Chapter 8 At Home with Our King
Chapter 8
At Home with Our King
Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and Seraphim falling down before Thee,
Which wert and art and evermore shall be.1
Above all, it will be Christ’s coronation day.
I’m thrilled that we will enjoy the Marriage Supper of the Lamb with its feast of rich foods and the finest of wines, and we will delight in our reunion with loved ones, and, yes, it will be exhilarating to reign over angels and rule the earth with new bodies to boot. But I have to keep remembering it will not be our celebration. It will be His.
I could never dare keep those crowns for myself. Could you?
We shall press in line with the great procession of the redeemed passing before the throne, an infinite cavalcade of nations and empires, age following age, Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, all standing shoulder to shoulder, the people of the islands of the seas in one happy parade, generations of the redeemed before the Cross and after, all bearing their diadems before God Almighty.
Then as Jesus rises from His throne before this great host, all crowns are lifted, all chimes ringing, and all hallelujahs hailing until the vocabulary of heavenly praise is exhausted. We will press our crowns against our breasts, look at one another, and say, “Now?”
“Now!” all will shout. Together we will raise our voices, not in four-part harmony, but perhaps in twelve-part, with the twenty-four elders as “they lay their crowns before the throne” (Revelation 4:10–11) and sing:
Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne:
Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own!
Awake, my soul and sing of Him who died for thee,
And hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity.2
If, indeed, we are given literal crowns, make no mistake about it—the diadems will be His. The judgment seat of Christ may have been center stage where Jesus showered praise on the believer, but all of heaven will turn the spotlight on the Lord to give Him back the glory. The universe will bow its knee and hail Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords when He raises His sword in victory over death, the devil, disease, and destruction.
In a breathless moment—an infinite moment—we will comprehend that the whole plan of redemption was merely the Father’s way of securing for His Son…
A Bride.
A Family.
An Army.
An Inheritance.
But the crowning purpose of His plan will be to secure for the Son a grand chorus of Eternal Worshipers.
This is what I was made for. This is the answer to all the times I asked on earth, “Why has God chosen me? Why not someone else?” The response is simply, I am the Father’s gift to the Son. Ephesians 1:11–12 will then make perfect sense for “in him we were chosen…in order that we…might be for the praise of his glory.” I will be the flashing and iridescent gift for the Son who Zechariah admired, “They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown. How attractive and beautiful they will be!” (Zechariah 9:16–17).
This explains why I feel so beautiful when I sing that old Sunday school song. I like the idea of being a jeweled gift for Jesus:
When He cometh, when He cometh to make up His jewels,
All His jewels, precious jewels, His loved and His own:
Like the stars of the morning,
They shall shine in their beauty—Bright gems for His crown.3
Earth was one big diamond mine in which I was chiseled from the dirt, cleaned, polished, and fitted for a King’s crown. Can you now understand why I want to win as many crowns as possible while on earth? True, greater rewards will enhance my service in heaven, but they will also magnify the glory Jesus will receive. The more crowns, the merrier God’s praise. My motive in gathering a truckload of diadems is not to hoard them, but to have more to cast at Jesus’ feet.
You and I were chosen to praise Him. It’s that simple. What a shame that on earth we made it so complicated.
In the early days of my paralysis when I first learned about heaven, I zeroed in on it because it was the place where I would receive new hands and feet. Heaven was the place I’d be freed from the pain, and so, it became an escape from reality. A psychological crutch. At times, heaven was so me-centered that I felt as though the whole point of it was to get back all it owed me, all I had lost. And so, heaven became a death wish.
Time passed, and with it I gained a little more spiritual maturity. It gradually dawned on me that the Day of Christ would be just that…the Day of Christ, not the day of Joni. Glorified hands and feet, as well as reunions with loved ones, began to look more like fringe benefits to the honor of simply being on the invitation list to the coronation party.
