The Coming of the Son of Man (Part 1 of 2)

As we seek to try to understand what the Bible has to say about the end times, how do we avoid the pitfalls of speculation?

Alistair Beggs says the answer begins by sticking to the irrefutable facts that Scripture provides. And today on Truth for Life, Alistair guides us through a helpful depiction that Jesus gives us about the coming of the Son of Man. Verse 24 of Mark chapter 13. But in those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. From the fig tree learn its lesson.

As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Amen. Father, help us as we turn to the Bible now to understand it, to believe it, and to obey it. For Jesus' sake.

Amen. I had a rental car this week. I was in North Carolina at the Billy Graham Conference Center at the Cove, and I drove from Charlotte to Asheville, and it had wing mirrors, which you would expect. But on the wing mirrors, there was another little mirror that was over in the corner that I think was there in order to help you see how close people really were. I'm not sure. I think it's that.

I think it's there to replace what you have on the mirrors that don't have the wing mirrors, where it says objects may appear closer than they actually are. Something like that. I don't know. You know what I mean, don't you?

They have that thing. I've never fully understood that. I was horrible at physics.

I couldn't figure out how that could possibly be. But anyway, the reverse is the case as we continue to study the apocalyptic discourse of Mark chapter 13—i.e., events are further apart than they appear to be. This we've been discovering all the way through as we've used the metaphor of hill-walking, and we've said that things that have appeared in a passage of Scripture, right beside the next thing in the Scripture, make it seem as though the two things are right on top of one another, when in actual fact you realize that the things are much further apart than they appear to be.

That's not the entire story, but it is an important principle, and it's helping us from going badly wrong—at least many of us—in trying to understand these things. We are considering the events of the end. The disciples have asked questions, Jesus is answering, and we have this telescopic dimension whereby some of it has an immediate application, some a sort of midpoint application, and some of it a much longer-term application. What we're really discovering is that the end of all things has three dimensions to it, in the same way that we speak about the salvation, where we will say, I have been saved from sin's penalty, I am being saved from sin's power, and one day I will be saved from sin's presence. And in much the same way, we're able to say that the end has come, the end is coming, and the end will come.

If that's not of help to you, just forget all about it. But the end has come inasmuch as the coming of Jesus was the beginning of the end. He said that, didn't he? And when you read the Gospels, and when you read, for example, Hebrews, we read in Hebrews 9 26, he has appeared, past tense, once for all, at the end of the ages. Notice the phrase, he came at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. So in the first coming of Jesus, the end has come, the end is coming, and eventually, at the second coming of Jesus, the end will finally come. Now, in this little section before us this morning—and none of these sections get easier than the previous one—but I want us to notice, first of all, a picture to be understood, which is what we're given here, and then a lesson to be learned, and then, thirdly, a word to be trusted.

First of all, then, a picture to be understood. It's the picture that is there for us in verse 24 and 25. Now, you've become familiar with the fact that we've been saying to one another, if we had lived in the era of the first readers of the Gospel, we would have each of us been better placed to deal with this than many of us are today. And that is because we have to sadly recognize that we are not as familiar with the Old Testament as we ought to be and as would be helpful for us to be.

But the early readers of this Gospel would immediately, in reading this verse concerning the darkening of the sun and the moon not giving its light, they would immediately be able to connect it to the day of the Lord prophesied in the Old Testament. And once again, I'm going to ask you to trust me on this, and then I'm going to ask you to be Berean about it, and go away and examine the Scriptures and see if these things are so. But if your Bible is there in front of you, I encourage you to turn to Isaiah chapter 13. And there in Isaiah 13, under the heading of the judgment of Babylon, which is the immediate historical application of this chapter, we read of the day of the Lord. And the exhortation comes in verse 6, Wail! for the day of the LORD is near, as destruction from the Almighty it will come. Verse 9, Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. As soon as you come to that, you begin to say, Oh, I get it. I'm beginning to get it.

