John 1:35-39, Revelation 22:12-21

 

I.          I have two cats at home.  their personalities are as different as night and day.

A.         Miss Issy is a 20 year old half-breed Siamese, who makes friends with everyone who comes through the door.  So when Carol Wilkins comes over to feed them when I am out of town, Issy loves to see her.

1.         The second cat is 4 years old; her name is Katrita, and she is a Katrina evacuee from New Orleans.  She is–well, she is antisocial!  Yesterday when Carol came through the door, Katrita was waiting and she was disappointed not to see me coming home.  She walked across the room and turned and hissed at Carol!

 

II.          Jesus’ wonderful promise to each of us is, “‘I am coming soon!’”

A.         In the final chapter of Revelation, this provides a fitting epilogue for Scripture.

1.         There is someone in each of our lives, from whom we long to hear, “I am coming soon.”

2.         Just as the father of the prodigal son waited and watched from his door, never giving up hope for some word of his son.

 

III.         God is revealed to us as the One who keeps coming back to us.

A.         “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God; I am the one who is and who was and who is to come. I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no other God’” (Revelation 1:7-8).

 

B.         First of all we see a God who returns to us as Creator:

1.         In the first Garden God chose to walk in the garden in the cool of the evening with the two people He had given life to and to enjoy fellowship with them.

2.         God comes to us in the birth of babies, in the gift of new life in the spring time

a.         We experience his  re-creative act, in death and the resurrection of the dead.

3.         In the 21st  chapter of this final book, God says, "’I am the God who makes all things new.'" 

a.         What would you like to see made new in your life?

 

C.        God comes to us as a parent and as a lover:

1.         The most overpowering imagery of this is through the prophet Hosea, where God is in the role of the female lover, as well as a mother,         

a.         "'When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son... it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms,   (11:1-2)  but they did not know that I healed them)...How can I give you up, O Ephraim!.’”

2.         So God promises to re-enter the wilderness  'to heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely'" (14:4).

3.         Christina Rossetti, in her sonnet "Echo," writes of the dream of the lover who returns:               

a.         "Come to me in the silence of the night;  Come in the speaking silence of a dream;  Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright  As sunlight on a stream;  Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years."

 

4.         We want a God who  always comes back to us as a parent and as our lover, particularly if we had a parent or mate who abandoned us or walked out.

 

D.        The psalmist says that God also presents himself  to us in the role of a judge, which surprisingly, is really good news.

1.         "He comes to judge  the earth with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth"          

2.         This will be an occasion for singing for joy (96:13)!

3.         because God’s purpose in judging the world is so that you and I  may experience God's total forgiveness and be restored fully to his grace.

4.         To come as judge in the Hebrew lit means "to bring our wages." our final reward, as in the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

a.         Have you ever gone deep-sea fishin? Out on the California coast, or up in Oregon in the fishing towns, the birds know exactly when the fishing boats come in. The seal gulls, pelicans, even the shore birds wait on the piers, or they follow the commercial or sport fishing vessels back past the breakwater to where they tie up at their moorings. They are waiting for their wages– the fisher folk to clean their catch and toss the entrails, the heads, the tails back into the sea. Then there is a frenzy as the birds go at it!

5.         All the nations, prophesy the later prophets like Isaiah and Micah, “shall see your light, O Lord, as you come, and they shall flock to your light."

a.         "The Lord will arise upon you" (60:3,2).

 

IV.        It follows naturally that the word “come” should be a favorite saying of Jesus as well as a favorite saying in our church.

A.         When he meets his first two disciples, Andrew and Nathanael,  they want to know where he lives, the Lord replies simply, "'Come and see.'" (John 1:46)

1.         "Come," is both an invitation and a command.

2.         The first week of a bicycle trip into Northern Ireland, on a very rainy day such as you know so well in Arkansas, I was standing outside a small Spar grocery (something like a Quik-Stop), and a man stopped to engage me in conversation. He said, “Come to my house for tea. I live 3 miles up the highway in Swatragh in County Derry. I could see that “No,” was not an option. “I’m going home to put the kettle on; you will enjoy meeting my wife Pauline.” When I resumed my very wet bike ride one and a half hours later, now nice and warm, it was only after promising I would phone Dennis and Pauline when I reached my destination that day, and that I would exchange Christmas cards with them.

3.         Jesus approaches the woman at the well, Zaccheus, the dead Lazarus in his grave, and to all of these he says, "'Come!'" --an invitation and a summons, a command!