You’ll agree. The privilege of casting your crowns at the feet of Jesus will be enough of an honor. Ruling the earth and reigning over angels, becoming pillars in God’s temple and co-heirs of heaven and earth are almost incidental. What we become, receive, and do in heaven won’t be the highlight of heaven. To be there and to be to the praise of His glory will be enough.
It will be Jesus’ Day.
Christ’s Coronation Day
We should have known it all along. But it never sunk in. Oh, we understood it on paper, but how often did we live—really live—with the focus off ourselves and fixed on Christ as King of Kings? It takes heaven to force us to fully comprehend what should have been plain on earth all along. If only we had stopped and read—really read—that “the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24).
Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth.
We said it in our prayers, we sang it in our songs, and we would have sworn we believed it with a capital B. But it never really clicked for us. That’s because “us” kept getting in the way. All those years when earthly trials hit hard, we burnt rubber in our brains trying to figure out what it meant to us. How problems fit into God’s plan for us. How Jesus could be conformed in us. Everything was always “for us.” Even Sunday worship service focused on how we felt, what we learned, and if the hymns were to our liking.
Why, oh why, didn’t we take the hint from Acts 17:24 and switch our attention off us and onto Him? Why didn’t we appreciate that God gave every trial, heartache, and happiness to show us something about Himself?
That we might appreciate His grace?
That we were being polished for the praise of His glory?
That we might see that everything fit together in order that we might know Him?
We always marvel that God shows an interest in us, but in heaven it will be clear that every earthy thing happened so that we’d show an interest in Him. In every trial, happiness, and heartache, God wanted us to think about Him. We will finally be convinced that the One whom we lauded with our lips as King truly did have supremacy in all things.
His kingdom came.
His will was done on earth as it is in heaven.
His word went forth and accomplished His purposes.
He was sovereign Lord over all.
While on earth, you never could have convinced us. We acted more like His kingdom sort of came, but not really. We behaved like His will was done on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven mainly to benefit our jobs and relationships. And whenever we talked about heaven, it was more along the lines of an eternal playground where we would receive lots of new toys while God, like a granddaddy, would nod and smile to see us enjoying ourselves.
What a shame that on earth we acted as though we did God a big favor by accepting Jesus as Savior. We pitied Jesus because His reputation could never quite be vindicated. We felt sorry for God because it seemed like His justice was never quite served; in fact, at times we were embarrassed for our “King” as we scrambled to defend Him over earthly holocausts and horrors. Jesus never appeared to flex his kingly muscles, and thus never got credit, much less glory.
We weren’t the only shortsighted ones. Even the disciples had a small-minded view of God. They too failed to recognize the King in their midst. Occasionally the fog lifted from their thinking, and once, toward the end of Jesus’ ministry, they rose to a heavenly perspective of their King and said, “Now we can see that you know all things.” For a brief moment, their focus was off the kingdom on earth and fixed on the kingdom in heaven. It was a rare flash of revelation, and Jesus was moved enough to exclaim, “You believe at last!” (John 16:30–31).
Those words of Christ’s rip at my heart. All Jesus wanted from us was, at last, to believe. So why were our times of drastic obedience and absolute trust only flashes, brief moments of illumination? Why did we always have such a hard time acting like Jesus was King?
The King Who Won Against All Odds
Perhaps because on earth, He never acted like a king.
Or at least not like one would think a king should act. Jesus, however, had a good reason for cloaking His majesty under the robe of weakness, shame, and humility. It has to do with His glory in heaven. When the Father designed the plan of salvation, He initiated a scheme that would ultimately bring the highest and brightest glory to His Son, the King of the Cosmos. It was a plot that almost reads like an adventure story.
The plan was put into effect when the evil villain, Lucifer, enslaved the citizens of the kingdom of earth through treachery and deceit. He usurped the authority of the rightful Ruler and set up his own rival government. The good Ruler sent His most skilled servants to try to recapture the occupied territory, but with few exceptions, the villain seduced and defeated them. Finally, the Ruler sent His only Son, the rightful Prince, to invade Lucifer’s territory, free the captive subjects, and retake the kingdom under the family banner.
