was preached on Sunday morning,
January 1st, 1989, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville,
New Jersey. While some of us have lived many
decades, and the passing of an old year and the coming of a
new is not an unusual event in our lives, it is nonetheless,
each time it occurs, a very sobering event, for it is a vivid and
an unescapable reminder of our mortality. On every tombstone
that has etched into it the birth date and the death date of the
one lying in the sod, there is a date that marks the birth and
the year that was that person's New Year's. And it is in the
spirit of that sober realization of my own mortality and the fresh
awareness of the mortality of every man, woman, boy or girl
to whom I speak on this first Lord's Day of the year 1989 that
I come to open up the scriptures this morning and let us again
seek the face of God in prayer that God will grant us in the
language of Moses, the man of God, in Psalm 90, that wisdom
that will enable us to number our days. Let us pray. Our Father, we have been reminded
in the singing of this hymn that it is but a few more years that
shall rule And we shall be asleep in the earth with all who've
gone before us. It is but a little while, and
he that shall come will come. And the skies will part in the
voice of the archangel, and the trump of God will be heard by
all the living and the dead. And our Lord Jesus shall wind
down time and usher in eternity. O God, in the light of these
sobering realities, will you not come and so attend the preaching
of the Word and our own self-reflections in the light of that preaching,
that we may have a heart of wisdom to number our days? May we taste
in this place today the powers of the world to come. May heaven
and hell and eternity breaking upon us with felt reality, and
may we give to those realities the response which they demand. Hear our cry, we plead, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now, as we come to the ministry
of the Word on this first day of 1989, I have but one single, burning,
focused concern upon my heart. As I sat here worshiping with
you, the words of the Apostle in another context came to my
mind again and again, in which he said, This one thing I do. And in the preaching of the word
this morning, this one thing I would do. And that one thing
is to attempt to press home to the consciousness of every single
one of you in this place this morning one very simple but profoundly
important question. And that question is this. Do
you enter 1989 in saving union with the Lord
Jesus Christ. I have said it is my one purpose
in preaching this morning to press home not just to your mind,
but I used this word purposely, to press home to your consciousness. That is, to the point where you
feel the pressure of this great concern, and it is this, do you
personally enter 1989 in saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ? Now please, don't grab for that
shade that hangs hung over the window of your mind and pull
it down. Because I've been so direct in
telling you that I'm going to address the most vital concerns
of your soul's relationship to God. I fully realize if you are
an unconverted man or woman, boy or girl, you do not love
the light of God's truth, for the Scripture says this is the
condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men
love darkness rather than light. And I'm fully conscious, as I
was in my preparation, that by not, as it were, sneaking up
on your mind and your judgment, but by coming straight to the
front door, and saying that my concern is to press upon your
consciousness. the great question as to whether
or not you enter the new year in saving union with Christ,
I fully realize that for perhaps not a few of you, there would
be an immediate internal reaction of the hands of your soul grabbing
the thick shade, the dark curtain of your mind, and pulling it
down and saying, if that's what he's about to embark upon, I'll
shut him out at the outset. I beg of you, will you allow
me, in love, to attempt to press that question upon your consciousness? Will you let me do, as it were,
with the hands of my soul what my wife and I used to do with
our physical hands with our daughter, Heidi Cook, who is now twenty-four,
almost twenty-five years of age when she was a little girl She
had a tendency to look off to the right or to the left or up
or down when you were seeking to give her directions, and we
often wondered if the directions were registering. And therefore,
if it were something important, we'd cup her little face in our
hands, and we'd say, now, Heidi, look at mommy or daddy's eyes.
