Psalm 39:4-5, 7-8
People have always been interested in knowing when the end of the world will come, and when judgment day will be upon us. During the Middle Ages, the approaching end of the first Christian millennium, around the year 1000 A.D., aroused a high level of apocalyptic expectation.
In the sixteenth century, the Lutheran Reformers were quite certain that the end of the world was at hand – although they refrained from specific date-setting. But the early eighteenth-century German Lutheran Biblical scholar Johann Albrecht Bengel predicted – on the basis of calculations mostly from the book of Daniel – that the world as we know it would come to an end in 1836.
Closer to home, here in America, the Baptist preacher William Miller proclaimed to his followers in the first half of the nineteenth century that 1843 would be the year of Christ’s return. When 1843 came and went with no such occurrence, the prediction was adjusted to the following year, 1844. Of course, that year came and went, too.
In our own time, interest in knowing when the end will come is not subsiding. Radio preacher Harold Camping began predicting in 2005, on the basis of his own decoding of Scriptural prophecy, that the world would be destroyed on October 21, 2011. It didn’t happen, and he went off the air.
Many with such a curiosity in our post-Christian age no longer limit themselves to fanciful interpretations of the Bible as their source material. For a while, the ancient calendar of the Mayan Indians was interpreted by some as indicating that the end of time will come in the year 2012. That didn’t happen, either.
Those of a more scientific bent have wondered if an asteroid called XF11 will come so close to the earth in the year 2028 – October 26 to be exact – that it will initiate a destructive geological cataclysm. I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that one.
But it’s also possible that the end of the world as we know it will be ushered in sooner than that, if the scary warnings we are currently hearing on the news about World War III possibly starting, involving several nuclear powers, come true.
Now, what are we to make of all of this? Jesus – together with the prophets before him, and the apostles after him – did tell us that the world in which we live will come to an end. Jesus also promised that he will return on the last day, to judge the living and the dead.
All of these human efforts to know when the end will come, can be seen as an indication that people do in fact have a sense of the truthfulness of what Jesus predicts. They know, deep down, that the earth as we now experience it will not endure forever.
And people also wonder what will happen to them when the world comes to an end. If we survive until the last day, what then? Will we be snuffed out, together with the world and everything in it? Or will we live on? And if we do live on, what will that be like?
And where will we stand in regard to God and his judgments? If our life and conduct are going to be weighed and sifted in the presence of our Creator, how will it come out for us in the end?
These questions occupy the thoughts of all of us, to a greater or lesser degree. I’m quite sure that all of us, at one time or another, have thought about the end of days, and about the end of our days.
Perhaps we perceive that the more we know about these things – or the more we think we know – the less scared we will be as we face the future.
But Jesus also says, “of that day and hour no one knows.” Only God is truly aware of his own timetable for such events.
So, all the efforts of human ingenuity, and of the human imagination, to plumb the depths of this mystery, will come to nothing. When the end does come, no one will have predicted it – beyond a general awareness that this day was coming.
The high level of interest in mastering the details of end-time prophecy that can be seen among many people in Christian history, and among many people today, is, I would suggest, a distraction – a dangerous distraction – from the things that humanity is really supposed to be thinking about.
As far as the visible second coming of Christ is concerned, it is enough for us to know in faith that this will happen, according to the Lord’s own schedule. Christ the Lord will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead. His kingdom will have no end.
We confess this in the Creed, as we should. But for now, while we await the final consummation, it’s much more important for us to consider the ways in which Christ already comes to us here and now – while we are still living in this world, and while this world still survives.
The question of where we will stand at the end of the world – as far as God’s judgments are concerned – is intimately connected to the question of where we stand with God right now. In today’s Introit, from Psalm 39, King David reflects on his standing with God, and on his standing in the broad sweep of world history.
It’s remarkable to listen to what was said here by someone who was, at the time, a king, and an important person. In unpretentious honesty, David chants these sober and humble words to his God:
“Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.”
During his lifetime, David was one of the most important men on the face of the earth. He was a king over God’s people, and a prophet.
But David knew that his short and fleeting life was as nothing before God, in his eternal glory. David’s human greatness, such as it was, would evaporate before the greatness of God.
David knew that when he would someday stand before the Lord, his short and relatively insignificant life had better stand for something of enduring value.
And he knew that if his life were to have something of enduring value about it, this would have to come from God. So, that’s why he went on to say:
“And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You. Deliver me from all my transgressions.”
As David looked to the end – the end of his short life, and the end of the world – he looked with hope in God’s mercy. The ways in which God would use David, and the ways in which God would glorify his own name through David, were the only things that would give meaning and purpose to David’s life.
