His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): It's true, most of us have experienced this: we've overslept and missed an important appointment or didn't end up where we were supposed to be as a result. Sadly, many Christians are asleep spiritually and are missing out on something good. As we'll see today on His Perfect Love, it is time to wake up.

We're in the last days and Jesus is coming soon. With that in mind, we need to be ready and we need to be loving others. Pastor Matt VanderVen will sound the alarm as he turns to Romans chapter 13. We start off in Acts.

Matt VanderVen: What about Acts? Turn to Acts chapter 1. What's one of the last things that Jesus said to the disciples before His ascension in heaven? You know what's interesting? He's out there and He's going up. I can see it now, the jaws of the disciples are gaping their mouths as they're looking up because they've never seen anybody fly like that before or ascend. I don't know how it looked, but I mean I'd be doing the same thing, as my mouth is open and I'm just looking up.

And the angels too come to them and go, "What are you doing out here?" Like, what are you not doing? Aren't you...? You ever go to New York? I lived in New York City. When you look up in New York City—try it sometime, but don't do it if there's traffic—try it sometime right on the curb. Stand up and look up. You will have a crowd of people around you within moments. That's the normal reaction. People are going to look up because they see you looking up.

But these two angels, they know. They listened to Christ's words. They know that He's going to come again. And so what do they say? The same way that He went up, He's going to come back. He says, "So what are you doing out here? Why don't you get in Jerusalem and go wait up into the upper room?" So before they go up into the upper room, where do they go first? They go to the temple and what do they do? Praise and worship God, exhortation, teaching, and then they go to the upper room and wait for the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father.

I don't think this is coincidence. If you look at Acts chapter 1 verse 7, once again, they assembled together and I love this. You gotta love the disciples and the apostles. When you were kids, or maybe even now some of us who are still childlike, if somebody tells you no when you ask them a question, what do you often do? Repose the question.

So maybe the first time around when Jesus addressed the question of, "Hey, what's the sign of your coming? When are you coming? How's it going to happen?" He said it's not for you to know, only the Father knows in heaven. So what are they thinking? Well, they knew their Bibles. They knew Isaiah. They knew that Jesus would come back to establish a kingdom.

So they get clever and they say, "Ah, we'll ask Him. What if we turn around... when is your kingdom? When is the kingdom of God coming?" That's a good one because if we ask Him that, then we'll get the answer. And what does He say? No one knows the time. It's like Jesus didn't see this coming.

So look here, He says, "It is not for you to know the times of the season which the Father has put in His own authority." Notice that with me: His authority. Why is that important? When we read the word of God and we keep to the doctrine of the word of God, it protects us from heresy.

Out West right now, there's a big movement going on. I don't know if some of you have heard of it: Kingdom Now. Have some of you heard of the Kingdom Now movement? It's the idea that they believe they're to usher the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God in now, that they somehow have to do it. It's very much tied to the same occult practice that the Mormons have, that they believe politically they have to put people in office to usher in the kingdom so that Christ's return would be imminent. They believe somehow they have a role in that responsibility.

Well, this Kingdom Now heresy, false doctrine, false teaching, is of the same idea. They have to turn around and usher these things in so that the kingdom of God can come now. But what did our Bibles just teach us? That it has nothing to do with man. Whose authority is it in? God's authority. It's in God's authority. God is the one that does that leading.

That's why we have to be students of our Bibles. It protects us because He said in the last days that they would be given over to false doctrines. They'd be saying go over here, go over there, Jesus is over here, and they would be following all these things instead of following Jesus and His word because they would begin to believe that. He said this to protect us. He wanted us to be warned by this.

He says that it's His authority. He's the one that controls this. It's nothing we can do. Now, it's no wonder the late John Walvoord—some of you may know John Walvoord, wonderful scholar. I have a few of his books. He passed on many years ago. Beautiful man. Some of you saw Warren Wiersbe, the pastor's pastor, just went to be with Jesus as well. What a celebration. These guys have lived their life faithfully. What a celebration for their lives; they're with Jesus now hearing, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Don't we all look forward to that?

Walvoord called imminency the heart of pretribulationism. He was making that connection too. The Holy Spirit had given him that connection too: that the doctrine of imminency is the heart of pretribulationism and pretribulationism is at the heart of the doctrine of imminency. Because if you truly are to be imminent, that means you expect Him to come now. Right now. Or any time now. Everything's ready, He can come.

He's protecting our hearts because if you knew what was going to happen tomorrow, if you knew Christ was going to come tomorrow, or if you knew you had to make a credit card payment today... you had to make a credit card payment with a certain company, it's due tomorrow, but you know Christ was coming tomorrow. How many of you—and you all should, because we saw render unto Caesar unto Caesar—but how many of you would run down to make sure you got that check in the mail because you weren't here tomorrow?