And those two little brown chocolate drops would come up, and she'd
look. And we'd say, now, Heidi, Mommy is saying, Daddy is saying,
do you understand? But we gently cup her face, turn
it upward and say, look into my eyes. Will you allow me the
luxury of my love for your soul to take the hands of my soul
and to cup your face and say, look me in the eyes while I ask
you the question? Do you enter 1989 in saving union
with the Lord Jesus Christ? And if there are some of you
men that feel a bit uncomfortable with the imagery of having another
man cup your face in his hands, perhaps the more appropriate
imagery is that of placing my hands upon your shoulder, as
men often do. When they have a serious message
to deliver one to another, will you let me take the hands of
my soul and place them upon the shoulders of yours and say, Man,
look me in the eye while I press upon you one simple but basic
concern. Do you enter 1989 in saving union
with Jesus Christ? And for some of you women who
feel even uncomfortable with the imagery of a man placing
his hands upon your shoulders, perhaps you feel more comfortable
with the imagery of a man clasping you by the wrist and standing
at a discreet distance saying to you, my friend, will you look
me in the eye while I ask you in love this question, do you
enter 1989 in saving union with Jesus Christ. Whatever imagery makes you feel
most comfortable, I want you to know that the posture of my
soul is that which was expressed in cupping my little daughter's
face in my hands. And if you feel more comfortable
with the imagery of the hands upon the shoulder or clasping
your wrist, make your choice. But on this, please don't deny
me the passion of my own love for your soul. Don't deny me
success in my effort to press on your consciousness this question. Do you enter 1989? in saving union with the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now you may ask, and well asked,
Pastor Martin, why are you so concerned with that question? And there are so many questions
that flood the minds of men and women and boys and girls on the
threshold of a new year. Why of all the questions that
could be raised and addressed from the Scriptures, why that
question above all others? Well, among the many parts of
the answer that I could give to your question to me, two are
uppermost in my own mind this morning. And they are these. If you are not in saving union
with Jesus Christ, number one, you are not prepared to die in
1989. And secondly, you are not prepared
to meet the Lord Jesus Christ with joy should he return in
1989. And it is that twin concern that presses upon me the desire
to engage your mind, your interest, your intellect, your affections,
all that you are in addressing the question, as you enter 1989,
are you personally, individually, truly in saving union with the
Lord Jesus Christ? Now as I attempt to press that
question into your consciousness from the word of God, I will
do so by collating the biblical materials as an answer to two
other questions. Question one, why is this the
most important issue to consider on this first day of 1989? And I'll have three parts to
my answer. And then secondly and more briefly,
how can I become savingly united to Jesus Christ? First of all
then, why is this the most important issue for you to consider on
this first day of 1989? And as I've already intimated,
my answer has three strands to it. Because it is only while
we are alive in this present life that we can prepare for
death and for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm concerned
that you be exercised with this question. Are you in saving union
with Jesus Christ as we stand on the threshold of a new year?
Because it is only while we are in this present life that we
can prepare for death and for the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ to events which may well occur. in this coming year. And I want you to look with me
at two pivotal texts in the scripture, one referring to the matter of
death and the other to the second coming. In Hebrews chapter 9,
and in verse 27, God has given us a statement in his word which forever settles beyond
reasonable debate, the fact that it is only in this present life
that we can prepare for death. Verse 27, And inasmuch as it
is appointed unto man once to die, And that word, once, often
has the pressure of once for all, once unrepeated and unrepeatable,
as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this, that
is, after each man's death, You'll notice if you have an older translation,
the word comes or cometh is in italics. There is no verb in
the original. The language is much more terse
and in that sense powerful, as it is appointed unto men once
to die, and after this, judgment. There it is. Death is followed
inevitably. Death is followed in every case,
without exception, by judgment. For this is an appointment in
which you and I have nothing to say as to when, where, and
under what circumstances we shall keep it. The year pass, For some
of us held the unfolding of certain pages of God's appointment book. God has revealed that in His
appointment book He had marked down the death of a certain loved
one, a death that came in what we might say rather ordinary
ways, a degenerative disease that over a period of months
took them down to their graves. this past year. Death's appointment
book was opened up to us with regard to one of our dear elderly
sisters, Grace Albert, for whom her threescore and ten were lived,
and almost her bonus ten, and the general erosion and degeneration
of old age took her down to her grave, thereby revealing that
in God's appointment book on the threshold of 1988, He had
determined that Grace Albert should die. He had determined
that others should be taken from our ranks by death. He had determined
that multitudes in the world would be taken by more ordinary
means of death. But I remind you that Almighty
God has underscored in bold red for all of us to see that He
does not always take by such ordinary means. God said in my
appointment book, there are some 50,000 who must keep an appointment
with death in Armenia, and they are all appointed on the same
day. And so God just takes the earth
that He made out of the womb of nothing by the word of His
power, and He shakes a little bit of it. And through an earthquake,
50,000 keep their utterly unexpected appointment
with death. Laughing, joke-telling, and no
doubt, if it's like most international flights, booze-drinking people
were anticipating a marvelous, wonderful Christmas reunion. And having done considerable
travel across the Atlantic that very route, that was taken by
flight 103, I have no reason to think that the internal activity
of that flight was any different from the dozens I have witnessed
personally. People's minds and conversations
utterly taken up with everything but their appointment with death.
