The Lord is at hand

April 23rd 2023

Our gentleness, brothers and sisters, our “sweet moderation in the face of adversity”, that we talked about last week, must be known to all men. Not simply the other Saints with whom we share a pew. Not only those in this life that we can go to in our times of trouble and temptation, that we know with no shadow or shade of doubt that they will make an appeal to heaven for us on our behalf. Not only must our refusal to retaliate, our slowness in making a judgment until we hear all sides of an issue, our patience towards others in their sins, and our willingness to set our rights aside to better show the people in our life that Jesus Christ did the exact same thing…not only must our, as The Apostle wrote in Greek…our EPIEIKES be known to those who will one day join us in the presence of the King of the Universe, Jesus Christ…but it must be known to all men.

But it must be said, before we understand what it means for “all men” to know our reasonableness…the other believers that we have enveloped and integrated into our lives must know it as well. Those who have cried with us, have fought with us, have wrestled over Scripture with us, have hugged us as we mourned, have not moved as we struggled with a certain truth about God that they have long since come to accept. We must have other Christians in our life to sharpen us, support us, care for us, cry with us, and take joy with us. We must have other blood-bought Saints standing to our left and to our right, each of them with the Bible firmly in their hand and everything that comes out of their mouth and out of their life firmly rooted within the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. We must go to these other Saints for help. In the mundane things of life and in the extreme things of life. They are closer than family, they are closer than human blood, because they have been bought and adopted by divine blood. They are our heavenly family, each of them holding rank within the multitude of multitudes from every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation (Rev. 7:9), who will, on a day beyond soil and sword, raise their voices with us and in a heavenly chorus singing chords and melodies beyond anything a human has ever written or sang, we will, stand before a sea of glass glittering as crystal in the light of the eternal Son, and in the midst of His heavenly throne room (Rev. 4:4) with flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder proceeding from Him…we will, with one voice shout aloud “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:10). And when we do so…when those who have walked this Earth a thousand generations before us, join with us…and with those who will walk the Earth a thousand Generations from now, when all of us adopted sons and daughters sing a song of celebration to our Lord, the very angels themselves will echo our praise as they sing and shout: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

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We must let our gentleness be known, our forbearance, our fair-mindedness, be known to the other Saints whom our God has chosen to intertwine our lives with. But that is not all. Our verse this morning, says that our “kindliness” our “sweet reasonableness” our “gentleness” must be known to “all men”.

The Saint and the sinner, the found and the lost. Those who have lived their life in abject opposition to the things of God…must, brothers and sisters, must be able to see our “patience while being mistreated”, our “considerate spirit” …our gentleness.

This World, if we have not since noticed it…is hungry. It is aching. It is in pain as its bowels groan and moan for food and truth and meaning and love. They have sought after the empty calories of sexual gratification, entertainment, and social justice, and have refused to admit it has left them wanting. 

More and more they seek after, more power, more prestige, more influence, more men, more women, more children, more money, more entertainment…all of which will leave them with nothing but the rotten ash stained hearts that always comes from chasing after desire.

They, being fellow image bearers of God, hunger with God-created hungriness…for justice and truth. But, being outside of God, they are quick to assume they themselves, within their own power, their own strength and their own intellect, are full able to solve it. “OR” they may say, “an individual is too small, too weak, to bring about the justice and truth which satisfies the soul…this is why it must be a communal and societal effort. They seek the culture to bring them truth. The culture to bring them meaning and love and acceptance. They scream and foam at the mouth, they riot in the streets, burning down police stations, looting business, and cry aloud with one voice that if society is unable to bring about the hunger satisfying truth and justice that they so desire…then they will bring society down around them.

This is what is at stake dear friends. We are witnessing, through the screens of our phones, the death of a culture. And just as a body reaches its last few moments on Earth, and begins sending signals out to its extremities in a vain attempt to do anything it can to stay alive…so does a culture. We are watching, in 4K high definition, the death spasms of America. 