Why? Because what happens tomorrow affects what you do today. Do you see why Jesus was doing this? I hope you all said yeah, we'd make that payment. The point is because God said it's right living; we're to be witnesses. But what happens tomorrow or what you envision happening tomorrow affects what you do today. That's why the doctrine of imminency is so important.

Because if we're living as Christ is coming back today or tomorrow, then we're going to live the Christian life that way. We're going to walk it out. We're going to put on Christ, as He said. He says the day is at hand. You know what that means in the Greek? The day is at hand. It means exactly what it's saying in the syntax. You can't manipulate that.

The day is at hand doesn't fit anything but a pretribulation. It doesn't fit a mid or a post-tribulation. If Jesus was prevented from coming until the Battle of Magog—Ezekiel chapter 38—or the rise of the Antichrist—Revelation—or the mark of the beast—again, Revelation—if any one of those would be signs, we wouldn't need to watch, would we?

And how many times did He just tell us to watch in Matthew 24 and 25? He told us two different times and He told us three different times to be ready. Is our God grammatically challenged? Does our God give us things that we don't need? No. He tells us to watch and be ready. It's important.

If the church was required to go through a seven-year tribulation, you would expect the New Testament writers to have warned us. They warned us about false doctrine. They warned us about the heresies that would come. They warned us about the division in the church. They warned us about all types of things, the wolves among the sheep. Why would they leave that out? It would be so significant that they would leave that out and not prepare us. Ask your friends that believe in a mid or post-trib. Ask them, how do you explain that? You don't find it that way.

But isn't it the opposite? The New Testament writes repeatedly and it tells the church to be comforted by the coming of the Lord. That's what it says. Look at 1 Thessalonians 4:18 in your Bibles. Now, I have to ask you a question. If I told you you're going to go through the great tribulation, is that going to bring you comfort? It's not going to bring me comfort.

If I told you that you're not going to go through the great tribulation but that you're going to go through trials, affliction, oppression... okay, Lord. But I'm going to save you from the day of wrath, the great tribulation. Are you going to be comforted by that? I'm going to be comforted by that. Why? I know God's plan. And that's the only thing that'll comfort me: if I'm watching and I'm ready. Nothing else makes sense in Scripture.

And I'll go further than that. As you look at 1 Thessalonians 4:18, the word "comfort" implies the rapture will take place before the tribulation. But I'll give you something that's interesting. Do you know the early church, when they were together, did they turn around and say, "Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you. Welcome. Good to see you"? No, they didn't do that. Do you know how they greeted each other? We can read it extra-biblically. Do you know what they said to each other? Maranatha. They said Maranatha to each other. The words that we have written in our Bible. That was their greeting.

What do you say in Hebrew? If I see somebody in Hebrew and I'm greeting them, what might I say to them if I want to say hello and goodbye? Shalom. Right? Shalom, peace. I want to give you peace. Hello, Shalom. Goodbye. Peace. Maranatha. Now, I have a question for you: is Maranatha Hebrew or Greek? It's neither. It's Aramaic. It's Aramaic.

What is this Aramaic expression made of? It's made of three words. If you're taking notes, write this in your margin. "Mar" or "Mer", what's that mean in Aramaic? It means Lord. "Ana" or "Anna", depending on how you want to pronounce it, means our. "Tha", Mar-ana-tha, which means come. So it actually means "our Lord come."

So when they would see each other and greet each other in the church right in the first century that way, they would turn around and say Maranatha. Our Lord come. Our Lord come. Now, if it wasn't a doctrine of imminency or something that was important to them, then why would they use that as a main greeting? The main greeting with each other. They could have said anything like, "What's up?" or, "Hey", or fill in the blank with your favorite greeting. It was Maranatha because it was the thing that brought hope. Remember, these people were being martyred. They needed that hope.

It's used by the apostle. Look at 1 Corinthians 16:22, please. Turn in your Bibles, 1 Corinthians 16:22. Paul uses this word. He uses it in the context of Anathema Maranatha. What's he saying there? "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed." What would we say, Anathema Maranatha? But what does that really mean? Let him be cursed from our Lord's coming.

He's saying in the context that if you're not a believer, if you've rejected Christ, let him be cursed from the Lord's coming. What happened again in Israel when they didn't obey and they weren't obedient and they were practicing idolatry? God brought correction that they would turn around and do what? Come back to Him. Anathema Maranatha.

