then is the portent which this very year may carry, or any year and the way may not be long before it comes. Around 2000 years ago, Peter warned us NOT to be impatient, NOT to think that the Lord is delaying a long time, since a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. He has His own tasks, and there is no stipulation as to the time of His coming, but much concerning the signals which will indicate it, as He declares, seen in the text of Luke 21. These things are notoriously present, far more than most realise (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Now we come to the people of the Mount, the children of the Rock, who stand on it and do not fail, the smitten rock from which the everlasting waters of life proceed (cf. John 7:37, 4:14ff.).

What does Isaiah declare of these ? It is this:

"For the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

And come to Zion with singing,

With everlasting joy on their heads.

They shall obtain joy and gladness;

Sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

This comes in the prelude to that famed Isaiah 52-53, where the Lord as light to the Gentiles no less than to the Jew (Isaiah 49:6, 42:6) is to be found by those who believe Him and in Him.

And what do we find in Isaiah 51:6, but the fact that in the Lord's own time, when time as we know it comes to pass away, it is HE who REMAINS for man, and it is in HIM that security rests, who as Maker, provides past the made, for those who are His.

"Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look on the earth beneath.
For the heaven will vanish away like smoke,
The earth will grow old like a garment,
And those who dwell in it will die in like manner;
But My salvation will be forever,
And My righteousness will not be abolished."

Unabolished! There is rest for man. Life is meant to last past time and into eternity. Those who miss it in the chasm of sin and reject God's own mount of righteousness, not pilgrims of light but denizens of darkness, these find the lack of the new passport fatal.

In the New Year, be assured that you have your passport past time; for the time for pollution is like all disaster, an enduring horror; but this life instead, it is enduring by its very nature. It is the antidote to death (John 6:47ff.), the roll-call past mortality (II Timothy 1:8ff., Romans 8:29), the deep call of the Spirit of God to the children of God (Romans 8:16), brought home (Matthew 13:30,43) now in spirit, then with spirits clothed with everlasting life made manifest (II Corinthians 5:1ff.) in the eternal body prepared in heaven to replace this portable ‘tent’. A New Year ? It is a new era, coming to its consummation in Christ. Rejoice therefore, and keep on rejoicing (I Thessalonians 5).

Happy new year! happy new life!