But the battle tactics of the Son were odd, to say the least. In fact, the manner in which He fought seemed to insure defeat. At one point, when Lucifer had the Prince pinned, the Son merely yielded to the deathblow. All appeared lost and the people’s hearts fainted in despair. Little did they realize the best and final part of the plan was just about to go into play. It was called the Resurrection, and it was the only battle tactic that could deliver the killing blow to the enemy and his hordes of evil rulers.
Now any struggle between a hero and the bad guys is interesting enough, but when the hero is disadvantaged, a new element is introduced. Now the hero is in far more danger and he appears to have less chance of winning. But if in his weakness he overcomes against all odds, he ends up twice as much the hero. When weak heroes outmaneuver strong villains, the victory is awe-inspiring.
And so, the Prince of Peace, the Lamb who let Himself be slain, will be glorified, not because He employed brute force against Satan, but because He didn’t.
The King Who Won Through Weakness
There’s another aspect of the Father’s plan which positions His Son as less than kingly, yet guarantees Him greater glory. It involves defeating the strong villain by using his own dark power against him.
It’s kind of like judo.
My husband Ken could tell you all about it. Every once in a while he gets into his martial arts mode and starts jumping around the living room like a cat on catnip, pouncing helter-skelter, punching the air with his fists, and kicking toward the ceiling with the side of his foot. I always watch with distracted feminine interest.
Ken tells me that judo has its uses. It’s the art of using the power of your enemy to defeat him; and although Ken may appear passive and even weak in a judo match, the secret is simply to wait for that moment when the opponent’s full strength can be used to defeat him. When my husband is attacked, he simply judos his assailant and sends the guy flying over his shoulder.
Jesus appeared passive and weak. People kept looking for His diadem. We kept hoping He would behave as a monarch should and make the lives of His subjects happy, healthy, and free from trouble. But Jesus had other plans for earth—plans that involved greater praise for the believer and glory for Himself.
He kept doing judo. Especially against the devil. And most specifically at the Cross. At the exact moment the devil thought he had Christ cornered and pinned down in defeat, he unleashed his full satanic fury to finish Him off. But it was Christ’s weakness and vulnerability that enabled Him to judo Satan into slitting his own throat.
James Stewart, the Scottish theologian, put it this way:
The very triumphs of His foes He used for their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements to subserve His ends, not theirs. They nailed Him to the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to His feet. They gave Him a cross, not guessing that He would make it a throne.
They flung Him outside the gates to die, not knowing that at that very moment they were lifting up all the gates of the universe to let the King of Glory come in. They thought to root out His doctrines, not understanding that they were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy.
They thought they had God with His back to the wall, pinned and helpless and defeated. They did not know it was God Himself who had dragged them down to that point. He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil, He conquered through it.4
Something glorious happened when the world’s worst murder became the world’s only salvation. When the cross, a symbol of torture, became a symbol of life and hope, it meant triple the glory.
Jesus ends up triple the hero in heaven because He won using weapons of warfare that were spiritual, and not carnal. His triumph was assured using divine judo. He won using perfect timing and patience. “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). He won through waiting, yielding, and submission. Philippians 2:7–9 reads like “The Basic Principles in Martial Arts” because the weaker Christ became, the greater was His victory, and the greater the victory, the more glorious the honors: “[He] made himself nothing,…he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.”
If we pitied Christ on earth or felt badly that His justice seemed aborted, we wasted our time. If we were embarrassed for His sake over so much senseless suffering, we would have done better to take a few lessons in the martial arts. Jesus did flex His muscles as King on earth; our unskilled eyes, hearts, and minds just weren’t trained to see it. He wore a crown; it just wasn’t the crown we expected. Not one of gold, but of thorns.