When we go to the book of Corinthians next, we're going to read in 1 Corinthians 5 that sometimes the church through discipline has to let a brother or sister go and they have to be buffeted by the enemy. Why? If they're living a way that's contrary to the Scripture, they have to be given up to that because no matter what you say, if they were not willing to receive it or they're not willing to hear it, sometimes that being broken like that is the only thing that gets your attention that you'll turn back to Christ.

Well, if the first-century church believed that certain events needed to take place before the Savior could turn, why would they greet each other with Maranatha? Isn't that interesting? They lived 2,000 years ago and yet they seem to have a deeper awareness of the imminence or the return of Christ than many Christians today.

What about a historical perspective? I'm sure some of you are thinking about that. Many of the contemporary writers attack some of the scholars. If you go to seminary today, some of them try to attack imminency or the doctrine of imminency. They try to promote the idea it was dreamed up by men—Darby and guys in the 1700s and 1800s. They're ignorant of the true meaning of Scripture, saying that the pretribulation rapture only dates back to the early 1800s.

However, when you study the early church fathers—and I'm going to go over three or four of them for you—they were clearly looking for an imminent return. Not only the first-century churches I've mentioned, but even the early church fathers. How many of you heard of Clement? Clement, if you look at some of the first epistle he wrote, it was around 96 AD.

And here's what he says, Clement: "All the saints and the elect of God are gathered together before the tribulation which is to come and are taken to the Lord." What does that sound like to you? The Rapture. "In order that they may not see at any time the confusion which overwhelms the world because of sins." Well, maybe that's just one guy.

What about the Didache, as early as 70 to 180 AD? Chapter 16 section 1, if you want to look up the exact quote, says, "Be vigilant over your life. Let your lamps not be extinguished or your loins ungirded, but be prepared for you know not the hour in which our Lord will come." This is what they believed.

What about Tertullian, 155 to 245 AD? He said, "But what a spectacle it is, the fast-approaching advent, the coming, of our Lord, now owned by all." By all. All believed by all, espoused by all in the early church. "Now highly exalted, now a triumphant one."

Now, up until that point, it was widely adopted. 400, 500, right around then there was a bishop that basically got together because of a political scenario and he said, "You know what? We need to build." This is Kingdom Now mentality. See, there's nothing new under the sun. "We need to build the riches. We need to build all this stuff for the kingdom and it needs to be in our building."

So if we teach the doctrine of imminency, does that make us want to have the nicest, shiniest, best building in the whole world? Or is it want us to be about our Father's business so that as many can get saved so that they won't have to go through the tribulation? It means that we're to be about our Father's business. It's not putting stock or seed into the things or the temporary here of the earth that are going to burn. Hay, wood, stubble.

I want all of you to get great rewards. You're going to all stand before Jesus at the Bema Seat if you're a believer in Christ. And I want you to get the best rewards. I want to be sitting there going, "That is an awesome crown, man." I don't care if you get more crowns than me. Praise God, I hope you do. That's my prayer for all of you. I have to stand before Jesus and give an account and I'm not going to stand before Jesus and go, "I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them." No, I'm going to say, "I told them. I read Your word. It's just as it says, Lord. I was faithful."

Christianity. Think about this. It's God's gift. It's a gift of grace given to you and I and yet He gives us a gift for receiving it. Does that blow your mind? Where else do you...? Yeah. Well, up until right around 1600, it goes into this heretical teaching notion because they're trying to build up their fiefdoms and putting all the money into all this stuff. You know some of the wealthiest religions around today. You know the landmasses that they have. I don't have to tell you this. You've studied. You know who they are. How they've built their little fiefdom.

Well, right around the time when Martin Luther, right around the Reformation, you might remember there were three things that came out in particular at that time: Sola Gloria, Sola Scriptura, and Sola Fide. Faith, faith alone, Scripture alone, and the glory of God or grace. Why did that come out at such a time as that? Because Martin had been a monk. He had been looking... he was very into asceticism and a works-based mentality.

He reads Romans, realizes it's by faith and it has nothing to do with your works. Your works never can save you. He realizes it's justification by faith. He makes that quite simple as he reads Romans chapter 1 for the first century in his life; it pops off the page just like when we read it. Wow, saved by faith.

Well, he turns around and reads that and understands righteousness, right living comes because of Jesus. It's imputed to us from Him. After that, what does he begin to do? He goes back and tells everybody it's in the Bible. Because up to that point, they were having services in Latin, or they were having services where the priest was turning his back to you and he was talking this way as though he was talking to the host.

