Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 41)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 7 – How the Bible Describes Truth
Putting Together Images (continued)
For those who would trust in the Lord there was a far different outcome. Jeremiah goes on to say in the passage started above:
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
And whose trust is the Lord.
For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8
The contrast is striking: bush in a desert versus tree by a stream. “Which do you want to be?” asks Jeremiah. Of course, he’s urging a move to the spiritual orientation. And Jesus picks up the same theme in the Gospels. As a result of the resurrection, the temple of God was no longer to be the stone structure in Jerusalem, but rather the body of believers in Messiah. But a Christian who put his trust in that temple of believers would eventually be in just as bad a shape as the Jew who kept looking to the stone structure. This because that body of believers that one can see is flesh.
Even if Jesus should appear to us one day in the flesh, wouldn’t that just put us in a faith quandary? Who would we trust: the God we could see (Jesus in the flesh) or the God we couldn’t (the invisible Father in heaven)? No one can serve two masters. In Jesus’ first coming there was no conflict, for He came not to reign but to serve as a human being. He sought to downplay that He was the Messiah until the resurrection because it was only the resurrection that would reveal the true nature of Messiah’s role. How much more was it necessary to conceal the fact that God was walking around in the flesh! In the Second Coming, however, Jesus comes in “the glory of His Father,” meaning, of course, a divine, and not human, presence. We will say more about this later. The important point here is that a physical, human Second Coming of Jesus would present us with a dilemma of choice between focusing on the Father and the Son while a spiritual coming allows them to be what they eternally are – One.
Therefore, we have seen that the contrasting images are understood as referring to the contrasting ways the Second Coming will strike people. And the question of, “How do I make it strike me correctly?” is dealt with in other parables. The one that rounds out Matthew 24 and the three that comprise Matthew 25 have a common element. That is, what happens at the moment of arrival is determined by what happens before it. To put it simply, the more righteously one lived prior to the Lord’s coming the better the reward one would find. This is perfectly consistent with all we’ve been taught from the Bible. Righteous living is rewarding – both in this life and the one to come.
What we have said about the parables the Lord told in Matthew 24-25 in referring to His Second Coming does not, of course, exhaust their meaning. There is much richness of thought waiting to be mined. But then what exposition of the kingdom parables in Matthew 13 ever exhausted their meaning? Won’t there always be more to learn from them? Our purpose has been to show that since Jesus used spiritual language – parables – to explain His Second Coming, then we ought to understand Him spiritually and not force His words into some physical mold they were never intended to fit.
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