We are seeing children taught that their ancestors were fish; that men can be women, and that women can be men. That humans have no inherent value beyond self.

We are seeing men dissect their genitals, so that other men can do evil and perverted things to satisfy themselves with it.

We are seeing billionaire corporations endorsing homosexuality.

We have politicians stoking racism.

We, America, have only existed for 247 years, and have been at war for 229 of them.

We have thrown away more food than we consume, and we consume more food than any other Country on the planet.

We have grown men with breast implants teaching children it's ok for boys to get married to other boys.

We have 80 year old billionaire oligarchs puppeteering our government and stealing elections from the people they swore to obey. 

We indulge in every sort of substance we can think of, numbing our senses to reality, and then legalizing that which can numb them even more.

We encourage prostitution. We encourage pedophilia. We…America….spends 3 Billion dollars a second, on average, on pornography. We have an entire generation of teenagers dropping out of school to make millions selling their bodies to strangers on the internet…and then they are applauded and encouraged by our perverted culture.

We have killed, murdered, dissected, destroyed, and dissolved in acid… over 63 million children ..and then sold their body parts to the highest bidder. Hitler ain’t got nothing on America’s numbers.

We are a blood soaked, death loving, arrogant, prideful, perverted, culture, begging God to rain His holy fire down upon us.

But still…all of them…every pornographer, every homosexual, every self righteous bigot, every drunk, every abortionist, all of them…must be able to see our reasonable, moderate, gentle and considerate spirit.

Our gentleness must be known to all men.

We must not lose our patience with them, when they call us homophobic racists. We must turn the other cheek when we are called women haters for not wanting unborn children to die. We must show patience toward them as they struggle and flounder in their sins. All the while standing up for truth, not compromising a single syllable of Scripture, and always showing them what actual love looks like.

That it is patient, kind, it does not boast, it does not envy, it is not proud…

Everyone in our life must be able to see us incredibly unwilling to hold back the pearls from the swine in our life, but do all that we can to wrestle over the truth with those in our life who don’t know God.

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This is a big ask. God is bringing something bigger than us to our minds, and saying “Do this.” That old phrase “God will never give you more than you can handle” … is nonsense. It is touchy-feely, modernistic, selfish and self centered garbage that is nowhere in Scripture. God always gives His people more than they can handle.

And we will always fail if we assume we can show them our gentleness, by ourselves. We live in a hungry world, and we need other Saints with us, to present to those beyond our Church doors, the gentleness that is capable of those within whom God lives.

We live in a hungry and ungentle culture, fellow Saints. They act in direct contrast to the words of God we find ourselves studying this morning. This American culture is the direct opposite of everything we talked about last week. 

They always assume the worst. They jump to conclusions. They fly off the handle. There is no reasonableness to them, they simply march in the streets and burn down police stations. While claiming to seek justice, they settle for revenge. While claiming to seek peace, what they really want is the freedom to do whatever they want. 

But if we love them, as Scripture tells us is the Second greatest commandment which is like the first, then we must let our gentleness be known to them…for the Lord is at hand.

This is the  “how” we are able to do so. And it is the “why”.

We are able to show them our gentleness, not because we are united with other believers, though that does help…but we are able to show them our gentleness…because the Lord is at hand. 

He is not far off, sitting atop golden clouds, looking down at His creation, looking down at His children, set afar off in the safety and security of eternity. 

2000yrs ago, the God of all Creation, the King of the Universe, The unchanging and undying Monarch of the cosmos; climbed down out of the eternal sunrise of tomorrow. Lowering Himself, He stepped His beautiful feet deep into the disfigured mud and mire of a World that hated Him. Though it would have been fair of Him to forever remain in Heaven, unendingly enjoying the eternal dance within the Triune Godhead with the Father and Spirit, He willingly chose to set everything necessary to save those who hate Him aside, and put on human flesh.

The Lord is at hand.