And God said, My appointment book says 250 shall meet death
today. It is appointed unto men once
to die. And notice what the text says,
and after this, Judgment! As death leaves you, the judgment
will find you. And as the judgment finds you,
eternity will hold you. Precious dear young people, hear
me. With what you think is your whole
life spread out before you, and should God give you the fulfillment
of every dream in life, even to live to be ninety, it is nonetheless
true. As death leaves you, the judgment
will find you, and as judgment finds you, eternity will hold
you. And that's why I'm concerned
with this question. Are you in saving union with
Jesus Christ? Because it is only while we are
alive in this present life that we can prepare for death, and
it is only in this present life that we can prepare for the coming
of the Lord Jesus. Turn, please, to the second text,
Matthew chapter 24. In this chapter in which our
Lord Jesus is dealing with the subject of the destruction of
Jerusalem, and then that greater destruction that will come at
his own second coming, listen to the language of Matthew chapter
24, beginning with verse 37. And as were the days of Noah,
So shall be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days
that were before the flood, they were eating, nothing wrong with
that, and drinking, nothing wrong with that, and marrying, nothing
wrong with that, and giving in marriage, nothing wrong with
that. They were engaged in normal, legitimate, God-instituted activities,
innocent in themselves. And they were doing these things
until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not
until the flood came and took them all away. So shall be the
coming of the Son of Man. They had opportunity to prepare
up to the point of the closing of the door of the ark, and then
there was no second chance. So shall the coming of the Son
of Man be, verse 40. Then shall two men be in the
field. One is taken. The other left
to what? Not a second chance? Any more
than those that were left outside the ark were left to a second
chance? Those taken are entering into
consummate glory. Those left are left to crushing,
irreversible judgment. Two women shall be grinding at
the mill. One is taken, one is left. Watch
therefore, for you know not on what day your Lord comes. But
know this, that if the master of the house had known in what
watch the thief was coming, he would have watched and would
not have suffered his house to be broken through. And here is
our text, therefore. Be ye also ready, for in such
an hour that you think not, the Son of Man cometh. You see, the
readiness must precede the coming. There is no time to be ready
when He comes. There is no opportunity to be
ready after He comes. Be ready, for in an hour that
you think not the Son of Man comes and that is coming, all
opportunity for readiness is forever past. And dear people, this is why
I want you to consider the question as you enter 1989. Are you in saving union with
the Lord Jesus Christ? Why am I concerned to press this
to your consciousness on this first Lord's Day and first day
of the new year? It is only while we are alive
in this present life that we can prepare for death and for
the coming of the Lord Jesus, and the only part of 1989 you
are certain to enjoy is the part that is presently yours. Not
even one more hour is guaranteed by God. You see, in our day, people like
Shirley MacLaine have popularized the silly pagan lie of the devil
of the so-called reincarnation of the soul. When you die, that's
not the end of you. You'll come back in another life,
in another form. They would rewrite Hebrews 9.27.
It's appointed unto man once to die, and after this comes
another life, and then another death. My friends, that is not
the teaching of the Word of God. It is a satanic lie to drag you
into hell to make you think. that you will come back in some
other form, in some other life, with another chance to attain
some higher or more noble existence. No, this Bible that we hold in
our hands and our own consciences confirms its witness that it
is appointed unto men once to die, and after this judgment
there is no second chance. There is no extinction of our
being. The doctrine of the annihilation
of the soul is equally a satanically conceived notion to lull people
to sleep in their present state. For no matter what we may try
to say to defend morality and the gospel of Christ and say
it does not depend upon a doctrine of conscious suffering beyond
the experience of death, the facts are that God knows that
to strip from His Word the patent truth of it, that the soul is
the deathless part of us. that survives this body's death
and this body's decay in the grave, a body slated for resurrection,
yes, but a soul that merely flies from the body to go to a place
of conscious existence in bliss or in torment awaiting the day
of judgment at which time it will be joined to a body that
will then be ushered in to consummate bliss in the presence of Christ
in the new heavens and the new earth, or consigned to a place
called Gehenna, where soul and body will suffer forever and
forever. My friends, this is why I ask
you the question, because it's only while we're alive in this
present life we can prepare for death. There is no reincarnation. There is no second chance. There
is no annihilation or extinction of being. And this is equally
true with reference to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nowhere does the Bible hint that
at the second coming there will be a period for reflection and
repentance and reformation. Listen to the language of 2 Thessalonians
1, the very second coming that will bring rest and eternal deliverance
to the people of God, what will it bring to those who are not
in saving union with Christ? I read now II Thessalonians 1
and verse 7. And to you that are afflicted,
rest with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven
with the angels of his power Inflaming fire, rendering vengeance
to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall suffer eternal punishment,
who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from
the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when
When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, when the Lord
Jesus comes to be glorified in His saints, living saints caught
up to meet Him in the air, dead saints resurrected in their bodies
from the grave, joining their glorified spirits at that point,
There will be irreversible, eternal punishment upon all who know
not God and obey not the gospel. This teaching of the Second Coming
that says believers will be snatched away And though things are going
to get rough and hot, and though things are going to be difficult,
and it won't be easy to be a Christian, there will be a period when men
can still call upon the Lord and be saved. My friends, that
is an utter denial of this and many other portions of the Word
of God. And if you've come here this
morning imbibing some notion, well, it's all right if I come
into and pass through 1989 not savingly united to Christ, because
although things will get a bit hot in the so-called final tribulation
period, as long as I know the Lord has snatched His people
away, I'll know that time is upon us. I'll grit my teeth.
