We Shall See Him - Part 2 of 2

The Baptist Bible Hour now comes to you under the direction of Elder Lacerre Bradley, Jr. O for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise! Thou the wisdom of my God and King, thou triumphs of his grace!

This is Lacerre Bradley, Jr. inviting you to stay tuned for another message of God's sovereign grace. My dear Jesus, blessed Jesus, what a grand and gracious being! O the precious name of Jesus, what a bright and brilliant being! O my Jesus, dearest Jesus, how I love to hear the sound! Thou whose name is filled with music, may I in thy love be found! Precious Jesus, dearest Jesus, may I love thee as I should! Thou art altogether lovely, thou art altogether good! O sweet Jesus, wondrous Jesus, what great works thy hands have brought! What great things for wretched sinners!

O how precious is the thought! O thou gracious, loving Jesus, words have raised me to thy feet! So that in thy troubled posture thy dear name I might repeat! Jesus, Jesus, lovely Jesus, I would dwell before thy throne, praying, praising, seeking, finding, ever humbly pressing on, pressing on! O dear Jesus, my Lord Jesus, how I love to speak thy name!

Thou art lovely on our mountains, in our valleys you're the same! Precious Jesus, my dear Savior, thou thy college-darling Son, how we hope one day to see, when our race down here is won! If you enjoy this broadcast, I encourage you to write us, and if you can, help us with the support.

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There you can read the Baptist Witness, and if you would like, you can make a donation there. Today we continue with the message, We Shall See Him. The text is 1 John chapter 3, beginning with verse 1. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

What a wonderful hope we have to look forward to that glorious day when we see Him as He is. And then, when He came toward the end, He had informed His disciples He was going to be going away. And although He had indicated that a number of times, they had never really gotten the point.

But they were extremely sad. In fact, Peter objected as though the Lord was taken. Lord, we can't have that. We can't have you going away. But Jesus said, I came for this purpose.

I must be going away. Well, He knew their hearts were heavy, so what did He do? Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions.

If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Oh, what comforting words.

Don't let your heart be troubled. Yes, I'm going away, but I'm going to prepare a place for you. I'm not leaving you, deserting you as though I don't care about you. I care about you. I love you.

He loved His own unto the end. I'm going to get a place ready, and eventually we're going to be together. Where I am, there you will be also. And surely that was a comfort to those disciples and that will be a comfort to us today. In our times of loneliness and heartaches and difficulties, to believe that Jesus is preparing a place for us and someday we'll be with Him. Where He is, we shall be also. It's His desire to be with us.

We want to be with Him, but it's amazing to consider He wants to be with us. And then finally, see Him as He surrenders to those who came to take Him captive and lays down His life on the cross, nailed to the cross. It's a horrendous thing to think about. Nailed through His hand and His feet, the crown of thorns pressed down on His brow. We can't even imagine the physical suffering, but there was something much greater than that. The sins of all of God's elect were going to be placed upon Him. And it's beyond us to comprehend how it could possibly happen, but in the hours that He was on the cross, He would suffer and pay the sin debt for all who were given to Him by the Father. Those who ultimately come into the time of judgment are cast into the lake of fire. And we think, how could that be that a person is suffering forever?

There is no relief. There is no mercy for those that are at that time cast away. But Jesus suffered that not just for one person, but for all of His people. He suffered the wrath of the Father poured out upon Him. Oh, what a Savior He is. See Him on the cross that as the thief next to Him says, Remember Me when Thou cometh into Thy kingdom, and He says, This day Thou shalt be with Me in paradise.

What a Savior. He was not only on the cross to redeem those that were given Him by the Father, but He speaks to this One by His side and gives Him assurance, You'll be with Me today in paradise. And then, after He died, He was taken down from the cross and put in the tomb.

Those women came out there early in the morning to bring the spices to show the respect for Him in His grave. And the grave is open, and it's empty. And the angel meets them and says, He is not here. He has risen. Jesus Christ is alive. They were afraid when they saw this angel, but he says, Fear not.

I've got good news for you. Jesus Christ is alive. And after His resurrection, we think about those who were on the road to Emmaus, talking one to each other about this great event that had occurred, that Jesus had died and they had heard a rumor that He had risen from the dead. Well, Jesus comes and walks with them. But their eyes were holding and they didn't know who it was. So He said, Why are you so sad? And they said, Don't you understand what's going on in this part of the country, that this great teacher Jesus was crucified? And so He opened up the Old Testament scriptures and began to expound them and explain them to these two.

And then He disappeared. And then later they were talking and saying, Did not our hearts burn within us as we walked in the way? When Jesus was present, although they didn't recognize Him at the time, He said as He spoke, as He opened up the scriptures, our hearts burned within us.