Now I can see where this has its genesis. The sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. Now, what we have to be aware of is this principle that is the sort of comprehensive notion of the prophetic word, that this prophecy in 13 of Isaiah is immediately to be worked out in the context of Babylon, the prophecy we find exemplified in the movements and shifts of nations and events throughout time, and eventually it will be reaching its great denouement when Jesus Christ returns. And I think that this picture is better understood as being figurative rather than being as literal. Now, some of you get immediately concerned about that, because you run outside and say, The pastor is no longer interpreting the Bible literally. He said he was dealing with it figuratively.

That's exactly right. I was taking it literally in a figurative sense. Because that picture that is given to us there is of the powers of the heavens being shaken. And to the degree that these things unfold in this way, then the picture would simply be fulfilled. But what you have in the picture is a description of the aspects of life, if you like, that are normally routine and the things that are apparently stable being disrupted.

Whatever else you do with it, that's what we're finding. This is not, Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket. This is something far more dramatic than that. The stars will be falling from the heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. In other words, it is a picture of a cosmic shaking of all that represents stability within the world. In other words, the day of the Lord has come, is coming, and will come. And when that day of the Lord comes, he will then intervene and put to rights, establish the justice for which men and women say they long, although if they were to establish it now, they wouldn't be so quick to long for it. And the reason that the day of the Lord has not appeared, ala Mark 13, Peter tells his readers, is not because God is slow concerning his promises but because he is patient, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the patience of God is not infinite.

It is finite. And there will be an end to his patience. And on that day when his patience ends, then these things that are portending this drama will be seen in all of their fullness.

One of the commentators puts it as follows. God has a day scheduled on the calendar when he will repay all the dirty deals and broken promises and backstabbings of history. He will take care of Hitler. He will take care of injustice.

He will take care of all the times when we've read our newspapers and said, You know, that person got off apparently scot-free. His justice will satisfy himself and will satisfy all who are present. Now, loved ones, it is imperative that we understand something of the solemnity and the gravity of this. When you look at that chapter—and I just commend it to you for your own further consideration—when you read Isaiah and look at what is being said there, and when you go on into the fourteenth chapter, you realize that here's material concerning which we need to put our hands over our mouths. This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, or purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? This is speaking there of the hand of God's judgment over the nations of the world. Alec Matea, in his wonderful commentary on Isaiah, was helpful to me in this respect, and I hope will be helpful to you. Because when you think of this picture, of all that represents stability and reality being completely shaken and God intervening, you have the question, Where does man's inhumanity figure in the fact that God is a sovereign God over all of that inhumanity?

How does it work out? Says Matea, we mustn't think of human beings as puppets with the Lord as their puppet master. On the contrary, they are being themselves to the fool, with their natural acts fulfilling his supernatural purposes. In a very real sense, therefore, what the Bible speaks of as the stretching out of his hand—which I've just quoted from the twenty-sixth verse of Isaiah 14—what the Bible speaks of as the stretching out of his hand would be more easily understood if we thought of it as the withdrawing of his hand. To leave sinners, to implement all the inhumane savagery of fallen human nature, bereft of the restraining, humanizing efficacy of common grace. So when you read Romans chapter 1, and it says, And God gave them up, God said, Fine, you want to try it like that?

Here's what it looks like when you do that. Here's what it feels like when you respond in that way. Here's what happens to a culture. Without the restraining hand of common grace, we couldn't manage to live for a nanosecond in contemporary America. For it is the restraining hand of grace which prevents it from absolutely decaying to the point of extinction.

Mattia. The Creator has so constituted humankind that sin progressively makes people less human and therefore less humane. Sin makes people less human and therefore less humane.