I'll become a Christian, and I'll make it. And then I can
breathe easily when the Lord comes again and again to take
me to himself, and I enter with him into the new heavens and
the new earth." My friend, that's a pipe dream. That's a pipe dream. Be ready, for you know not when
the Son of Man comes. And when he comes, if he doesn't
come to take you in mercy, he'll crush you in judgment. And there
will not be a millisecond of an extension of the day of mercy. But there is a second reason
why I want you to consider this question. Am I savingly joined
to Jesus Christ? on this first day of 1989, I
ask it not only because it is while we are alive in this present
life that we can prepare for death and for the coming of the
Lord Jesus, but secondly, because not one of us knows how long
the gift of earthly life will be given to us, nor do we know
the time of our Lord's return. There is not a one of us who
knows how long the gift of earthly life will be given us by our
sovereign God, nor do we know when Christ will come. Consider
several passages of the Word of God with me. First of all,
Acts chapter 17. How fragile is human life? How tenuous is human existence? How uncertain is it that I shall
live even through the day? I tell you it's a sobering thing
to realize in the midst of preaching at times when my own soul is
caught up with the truth and my mouth is dry and I take a
drink of water that I could choke upon my own spittle and die and
It wouldn't be the first time it's happened to a preacher. I feel that. I don't have a death
wish. I don't have a premonition, but
I realize that my life hangs on a thread that makes a spider's
web look as thick as a rope. And that thread is held in the
hand of a sovereign God with one hand. And he holds the scissors
in the other. And all he need do is exercise
his sovereign right to stretch out the scissors, clip the thread,
and I shall drop from the land of the living into the realm
of the dead. And so will you. Look at Acts
chapter 17. It underscores this so powerfully. Paul is standing in a place where
the learned ones gather to spew out their latest insights as
to reality. You see, a philosopher is a man
who thinks that unaided by outside illumination, a pagan philosopher
that is, that he can take the stuff of his own grey matter,
and with that little mass of grey matter, he can interpret
all reality. He can find the great universals
which unlock the mystery of life's meaning. Well, because poor man
is doomed to futility, no sooner does one school of philosophy
gain ground, but another comes to take its ground from it. And
before the man can even gloat that he's claimed new turf, someone
has taken his turf from him. And so there was a group of these
people that gathered for no other purpose. Look at verse 21 of
Acts 17. Now all the Athenians and the
strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else but
either to tell or hear some new thing. That's what the scripture
says. I mean, the new things were coming
out quicker than cars come off the assembly line there in Detroit.
Some new thing, some new thing. What an opinion you have to have
of yourself to think that you can stand in the midst of even
the universe of your own existence and figure it out by yourself.
Let alone stand in the midst of God's universe! whether we
think of that universe in the microcosm, the mystery of the
atom, the macrocosm in the thousands of galaxies that stretch out
over millions of light years. What a fool and arrogant creature
man is to think he can come up with the answers to where it
came from, why it's there, what's his place in the midst of it.
And so God dooms such arrogance to futility. So they're always
trying to come up with some new thing, new thing, new thing,
new thing. So what does Paul do? to cut the nerve of their
pride. He begins to preach to them,
and notice where he begins. Verse 22, Paul stood in the midst
of the Areopagus and said, You men of Athens, in all things
I perceive you are very religious, for as I passed along and observed
the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription,
To an unknown God. What therefore you worship in
ignorance, this I set forth unto you," and notice where he starts,
with the place that the Bible starts, "...in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth." the God that made the
world and all things therein. He, being Lord of heaven and
earth, dwells not in temples made with hands, neither is He
served by men's hands, as though He needs anything. Seeing, He
gives to all life and breath and all things. He starts by emphasizing that
the God who made the world is the Lord of all that he made. Then he tells them that this
God cannot be either contained by his world or by sustained
by anything in it. He is neither contained by what
he made nor sustained by what he made. Then he says he continually
gives to all. Life. You just heard three gifts of
God. Stop. Listen to yourself breathing. You're alive this morning. God
is giving you life, a present participle, actively, presently,
imminently, giving you life. The next breath, a gift of God,
I exhale. Will I have another? A gift from
God, I exhale. Will He give me another? A gift
of God, I exhale. But remember, many inhaled for
the last time. in 1988. And a moment is coming when God
will give you your last inhalation of breath, and then he'll withdraw
his hand and say, not one more. And if you happen to be hooked
up to a life support system, The call number will be sounded,
and the cardiac arrest team will come, and the paddles will be
placed upon your breast, and your body will jump. But if God
has said no more, they could bring a thousand cardiac
arrest teams, put you on a thousand respirators. But that soul is
God, because He gives life. and breath, and all things. You talk about cutting these
proud philosophers off at the knees. We're going to figure
everything out. God says the very life by which
you're sustained to stand in this think-tank part of Athens
called the Areopagus, it's God who gives you that life. And
the breath you breathe with which you exhale and frame your own
stupid cogitations, Almighty God in grace gives you that breath
with which you form words to blaspheme Him, to deny Him, to
dishonor Him. But He gives it. And the time
is coming when He's going to say, that's the last one. Now, my friends, that's why I
want you to consider the question. Am I, as I enter 1989, savingly
united to Christ? Why do I want you to take that
question into your consciousness? Not only because the Bible teaches
that it's only while you're alive and present in this world that
you can prepare for death or the second coming. But how long
you will be in this present world is not determined by you, but
by a sovereign God. I had a moving letter recently
from a man in his sixties from a place many of you perhaps wouldn't
even know where it was. If I said Tasmania and said,
here's a thousand bucks if you can tell me where it is, would
you be able to tell me? Suppose I put a gun to your temple
and said, tell me in the next five seconds or I'm going to
pull the trigger. It's a little hunk of real estate
down off the southern tip of Australia. It's part of Australia.