And what a blessing it is when we can hear the gospel proclaim and our hearts burn within us. And then we see Him ultimately as He went out on the mountain. His disciples were there to witness as His feet began to lift off the ground. And He ascended up through the clouds and went on and on.

And the angel said, Why stand ye here gazing into heaven? The same man that you've seen going away is coming back. Over and over again we have these confirmations that Jesus is coming back. He's coming, just like you've seen Him go away, He's coming back. Yes, we can see Him by faith, by the eye of faith in His Word.

We can see Him in His ordinances that He has given us in the church, baptism represents His death, burial, and resurrection. I remember many years ago, before we had a building and didn't have a baptistry, and we had 17 people to be baptized on a Sunday afternoon, and we went down to the Ohio River at the public landing. And I remember when we got there and I thought, How are we going to have a respectable service here?

This place is so loud. People would come out for a Sunday afternoon, had their radios turned up full blast, and the boats on the river were racing up and down, and it was so loud. I called on Elder Walter Evans to offer prayer. And it seemed to me the Lord just intervened in a very special way.

His voice rang up and down that river like a trumpet. And when people heard that prayer, they turned off their radios, the boaters cut off their engines, and it was quiet. And we were able to baptize those people, and there's still a couple of them still with us in this church. And we rejoice knowing that this ordinance just brings vividly to our attention the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And then we sit together at the Lord's table.

We eat the bread and the wine. And he says, This do in remembrance is me. And as long as you do it, you do show forth the Lord's death till he comes. So we sit at his table with a reminder of what he has done for us, of his sacrificial death, and also that it speaks, we're looking for him to come. All of that is continually brought before us. So we see him on the pages of scripture, because our eyes are now open and we can see.

We see him in the ordinances, and we see him in the hymns that we sing. Oh, there were some beautiful hymns that were sung here this morning. And I think of one, Jesus heals the brokenhearted. Oh, how sweet that sounds to me. This in harmony with what Jesus said when he spoke that day. From the book of Isaiah, that he came to bind up broken hearts. And if you experience a broken heart with a sense of sin, how comforting to know Jesus heals the brokenhearted.

Oh, how sweet that sounds to me. Once beneath my sin, he smarted, groaned and bled and set me free. By his suffering, death and mercies, his compassion, blood and pain, broken hearts and wounded spirits are at once made whole again. Yes, you come and sing. But not just singing words and notes, you're singing a gospel truth. And when you let those words sink in your heart, you see him, you see Jesus. Or then to hear a congregation excitedly lift up their voices together to sing, all hail the power of Jesus' name, let angels prostrate fall, bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all.

Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all. And it lifts your spirits because, you see, Jesus exalted, exalted. And then this hymn. Jesus, what a friend of sinners, Jesus, lover of my soul, friends may fail me, foes assail me, he my Savior makes me whole. Hallelujah, what a Savior.

Hallelujah, what a friend. Saving, helping, keeping, loving, he is with me to the end. Is it not a joy to sing such beautiful hymns and have the truth concerning the person and work of our Savior brought vividly before us?

And then the third thing we consider is where you're going. We shall see him by the eye, we see him now by the eye of faith, but then we shall see him face to face, now through a glass darkly, but we shall see him as he is. We see him in his promises, we see him in the gospel, we see him when he's proclaimed from the pulpit, we see him as we sing hymns of praise, we see him in his unfolding providences and in answered prayer. What an exciting thing though to anticipate, we're going to see him in person. People often have great excitement about seeing a celebrity in person.

If it's maybe an entertainer, if it's a singer they've heard, they want to go to a concert, I've heard this person say, but I want to see them in person, something special about that. I remember when I was just a youngster, I was always interested in seeing the prominent people that came to our city to make a speech. And on this occasion, President Truman was going to come, he was in office, but he was running for reelection. And I thought that would be an amazing thing to see the President of the United States in person. So I got on the bus and went downtown in Lexington and went to where the railroad tracks cross Main Street because the politicians in those days would travel by train and when they got to where they were going to speak to the crowd they'd come out on a platform on the back of the train and could be seen and heard. So as I got there I saw a crowd already assembled and I was trying to figure out where could I stand and I'd be sure I see him closely. And a man who worked for the railroad saw me kind of wandering around and he said, son, do you want to get a good view of the President? I said, yes, that's why I'm here.

He said, follow me. He said, you see this chalk mark on the rail? The back of that train is going to stop right there.

That's where it's going to be. He said, the crowd is all down the track. When the train comes they're going to have to walk up here quite a distance to get where it is. So I took him at his word and I stood there by that chalk mark and sure enough when the train came in it stopped exactly at that spot and in a little while President Harry Truman stepped out on that platform.