Up in heaven, we may be tempted to smack our foreheads and exclaim, “Oh bother! How did we miss it?” But there will be no room for remorse. We won’t berate ourselves for not having seen it. No, our King of Kings will be too gracious to permit us such regrets. It will be obvious why His medals of monarchy were hidden. It was all engineered to help us exercise faith, develop trust, and demonstrate obedience, as well as to teach us timing and patience, waiting and yielding. The King overcame the Cross so that we might have power to parlay a bullying devil and thus accept our thorns, share our burdens, and carry our own crosses, while all the time turning tragedy into triumph and heartaches into victories.
With good grace, Jesus will not scold us for being so us-centered. He will assure us He knew our frame and remembered that we were but dust. We will realize that on earth we were worse than we thought, but the Lord’s grace went deeper than we thought, and so in heaven we will do better than we thought.5
The Lord Jesus will be sloppy with His kindness, letting it spill and splash over everything. Even our regrets. And that, dear friends, will compel us to love, praise, and rejoice in Him all the more. At that point, God’s glory in heaven will open up exponentially to the hundredth power.
I get so happy for Jesus when I picture this moment. For He will show Himself as He is, no longer the weak and suffering servant, but the mighty Sovereign of time and space. His reputation will be vindicated. He will receive all the credit due Him, plus triple the glory. Most of all, His justice will be served.
And it won’t look very nice. At least to some.
The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord
All this stuff about weakness and humility grates on the nerves of some people. They don’t buy a God who would let Himself be mocked, kicked, and spit upon, all for the sake of justice. Especially justice on their behalf. How dare this weak, powerless God assert they need to be saved—and from their sin, no less!
On earth, they pushed their own kind of justice. And first on their agenda was to defame and defrock Jesus. Setting themselves up at the center of their own moral universe, they thought they had the power to put God on trial. They arraigned and indicted Him, accused and banished Him as some impotent third-rate deity. They kicked Him out of school classrooms and erased His mark from the public square. Profaning His name, they neutered God and tamed Him so He would bless their lusts and passions.
But in heaven, the record will be set straight. God will vindicate His holy name and dispense His pure and perfect justice. For a great many people, it will be terrifying.
What a shock when they behold this Jesus whom they tried to shove back into a Sunday school room. Horror will strike their hearts as the scene in Revelation 19:11–16 unfolds, and they’ll cry:
I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
These symbols aren’t clunky at all; they’re frightening! As an artist, not only could I not paint it, I would never want to. Eyes like blazing fire? A robe dipped in blood? This is no senile Benevolence that drowsily wished human beings well while they were on earth, a God to be pitied or felt sorry for. This is the great and terrible Lord, the consuming fire Himself. “See, the Lord is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind; he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For with fire and with his sword the Lord will execute judgment upon all men, and many will be those slain by the Lord” (Isaiah 66:15–16).
This is not a pretty sight for “it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). The same mouth that spoke peace and reconciliation will one day emit the sharp sword of judgment. The same eyes that glowed with compassion will one day blaze with fire. Is this the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, my Bridegroom? Yes, this same Jesus, into whose loving hands I first fell, is the dreadful living God. Lover and Avenger? He is perfectly one and the same. He is altogether loving in His justice, and just in His love. And because He is perfect, His justice is pure.
How Will It Feel on That Terrible Day?
Once in heaven, we will know in every fiber of our being, beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever the Judge declares about us is true. As He says we are, so are we. No more, no less. Maybe we will even realize, in a dim, hazy way, this was our actual deep-down self on earth all along. If the Judge rules we were righteous in Christ, then “Hallelujah! I knew it all along.” If He declares us unrighteous, wicked, and steeped in selfishness, then “curse me! I knew it all along.” The self-evident truth about you or me will be clear to everyone.
This fact is especially humbling to believers. Remember when I said that Christians will not have their sinful past replayed before everyone like some awful R-rated movie? Don’t worry, I’m not throwing you a curve. It’s true we won’t have to bear that shame because God has separated us from our sin as far as the east is from the west.