And this man wrote to me to express how he's been helped over the
years by the tapes and they have fed his soul. But then he mentioned
a very moving incident. He had a 16-year-old daughter.
And the Lord had been dealing with her, and she was saved by
his grace at age sixteen. And the day after she was saved,
with no previous indication or hint as a carefree, happy, new
believer in the Lord Jesus, with the fragrance of the kiss of
reconciliation still upon her cheek, she sat at her desk to
do her homework, and God took her breath away. She died. What I guess they would call
an unexplained mortality, an idiopathic cessation of life,
all big fancy mumbo-jumbo to say, God controls life and not
man. That's reality. That's not a
preacher trying to scare you. That's reality. He gives life
and breath and all things. A second text that underscores
that all of this is in the sovereign hand of God is James chapter
4, a passage which over the past twenty-five years I've preached
on two or three times on the first Lord's Day of the New Year.
It almost has written over the face of it a New Year's text. James 4.13, come now, you that
say, today, tomorrow, we'll go into this city and spend a year
there and trade and get gain. In other words, here's some people
sitting down, projecting their business goals. Nothing wrong
with that. Nothing wrong whatsoever with
being prudent and wise and using scientified forethought. God
commends it in the very example of the ant who anticipates winter
and stores up in summer against that emergency. What is God concerned
about in this passage? Follow on. You that say, we will
go into this city and spend a year and trade and get gain, whereas
You do not know what shall be on the morrow, and that's the
truth. Who among us would dare stand
on his feet and say, I will give an accurate and comprehensive
description of every detail of my life tomorrow? Even if to
prove yourself true, you should lock yourself in a lead-walled
shelter three feet thick. You might carry with you into
that shelter a tummy bug you picked up in the nursery today
and end up vomiting all day. You might, in that shelter, take
a drink of water and choke on the water as it went down your
windpipe. No, I don't care what circumstances you create. To
be, as it were, the surefire context of fulfilling your predictions,
you and I do not know what even a day may bring forth. What is
your life? You and I are a vapor that appears
for a little time and then vanishes away. Now here's the heart of
their sin, for that you ought to say, if the Lord will. We shall both live and do this
or that, but now you glory in your hauntings. All such glorying
is evil." You see what he's driving at? Here are people living life
as though they had life in their hands. We will, we will, we will
not This is what we plan to do, believing it to be an application
of biblical principles so that we may live responsibly to the
glory of God. If God wills, this is what 1989
will hold. Now theirs is an evil haunting
as though they were God's. In 1989, I will this and I will
that. My friend, there's one fatal
flaw with all your I wills. You don't know whether you'll
see January 2nd, 1989. A sovereign God gives you life
and breath. It is the sovereign will of God
that I stand here in the land of the living today. It's not
that I've been careful with my diet, though I am. It's not that
I make conscience of exercise, though I do. It's not that I
try to drive responsibly, though I do. It is the sovereign will
of God who has given me life and breath through another year
and privileged me to see the light of this day. And that's
the only reason you're here, sitting here, breathing and looking
up at me. And the only reason any one of
us does not go out of this life with a cardiac arrest before
the sermon is over is that God wills to keep you in the land
of the living. And what is true with respect
to living is also true with respect to the second coming of the Lord
Jesus. Just as we do not control the extent, the duration of our
days, nor the events in them, with reference to the second
coming of Christ, I give you this one text only from the chapter
we expounded several months ago, Mark chapter 13. The man who sent out his thousands
of booklets proving Christ was coming in 1988, now must sit
with his pencil and red face and try to, with sophistry, explain
why his predictions were right, though they didn't come to pass,
when the Scripture tells us in Mark 13.22, But of that day and
of that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father. The Lord Jesus, in His present
state of humiliation when He spoke those words, the Father
had not yet revealed to Him in His messianic function and identity
a function of dependence upon the Father for the revelation
of His will. Even He, at that point in His
own life history, did not know the day nor the hour, nor were
the angels pretty. to God's time schedule locked
up in the cabinet of his own sovereign mind. The incarnate
son was not even privy to it at that point. My friend, will
Jesus Christ come back in 1989? I do not know. I'd be a fool
and you could call me a false prophet if I said he were coming