He said, close enough, I've got to text him. I just thought, what an exciting thing. I've heard him on the radio but now I'm seeing him in person. You think of getting excited about seeing celebrities here but oh, think about seeing Jesus face to face. If Jesus came in here today we couldn't even see him. His glory would blind our eyes. But we're going to be like him so we will be able to see him face to face.

Just think about that a little bit. That one day you will see Jesus face to face. Yes, what a wonderful outlook we have. This is something that should cheer us in the most difficult of times and when we see him it's not going to be a temporary meeting. It's not that we're just going to see him and then he's going off somewhere else. We shall be with him forever. 1 Thessalonians 4.16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. What a meeting that's going to be. To see him as he is and then to know we shall forever be with him.

So it says to comfort one another with these words and what a comfort that is. Well when we see him we're not going to see him as that one who was despised and rejected. We're not going to see him as the man of sorrows acquainted with grief. We're going to see him as king of kings and lord of lords.

The king of glory. Revelation 7 verse 9 says, And after this I beheld in law a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever. Amen. Verse 16, They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst anymore, neither shall the sunlight on them any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of water and God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes.

Isn't that wonderful to anticipate? How many times great tears are shed here, tears of disappointment, tears because of the conviction of sin, tears because of physical pain. Many tears are shed, but God's going to wipe them all away.

Never need to shed another tear. Sin will be gone. Guilt will be gone.

Conflict will be gone. Peace will reign, joy forever in the presence of the Lord. To consider that we shall be with Him and that we shall be like Him is in many ways beyond our ability to fathom. But by faith, we believe it because this is the declaration we find in God's Word, with Him and like Him.

And then the fourth thing, what we do. The impact of this hope changes us. Verse 3 in our text says, And every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. So if you have this hope, I'm going to be with Jesus.

I'm going to one day be like Him. I want to live to His glory now. I want to be submissive. I want to pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. I want it done in me as an earthen vessel, Lord. I want Thy will to be done. I still have to contend with my own Adam nature.

The Apostle Paul said, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And we struggle with that. But our utmost desire is to please the Lord. Lord, I want the use of my time. I want the use of my resources, everything, to please You.

I want to honor You in what I say, what I do, how I live from day to day. The one that has this hope in him has something then that certainly impacts his life. So, we shall see Him.

And I feel that that would include most everybody here. We, we shall see Him. But there may be some who have not yet seen Him by their faith. Oh, that today you might see your need of the Savior.

That you might come to realize that you are guilty before God and cannot save or help save yourself. That you might see Him lifted up. John chapter 3 says, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Jesus Christ was lifted up on the cross just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. And Moses called upon the people, look, look and live.

You've been bitten by these serpents and if you don't look you will die. Those that looked, lived. And that's the gospel we bring today. Look to Jesus. Look to Him who died at Calvary to save sinners. Yes, look to Him today.

Believe on Him. And then you can join with us all to say, We shall see Him as He is. The hymn says it this way, As I journey through this land, singing as I go, Pointing souls to Calvary to the crimson flow, Many arrows pierce my soul from without within, But my Lord leads me on, through Him I must win. Oh, I want to see Him look upon His face, there to sing forever of His saving grace.

On the streets of glory let me lift my voice, cares all past, home at last, ever to rejoice. You look to that great day when you'll finally be at home, at home with the Lord on a permanent basis. As John writes, Behold what manner of love this is that we should be called the children of God, and shall ultimately see Him as He is, be like Him, and live with Him forever. It'll all be because of His great love, His marvelous, sovereign, saving grace. Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this magnificent love.

We can't fully grasp it, but what we can see of it, we thank You for it, and praise You for Your love, for Your mercy, for Your grace, for the salvation that we have through Jesus Christ. And we pray that any today who have not yet looked, who have not yet repented of their sins and believed on Jesus would be brought to Him today. And may we all as a people rejoice to anticipate that we shall see Him as He is and be with Him forever. Here is for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Amen. Yes, we're looking forward to that wonderful day when we shall see Jesus Christ face to face. Now we see Him by the eye of faith, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. We rejoice in Him, but oh, what it will be to be with Him and be like Him forever. Promises made that He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.

He that believeth not is condemned already because He's not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Oh, my friend, if you have never come to Him, I pray today you may come in repentance of your sin, faith in Jesus Christ, trusting Him, knowing there is no other way. Until next week at this same time, may the Lord richly bless you all. The Baptist Bible Hour has come to you under the direction of Elder LeSaire Bradley, Jr. Address all mail to the Baptist Bible Hour, Cincinnati, Ohio 45217.

That's the Baptist Bible Hour, Cincinnati, Ohio 45217. We'll be one with God, when we see Jesus. Thy Son will see us more, when we see Christ. What lives have His new face? All sorrow will He reign.