But if it were not so, let’s say if our secret closet sins were exposed, I’m convinced there’s not a righteous soul who would protest. You and I would wholeheartedly agree with the Judge and say, “Jesus, You are absolutely right, Your justice is perfect. I was a manipulator on earth, always fudging the truth and faking it with everybody around me. That was my true deep-down self all along!”
In fact, I can picture myself tugging at His robe and saying, “Wait, Jesus, I have some other ugly hidden things about me I want you to expose. I want everyone to know how vast and far-reaching Your grace was to me. I don’t want to cover up my sins. I want everyone to see how rotten-to-the-core I was so they know how deep-cleansing was Your grace!”
Jonathan Edwards takes this thought a step further when he says that sinners “will have so much the more admiring and joyful sense of God’s grace in pardoning them, that the remembrance of their sins will rather be an indirect occasion of joy.”6
If—and I say if—our gruesome pasts are to be replayed, it would serve to bring God greater glory for such great grace.
That’s why, as uncanny as it seems to us now, we won’t cringe or cower on the great and terrible day of the Lord. Oddly, we will rejoice. This sounds insane because our human sense of compassion abhors the idea of justice being executed with unbridled sound and fury. On earth, justice is served as prisoners are quietly escorted from death row to chambers where hushed groups of people sit behind soundproofed windows and, without emotion, watch death happen.
But not in heaven.
There, judgment is full of emotion.
Smack-dab in the middle of the apocalypse, as bowls of wrath are being poured out with smoke and fire, we are found singing and rejoicing while watching the Judgment. This parenthesis of incredible praise is squeezed between the rage of God in Revelation 18 and what looks like Armageddon at the end of Revelation 19. In the mighty praise chorus of verses 1–10, we are numbered among the angels, the elders, and “the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments.’”
Why will we happily agree with Jesus as He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty? Will it be because the tables will finally turn on the bad guys? No. We will accompany the Judgment with choruses of praise because we will love purity and hate the perniciousness of evil. We will desire truth deeply and despise lies and wickedness. With perfect minds and devout hearts, we will joyfully accent all of God’s judgments with a hearty “Yes!” And we’ll do it as He’s treading His grapes of wrath.
The Day of Christ will be a great and terrible day. Great for the righteous and terrible for the unrighteous. “In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other.”7
I’m just grateful that Scripture speaks of that time as only “a day.” It may mean the Great Judgment will be swift. After all, “there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it.”8
For all the people who insisted “My will be done!” God will not dissuade. He will no longer strive with them, either by pointing to His glory in creation or by preaching to them from the Gospel. For those who turn their backs on Christ, there is no heaven.
All That Are in Hell, Choose It
Yes, there is a hell.
It’s unthinkable to talk about heaven without at least mentioning hell. Please note I didn’t refer to it as “heaven’s counterpart.” Heaven has no counterpart. It has no opposite. Just as Satan is not God’s opposite (for the devil is merely a created being—and a fallen one, at that!), neither does heaven have an opposite. In the vastness of God’s infinite, as well as cleansed and purified universe, hell may end up being only a speck. A trash heap. A garbage dump.
Outside of Jerusalem, the holy city, there was a junkyard where the Jews took their garbage to burn. In earlier times pagan tribes, and way-ward Jews themselves, had used this area called GeHinnom for performing rituals and sacrifices; that’s why God’s people thought it only a place fit to set fire to their waste. They ended up calling it Gehenna, and that became the biblical term for hell.
The actual hell will be the trash compactor of the universe.
