February 9, 1997
Bethlehem Baptist Church
John Piper, Pastor
WHAT CHRIST WILL DO AT THE SECOND COMING
(Hebrews 9:27-28)
And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes
judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many,
shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those
who eagerly await Him.
So Christ Also
Notice the structure of this sentence. "Inasmuch as it is appointed unto men
. . . (28) So Christ also . . ." The comparison is made between something we
do, die and later come into judgment, and something Christ does, die and
later come to save from judgment. There is a parallel between our experience
and Christ’s. For every decisive experience that you have (like dying and
facing God in judgment), the Son of God has a corresponding experience.
Only Christ’s experiences are not merely alongside ours and like them. His
have an impact on ours. His death and our death are not parallel. His
utterly transforms ours. Our arrival at the judgment and his arrival at the
judgement are not parallel. His rescues us. In other words, the parallel
between our life and Christ’s life is designed to show how utterly dependent
on him we are at every point of our lives, and how great he is. He is the
strong saving one and we are the weak and desperate ones.
So it’s not accurate to say merely that we run the race and he runs the race
. . . just as we will cross the river, so he will cross the river; just as we
will face the dragon, he will face the dragon. No, it’s not like that. It’s
like this. We have to cross the river, yes. And he did too. But he died
crossing the river to build a bridge for us to cross the river. And we have
to face the dragon at the end, yes. And he will face it too. Only he will
save us from the fiery breath of the dragon and bring us into the joy of
eternal life.
So the point of these two verses is to get us to think of the big issues of
our lives, like death and judgment, and then to help us see that Christ has
gone before us in these experiences. And that his experience of them is so
powerful that when we have to walk through death and judgment, those
experiences will be radically different because of Christ. The point here is
to magnify Christ, and by that magnificence to unleash confident and
courageous Christians in the world for his glory.
Christ’s Experience Prepares the Way
So let’s look at these things one at a time as they come in these verses of
Scripture. Verse 27, "And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once .
. ." Now this is a rich sentence. God has been very merciful to say this to
us. Listen to two things God means for us to hear in this word.
1. One is that all of us have an appointment with death. "It is appointed
for men to die." Who made this appointment with death? I surely didn’t. I
make some appointments that I don’t like to make, like with the dentist or
with the car mechanic. But I would never make this appointment if it were up
to me. Who made it for me?
The answer is, God made it. When Adam and Eve sinned, human death entered
the world. And God appointed the curse of death for everyone of their
ancestors. Romans 5:12 gives us the background. It says, "Through one man
sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all
men, because all sinned." God had warned this is what would happen. And he
brought it to pass.
So death is not an appointment that comes to us only by natural processes.
That would be far from the Biblical view. As if the world just runs on its
own laws without God’s daily oversight and guidance. No, our appointment
with death comes not merely by natural processes but at the divinely
appointed moment. God plans our birthday and our death day. Psalm 139:16
puts it like this: "And in Thy book [O God] they were all written, the days
that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them." A certain
number of days are ordained for me by God. God sets this appointment, not
Satan and not my enemy and not cancer and not me.
But not only that, God sees to it that we keep the appointment. He plans it
and he brings it to pass. You recall how Job said, when his children were
killed by the collapse of their home, "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken
away. Blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21). So the Lord makes the
appointment. And the Lord sees to it that death and we keep the appointment.
There is no absurd, meaningless fatalism here. All is governed by an
all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving God, no matter what it looks like to us.
God makes our appointment with death in his sovereign planning of all things.
You recall how Jesus spoke to the apostle Peter in John 21:19 that the day
was coming (the appointment was made) when he would be crucified like Jesus.
And a few minutes later Jesus spoke to Peter about the apostle John and
said, "If I want him to remain [alive] until I come, what is that to you? You
follow Me!" (John 21:22). In other words Christ himself decides when and how
his servants will die. "If I want him to remain, he will remain. If I want
to take him, I will take him. You are all in my hands" (See Revelation 6:11).
So Henry Martyn, the young missionary to Persia, was right to say, "If
[Christ] has work for me to do, I cannot die." (Journal and Letters, New
York: Protestant Episcopal Society for the promotion of Evangelical
Knowledge, 1851, p. 460).
So it is appointed to us all to die. And we may rest assured, it is not man
or Satan or fate or disease that makes that final, ultimate choice. It is
Christ himself, our creator and king.
2. "It is appointed for men to die once." But there is another key word here
besides the word "appointed," namely the word "once." This means that you can
stop dreaming right now about reincarnation. We are not coming back to die
again. We are not coming back in any form at all. The point of the word
"once" here is to stress the finality of death. We die once. And that is
the end of our experience of earthly dying.
Now all of this should have a profound effect on us. Samuel Johnson said, in
1777, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a
fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully" (Boswell’s Life of Johnson,
Sept. 19, 1777). Moses put it like this in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to
number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom."
Surely the writer of Hebrews wants us to hear this word of the Lord in verse
27 and be wakened from the usual numbness and sleepiness of our lives. Most
people think very little about what matters most and think very much about
what matters little. The Bible is God’s gift to us to keep us from that
foolishness and to make us wise. Wise people are people who have proportion
in their lives. What matters most they are most concerned with, and what
matters least they are least concerned with. Death is huge and death is
sure. And so God is calling us here to think about it and get serious about
it in a way that fits with how momentous death is.
And After This Comes Judgment
The next phrase is what gives death its greatest seriousness. Hebrews 9:27
says, "It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment."
Death is not the end of our existence. That is what is so awesome about it.
We are not mere material beings that simply go out of consciousness and
decompose in the ground. This word from God stands over against the common
evolutionary idea expressed, for example, by William Provine, the historian
of science at Cornell. He says that evolution finds no intelligent design
operating in nature and "no such thing as immortality or life after death."