4.         All of this as a prelude to his incredible promise in John 14, "’I am going to prepare a place for you...I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.'"       

 

V.         So it is that this final book of the Bib le picks up on the favorite theme of our Lord in his earthly ministry.  Appropriately, the last word of Jesus and the Last word of Humankind is, “‘Come!’”

A.         To any of us who read this book of Revelation, Jesus promises a wonderful blessing! Two invitations are given in this concluding scene which now takes place in the new creation, the new earth.

                        (page 2)

1.         The first invitation is addressed to the risen Christ, the lamb of God., an invitation to hasten his return,

2.         "Come on down to the new earth, we are ready for you; we are looking for you, as your lover, as your bride.”

3.         So that this book ends as it opens, with a promise that He is returning:

a.         (first chapter)  "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood...Behold, he is coming w the clouds, and every eye will see him"

4.         A hurricane had struck the state of Florida.  People were huddled together in the shelter. An old Baptist preacher was praying with great oratorical effects in the midst of this violent storm, crying out, "Send us the spirit of the children of Israel, the children of Moses, the children of the Promised Land, the children of Daniel in the lion’s den, Shadrack,  Meschach and Abendego in the fiery furnace..." At this, a younger impatient Floridian with less oratory but more directness interrupted with his own succinct prayer, "Lord, don't send nobody. Come yourself. This ain't time for no children." (adapted Parables, 1/87).

5.         I think one definition of hell might be that it is a place or a condition where you are waiting and waiting for an eternity, and you know no one is coming, no one is coming back to you.

a.         One of Robin William best films is What Dreams May Come, You may recall that Robin plays a character Chris who died after his two children were killed in a tragic accident. Christ finds himself romping with his dog in an artistic, surreal paradise. But his guardian angel, played by Cuba Gooding, lets him know that his beloved wife Annie has turned to drugs, she commits suicide and goes to a Dante-styled Hell. Chris says he must come to her in Hell and bring her out. No one has ever returned from Hell, the angel tells Christ. But Christ would rather be in Hell with Annie than in heaven all alone.

6.         To the congregation in Laodicea, one of the persecuted churches in Asia Minor in the first century, Jesus promises, "'I stand at the door and knock; if any of you hear my voice and opens the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me'" (3:20).

7.         This coming will not be a delayed, or prolonged process like those returning from Iraq, or the way you an d I sometimes wait to come home again,  but carries a sense of urgency and of the shortness of time...

a.         Paul says, our Lord will arrive "like a thief in the night."

8.         We want to say  to a new pastor, “Come...all things are ready.” [PAUSE]

a.         Dare we say it to Christ today?  (Matthew 22:14)

 

B.         The second invitation here in the epilogue of Revelation is an invitation from Jesus to ALL people, to all nations.

1.         The final word Jesus utters is his invitation, "'Come,'" to the person who still thirsts in his or her soul and heart, Jesus offers himself as the thirst quenching Water of Life,  flowing from under the throne of God on the new earth.  (page 3)

2.         This is not an invitation which is fashionable in Presbyterian churches. Have you ever heard a call issued from the pulpit in this church to the truly lost? ...

a.         I heard it this past weekend at the Salvation Army College in Atlanta.

b.         In their lovely chapel the Salvationists have a table which they call the holiness table, where people may go to pray alone.

c.         Or the invitation may be given to come to the mercy seat, which is a kneeling bench beside the table at the front.

            (page 3)

(1)        There you may go to pray and have others come to pray with you to encourage you, to help you in your re-commitment to Christ Jesus.

d.         Perhaps our whole church family should come to the mercy seat!  come and see what we are doing in this church today. This is a new and exciting place to be. We have a new mission, a new vision!

3.         French theologian Jacques Ellul, in his bk on the Apocalypse, believes that we come where there is only love, exclusively, perfectly love, here in the new creation, where there is no authority, no submission, only the energy of life, the totality of God with God's own people.

4.         "Come," even to Christ’s table, is and must be a word of grace,

a.         At the same time it is a warning to those who chose to ignore this great invitation.

5.         Ellul declares,  "God would suffer an irreparable loss if (humanity) were lost (God could also no longer be himself since he would no longer be love and his love would have absolutely failed" (p. 231).

 

C.        Let our greeting to one another, our blessing and our benediction, our final word, be "Come, Lord Jesus!"  Amen.              (page 4)