in 1989. But hear me, I would be a false
physician to your soul if I did not tell you he could and he
may come in 1989. Be ye ready, for in such an hour
as you think not, the Son of Man comes. Now that's why I'm concerned,
you see. that you take this question seriously. Am I in saving union with Jesus
Christ? Am I united to the Son of God? Why am I concerned that you take
that question to heart? Reason number one, because sitting
here today in the light of the Scriptures, because the Scripture
tells us that we must die and there is no second chance. Christ
will come and there is no second chance. The scripture tells us
secondly, as we have seen together, that a sovereign God holds in
his own sovereign hands the time of our death and the knowledge
of the day of the return of his Son. But then thirdly and finally,
I ask you to take this question to heart as the most important
issue to consider on the threshold of a new year, because God calls
everyone a fool who does not make present preparation for
death and the second coming his first priority. Because God calls
everyone a fool! who does not make present preparation
for death and for the second coming his first priority. Now let's look at the text that
says that's true with death and one that says that's true with
the second coming. Luke chapter 12. Luke chapter
12. This is the same Lord Jesus who
said, that if we call people fools in an attitude of derision
and an angry, mean-spirited abusiveness, it is of the very essence of
the spirit of murder. And he says, Whosoever shall
say to another, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. And so our Lord does not use
the term fool lightly nor carelessly. Now we read in Luke chapter 12
this very interesting story, could well be a true story, because
in verse 13 there is the record of one who cried out of the multitude,
Teacher, did my brother divide the inheritance with me? Unlike
our own day, we got a lawyer on every corner begging you.
to take on the case of litigation. One lawyer for every 365 people. We are the most litigious society
on the face of the earth. Everybody waiting to pounce on
someone else with a lawsuit. Apparently, what all the curses
of the condition at that day, at least apparently, it wasn't
anything like it is in our day. So he figures, well, here's a
teacher of righteousness, a man committed a justice. Maybe I
can get Jesus to be my unofficial lawyer. At least his rates will
be a little cheaper. So one cries out of the multitude, Teacher,
did my brother divide the inheritance? But he said, Man, who made me
a judge and a divider over you? Who gave me such a role? The
fact that you want me to play it doesn't mean I have to. That's
a vital word for every preacher. You better know who you are and
what God's called you to do, because there's all kinds of
people telling you what they think you ought to do. And you need
to just tell them, Man, who made me to fulfill such a role? And
your Bible too. Say, my conscience is bound by
the word of God to do the will of God as a servant of God. Show
me. Oh, yes, but my preacher always came and held my hand
four hours a night. Fine. You show me in the Bible
where I'm supposed to come and hold your hand four hours a night.
Yes, but my preacher always came and dug the fences in the spring.
Fine. Good for your preacher. But tell
me, where's God say I got to come and dig your fence post
in the spring? You see, Jesus wouldn't be bullied by men's
wishes. He was bound by the revealed will of the Father. So he said,
rather curtly, man, who made me a judge and a divider over
you? And then he took the man's request as a springboard to preach
against covetousness. The clear inference is this man
had a covetous spirit that was driving him. And he said unto
them, Take heed and keep yourselves from all covetousness, for a
man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things that
he possesses. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground
of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he reasoned
within himself, saying, what shall I do? I don't have anywhere
to bestow my fruits. And he said, this is what I'll
do. I'll make some capital investments to secure my capital goods. That's current terminology. Put
it in current economic terminology, that's what he said he'd do.
Make some capital investments in order to secure his capital
goods. I'll pull down my barns, build
greater. Capital investment. There I will
bestow all my grain and my goods, capital goods. Now notice, all
this has this end in view, and I will say to my soul, soul,
you have much goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat,
drink, and be merry. He said, I got it all figured
out. I'm going to secure my gains And then I'm going to live off
those gains, and I'm going to live the life that all of the
people who play the lottery hope that they'll end up living. Do
you hear their testimonies? While you play the lottery, what
are your fantasies? Live them out. Place your buck.
Live out your fantasies. It's the same spirit that thinks
that life consists in things. And Jesus goes on to say, verse
20, But God said unto him, Thou fool, Thou fool! And why was he called the fool?