God makes no garbage, but we do; and a good cosmos must eventually purify itself of spiritual garbage like egotism, hate, greed, cowardice, or lust…We can even rejoice that it exists, for we should want our spiritual garbage burned away, if we do not identify ourselves with that garbage. If we do, we are burned eternally…God cannot allow that garbage into heaven; and if we do not want to throw it away, if we clutch our garbage so close that we become garbage, there is only one place for us.9
Hell will not pollute the purified universe, nor will it be a festering boil in the side of the new heavens, an ugly sore spot that forever seeps and demands somebody’s attention. It may well be too small for that. I don’t mean hell will be smaller than heaven in terms of population statistics, but in terms of its importance in the new heavens and new earth. Nobody pays much attention to smoldering junk heaps.
Since I brought up the subject of numbers, however, I’m reminded of the record of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:13–14: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” No doubt about it. The world, for the most part, chooses the path to hell. Not many choose Christ and His heaven.
But I wonder, will hell have greater numbers than the repentant residing in heaven? What about the redeemed numbering more than the sands on the beach or stars in the sky? Revelation 7:9 claims there is to be a multitude in heaven that no man can number.
There’s no contradiction between Christ’s words in Matthew and His words in Revelation. C. H. Spurgeon reconciles it this way:
I believe there will be more in heaven than in hell. If you ask me why I think so, I answer, because Christ in everything is to have the preeminence (Colossians 1:18), and I cannot conceive how he could have the preeminence if there are to be more in the dominions of Satan than in paradise. Moreover, it is said there is to be a multitude that no man can number in heaven. I have never read that there is to be a multitude that no man can number in hell. I rejoice to know that the souls of all infants, as soon as they die, speed their way to paradise. Think what a multitude there is of them!10
Rather than debate the census figures of heaven and hell, it is simply sufficient to say that hell exists; it’s horrible, you don’t want to go there, and you want to do everything in your power to keep others from choosing it. Jesus’ teaching about hell with its wormwood and gall is meant to strike terror in our hearts, warning us that if heaven is better than we could dream, so hell will be worse than we can imagine.
Hell warns us to seek heaven.
It is its own best deterrent.
I know this firsthand. At the time of my injury, doctors pumped me up with powerful drugs to get rid of the infection that was raging through my paralyzed limbs. My body was on fire with pain. When nurses turned me facedown on the Stryker frame, I could only see the floor and people’s feet. Horrified, I saw the ugly cloven hooves of demons where there should have been shoes of nurses. The feet of friends were webbed with claws. I screamed at the nurses not to flip me face up, fearful that I would see ugly monsters. But when they turned me over, I was shocked to find everything normal.
What a hell. Looking back, I know my terror was drug-induced. But those frightening images remained with me even through subsequent years of backsliding and bitterness. In fact, during those years when I teetered on the brink of rejecting Christ entirely, scary cloven hooves would flash in my mind. For me, it was a warning.
My teenage years were full of warning. I recall reading Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” while studying American Literature in tenth-grade English. My hands trembled as I held the book! I wish public high school students still were required to read Edwards, one of America’s greatest thinkers, but times have changed. Few read such cautions as,
The same God whom the saints see as their supreme lover, sinners see as the enemy of their souls. The divine and supernatural light of the saint is the divine and supernatural darkness of the sinner. As the redeemed see God as the source of every blessing that heaven affords, the impenitent see God as the source of every curse of hell. For the saint, heaven is God. For the wicked, hell is God. Cursed are the impure in heart for they too shall see God!11
Does this seem unfair? Does it seem cruel that unbelievers “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12)? Our human sense of justice may think so, but remember, God owes this utterly rebellious planet absolutely nothing. Were it not for God’s quickening grace, we would all remain dead in our trespasses. Plus, were it not for His grace, this planet would have ripped itself apart at the seams long ago in hatred and violence. That the human race has survived this long is a demonstration of God’s compassion. The question is not “How could God let so many people go to hell?” but should be “How could God be so generous and save as many as He does?”
Human fairness is not the point, the justice of God is. If there’s no judgment and subsequent hell, then it makes more sense to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die and…period. Nothingness. It’s all over. But there is a hell. As well as a Judgment. “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done.…If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:12, 15).
