of messages the last few weeks have been focused on looking forward to the return of Christ and the things that accompany His return, the last days. And, of course, as people talk about the last days so often, the result of those conversations or those thoughts Even people that are not familiar with the Bible particularly, they know there's this thing called the Battle of Armageddon that comes toward the end, right? And they're like, oh, this is horrible, this is fearful. And people seem to be captivated by fear. And that's kind of the way we live our lives, isn't it? fear of the pandemic, fear of economic upheaval, fear of war, fear of death, fear of the unknown, and on and on it goes. That's kind of part and parcel of being human, it seems. But the question is, how are we supposed to respond to these Do we adopt this fatalistic approach of, well, hey, whatever's gonna be is gonna be, I can't stop it, so I might as well just go with it. Do we melt into a panic? Do we run screaming out the door, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, right? What are we supposed to do? In the very same passage that we started in a couple of weeks ago, where Jesus warned us not to be deceived by false teachers, he gave instructions about fear in the face of coming events. And so we look again in Matthew chapter 24 verses 4 through 6. And this is what we have here. Jesus answered them, See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ. And they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed. for this must take place, but the end is not yet. This word alarm that we have here means to make an outcry. It's what happens when someone surprises you and you go, oh! You just, you know, you can't help it. It just comes out. That's the word that Jesus used here. Don't, don't be suddenly scared and shriek or It's also translated as being troubled or frightened in some translations and other places in Scripture. But I want us to look at some of the things that Jesus told us that we should expect in this age as the age draws near its end. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, deception from false teachers. We have here wars and rumors of wars. If we look at verse 7, we find that he is describing more. It says, For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. We have famine, pestilence, Earthquakes. Has anyone noticed, depending on where you look for news, but there has been a significant increase in the number of earthquakes worldwide in the last couple of years, and it seems to continually grow more. That fits with what Jesus said we should expect as we approach the end times. We have famines and pestilence, disease. Jesus is not candy coating things for us here. He says, look, I want you to understand, be prepared. There's gonna be tough times as we approach the end of this age. But then he said, see that you are not alone. He's telling us these difficulties are going to come. Our salvation does not Give us a free pass to evade all the difficulties that the world is going to hit. We're not gonna avoid sorrows or suffering. But Jesus did say, but you don't have to be alarmed. You don't have to be troubled. This must take place, but the end is not yet. And Jesus said, all of this is just the beginnings of birth pains. This is the signs pointing to what is coming. He said that rather than panicking, we ought to be preparing our minds. Preparing our minds to endure these things and also to take practical steps where we can. And as we said in the first two messages of this series, the most important preparation for these things is to abide in Christ, to know that our salvation is secure. So that's our spiritual preparation, be sure of your salvation, and of Christ's continuing care for you. When we know our eternal destiny is secure, when our souls are taken care of, we're able to face troubles, difficulties in this life with hope. That's the natural connection there, and we see this fleshed out in the life of Job. We all love Job, right? I mean, poor Job. He went through so much and truth be told, Job didn't know why he was going through what he was going through, right? That's that's where we can really learn from him is like so often as we are going through things, we don't know why we're suffering the things that we're suffering. So often, we don't But the example that we find with Job is that he had hope, even though, yes, he struggled very much. We find him expressing that. But where did he express it? Back to God. And a couple of the statements from Job. He said in Job 13.15, Though he slay me, I will hope in him. That was the faith that he had. I feel like God has put a target on me and he's out to kill me and I don't like that. And we express that to God. But in the midst of that, he said, but even though, even if God decides to kill me, he is still my hope. He is still who I'm looking to. And then he said in chapter 19, I know that my Redeemer lives. and at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God." Where was his hope? Not in this life, but after this life. Job truly did suffer, and he struggled in dealing with his suffering, but in his struggle through the suffering, he exercised faith in God. hope in god and continued to trust in god and god's ultimate deliverance of his soul. Coming back to the New Testament as Jesus prepared to leave this world and he's preparing his disciples uh for his departure. He said in John fourteen, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in god. Believe If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself and where I am, you may be also. Jesus said that he was not simply leaving his disciples, his followers, but he was going with a purpose to prepare a place for them, for us. where he said, where I will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. He said, I'm preparing a place where suffering is ended and you can look forward to being with me for all of eternity. One of the things that we should do as believers in Jesus Christ is look forward to that eternal hope that He has given to us, the glories and the joys of heaven as we enter His presence. If you look through our hymnal, you'll find that there's quite a few hymns that talk about heaven, the hope of heaven, the anticipation and the glory that awaits us when we get there. You know, a song that just comes to mind. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. Why do we sing that? Because it points us to the hope that in spite of the suffering in this life, there is a better life, a more real life waiting for us in heaven. And so this eternal hope helps us to bear the suffering of this present life. This promise of a place with him. Peter picked up on this same thought, as he wrote his first epistle. Now, Peter knew a little bit about suffering. And, you know, he was imprisoned for preaching Christ. He was ultimately crucified, put to death for his faith and his preaching of Christ. But this is what Peter wrote in his first epistle. But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you." He said that we as believers, facing the reality of suffering and But what are we supposed to do with the action on our part? Honor Christ the Lord as holy. Set him apart as worth that suffering. Again, we can go back to the picture from the Old Testament. How holy, how awesome is this God who we are worshiping, who we are serving, who has called us to be his people. Is he worth it? Yes, we, in our hearts, And then we prepare ourselves to make a defense, to give an answer to anyone who asks, why do you have hope? Are we able to do that? I remember, I've shared this before, but Stonewall Jackson, Confederate general, was a committed and when he was wounded on the battlefield, his hand got shot. And he was recovering. One of his subordinate officers, I think it was a captain, came to visit him. And one of the things, if you don't know anything about Stonewall Jackson, one of the things that had been reported of him is that anytime he was in battle, the more intense the battle got, the more excited he got. In fact, they described his eyes would develop this almost neon glow to them, right? If I remember correctly, he had blue eyes, and it was like the blue just got brilliant, and it was like there was as as this captain came to him with a question and and he confessed his own fear in the face of battle and wondered, general, how can you be so bold, so confident, and even joyful in in the midst of the battle when all the rest of us are to his faith in god. I'll probably butcher the quote but it was something to the effect of captain. My faith teaches me that if I am in the hand of Christ, I am as safe in this bed as in the battlefield. and he pointed that to have hope, to have confidence, to have boldness. He was prepared to tell others why he was able to do that. It's all because of faith in Christ. We ought to be able to do the same thing and that's in preparation for suffering, for these difficulties that Jesus told us are going to be coming in the last days. We don't know when days is. Is it in our generation? Is it in the next generation? We don't know. But are we going to see wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and pestilences and troubles? Yes, absolutely. We've been seeing that. We've lost loved ones to these various things. Where do we have hope? In Christ. Where we point others? To Christ. We are prepared to give an answer to those who ask us a reason of the hope. Paul also knew a bit about suffering in this life, and Paul detailed it for us in 2 Corinthians 11, verses 23 through 27. He said, I have had many imprisonments, countless beatings, five times I've been whipped, three times beaten with rods, once I've been stoned, three times shipwrecked, endangered by the Jews, endangered by the Gentiles, endangered by false brethren, hunger and thirst, exposure to cold, sleepless nights. I think he's experienced in these things. That's more than what I've had to experience with regards to suffering. And as he was detailing those things of his experiences, he then went on glorious revelations but but to humble me lest I get a big head over these revelations. There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of satan to harass me. Paul said, and we don't know exactly what that thorn in the flesh, that messenger of satan was. It was some other type of Some have thought, well, it might be his poor eyesight that he mentioned. It might be the lasting effects of the previous beatings. It might be just the fact of the continual types of suffering that he went through. We don't know. What we do know is that he pleaded with God to be delivered from that particular suffering. And in response to his plea for helping And Paul's response to that was most gladly, therefore, will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest in me. That's otherworldly, right? That's superhuman. That's God doing a work in the heart, but Paul said, I asked God for deliverance and God says, I'll give you grace. I'll give you the grace through the suffering, so that I could be glorified. See, that's what God taught him. He learned that God used those things, those matters of suffering, in order to make Paul more dependent on the power of Christ in his life, but then also to display the power of Christ to others through the Paul learns to rest in God's grace and faithfully serve Him through all of these kinds of sufferings. And the same thing would be true of us. As Jesus made that statement of, hey, you'll hear wars and rumors of wars, and