Though He put on human flesh, He retained His divinity. He was still God, regardless of the human nature that was now added to Him. He remained all powerful, but refused to act on it. He remained all-knowing, but only acted on it when it was in accordance with His Father’s will. He remained unchanging in His divinity…even though His humanity underwent the changes that this human life brings upon us.

The Lord is at hand.

His humanity changed, from a newborn babe, feeding upon the breast of His virginal mother; to a child learning to walk. Though in His divinity, He had perfect knowledge, He willingly limited Himself to undergo the trials of those He came to save. In His humanity, He learned to walk, learned to run, learned to speak, and learned to love. All the while, refusing to act upon the Nature of God that He never gave up. And all the while, never sinning. Though He was a human, He sinned not. Though He was tempted in every way that we are, and ever will be, He was sinless. Though the devil himself, with all of his God-given strength, came against our Savior with temptations sweet and powerful…Jesus Christ resisted him. 

The Lord is at hand.

And when His time came, that time that was written down long before the foundations of the World were ever poured forth from the storehouses of Heaven, Revelation 13:8 teaches us, He stood not upon His rights as the rightful King of the World, but willing walked a Roman road, to be willingly hung upon a Roman cross. With deep anguish for the trial that He was about to undertake, our King brought drops of sweat-born blood up from beneath His beautiful skin in His prayer to His Father…but still, He strayed not from the path set out before Him. He did so, for more was at stake then the physical pain of the events to come.

There was more at stake, there upon that place of the skull, the hill called Golgotha, than the biting lash of a pagan’s whip, or the stinging pain of a pagan’s nail. There was more at stake, than the mere bloodletting and flesh tearing that awaited all who stood against the might of the Roman Empire.

More painful than His beautiful back, being opened to the Sun that He created; worse than His beautiful hands, those which He used to heal the sick and raise the dead, being run through with nails of iron; more painful than the thorns He created, being forced upon His holy head; More fearful than the hours of hanging naked, bloody and bruised, upon the wood whose tree He Himself nursed to maturity for the singular purpose of dying upon its splintered beams…was His reason for doing so.

He did so, not to simply provide us with an example to take in. Not to simply be a martyr by which those who believed in His words would be galvanized into action. Not simply because He was fulfilling the hundreds of prophecies that His prophets had given to His people for thousands of years before His birth. But to make the path for His children to join Him in eternity clear…by satisfying His Father’s holy justice.

The Lord is at hand.

There, upon a cross 2000yrs ago, the punishment that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ could ever earn, the rightful wrath from heaven that their darkest deeds could ever deserve…was fulfilled. He who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21)

It was His fathers holy anger that caused Him to sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was the full and complete punishment from heaven that trillions upon trillions upon trillions of undeserving, God hating, rebellious and wretched sinners heaped up for themselves by their willful and intentional cosmic treason against a perfect and holy King.

And willfully and intentionally did He drink that cup of His Father’s wrath (Mt. 20:22), as dry as the empty tomb He left behind. 

The Lord is at hand.

The Lord is at hand, because He remained not within that tomb, but raised back to life. Defeating death for all who will ever repent and believe in Him.

Not only did He tear the veil, and open the way into the holiest of holies, that we might go in…but even now, today, thousands of years and hundreds of generations later, He remains at His Father’s right hand interceding to Him on our behalf. (Rm. 8:34)

Everytime we sin, in ways that we have sworn a thousand times we will never do again…He looks to His Father and says “Remember my sacrifice. Look not at their sin, but at the mark in my hands.”

The Lord is at hand.

“Look not to their destruction” He intercedes for us, “but look at mine. Look not at their righteousness, the filthy rags of which can do nothing to save them…but look at my righteousness that I have given them.”

The Lord is at hand.

And though He, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, sits at His Father’s right hand, awaiting His word to return to this world to save His Bride out from every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation; though He is there, stationed in Heaven far above all rule, power, and authority, above every name that is named in this life and the one to come, above all dominion, powers and principalities; though He is in heaven…God is still with us.

