Pastor Marty Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:09PM This evening Evangelists Ernie and Karol Salinas were with us to share about their trip to Latvia. We appologise for the recording starting mid-sentence.
Pastor Marty Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:07PM This morning Evangelists Ernie and Karol Salinas were with us to share about their trip to Latvia. We appologise for the recording starting mid-sentence.
Pastor Marty Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 2:07PM Zechariah 14:8-11, 16-20; Romans 8:18-25. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 14, 2018.
We are taking time to see what the Bible has to say about the period of time that we call the Millennium. This is the promise throughout the Old Testament that God would deliver Israel and rule over the nations of the world through His righteous, anointed King, who will sit upon the throne of David. We are given a taste of this righteous King and his righteous kingdom in the Church. Jesus is our King and we obey his commands. However, the fulfillment of these Old Testament passages is about more than a metaphor for our current experience in Christ. It truly is about an earthly kingdom that will occur when Christ returns to earth. Thus, our current experience simply prepares us for that reality.
Now the Church has preached that Jesus is the coming King of kings for the last 2,000 years. It is clear that, though many people within the nations of the world have embraced Him, the governments of the world have no interest in Jesus being King over them. Not even the “Christian” nations in the West show any true desire for Christ to return and rule over them. Instead we keep doubling down on our own human wisdom and looking for anyone, someone, who will come along with better answers. In short the governments do not like the Savior that God has given and seek another savior, or an antichrist. Eventually God will allow them to have their wish. However, such a hope will be short lived. Jesus is destined to reign over the earth and His divine wisdom will usher in a new time of peace that the world has never known. Let’s continue our look at this 1,000 year kingdom and what it will be like.
Our first passage today will be in Zechariah 14. You will notice that the millennial passages in the Old Testament have a distinctive, Jewish flavor to them because the Israeli people will be re-gathered, and Christ will reign from Jerusalem over them and the world. You may remember Jesus speaking to His disciples in Matthew 19:28. He promised the Twelve, “In the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (NKJV)
However, the Millennium is not just about Israel. It is also about the nations of the world. Thus Zechariah speaks about the whole earth worshipping the Lord Jesus. Now, we should not expect that we will have church services exactly as we do now. However, neither should we expect that all cultures will have to adopt a Jewish-style service. This passage is not saying that we will have to follow the Old Testament laws on worship. Rather, it makes clear that there will be universal aspects of worship that all nations will do. In this case, all nations will gather once a year to celebrate the Feast of Booths (The last feast of the 7 feasts of the Lord, which is in the Fall). This is a super-corporate event. It leaves the question of what worship will be the other days of the year. I believe this passage leaves room for cultural differences, but also makes clear that Jesus will give some specific directions, much like Moses directed Israel in how God wanted them to worship Him.
We are told that there will be some big topographical changes to the area surrounding Jerusalem. Most of the area will be flattened like a plain. However, Jerusalem will be raised up above the plain. This topography actually will occur, but it also symbolizes God’s decree. All who approach the City of Jesus do so from a humble position and should have an attitude of worship. In verse 4 we are told that the Mount of Olives will be split in half as the Lord stands upon it. We are also told that water will flow out of the city of Jerusalem, some towards the Mediterranean Sea and some towards the Dead Sea. This actual water flow is also intended to symbolize what God is doing spiritually. His truth will flow towards the East and towards the West and fill the world. He will lift up Jerusalem and dispense the Life of God to the nations. Ezekiel 47 actually states that the waters that flow from Jerusalem will heal the Dead Sea so that fish swim in it and vegetation grows around it. It also states that the water will flow all year long. In the Pacific Northwest this may not sound like an important statement. In the Middle East this is a powerful statement. It will not just be a powerful spring river that is completely dry by the end of summer. Rather, it will flow continuously, making the land a land of milk and honey once again. Water shortage has been a big problem in the Near East for centuries. The fact that this land lacks water and would be barren without modern technology, despite clearly being bountiful during the times of Moses, points to the judgments of God. During the Millennium the land will be blessed and have plentiful water.
In verse 16 we see the worship of the Millennial Kingdom. The passage uses the term “survivors” for those who remain after the devastations of the Tribulation, and the Second Coming. Under the Beast and the False Prophet, the kings of the earth had gathered their armies against Jerusalem in order to destroy it, but now the nations will come up to worship rather than to attack. The Feast of Booths is also called the Feast of Tabernacles. In Ezekiel 45 we also see that the Feast of Passover will be observed. However, it does not say that the people of the earth will gather for it.