Not because he had good business sense, not because he had the
foresight to know how to preserve his gains. He says, Thou fool,
this night your soul is required of you and the things which you
have prepared. The things which you have prepared,
who shall they be? He made preparation for things,
but he made no preparation for his deathless soul. And God says
he's a fool. And my friend sitting here this
morning, if you go into this new year, if you've come into
it, And you are not, in the language of this passage, rich toward
God. So is he that lays up treasure
for himself, but is not rich toward God. If you don't have
the riches of the righteousness of Christ, the riches of the
full pardon of your sin, rooted in eternal justice, having been
satisfied in the bloodletting of the Son of God, If you are
not rich with a new heart in which the dominion of sin has
been broken and the reign of righteousness has been established,
if you are not rich with a personal knowledge of the Son of God that
makes Him the pearl of great price, if you are not rich with
experimental communion with God, rich with the hope of heaven
well grounded in the Scriptures, rich with the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, the down payment in earnest of all the blessings
of salvation. My friend, listen to me. God
says you're a fool. God says you're a fool. Oh, you're
not a fool that you've made judicious planning in the event of your
death, that your wife will not be destitute, your children will
not be destitute. You've made wise investments,
low risk, high yield. Yes, yes, my friend, but what
of that deathless soul now housed in your body? If God should say
to you before nightfall, your soul will be required. And God
sends the death angel. and says to the death angel,
rend that soul from that body. Sever that immortal, never dying
soul from that body. My friend, that soul of yours
leaving the body, entering immediately into the realm of spirits, what
would it be? A naked soul, no covering of
the righteousness of Christ, but deformed and ugly and grotesque
in its sin, no covering of the righteousness of Christ, a soul
with no eyes to see the glory of God with delight, but only
with terror. Oh, my friend, what a horrible
way to enter a new year as a fool who is not ready to die. Dear children, You'll allow me,
will you not, with the hands of my soul to cup your faces?
And I say to you, look me in the eye and answer me with all
that you're learning in your school, in the home. Have you
learned your sin and learned the grace of God and learned
the initial lessons of repentance and faith so that your youthful
soul is washed in the blood of Jesus? and ready for heaven. Dear children, if it isn't, God
says you're a fool. God says you're a fool. And what
about not being ready for the second coming? Turn to Matthew
25 and see how Jesus describes such people. How does Jesus describe people
who are not ready for the second coming? Matthew chapter 25. Look at the language of the text.
Then shall the kingdom of heaven, verse one, be likened unto ten
virgins who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
The Lord's describing an oriental wedding in the Middle East at
that time. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. And when you read down through
the parable, you know what makes the difference between the wise
and the foolish? not their New Jersey scores on
their school tests, not their IQ quotient. You know what makes
them wise or foolish? Five were ready when the Bridegroom
came. Five were not ready. And the
thing that made them wise or foolish was one issue—readiness
for the coming of the Bridegroom. And some of you kids may struggle
and be on the bottom of the heap in your class, not because you're
lazy. God just didn't give you the
mental furniture to be a math whiz. Oh, you do all right in
social studies. You do even better in science.
But somehow God just didn't give you a head that's comfortable
with numbers. And you struggle and struggle.
I know what that's like. I could get straight A's in everything
with a breeze, but I had to sweat like crazy. to get A's in math. Oh man, I said, God, if you'd
only done something in my head that made me more at home. Some
of you may struggle with it and you feel bad about that. And
others of you, why you can just, you take math like a fish to
water, but you just get into another subject and you feel
so bad. Others, listen, listen, forget all of that. I would not
encourage laziness or indifference in any of your studies, but listen
to me kids. There's something far more important
than A's in math and A's in social studies and A's in English and
reading. It's that you be wise unto salvation,
that you be ready for Jesus to come. So if He came in 1989,
He would not only summon mom and dad into their everlasting
joy with Him, not only your elders and your deacons and your Sunday
school teacher and some of the older ones, but when the heavens
part and the voice of the archangel shouts and the trump of God blares
and Jesus comes, he would gather you, his precious lands, with
him, as well as some of his old and limping sheep and some of
his young rams in the vigor of their youth and strength Oh dear
children, listen, if you're not in Christ and ready for His coming,
you're a fool, you're a fool. Now you see why I've come to
you this morning with one burning concern, to get this question
inside your spiritual and mental gut. to get it inside your spiritual
and mental viscera until you face it honestly. Am I savingly
united to Christ? Why is that important to consider
above all else? On this first day of 1989, I've
given you three parts of the answer from the Word of God,
because, because the Scripture tells us it's only in this life
that we can prepare for death and the second coming. Secondly,
a sovereign God determines how long we will live and when His
Son will return. And thirdly, God declares that
all who are not ready to die or for the Lord's return are
fools. Now, very quickly in closing,
for our time is gone, And I've already given much of the answer.
