What Time Is It? part 3

When Jesus came into the world the first time, the king of this future kingdom, of the time to come, invaded this present evil age.This kingdom that is to come, came.That’s why Jesus says the kingdom of God is at hand and why he says to the Pharisees the kingdom of God is among you and why he says the kingdom of God has come upon you and that’s why there were all these healings and miracles and awesome stuff happening while Jesus was walking the earth, the king was here and he was giving sneak peeks, little previews of the kingdom that is to come.This kingdom, this time, it came and as a result of Jesus’ coming, we who are believers in Christ are now able to experience some of the benefits of the time to come. It’s like now, because Jesus came, we are able to experience little tastes of the blessings now that we are going to fully experience later.Take eternal life.When we do experience eternal life? You would say, obviously that is in the time to come.John 5:28 and 29, “Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”Eternal life is future. But it has also started now.John 5:24. “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”That’s something that has already happened. We are going to have eternal life. But we also have it.The new creation.You say that’s future. Yeah it is future. The new creation.Romans 8 and Revelation 20, remember we long for it, this new creation.But, what’s so cool is we get to experience some of that now in the way God has changed us personally.2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”Are we all that we are going to be in the time to come, no, but we get a taste of it as believers now, we are new, the old has passed away.Salvation. Being rescued by God.There’s a future sense to that. When Jesus returns. 1 Thessalonians 5:9, “God has not destined us to wrath, but to salvation.” So salvation is coming.But it is also here. Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved.”Coming back to our little line, the history of the world, what time is it now? What time are we living in?You could say, we live in the not yet. It is not yet the time to come. There’s a whole lot of good things God has in store for us and for this world that we are not yet experiencing and that we will not fully experience until the time to come.But you can also say we live in the already, because there are many blessings from the time to come that God has given us the privilege of enjoying RIGHT NOW when we come to Christ.What time is it?It is the already, not yet. That’s the time we are living in. AND YOU SAY WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THAT MAKE? HOW DOES KNOWING THAT ACTUALLY HELP ME?I think if you will take a look at many of the problems with what people believe and the mistakes they make in how they live you will find they have to do with the fact that they don’t actually know what time it is.There are some people who are just constantly disappointed in the world because they are wanting heaven now.If you don’t know that there is a time to come after this one, a time of glory that can only be brought in by Jesus and that this time is marked by suffering and pain, your expectations of this time are going to be way out of line. You are going to be desperately trying to get all the comfort and glory you can for yourself right now and you are going to become very frustrated and angry when you can’t. You are going to get mad at God and say God why is my life like this.But look, the Bible is honest about life in this age, this time, and you need to be honest about it as well. It’s marked by evil, suffering, darkness, pain, greed, betrayal, perversion. And if you expect that somehow through your little efforts you are going to totally change that, you are going to be disappointed time and time again.Heaven is coming. It is now and you can’t make it be now no matter how hard you work.I was talking to someone recently at the gym, an older man, maybe sixty and he went to the gym three hours a day, he worked out hard, and you know he’s in good shape, but he’s still sixty and no matter how hard he works out, he’s still only going to get older, not younger and there’s really nothing he can do about that and if he somehow thought, he could, what’s going to happen to him, he’s going to be a very, very sad man.Which I think is a lot of people, people who have moved to Sunnyside from foreign countries because they think aah, there’s going to be hope, I can make life great, and they get here and what do they find out, this is a broken world no matter where you live. You’ve got to get your expectations right.In this time that we are living, it’s the not yet and you are not going to ever be completely satisfied in the not yet, that’s why it is the not yet and if you ever are completely satisfied in the not yet, that’s not good because it is the not yet, you are supposed to be waiting for the time that is to come.On the other hand, it’s not just the not yet, it’s also the already. And I think some people forget that as well, we are presently experiencing as believers an almost indescribable amount of spiritual blessings in our live. Yes, there’s a whole lot of sadness in this world but we can’t live as if we were only experiencing sadness because God has poured into our life all kinds of goodness that we get to taste right now.There are some people who are constantly frustrated in their Christian life and with themselves because they forget that they are living in the not yet.They can’t understand how they could be a Christian and still struggle with sin, but man, look we are in the not yet and yeah, the never struggle with sin time is coming, but it is not here yet, we are still waiting for that.But other people, they are totally giving in to sin and they are like well, what can you expect I am a sinner but they are forgetting that they are living in the already, God has done a great work in their lives if they are Christians and they have power, real spiritual power to say no to sin.There are some people who are constantly angry at churches because those churches keep leaving them down and it’s because they forget they are living in the not yet.The church is not all that it should be. But other people have just given up on church because they say, oh, those people are just going to hurt me and they are really forgetting they are living in the already, God has made us a church and he’s gifted us and we can and must serve and love and help one another.There are some people who have given up on God and given into sin because they forget they are living in the not yet. They think well, God hasn’t judged sin. I see these people out there doing wicked things and nothing seems to be happening to them, so it must be that either there isn’t a God or that God doesn’t care. But man, it’s the not yet. JUDGMENT, VISIBLE EVERYBODY KNOWS JUDGMENT IS COMING. There is a day God has set aside in the future for just that.Other people though, they look at their own sin and they feel like there could never be any hope for people like them because there sin is just too big and they need to appreciate the fact that they are living in the already. JESUS HAS COME AND HE HAS BROUGHT WITH HIM FORGIVENESS OF SIN AND SALVATION FOR SINNERS!