Some believers are bothered by the idea that at least some of the Jewish feasts will be reinstated and that sacrifices are described. Let’s remember that they are not Israel’s feasts. They were originally described as the Feasts of the Lord. Clearly, we will not be under the Old Covenant of the Law of Moses. However, there will be some symbolic rituals and memorial offerings that will function much like Christian Communion does today. We do not look to the juice and the bread as our salvation, but rather a celebration of what Christ did. Thus these feasts and their sacrifices will function the same way during the Millennial Kingdom. They will point to the work of Christ. We also should remember that there will be mortals as well as immortals on the earth in those days. Thus the sacrifices will also testify and remind the mortals of where their salvation lies. It lies in Jesus and His ability to atone for sins and to forgive them. This snapshot of global worship doesn’t imply that we will worship only once a year, but that there will be an annual global, worshipful, celebration.
The last part of our section brings up a hypothetical situation where the nation of Egypt might choose not to come to the feast. It describes the “blow” or punishment that Christ will give to any nation that refuses to come. They will lack rain in their country until they comply. This strikes me in two ways. On one hand it is clear that Christ means business and Egypt will have to comply, if they want their country to survive. However, on the other hand, there is no executing of rebels and military occupations either. There will be no tactics of the Antichrist, or the empires of this world, in play here. His response is both extremely powerful and yet extremely gracious. It reminds us of the punishment of a Father who does not wish to destroy a child, but rather to help them learn righteousness. This gives a picture of what the Bible means by the phrase ruling with a rod of iron. His commands will be unyielding and yet they will still be gracious, as is his character.
This concludes the passages that we are going to look at, which describe the Millennial period. However, I want to end today’s lesson by making this one last point from Romans 8:18-25. In this New Testament passage it refers to the time when Jesus returns to earth as the “hope” of all creation. Paul seems to personalize all of creation, as he describes its eager awaiting of this time. It is referred to as the revealing of the Sons of God. This is what the Apostle John spoke of in 1 John 3:2-3. “Beloved, now we are the children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” You and I presently do not look like “Sons of God,” which was a phrase used in the Old Testament for the angels. However, when we are resurrected and come with Christ from the clouds at His Second Coming, it will be made clear, or revealed, just who we really are. We need this personal revelation from time to time. Don’t forget what your destiny is and trade it for a bowl of beans in this life. The whole creation is groaning for deliverance and crying for you and I to be revealed for who we really are, the Sons of God.
We can look at this groaning and travailing of creation in a couple of ways. First the sentient parts of creation, angels and humans, literally groan and travail. The righteous angels and righteous men long for the Lord to come back and deliver the earth from the bondage of The Rebellion. However, there is also a symbolic groaning and travailing that we see in the earth itself, which is racked with quakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity. As we approach this blessed event, all of creation will groan more and more, louder and louder.
In verse 20 and following, it refers to the fact that the creation was subjected to futility. This word has the sense of something that has been perverted and lacks truth, or is devoid of the ability for good. This is the same word in Ecclesiastes used to translate the Hebrew, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Some versions also translate it “meaningless.” I believe that Paul has the curse from the Garden of Eden in mind. There Adam’s sin causes changes to the ability of the earth to produce. However, this curse was not intended to be forever. God’s punishment was given in the “hope” that it would one day be removed. Thus, we should not let the difficulties that we face today cause us to lose hope in the God who will one day lift this curse and celebrate the creation as it was meant to be with us. This is His promise to those who trust Him.
The freedom of the Sons of God will bring freedom to creation, just as the bondage of Adam, the son of God, brought bondage to creation. The Millennium is about Jesus, but it is also about His ability to bring forth the Sons of God. The righteous of every generation are those who put their faith in God. These will enjoy the glorious freedom of Christ as they are set free from death and this freedom will release freedom upon all of creation. Thus the Second Adam brings life where the First Adam brought death. May the Lord fill our hearts with faith even though we may not see these things now. It is the same Lord, who rose up from the dead and ascended into heaven to the right hand of the Father, who will set creation free from the bondage that it is currently under. Amen! Don’t squander another minute without turning towards Jesus in faith and trust. Give your life to Him and become a disciple of the greatest Master who ever lived, God Himself.
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Creation, Feasts of the Lord, Freedom, Hope, Millennium, Nations, Power, Revelation, Sons of God, The Curse, Worship Pastor Marty Monday, October 8, 2018 at 12:17PM Various Passages. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 7, 2018.
Last week we established from Revelation 20 that Christ will rule with the resurrected saints over the earth for 1,000 years. However, that passage gave us practically no description of what the millennium would look like. This is most likely because the rest of the Bible is full of descriptions of what the millennium will entail. Today we are going to go back into the Old Testament and fill in some of the picture of what we will experience as resurrected saints during this 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ upon this earth.