How can I become savingly united to Christ? Well, that's what
I preached on last week. You must own yourself to be what
you really are. You must start by owning yourself
to be what you really are, a guilty, hell-deserving rebel against
God. You'll never be ready to die
and meet the Lord. It is coming until you own yourself
to be what you are. You must own Christ to be what
He is, the Son of God and Son of Man, the only Savior of sinners,
whose perfect life, whose death upon the cross and His mighty
resurrection and whose place at the right hand of God the
Father constitutes Him, the one and only Savior of sinners. Thirdly,
you must embrace this Christ in penitent faith. You must turn
from your sins. and throw the weight of your
guilty soul upon the Lord Jesus. Spurgeon said it so beautifully
when he said, Repentance is the tear in faith's eye. In faith we look off to Christ
crucified, buried, and risen as our only hope that we will
be pardoned and accepted with God. And there is always in faith's
eye the tear of repentance, that is, genuine grief and sorrow
for sin, a resolute turning away from sin. Repentance is, as one
old Puritan described it, the vomit of the soul in which we
vomit out our sins and return to Christ to be our life. And
then, fourthly and finally, you must manifest the reality of
that union by a transformed life. If you are united to Christ,
then the sole object of your trust for forgiveness will be
Christ, Philippians 3. The supreme object of your affection
will be Christ, Luke 14. The Sovereign Lord will govern
you and direct you by his word, John 10.27. And Jesus will be
the real object of your hope and expectation, Philippians
1.21, 1 Thessalonians 1.9 and 10. Those were the texts I'd hoped
to open up, but our time is gone. But oh, dear friends sitting
here this morning, you can be united to Christ, but not if
you're determined to live in the never-never land of thinking
you are what you'd like to think you are. You must confront and
embrace the reality of what God says you are. A sinner, hell-deserving,
guilty, helpless, bound, and impotent. And you must embrace
Christ for what He is, Son of God, Son of Man, the only Savior
of sinners. And you must in penitent faith
lay hold of Him. And for some of you who say,
Oh, this wasn't for me. You've been able to coast through
the sermon. I wonder, do you manifest the reality of being
united to Christ? Your life does not demonstrate
that Christ is the sole object of your trust, the supreme object
of your affection, the sovereign Lord who governs you. He is not
your hope and your expectation. He's something secondary in your
life. If you're a child of God, He never takes second place for
long. And if second place is a pattern
of your life, you're no more saved than this pulpit. For whosoever
he be that renounces not all that he has cannot be my disciple. So I come around full circle
to where I began. I want you to leave today with
one burning concern on your consciousness. Something that goes with you
as much as the clothes you wear. More than that. You can take
them off when you get home. As much as the skin upon your
body. And that Question is this, are
you savingly joined to the Lord Jesus Christ? If not, my friend,
don't presume. As death takes you, judgment
will find you and eternity will hold you. When he comes, there
is no second chance. I ask you, Do you doubt the genuineness
of the love that has tried to cup your face in my hands, place
my hands upon your shoulder, clasp you by the wrists? Do you
think I'm just doing my preacher's thing to earn my living? Do you
really? If you do, please come to me
afterwards. I mean that sincerely. If you've
been so turned off and made so cynical by preachers who don't
live what they preach, and you think I'm just going through
it all, Dear friend, will you come to me? For until I can persuade
you that I'm dead in earnest, you'll snuff all of this off.
And I'm prepared to do anything short of sin to prove to you
that I'm dead in earnest. I don't get paid anymore if I
preach my heart out. My friend, don't treat this lightly. Give yourself no rest. till you
know that you're in union with Christ. Let us pray. Our Father, how we thank you
for your sovereign, gracious purpose to keep us in the land
of the living. Many of us can think of some
who were taken from us while they were yet in their teens,
others in their early twenties and thirties. We think of those
who have left the land of the living and have joined the spirits
of just men made perfect, and others who have joined the spirits
of the damned that await the day of judgment. O Lord, we pray
that this coming year, however many days it may hold for any
one of us, may not find us as fools, unprepared to die, unprepared
for the coming of Jesus. O God, will you not come down
this morning? Will you not come down even upon
this gathered people, that every man, woman, boy, or girl who
is not ready to die and go to judgment, who is not ready for
the coming of Jesus and the subsequent judgment, O Lord, give him, give
her no rest, no peace until they own what they are. Acknowledge
your son to be what he claims to be, and as they repent and
believe upon him, enter into the joy of sins forgiven. Father,
what thanks can we give you? We who have been spared, we who
were not cut off in our sins, Lord, we marvel that you gave
us breath And with that very breath, we mocked you. With that
very breath, we defied your law. Many of us, our lips were stained
with profaning your name. Our lives spent in violating
your holy law. Oh, God, we thank you for your
long suffering. You bore with us for so long. And we thank you. Oh, we thank
you. You've drawn us to your son.
And we pray that out of gratitude and love to you for so great
salvation, this coming year, how many days are blotted for
us, would find us utterly, undividedly devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Smash every idol that would rival
his place in our hearts. Tear from our breasts every trinket
to which we would cling. that we may say with the Apostle,
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. O hear our
cry, for his dear name's sake we plead. Amen.