According to him "we’re produced by a process that gives not one damn about
us" (First Things, February, 1997, p. 32).
Well the word "damn" is a very important word in this connection, but not the
way Provine thinks. When Hebrews 9:27 says, "After death comes judgement,"
that is exactly what he it means. God does give damnation after death. And
it is the most terrifying prospect in the universe, that we might be met
after death with a holy and angry and omnipotent God holding us accountable
for whether we trusted him and worshipped him and followed his ways in this
life. That is a fearful prospect.
Hebrews does not leave us in the dark about what this means. In Hebrews
10:27 it says, "A certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of
a fire which will consume the adversaries" awaits us. And three verses later
it says, "We know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again,
‘The Lord will judge his people’" (verse 30). So when our text says that we
have an appointment with death and after death with judgment, it means that
it will be terrifying and a furious fire and a great act of divine vengeance
even on those who claim to be part of God’s people, but are only external
Christians.
These are sobering realities. O, may God use them to wake us up and make us
alive to what really matters in this world!
Now in verse 28 the writer makes the comparison between our experience and
Christ’s. "It is appointed to us to die once and after that comes judgment."
What about Christ? "So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the
sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to
sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
Christ Joins Us in Death and Judgment
Notice for your great encouragement here how Christ joins us in death and
judgment. There is a parallel, he dies and he comes to the judgement. But
the difference is infinite. Let’s see how.
Verse 28 says that his death is "an offering once to bear the sins of many."
We will see who the "many" are at the end of the verse. But the main thing
to see is that the death of Jesus bears sins. This is the very heart of
Christianity and the heart of the Gospel and the heart of God’s great work of
redemption in the world. When Christ died he bore sins. He took sins not
his own. He suffered for sins that others had done, so that they could be
free from sins. Look back at verse 26 (from last week). The last line says,
"He has been manifested at the end of the ages to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself." So verse 28 says that "he bore the sins of many," and
verse 26 says that the effect of this is that "he put away sin."
This is the answer to the greatest problem in your life, whether you feel it
as the main problem or not. There is an answer to how we can get right with
God in spite of being sinners. And the answer is that Christ’s death is "an
offering to bear the sins of many." He lifted our sins and carried them to
the cross and died there the death that I deserved to die.
Now what does this mean for my dying? "It is appointed [to me] once to die."
It means that my death is no longer punitive. My death is no longer a
punishment for sin. My sin has been borne away. My sin is "put away" by the
death of Christ. Christ took the punishment.
Why Is There Death?
Why then do I die at all? Because God wills that death remain in the world,
even among his own children, as an abiding testimony to the extreme horror of
sin. In our dying we still manifest the external effects of sin in the
world. But the inner relation of sin to God has been radically changed. The
death of God’s children is not wrath against them. Paul cries out in 1
Corinthians 15:55-57, "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your
sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but
thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
In other words, the sting is removed because the death of Christ satisfied
the law’s demand and set us free from condemnation. Death becomes an
entrance into salvation not condemnation.
That is what the next phrase means. "Christ also, having been offered once
to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without
reference to sin." There are two great truths here. One is that the first
coming of Christ and his offering himself to bear the sins of many was
completely sufficient. He does not have to do any more to pay the price for
sin or to remove the guilt of sin. This is why it says here "without
reference to sin." He came the first time to deal with sin. He put away
sin. It is finished. This is the wonder of the gospel. Your guilt is
already removed. That much of the end-time salvation is past and done. "Once
for all at the end of the ages" this great salvation happened. It cannot be
improved on.
But there is more. This is the second great truth. We had to face the issue
of death, and so Christ faced death and bore the guilt and punishment of it
for us. Now, we must face judgment, so Christ comes a second time for us,
this time not to deal with sin, but to save us from judgment. That’s what it
means in verse 28 when it says, "He shall appear a second time for
salvation." This is not an addition to the salvation that the death of
Christ purchased; it is an application of the salvation that Christ
purchased. This is what Christ bought in his death. In other words Christ
died to bear our sin and to free us from condemnation, and the application of
this is the asbestos shield he gives us in the "fury of fire which will
consume the adversaries" (Hebrews 10:27; see 2 Thessalonians 1:7 and I
Thessalonians 1:10).
This is exactly what Paul said in Romans 5:9-10,
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved
from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
It’s the past death of God’s Son for us that guarantees his future salvation
of us from the wrath of God at the judgment.
Now finally, the utterly crucial personal question: who are the "many" in
verse 28a? "Having been offered once to bear the sins of many . . ." And
for whom is he bringing salvation at his second coming? The answer is given
at the end of verse 28. He is coming for those "who eagerly await him."
Faith That is Eager for Him to Come
If you ask right now, and you should, What must I do so that I may know
that my sins are taken away by the blood of Christ, and that, when he comes,
he will shield me from the wrath of God and bring me into eternal life . . .
if you ask that right now, the answer is this: trust Christ in a way that
makes you eager for him to come. He is coming to save those who are "eagerly
waiting for him." So how do you get ready? How do you experience the
forgiveness of God in Christ and prepare to meet him? By trusting him in a
way that makes you eager for him to come.
This eager expectation for Christ is simply a sign that we love him and
believe in him authentically. There is a phony faith that wants only escape
from hell, but has no desire for Christ. That does not save. And it does
not produces an eager expectation for Christ to come. It would rather that
Christ not come for as long as possible so that it can have as much of this
world as possible. But the faith that really holds on to Christ as treasure
and hope and joy is the faith that makes us long for Christ to come, and that
is the faith that saves.
So I urge you, turn from the world and from sin and to Christ. Take him not
just as your fire insurance policy, but as your eagerly awaited bridegroom
and friend and Lord.
COPYRIGHT 1997 JOHN PIPER
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