The process, however, is not allowed to run its logical course in the logical way, or else the race would have perished as soon as sin entered into the world. The Lord remains sovereign, operating his own rules, directing, restraining, prompting, but the time will come—the day of the Lord—when, in a climactic way, sin will take the stage as the total destroyer it always is, and sinful human beings who for so long have determined their own destiny without God will be left and indeed directed to do so. That's why Townend and Getty in their song have the line, A shout of joy, a cry of anguish, as Christ returns, and every knee bows low. Either when that day dawns, and the heavens move, and the earth shakes, and the Son of Man descends in the clouds, and we see him, we will either say, Fantastic! or we will say, Oh no!

with no prospect of anything to plead in our defense. Then, he says, then the Son of Man will be seen coming in the clouds with great power and glory. Now, once again, you need to have the Old Testament, because this is the book of Daniel. Daniel chapter 7. Daniel chapter 7 and verse 13. I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man. This is a prophecy of Daniel. He's looking forward in the night vision.

He sees this. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed.

It's fantastic, isn't it? Now, you see, the people in Jesus' day lived with this prospect of this Son of Man. Son of Man is used as a description just of humanity, in a general sense, in the Old Testament, but it is used specifically peculiarly in relationship to the One as described here in Daniel chapter 7.

Now, if you think about it, you've already got part of the picture on this, because you will remember that when we began to study Mark a hundred years ago, and we got to chapter 2, and the men came bringing the paralyzed man, and they dropped him down through the roof. Jesus had already announced what? The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. What was he saying there? He was saying that all the things that the Old Testament has been prophesying, they're all fulfilled in me.

They're fulfilled now. There's nothing, really, that is going to take place in the second coming that hasn't been actualized in his first. That's why we're able to say that the end has come—is coming, will come. It is this Son of Man that is prophesied in Daniel, that is expressed in the Gospels, that is now the one who will come in clouds with power and great glory. Now, some of my best friends want to see in this the ascension—that they say that Daniel 7.14 fits far better the giving of the kingdom to Jesus in terms of, now he has ascended, he has led captivity captive, and so on.

And so now, from his position as the ascended Lord, he pours out his gifts upon the church, and his messengers go around the world—and that is verse 27, according to that view—the messengers go around the world and collect his elect from the four corners of the earth. I'm not convinced of that. You might be.

I'm not. I think that even if there is that foreshadowing of it in the notion of the ascension—or the typifying of it, if you like—that we still have to see in this the return of Jesus Christ. Even just the phraseology, coming in the clouds with great glory. I know it fits Daniel 7, but it also fits, why are you folks standing, looking up into heaven? Don't you realize that he will come in the same way that he was taken from you up into heaven? And what did they just witness?

They had witnessed the fact that he was caught up into the clouds, and now he returns. But this is a promise. There'll be no empty seats in heaven. None whom he has purchased will be missing. No one will be missing. No one will say, Well, where are the rest of the people that fill up the seats?

How is he going to do this? Listen to Calvin. Whenever we perceive the church scattered by the wiles of Satan, or torn in pieces by the cruelty of the ungodly, or disturbed by false doctrines, or tossed about by storms, let us learn to turn our eyes to this gathering of the elect. And if it appears to us a thing difficult to be believed, let us call to remembrance the power of the angels, which Christ hold out to us for the express purpose of raising our views above human means. Above human means.

How are you gonna bring all the people that died in the Titanic? He's gonna send his angels. For though the church be now tormented by the malice of men, or even broken by the violence of the billows, and miserably torn in pieces so as to have no stability in the world, yet we ought always to cherish confident hope, because it will not be by human means but by heavenly power, which will be far superior to every obstacle that the Lord will gather his church." You see, this is, lift your eyes and look up, for your redemption draws nigh. This is not, get all freaked out by dramatic signs in the heavens or trying to tie the signs in the heavens to contemporary events.

No, the purpose remains always moral. It remains always evangelistic, if you like. These things are to teach you. During the confusing time in which we live, these are comforting lessons from Jesus.

You're listening to Truth for Life. Alistair Begg has titled this study in Mark 13, The Coming of the Son of Man. Today's message represents one small portion of a much larger collection, and I'm excited to let you know about a special resource from Truth for Life. It's a USB drive that contains the entire study of Mark's gospel, from chapter 1 all the way through to chapter 16. This study includes 87 messages, guiding you through a comprehensive journey of the life of Jesus, his death, and his resurrection.

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