That’s the one verse in the Bible that makes my hair stand on end. Apocalyptic verses about signs of the times, earthquakes, floods, and pestilence don’t do it. Not even word pictures about snarling beasts and ten-horned creatures or the heavens rolling up as a scroll and the mountains fleeing into the ocean. The worst verse in the Bible is the one about dead people being judged. That’s because some of those dead will be my neighbor down the street, my elementary school teacher, the lady at the dry cleaners, or even those Muslim young men who work at the Shell gas station near my house (not to mention millions of others worldwide).
When I pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” I utter that word “quickly” with caution. Do I really want Jesus to return soon? Yes!
And no.
Holding Off the Day of God’s Wrath
The day dawned quietly over Nazareth, except for the crowing of a rooster and barking from a few dogs. The hour was still early but the sun was high, the air dry and hot. Any other morning the streets of Nazareth would have been bustling with hawking vendors and women chatting on their way to the well. But this was no ordinary day. This was the Sabbath. And this was no ordinary Sabbath. Jesus had come home and He would be in the synagogue.
No one was sure how long He’d been gone. Two, maybe three months? Rumor had it that one morning Jesus just hung up His carpenter’s apron and headed off to the Jordan River to find the Baptist. Then something strange happened. When Jesus was baptized there was a thunderous voice, followed by a dove. Next, He vanished. Some say Jesus headed off into the wilderness. Others reported His whereabouts later on in Capernaum. That’s when rumors really got weird. Sick people getting healed? Something about water becoming wine?
And now He was back in Nazareth.
The air in the synagogue was hot and tight. The attendant handed Jesus the scroll of Isaiah. He quietly unrolled it, found the verse He was looking for, and began to speak with the voice of uncommon authority: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19).
He stopped in the middle of the verse. Just like that, Jesus left it unfinished and sat down. The eyes of everyone were fastened on Him. Little wonder, they had never heard Isaiah 61 read in such a way, like the words were His own. Finally Jesus broke the silence, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The rest was a blur. The crowd started demanding tricks, a magic show, shouting, “Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum!” Jesus reminded them that crowds demanded the same performance from Elijah and Elisha, but like the prophets of old, He would do no miracles among faithless, stiff-necked, prideful people. A scuffle broke out and then a town riot. They drove Jesus out of the village and took him to the brow of the hill to throw Him down the cliff. The story abruptly ends there, with Jesus escaping and going on His way.
This incident in Luke 4 records the formal announcement of Jesus’ ministry. From the very moment He embarked on His earthly mission, He made clear His motives and intentions. He had come for heaven’s sake. But why wasn’t the crowd satisfied with His mission statement?
Perhaps it wasn’t so much what He said, as what He didn’t say. Jesus did not read the entire verse from Isaiah 61. He announced He had come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, but He failed to finish the sentence. He did not say what the people were hoping He would say: That He had come “to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.” It was obvious to the people gathered in that synagogue that Jesus had no intention of executing the wrath of God upon their Roman oppressors. And everybody thought that’s what the Messiah was supposed to do—execute wrath and judgment.
He left off the most terrifying part of the second verse of Isaiah 61 because He did not come to condemn or destroy. He came to seek and save the lost.
This threw everybody into confusion. Especially John the Baptist who was poised for the judgment. John had been paving the way for Jesus, proclaiming, “Repent, for the day of the Lord is at hand.” He preached the coming hellfire and warned that the vengeance of God was at hand. Little wonder the Baptist was stymied. He had risked his life saying angry things against Herod as well as pointing the finger at hypocritical religious leaders. When Jesus failed to crush evil and castigate sinners, John was confused and disappointed. He got himself thrown into prison for the sake of the coming judgment, yet Jesus didn’t lift a finger to release him from jail.