And you never opened a Bible. You didn't have to even bring your Bible. You had hymns and songs, praise the Lord, but you didn't have to do any of this. Martin Luther says, "No, when we go back to the Bible, the Scriptures speak and we learn what's right and wrong. Not from a man that stands up front, but from Jesus and His word." That way it doesn't become man's wisdom and we can't get entertained by a good public speaker or duped by that. He wrote about that.

But then the Westminster Confession right around that time begins to adopt this, written by the Puritans of England during the 1600s, and they declared that men should shake off the carnal security. Think about what that meant—all the things they were placing their trust in. And always be watchful because they know not what the hour the Lord will come.

Once we see it, so from 600 to about 1600, silent. And then all of a sudden a man led by the Holy Spirit, convicted by the word, opens his Bible and begins reading again. And what does he come back to? And then everybody else that opens their Bibles as the Westminster Confession comes together, what do they turn around and do?

They come right back to the doctrine of imminency. They come right back to the Scripture that we're reading right now and they come back and go, "The Lord can come at any time. Have we been living that way? He's instructed us to live that way." And there are so many Scriptures that are proof texts. Because of our time, I have 20 of them for you, but I can't go through them all. I'm going to go through a few.

I encourage you to take some notes here as I read off the Scripture. If you want to get a recording or listen to it online, I encourage you to go back and look at each one of these. God didn't put all of this in there for us to be ignorant. This is our hope. This is everything for us.

If you go to 1 Thessalonians 4:17, you actually don't have to turn, I'll just read them to you. 1 Thessalonians 4:17: "Then we who are alive shall remain caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall be always with the Lord."

Matthew 24:36: "But of the day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Matthew 25 verses 1 through 6: "Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them," the oil representing the Holy Spirit.

So here they are, you've got ten of them. Five that were prepared, five that weren't. What is that speaking of? The doctrine of imminency. That they were ready. This isn't a question of were they ten virgins or were they saved. They knew they were. This is a question of sanctification. Were they living it? Were they living out the gospel? Were they ready to live and surrender their lives?

Had they come to that point that they realized it wasn't the democracy of heaven? But there's a king on the throne and it's the kingdom of heaven. Had they come to that submission? Now five of them were wise and five were foolish. Once again we see that. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took the oil in the vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that Matthew 25:1-6 uses the same idea that we just read here in Romans chapter 13:11? That we're to wake out of our sleep? Is that the only place we see that? No. There are so many different passages as you study your Scriptures that talk about this awakening from this sleep. And at midnight a cry was heard: Behold the bridegroom is coming and going to meet with them. What was this idea of sleep? They were living for themselves, not God.

Mark 13:33: "Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know what the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servant and each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch. Watch therefore, when you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning."

He really went a great effort in detail to say, you don't know. It's not at night, it could be in morning. He's telling us. "Lest coming suddenly he finds you sleeping." There we see it again. Mark 13:33. That's the third time we see him using that idea of sleep. "And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch." Jesus's own words. These are Jesus's own words.

Now two places in the book of Romans. One we just read in 13:11. But look at Romans 16:20. You can turn over there since you're already in that book. Chapter 16 verse 20: "And the God of peace will crush Satan under His feet shortly." Expecting it. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen."

1 Corinthians 7, Paul says, "Hey, if you can live like me and you won't be given unto lust that way, stay single. You don't have to be married if you don't want to. If you can do it, if you're not going to be tempted by lust." He had the right heart, the wrong timing. But it was a doctrine of imminency. He was saying, look, if it's going to happen, it's come.

1 Corinthians 7. Now how many people here have memorized Philippians 4:6-7? "Be anxious for nothing, but by prayer and supplication make your request be known to God." And in verse 7 it says and he describes a peace that surpasses all understanding. How come nobody describes to you or how come you haven't memorized Philippians 4:5 since it's the preceding verse? And I think it's the hinge verse for this passage.

What does it say there in Philippians 4:5? "Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand." What's he saying? That peace that you're going to get and the ability to do that is to know that no matter what affliction or oppression you're going through, God is coming. And having that revelation mentally like the helmet of salvation allows you to endure the trial.

And so when you pray, you can pray. Not temporally, but you can pray eternally. "Lord, not my will be done but Your will be done, Lord." It's a bridge verse. It's a bridge verse. We memorize Philippians 4:6 and 7 but we forget the power to it which is 4:5 which says, "I'm coming. This is only temporary and short while. I'm coming."

Guest (Male): Jesus is coming, and that can settle our hearts and minds in a world full of turmoil and tribulation. Well, thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit hisperfectlove.org. Catch up on what you missed in Romans at hisperfectlove.org.

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We hope you'll visit us at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service too, Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. And then we'll come back to our study of Romans next time on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt. See you then, and God bless.