Now, if King David knew this to be true of himself, how much more should each of us know this to be true of us? “Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.” That includes me, and you.
In and of yourself, you are vapor: a breath that disappears into the air when it is exhaled, or a mist that disappears in the morning sun. Your personal worldly successes, from the perspective of eternity, will be as nothing.
At the end, when you stand before the throne of judgment, do not expect God to be interested in a proud recounting of your accomplishments. If your hope then is not in God and in his merciful promises, you will have no hope.
But as with David, your hope can be in God. You can face the future with confidence. You can know where you will stand with God on judgment day, because you can know where you stand with God now.
David beseeches the Lord, “Deliver me from all my transgressions.” For the sake of the promised and coming Christ – “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” – God heeded that prayer, and granted that request.
David’s sins – which were great and many – were like quicksand, pulling him down into damnation. By his own moral and spiritual strength he could not extract himself from that fate.
But God, for Christ’s sake, reached out his hand, and pulled David up from that muck and mire. God, for Christ’s sake, gave David a chance for a new beginning, and a fresh start. And God did this for him over and over again.
You, too, can be sure that God will hear you, when you speak such a prayer from your heart: “Deliver me from all my transgressions.”
For the sake of Christ – David’s Savior and yours, who now has come – you are delivered from your transgressions. God lifts you up from the muck and mire of your sin, sets you down on the solid ground of Christ’s grace and righteousness, and calls and empowers you for a life of love and service that honors him.
With the joy of a conscience that has been set free from the fear of God’s wrath – by God’s free Spirit – you are now able to look toward the end with a peaceful heart. Of course, you still don’t know when Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. That day remains hidden from you, and from everyone.
But when your Savior does return visibly to this world, to usher in the culmination of all things, you can and will know, with the certainty of the faith that the Holy Spirit works in you, that he will claim you as his own.
As you wait for this last day, you do not wait alone. As a church – as the body of Christ – we wait together. And with God’s Word we build one another up in our most holy faith.
But what’s even more important to consider is the fact that Christ is also with us. He already comes to us, mystically and invisibly, to prepare us for his final, visible return, which will take place on the last day.
In this life, while it lasts, we are already guests in the Lord’s spiritual house. And he is our gracious and generous host. David says it this way, in Psalm 39:
“For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.”
Hidden under the earthly forms of human words, water, bread, and wine, Christ comes to us even now. He is with us, and we are with him.
When we speak of the Lord’s “second coming,” which we still await, we mean his second visible coming. We don’t mean to imply that Jesus is somehow locked away in a far distant place, separated from us and unable to be our companion in this life.
The number of times that the Lord has invisibly returned to the earth is far more than one or two. It is uncountable.
He comes again, to forgive us and save us, as many times as his gospel is proclaimed, and his absolution is pronounced. He comes again, to cleanse us and restore us, as many times as the sacrament of Baptism is administered.
And in particular, he comes again, to heal us and renew our hope, as many times as the sacrament of his body and blood is celebrated, and offered to his church.
It’s also true, of course, that those who partake of this Supper in hypocrisy and unbelief, without self-examination and repentance, and without faith in the words of Christ, do not receive a blessing from that participation. Yet those who commune in an unworthy manner do still have an encounter with Christ.
It’s the words of Christ that makes his body and blood to be present in the bread and wine, not the faith of the communicant. Therefore the unbelief of a hypocritical communicant doesn’t make the body and blood of Jesus go away.
But for such people, their encounter with Christ in the sacrament brings judgment upon them. St. Paul says in his First Epistle to the Corinthians that “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”
This is a foretaste of that final word of condemnation that the wicked and unbelieving masses of fallen humanity will hear when the Lord divides the nations before him, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.
But for those who, like David, have put their hope in the Lord, and in what he tells them, this sacrament is, rather, a foretaste of the final vindication and justification that will be ours, for the sake of Christ, on judgment day.
We know that Jesus will forgive us then, because Jesus does forgive us now. We will believe him then, and our hearts will be at peace then, because we believe him now, and our hearts are at peace now.
We are at peace with the Lord because of the Lord’s pardon, spoken from the cross of Jesus, and spoken to us here and now in the gospel and sacraments of Jesus.
We are forgiven because of the mercy of God, and not because of our achievements and successes. We are forgiven because of the mercy of God, in spite of our failures.
That’s how we live our life now, by faith, while this transient and temporary world remains. And that’s how we await the end of this world.
O God, our Help in ages past, Our Hope for years to come;
Be Thou our Guard while life shall last, And our eternal Home! Amen.