Of course, the real question is this. Where do you start? It is like swimming in the ocean. There is no way we can do justice to the multitude of passages that speak of the coming kingdom of God. So let me briefly summarize a few passages in this light. We could go back to Genesis 3 and see God’s promise to Eve that one of her seed would crush the serpent’s head. The idea is that the one who deceived them and tricked them out of paradise would eventually get his from a particular human. We could also look at Genesis 11 and 15, where God makes a covenant with Abraham. Basically God tells Abraham that all the nations of the earth will be blessed by what God does through Abraham’s offspring. There is also 2 Samuel 7 where God makes a covenant with David, promising that one of his offspring would sit on the throne of David forever. There is also Psalm 2 where God states that He has anointed a king who is to rule over the whole earth. Also, it is stated that the world will rebel against this choice and challenges people to put their trust in God’s king. Thus we see that God has a vested interest in helping mankind against Satan, our spiritual enemy. He has promised to bless the whole world by anointing a particular individual to be a righteous king over all the earth and crush the serpents head. This will be a king and a kingdom that lasts forever.
However, today we are going to start in the book of Isaiah, while keeping in mind this backdrop of promises that God has made to mankind. Here we will see that the Millennial rule of Christ is the promised hope that has been given to the saints of every century and will be established at His Second Coming.
Let’s start in Isaiah 2:1-4. Though the Old Testament does not explicitly state the name of the Messiah, we now know that it is Jesus. Of course Jesus is an anglicized transliteration of a Latin/Greek transliteration of a name that is either Hebrew or Aramaic in form. It would be something like Yeshua or Yoshua, but let’s not get sidetracked. All these prophecies are pointing towards Him. He is the one whom God has anointed King of all kings, Lord of all lords.
In our passage Isaiah describes this coming kingdom and states that it will be a global kingdom. The language is very clear with phrases like: “established on top of the mountains,” “exalted above the hills,” and “all nations shall flow to it.” Mountains and hills were often used as symbolic descriptions of kingdoms and empires. Powerful kingdoms were like mountains towering over the surrounding area, dominating it on every level. Later in Daniel 2, God gives Nebuchadnezzar a dream in which all the kingdoms of the world are crushed and smashed to pieces by a kingdom that is sent from God. This kingdom is described as a stone that is cut by God (without human hands) and grows to become a mountain that fills the whole earth.
Now, we are going to see throughout this study that a person can give everything in these passages a spiritual meaning and say that it is already fulfilled or still being fulfilled. Thus a person can say that Isaiah 2 and Daniel 2 are just talking about a spiritual kingdom, which is the Church today. Clearly the Church has spread to fill the whole earth, hasn’t it? I would say that there is a clear spiritual fulfillment of these passages, but that does not mean they will not be physically true as well. The same God who made humans composite beings of spirit and body, also works among us both spiritually and physically. When Jesus says in Luke 13:28, “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out,” he clearly envisions a day when this will happen. The plain sense of the passage is that Abraham and the others will be just as physical as those listening to Jesus (that is, a resurrection will have occurred). Also in Acts 1:6, the disciples ask Jesus if he will restore the kingdom to Israel at this time. Jesus does not tell them that the kingdom is only spiritual and will never be physical again. Rather, he tells them it is not for them “to know times and seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.” Thus, there is going to be a day when Israel and Jerusalem will be the hub of the world and all the nations will flow to this place on earth where Jesus will be physically reigning.
Verse 4 makes it clear that it will involve a judgment of the nations. Of course, we saw this in Revelation 19 and chapter 20. However, Jesus does not just judge the nations. He also judges between them. Think of all the disputes that have built up through the years between many different ethnic groups. Those who miraculously survive the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Christ will come before Christ. There he will separate the sheep from the goats. Those who are allowed to come into the millennial kingdom will also have long standing disputes with other settled by Jesus. In fact, it is said that he will rebuke many nations. Often our bloody feuds with others are nothing but pride masquerading as piety. Jesus will put an end to these disputes.