there will be famines and pestilences and earthquakes and all these things, and don't be alarmed. Why did He say that? Because my grace is sufficient. I can carry you through that. I can sustain you. When Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica, they had written him. They were worried. They were troubled that the day of the Lord had already come and they missed it somehow. And they were enduring many, many trials, suffering. And Paul told them, Nafsi quickly shaken in mind or alarmed or troubled in 2 Thessalonians 2. He gave them instructions about events that were going to be happening in the day of the Lord, these end times. But then, he went on to a couple of very important points that I want us to take a look at. So this is in 2 Thessalonians 2, starting in verse 15, if you wanted to turn with me there. The first thing that He said in verse 15 is, He said, So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us. Now this is interesting. Just in Sunday School this morning, we were talking about traditions. And it was not exactly a positive thing, right? That word traditions here is teachings. The doctrines, the teachings that we have delivered to you. Well, Paul was writing, as an apostle – the contrast to what we had in Sunday school – Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for, by their traditions, the teachings of men, supplanting, replacing the teachings of God, the law of God. Paul and the other apostles, on the other hand, are saying, we are faithfully delivering to you what the Lord himself has delivered to us. But Paul is saying here, stand firm and hold to what you were taught by us. Especially when we go back to Jesus' earlier statement, there will be false teachers. Do not be deceived. Paul talked about false brethren that were brought in. Don't get deceived. Don't be drawn away. Stand firm. yourself. Stand firm and hold to the teachings of the word of god. So, as we think of the the last days and preparing ourselves and and not being troubled, alarmed by the difficulties, the sufferings that accompany that, we start off by This kind of ties in with that, be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you. If somebody were to ask you, why do you believe that Jesus is coming again? You give them an answer. You point them to the scriptures. If somebody asks, why do you believe that God has a plan that's going to bring these wars and why does God do it? know what you believe and why you believe it. It's an important thing. For your own faith but also to be able to give an answer to others and point them to a saving faith in Christ. A a trust in god in the midst of the difficulties of the last days. And then, when we go down to verses sixteen and seventeen, then he said, now, may our lord Jesus Christ himself and god is we hold firm to his written word. Then we have Jesus himself who is the living word, the word made flesh, who loved us and gave himself for us, who comes and gives us This actually points us back to our starting point when we talk about what we do to prepare ourselves. What was the step one to prepare ourselves for the end times? Abide in Christ. That, in that instance, we're talking about ensuring that you are in the faith. Remember, we also talked about there's this continuing action, abiding in, continue abiding in as believers who we we know our foundation is secure. We know our our souls are secure within but are we continuing to abide in him? Cuz that was part of Jesus' own teaching, right? Continue to abide in me as the branch cannot bear fruit unless So, you can't do anything without me. See, that's the the tie in here is we are to remain in Christ's comforting presence. Realize that not only for the receiving of salvation but for the fleshing out of our salvation. We need to be connected with And He has said that He will remain with us. Where do we find our comfort and hope? In Christ Himself. In fact, we could probably have tied in this song, In Christ Alone. In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my life, my strength, my song. my cornerstone, my solid ground, right? Are you able to play that one off the cuff, darling? Let's see. Maybe? I don't know if it's in the hymnal or if it's in our other book. She'll tell us. But that's the point, is in Christ is where we have hope. In Christ is where we have strength. In Christ so that we're not troubled, we're not shaken, we're not alarmed by the things that we face in this life. With His comforting presence, with His hope, we will be able to continue faithfully in the good work that He has set down for us. And so that's where we need to set our minds. That's where we need to set our hearts. All of these things, no matter what they look like, no matter what they feel like, whatever the personal experience that we have is, it's still under His plan, His control. And we can trust Him, no matter what it may be for us, whether life or death. We can say with Paul, most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest in me. Father, thank you so much for your continuing presence with us. Thank you for the reminder that you do have a plan and all things happen according to the counsel of your will. Thank you for the reminder that we need to set apart Christ as holy in our minds is worthy of obedience and trust, even in the most difficult of times, worthy of suffering for. Help us to remember that we need to stand firm on the teachings that have been given to us in your work, to not be swayed away from them. And help us to remember that it is the presence of Christ that gives us hope, that gives us strength, the ability to press on no matter what we face. We thank you for your faithfulness, for your word, for your presence in our lives. Help us to glorify you, Jesus. Amen.