The Promise of His Coming.
I. Here we have the language of those moods of the human soul which lead in the end to entire rejection of the second coming of Christ. (1) "Where is the promise of His coming?" See here the language of natural impatience. To many a man, in religious as in other things, the one thing that he cannot put up with is to be kept waiting. He gets angry with Almighty God when a truth is not immediately verified, when a grace is not instantaneously given, when a promise is not kept without delay. He gets angry with God, just as he would with an inconsiderate or neglectful servant who kept him standing at his front door, exposed to the wind and to the rain, instead of hurrying to open it at once. This was the temper of some souls at the close of the apostolic age. They had fled for refuge from the storms of heathen life, from falling fortunes, from blighted hopes, to lay hold on the hope set before them. They wanted to see as soon as possible with their bodily eyes the object of their hope. Years had passed since the ascension of Christ to heaven; yet He had not come to judgment. The Apostles, those first fathers of the faith, had one after another fallen asleep; yet Christ had not come to judgment. The first generation of believers, then the second, then perhaps the third, had passed away; yet Christ had not come to judgment. Why this delay? Why this protracted expectation? Why these disappointed hopes? Was He, was He, coming at all? Why should men wait for that which they had expected so earnestly, expected so long, why hope almost against hope for a fulfilment of the promise of the Advent? (2) "Where is the promise of His coming?" Here we have the language of incipient disbelief in a supernatural event yet to come. I say, "yet to come." It is easier to believe in that which is above nature in a distant past, than at the present moment, or in a future which may be upon us at any moment. Many a man will believe in miracles eighteen hundred years ago who would not have believed in them at the time, who would not believe in the same miracles with the same evidence in their favour now. The promise of Christ's coming in bygone ages, as now, has seemed to be in conflict with the idea that the supernatural has passed away for good, and that henceforth only such events as can be brought within that circle of causes which we term "nature" can reasonably be expected. (3) "Where is the promise of His coming?" There is a kind of half-faith, half-unbelief, which receives Christ with one hand, which repels Him with the other, which is willing to admit much about Him, but not to admit all that He says about Himself. In this state of mind men are glad that He came to teach, to save them, to leave them an example, that they should follow His steps, nay, to "bear their sins in His own body on the tree." "He has done all this," they say to themselves. "He has died, risen, left this world. He is seated in a distant world on a throne of glory." And, if they said out quite frankly what they feel and think, they would add that they are grateful for what He has done, but that for the future they wish to be left alone, left to themselves, left with their memories about Him.
II. Let us place ourselves under St. Peter's guidance, and see how he deals with this way of looking at things in the verses which follow my text. (1) Now, first of all, he raises the question of fact. The objector says to him that there have been no catastrophes, and that, therefore, none are to be expected. St. Peter points to the Deluge. The Deluge, whatever else may be said of it, was a catastrophe both in the history of nature and in the history of man. All through the ages during which man has inhabited this planet, and we know anything of his annals, there has been a succession of tragic occurrences, whether on the face of nature, or in the realm of human history. Holy Scripture calls these occurrences judgments, and they are judgments. They effect on a small scale, and for a race, or a generation, or a family, or a man, what the universal judgment will effect once for all for all the races of men. Sometimes they are the work of nature, or, to speak as Christians ought to speak, the work of God in nature. Such in the old days of the patriarchal history was the destruction of the corrupt cities of the plain Sodom, Gomorrah, and the rest. Such in the splendid days of the Roman empire, and in a neighbourhood most favoured by the wealthy citizens of the capital of the world, was the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the last century, our great-grandfathers were accustomed to look upon the earthquake of Lisbon as an event of this character; and that mighty wave which, along the seaboard of Bengal, the other day swept some two hundred thousand and odd human beings into eternity, is a recent instance of nature doing what it will achieve hereafter on a yet more gigantic scale, winding up the account of a vast number of reasonable creatures with the God who made them. It is a mere difference, you will remark, of the area or scale of the operation. The principle is the same as that of the Deluge, the same as that of the convulsions which will accompany the coming of the Son of man. (2) And, secondly, St. Peter grapples with the complaint that the Second Advent is so long delayed: "Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." For the infinite mind time means nothing. There is no such thing for Him as delay. For Him all that will be is. The only question is how and when it will be unrolled to us. True, we may have to wait, we know not how long. (3) But, thirdly, can a reason be assigned for the delay, as it seems to us, of Christ's coming to judgment? We know that this delay is not accidental; we know that it is not enforced; we know that it is not the result of caprice. But then what is its reason? St. Peter answers this question too. He says that there is a moral purpose, highly in accordance with the revealed character of God, in this delay: "God is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." As love was the motive which moved God to surround Himself with created beings who could never, as He knew, repay Him for the privilege of existence, so in love does He still linger over the work of His hands when it has forfeited all title to exist. As "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," so He would fain extend, though it were to no purpose, the priceless blessings of this redemption so long as any soul may be redeemed. The delay is not accidental; it is not capricious; still less is it forced; it is dictated by the throbbings of the heart of God bending over the moral world in an unspeakable compassion.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, New Series,No. 903.
The Three Comings of Christ.
The Scripture speaks of the three comings of our Lord Jesus Christ: the historical coming "in great humility" more than eighteen centuries ago, and the future coming "in glorious majesty" at a day and an hour when we think not, and the present coming of Christ into the hearts of His true servants, and through them into the world. This we should call a spiritual coming.
I. I would remind you of the simple historical fact that less than two thousand years ago Jesus Christ came into this world. The more thoughtful we are, and in proportion partly to our age, partly to the range of our intellect, chiefly to our acquaintance with the things of God, will the real richness and manifold significance of Christ's coming upon earth be felt by us. My present object is simply to remind you of it, to counsel you amid the busy, exciting rush of life to think once again over this most extraordinary and most momentous of all historical facts, the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in great humility, and the complete revolution in the history of the world which His presence inaugurated, His love and holiness inspired, while His Divine power rendered it possible and permanent.
II. There is a second coming of Jesus Christ. It is often spoken of by the name of the "Second Advent." "We believe that He will come to be our Judge." This human life of ours on earth is not intended by God, who gave it, to last for ever. Here it is stamped by three dark shadows: the shadow of sin, the shadow of sorrow, and the awful shadow of death. They will not be for ever. There will be a close of what is expressively, if unconsciously, called this earthly "scene"; and then a great change will come. Jesus Christ will be revealed to good and bad alike with a "glorious majesty" that may be either feared or welcomed, but cannot be questioned or ignored. "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My words shall not pass away."
III. We must speak, lastly, of His third coming: His coming now into our hearts shall I say His actual coming or His desires, His efforts, to come? Try to believe that Jesus Christ is striving to enter your hearts. Whenever you feel your hearts touched; whenever your relish for prayer is quickened; whenever you are more certain that you are heard; whenever the call of duty sounds loud in your ears, bidding you be more bold and decided than heretofore in your Master's service; whenever you come to hate, as hateful to Him, some form of evil which you had hitherto tolerated, this is for you an advent of Christ. Then is He indeed knocking at the door of your hearts, urging you to let Him enter and "make His abode with you."
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 292.
References: 2 Peter 3:4. R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons,p. 269; G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons,2nd series, p. 1; H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons,vol. i., p. 300; W. Skinner, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 107. 2 Peter 3:8. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 109; J. Keble, Sermons for Advent,p. 58; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 447; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 4. 2 Peter 3:9. E. Garbett, The Soul's Life,p. 357.