He will be so effective that we are told that there will be no more war. The nations of the world will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” It is clear that the United Nations will not stop war in its present condition. It also beggars belief that it could be reformed in any way that would get rid of war. However, God promises that Messiah will be able to cause war to cease, and not just for a few years. The only hope for a world that rejects the One Anointed by God is to put a “superman” in power who will represent the greatest wisdom of man. Whether this is some kind of artificial intelligence or a combined link with “ascended masters,” we cannot know. Yet, that really is the only path forward for a world in rebellion that refuses to repent. This man who will supposedly have all the answers will pretend to want peace, but in the end the God of heaven describes him as a beast. Mankind cannot force peace upon the world. Only the Spirit of God can bring it. I find it interesting that the United Nations has a sculpture given to it by Russia in which a naked man is hammering a sword into a plowshare. It seems to give tribute to the Bible, but in truth it represents a humanistic rebellion. Yes, mankind has no problem with the goal of no war. However, they will attempt to accomplish it through humanist means, not divine. Thus the naked man represents the Greek ideal of mankind doing in the flesh the wisdom of its mind.
It is also easy to get stuck on the terminology used. Yes, we do not typically use swords anymore (or not nearly as much). However, the point is clear. During the millennium mankind will recycle all the weapons of war (tanks, missiles, guns, etc.) and use them to make farming equipment.
Next let’s go to Isaiah 11:1-2, 6-9. Here we see the wisdom of the Messiah on display. In verses 1-2 the image of a menorah (the seven-branched candlestick in the temple) is brought to mind. The seven lights were a picture of God’s complete wisdom giving complete light to the world. Each of these seven lights is given a name which makes even clearer that the source of the light (knowledge/truth) is the Spirit of God Himself. No matter how wise mankind becomes or how great an artificial intelligence we create, when we cast off God’s word and forge a path of our own, we have become fools and our path is folly. Jesus was and will be successful because He operates from a wisdom that has its source in God. Notice that verses 3-4 highlight his judgment. He will not judge by the sight of his eyes or the hearing of his ears. No one will be able to manipulate him, and he does not have an ulterior motive. Rather, He judges with righteousness and equity, which is bad news for the wicked and great news for the righteous.
In verses 6-9 we are told that the animal kingdom will no longer be deadly either. Just as humans were not created to kill one another, so animals were not originally made to destroy one another. When sin entered the world, it brought a curse and drastic changes to the world itself. Scripture tells us that the whole of creation groans in expectation for the manifestation of the Sons of God. The wisdom of Christ will turn back the effects of sin and the curse. Isaiah gives a list of things that we would not leave alone together in this world because one of them would kill the other: a wolf with a lamb, a leopard with a young goat, a calf with a young lion, a child near a cobra’s hole, or sticking its hand in a viper’s den. All of these things would strike fear into the owner or parent’s heart. Yet, they will lie down in peace together. Their nature will have been changed. How Jesus will accomplish this is not described, but it seems that, if these things were a judgment of God upon wicked mankind, such judgments are simply being lifted by God Himself. We are also told that the lion will eat hay like an ox. Whether such is possible in today’s conditions is irrelevant. The whole point is that the nature of things is going to change. The statement may be just as much about the hay itself as it is about the lion.
Now let’s go to Isaiah 35:1-7. Here we see descriptions of the desert places blooming with life. Again, we could spiritualize this whole passage to be a blooming of a spiritual desert. When Jesus came to Israel, it was spiritually a desert, but he caused it to bloom with spiritual life. The gospel has the ability to bring life into the most spiritually dead of lives. Again, this would be true, but there is also a natural aspect to this as well. Through his knowledge and divine power we will see the curse upon Adam turned back. There will be an increase in the fertility of the earth and an increase in places where water will “burst forth in the wilderness.” Amos 9:13 says it this way, “’Behold the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.” Many skeptics have scoffed over the years at the idea of Israel being a “land flowing with milk and honey.” However, it looks like it does because the land is under a curse, much like the whole earth is under a curse. In that day, the curse on the land and on the earth will be lifted and we will know fruitfulness as we have never known.
Verses 3 through 6 speak to the condition of mankind that has struggled under the heavy load of disease and poverty. These things will become a memory as Messiah heals. Some think that this only points to the miracles that Jesus did when he walked on the earth in the past. However, the miracles he did then were so that we could recognize that he really is the Messiah. When he comes again, he will have just as much healing power as he did before.
Just think that the saints of every age will be resurrected so that they can participate in this exciting period of humanity’s existence. I will close our time today by giving a reminder. This is just a small part of the plan and hope that God has put before us. We will take some more time next week to keep looking at this amazing period called the millennial reign of Christ. However, even then what can we say about the New Heavens and the New Earth that lay beyond it? Christians are to be those who live today in the light of this coming kingdom because its king is already living in our hearts. Is Christ living within you by the Holy Spirit of God? Turn from any wickedness, turn towards Christ, and put your trust in Him. Then you will be blessed by God with all these things.
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Christ, Environment, Healing, Jesus, Judgment, Messiah, Millennium, Second Coming, The Curse, War, Wisdom