For He did not leave us alone, to wade through the swamps and sands of this life. Alone He did not leave us, to fight dragons and demons. He did not abandon us to the trials and temptations, to face them by ourselves, with our own strength, with our own wisdom, with our own power…no. 

The Lord is at hand, because when Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, after having been in the grave for three days and rising again, being seen by many witnesses on many occasions (1 Cor. 15:6)…He gave to us the Holy Spirit. (Jn. 20:22)

The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is here, brothers and sisters. The Comforter, the Keeper, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Truth, is here, in this world, convicting the world of their Sin, and revealing the truth of reality to His children.

Not only is the Holy Spirit, here in this world, going as the wind does, wherever He pleases; doing all that He pleases; raising up nations and bringing them crumbling down as He pleases; not only is the Holy Spirit in this world, removing hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh as He pleases; moving His children to do mighty works in their cultures, as He pleases; but that same Spirit…The Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead lives within the very hearts of those whom He pleases. 

The Lord is at hand.

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God tells us in our verse this morning, fellow Saints…through the pen of The Apostle: “Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.”

And at hand He is. There will be no times, brothers and sisters, within your life as Christian, when you will ever be alone. There are no dark corners in His creation, whereby we can hide from His love, no sins we can engage in, for however long our flesh commands us to, that will ever cause the Holy Spirit to depart from those whom Christ died for.

When we are struggling to be gentle , and righteous indignation is boiling within us…The Holy Spirit will guide us in all truth. When we are struggling to be gentle, and self righteousness is boiling within us…The Holy Spirit will guide us in all truth.

When, in the course of this life, we join those who have gone before us, those prophets, those apostles, those disciples, those followers of Jesus Christ who, with strength not their own stood before lions and tyrants and boldly declared the truths of Scripture to those who could kill the body but not the soul (Mt. 10:28) ; when we are brought before the situations in this life that preexisted us, Ephesians 2:10 tells us, and we can do no other than to stand upon the unchanging Word of the unchanging God, and as a result we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, be they arrows from men or demons…we will be joining the Saints who came before us in the company of our risen Savior.

For though He was reviled, He reviled not in return. Though He suffered, He did not threaten. (1st Pet. 2:23) As a sheep before its shearers is silent, He opened not His mouth. (Is. 53:7). Though He was perfect in every way (Hb. 4:15), and no fault was found in Him (Lk. 23:4) He suffered and died alone. God struck the Shepherd, Matthew 26:31 tells us…and the sheep scattered.

He, Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, stood not upon His rights as King, and was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and because of His wounds we are healed. (Is. 53:4&5)

The Lord is at hand.

When our time comes to suffer for that which we believe, and the arrows of our enemies make contact with our hearts, minds, and families; when the pagans rage and the perverts stand and march against us; when the ridicule and vitriol of a God hating nation is vomited and spewed forth from behind gnashing teeth and forked tongues…we will be able to stand fast.

Not because we are smart and strong.

Not because we are wiser than others who may fall if they themselves were put under the same tests that we have found ourselves within.

Not because we have been to Church every Sunday or our lives.

No. Our finest efforts, Isaiah 64:6 tells us, are filthy rags.

If we seek to stand on our own strength on our day within Nebuchadnezzar's mighty furnace, we will not walk through the flames with one in appearance to be like the Son of God (Dn. 3:25) but we will be succumbed unto them.

We must stand, brothers and sisters, as gentle unmoving giants before the might of lions and tyrants, but we can do so only by the strength of the Lord who is at hand. The Lord who never left His children, The Lord who never leaves those who search for Him. The lord who answers when we knock. (Mt. 7:7) The Lord who willingly climbs into dens of lions and furnaces of fire to stand beside His children in their trials.