Jesus made it clear that His agenda was not to execute the wrath of God, but to bear in His own body that same wrath. I’m heartbroken by that statement: Jesus, precious Savior, did not come to execute the wrath of God, but to bear in His own body God’s fury. All of the Father’s white-hot anger against my sin was poured out on the cross. Because of Jesus, the Father has no anger left for you and me.
Instead, He’s storing up His anger for the day His Son will come back.
One day Jesus is going to return and finish the verse from Isaiah 61.
He will judge the living and the dead. He will crush the wicked. Punish rebellious, impudent evildoers. He will upset nations and overthrow kings and rulers. He will institute the day of vengeance of our God.
This is what tempers my pleas for the soon return of Christ. Yes, I pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” but in the same breath, I remember the high school girl in the white-sequined dress whom I prayed for at the prom and the ten-year-old Asian girl at the Hair and Nail Shoppe, and a few aunts and uncles who, unless they come to profess Christ as Savior, will end up getting trampled in the grapes of God’s wrath.
Please hold off a bit longer that great and dreadful day of the Lord!
Still, I need to remember that God’s timing is perfect. You and I have a job to do, just as the disciples were reminded when they asked Jesus when He would come back. The Lord said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power…and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
I need not bother myself with God’s timing. I simply need to be bothered enough to witness. While Christ is in heaven, He is proclaiming through us the year of the Lord’s favor, He is carrying out His agenda of compassion and forgiveness through you and me. He is still the tender, merciful Shepherd looking for more people to rescue, searching for lost men and women on whom He can gladly bestow salvation.
So when I begin to lean on the windowsill of eternity and pine for my Savior to fulfill His promise to return, I bite my lip and recall 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” That’s all the reminder I need to get away from that windowsill and go rescue the perishing.
How patient of the Lord to hold His breath for virtually two thousand years before bringing down His vengeance. I don’t mind the slowness of God even if it means having to spend extra years in this wheelchair. God’s slowness means more time and opportunity to increase heaven’s numbers. More time for His Inheritance to be enriched, His Body to be made complete, His Bride to be more beautiful, His Army to be greater in rank, and the grand chorus of Eternal Worshipers to be louder and more thunderous in their praise. In short, it means more glory for Him.
I can sum up 2 Peter 3:9 with this paraphrase: “The Lord is not slow in finishing His sentences, as some understand slowness. He is holding off the last part of Isaiah 61:2 so that, heaven willing, my neighbor, my relatives, and the people who work in my community will come to repentance.”
Oh, how gracious of Jesus, how patient. How kind of our God, how merciful. Until the King of Kings and Lord of Lords returns with eyes of blazing fire, robe of blood, and sword and fury, you and I better get out there and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Crown Him with Many Crowns
Is your blood pressure a notch higher like mine right now? Maybe you are feeling like me—awash in delight, yet reverent in fear. Tingling with joy, yet trembling with holy respect. Our God is an awesome God. That’s why I wish we were huddled together against the cold night air right now, listening to my neighbor’s whistling pine trees, and gazing at a thin slice of moon making a smile on the horizon. I wish we were standing together underneath a starry dome, feeling small and swallowed up, and tuning into the faint and haunting melody of a hymn. A certain hymn striking a resonant chord in our souls.
It would be a moment of great happiness and wisdom. But this time, we wouldn’t let it go. Nothing mundane or ordinary could drown it out, and we’d not only hold ourselves in that ecstatic state of listening to heaven’s music, but we would lift our voices and sing along…
Crown Him the Lord of love:
Behold His hands and side—
Rich wounds, yet visible above,
In beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his wond’ring eye
At mysteries so bright.
Crown Him the Lord of life:
Who triumphed o’er the grave,
Who rose victorious to the strife
For those He came to save.
His glories now we sing,
Who died and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring
And lives that death may die.
Crown Him the Lord of heav’n:
One with the Father known,
One with the Spirit through Him giv’n
From yonder glorious throne.
To Thee be endless praise,
For Thou for us hast died;
Be Thou, O Lord, through endless days
Adored and magnified.
Amen.12