And though we may fall to those flames, as so many Saints before us have; though we may feel the burn of America’s coals, and the sting of socialist fire; we will never feel the flames of hell. We may feel the derision from strangers when we stand outside of abortion clinics; we may hear the jeers and insults, launched at us by drag queens as we refuse to let them traumatize children; we may feel the deep sting of poverty as we lose our jobs; we may feel the burning of a family member leaving us because we will never stand down; we may feel the weight of a God-hating culture standing before the children of God as Goliath did so many years ago…but we need not go looking for stones and slings to slay the snakes that slither towards us.

We need not even fear them.

Hear me clearly fellow Saints…we need not fear the flames and snakes. We need not tremble before the trials of poverty or pleasure. We need not turn our head to the left or right when the mightiest trials and temptations that this wicked and depraved generation could ever summon forth from the blackest bowels of the blackest hell.

For nothing but hell awaits those who stand against an all knowing God. 

Woe to those who fall into the hands of an angry God, whose wrath knows no rest and whose eye never sleeps.

Our battle has already been won.

We can, with chests full of the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21), adorn ourselves with His holy armor (Ep. 6:12), take up the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God (Ep. 6:17), and with every ounce of strength that flows from Calvary’s side into our unworthy hearts, show to all men everywhere, the truth of Jesus Christ.

The truth of a reasonable and gracious King. One who forgives the darkest of deeds, but by no means leaves the guilty unpunished. One who saves the sinner, because the punishment that was due unto them was accounted to Jesus Christ when they repented and believed.

Through our gentleness; through our patience in the midst of suffering; through our willingness to be wronged against; through our temperament of understanding; through our grace towards those who have sinned; we will be able to show the people in our life a glimpse of A Savior willing to forgive all who so desire to be forgiven.

The Lord is at hand, brothers and sisters, be strong!

The Lord is at hand, fellow saints, be bold!

The Lord is at hand, descendants of the almighty, be humble!

The Lord is at hand, children of God, be gentle!

The Lord is at hand, you princes & princesses of the King, repent of your sins&believe in Him!

This is how we are able to change our culture, to change our life, to change our world. To go out into His Creation and fulfill His words in Matthew 28:18 and teach all the Nations about who He is and what He has done. And because His word never returns void (Is. 55:11) we can rest assured that He will produce results through us.

How can we show “gentleness” in the midst of this culture? Because the Lord is at hand.

But…“why” would we do such things…Why would we willingly put ourselves in harm's way? Put ourselves into situations where everyone around us…hates us? Why would we show gentleness to those who have shown us nothing but hatred and anger? 

Because the Lord is at hand.

He is seated at His Father’s right hand, with a multitude of battle-ready angels armed and prepared to enact His holy wrath upon this World, baptizing it in fire as He rolls up creation like a scroll. We show them gentleness because God is going to judge them. With perfect righteousness, the all knowing and all seeing God of all creation will lay bare every action, inaction, word and thought that everyone has ever had in their entire life…before them, and demand of them a reason for why they have lived in such a way. And there will be no good deeds in that day, that we will be able to rely upon to satisfy His holy justice. No good actions will fulfill the sentence of judgment that He hands down. Only the perfect blood of His perfect Son will be able to stand in that day. And those who have had their guilt nailed to His holy body 2000 yrs ago, He will welcome into an eternity of endless joy. But for those who choose to stand on their own good…He will cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

The Lord is at hand.

Hell and the unending fire therein awaits those people in our life who have shown us nothing but hatred, and our gentleness towards them will be one of the means by which our holy King uses to open their eyes and save their souls.

When we don’t retaliate, but forgive;

When we don’t insult and seethe, but humbly point out to them what Scripture says;

When we don’t stand on our right to be hurt and offended, but instead we show them a 

generous spirit willing to move forward;

When instead of attacking as the world does, those who hurt them, we show them forgiveness and kindness…we are showing them that God is able to forgive them no matter the darkness of their deeds. No matter how far they may have run, Jesus is willing to forgive all who turn to Him and repent of their sins, willingly accepting the punishment that they deserve.

Let your gentleness be known to all men, The Lord is at hand.