If you’ve ever ventured downtown in a heavily populated city, you’ve probably seen them. Men, sometimes women, and even children, equipped with sandwich boards and bullhorns; holding cardboard signs, with a Sharpie scrawled message: THE END IS NEAR! Spit flies from their lips as they scream at each passerby, “Repent, you sinners, or you’ll BURN in the fires of HELL forever! The end is near!” What’s the intention of these street corner preachers with their message of hellfire and brimstone? To make you smile? To bring joy to your heart? Certainly not! The goal is to strike fear so deeply into people’s hearts that they drop to their knees in terror and beg for forgiveness from a wrathful God bent on vengeance and punishment.
And we have to admit, the picture the Bible paints of Judgment Day isn’t exactly a Bob Ross painting with smiling sunshine and happy little clouds. It sounds terrifying! Our reading from Malachi says, “(The Day) will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day…will set them on fire.” The Apostle Peter writes, “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” Even Jesus predicted, “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
Doesn’t sound like a very joyful day, does it? Maybe people look at Last Judgment Sunday and think, “What’s to celebrate?” But I want to show you both sides of my sign: T HE EN D I S NEA R…SO B E JOYFUL! That’s right. Be joyful about Judgment Day! We look to Hebrews today to teach us why we can joyfully look forward to Judgment Day, and how that knowledge leads us to be joyful not just on Judgment Day, but on every day!
First, Hebrews tells us why we can joyfully anticipate Judgment Day by pointing us back to the Old Testament priesthood, and the sacrifices they offered to God on behalf of the Israelites.
Picture yourself at the temple in Jerusalem; gathered with all of Israel on the special Day of Atonement as the High Priest goes about his sacrificial work on your behalf. 15 animals will be sacrificed that day. You can almost hear the terrible noises of animals being slaughtered; their blood spilled, their carcasses burned, to forgive the people’s sins.
And that was just on that one day a year! Sacrifices were offered to God morning and evening, all year long for centuries, from the first sacrifices of Adam and Abraham on man-made altars, to the temple sacrifices at the time of Jesus.
Remember that. The priests had to sacrifice day after day, because the people of Israel, the priests included, sinned against God, day after day. Their sin separated them from God. Only through sacrifices and the shedding of blood, which God commanded, could they be connected with him.
Of course, sacrificing farm animals didn’t actually forgive anyone their sins. As Hebrews tells us, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Everything about these sacrifices, which God so intricately detailed for his people, was foreshadowing. Symbols, to remind people how desperately they needed forgiveness, and of God’s grace and mercy. These sacrifices were to be a constant reminder of the greater sacrifice whom God had promised to send. These sacrifices were always substitutionary, arrows pointing the people ahead to the perfect substitute of Christ! His perfect life our substitute for our failures to be holy, and his innocent suffering and death, the substitute for the punishment we deserve for our sins! The greater sacrifice, would bring Israel, and us, the greatest joy!
Maybe you’re wondering, “What does this have to do with Judgment Day?” It has everything to do with Judgment Day! The greater sacrifice makes it so Judgment Day can be a day of joy instead of terror!
The writer to the Hebrews lines up the Old Testament sacrifices side by side with Christ’s perfect sacrifice, and invites us to see why Christ’s sacrifice brings us true joy.
While the priests had to sacrifice for the people day after day, year after year, Christ sacrificed once, for all! As the writer to the Hebrews compares, “Nor did Christ enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own…But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Jesus only needed to sacrifice once, for two reasons: The Priest was different, and the blood was different! Rather than imperfect priests offering imperfect blood, our perfect Priest offered his perfect blood. Not the blood of bulls or lambs, but the blood of The Lamb! We can see the innocent lamb, silently allowing himself to be led to slaughter. Watch, as his perfect, innocent blood is poured out on the cross…for you. That you might have joy!
As our perfect substitute, Christ didn’t just sacrifice himself to set sins aside for another year. The word used for “do away with sin” means to annul sin! The blood of Christ made it so God remembers our sins no more, blotted out as if they never happened.
Why does Christ’s greater sacrifice bring us greatest joy for Judgment Day? “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” We can be joyful, because Christ is coming back!
Why will Judgment Day be such a different experience for you than the terrifying glimpses I read earlier? Because Christ’s sacrifice and the Holy Spirit working faith in your heart made you his very own! And so when Christ returns, he’s coming to bring you salvation! Yes, for all the arrogant…those who thought they knew better than to believe in God, for all the wicked, who made sin their practice, their passion, their pride and joy, Judgment Day will be a day of terror and mourning.
But for all those who believe, Judgment Day will be met with rejoicing! As Malachi says, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.” For us believers, we eagerly, joyfully wait in anticipation for Judgment Day, because the Son of Righteousness came, with healing in his wounds. Why can you be joyful? Because Christ is coming back!
We don’t know exactly when the end will come. It could be in 20 seconds, or 20 centuries. Only God knows! But we don’t need to wait until the end to be filled with the joy that Judgment Day will bring for us believers. We can live in that same kind of joy every single day!
That guilt you have hanging over your head today, the fear of vengeance from God, your doubts about whether your sins are really forgiven…they’re gone. Christ’s sacrifice has annulled every single one of your sins, like they never happened. No need to look back at your past in sorrow, for you can look ahead with joy!
When the weariness of life in a sinful world has brought you down; when the weariness of living your life shackled to a sinful body full of aches and pains, diseases and sadness has brought you low, you can still find joy every day, because you know what the end will bring! Malachi tells us that when Jesus returns, we believers will “go out and leap like calves released from the stall.”
It’s a pretty neat visual. On the farm, when the winter months have ended and spring has sprung, the young calves, some of them out in the pasture for the first time in their lives, will jump and gallop all over the fields in pure joy! In fact, even the adult cows will run and jump (as high as cows can jump!) when the long winter has ended and the sun shines on their backs again. They’re joyful, because they’ve been set free. Why can you be joyful? Because you’ve been set free! Because the sun will rise! Because Christ is coming back!
Maybe there are days when you don’t feel like leaping. Maybe there are days that your broken body, your broken relationships, or your guilt and shame, all have you feeling like you’re locked up in a barn for a long winter. Maybe when you watch the news and see the terrible things that happen in the world every day, your joy fades away. Maybe the loss of someone you love has you focused on present grief, rather than future joy.
On days when your health is failing, be joyful! Jesus is coming back to bring you salvation, and to give you a perfectly restored body. On days when your guilt and shame seems to suffocate you, be joyful! Through Christ’s perfect blood, God remembers your sins no more! When your relationships are broken, be joyful! Your God will never stop loving you.
He could have sacrificed anything else. But he didn’t. He sacrificed his own son, his everything, for you, to show you just how deep is his love. When the terror and sadness of the world have you longing for your eternal home in Heaven, be joyful! Jesus is coming back! Whenever we remember that Jesus is coming back, and coming back in love, we can be joyful…in any, and every situation. Day after day!
I have vivid memories of my childhood, going away to friends’ houses overnight, or going to a weeklong, overnight basketball camp, and being apprehensive to go. It was scary, and overwhelming. But the thing that always helped me to get through was the promise my parents always made. “We’ll be back to get you tomorrow.” “We’ll come pick you up next week.” With those promises in my head, and I was always able to enjoy myself, because I knew they were coming back to pick me up and bring me home. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we can have that same kind of joy…because Jesus is coming back! Wait with eager anticipation. He’s already made us his own. Now, he’s coming back to bring us home. And we say with all those believers, who eagerly await his return, “Come Lord Jesus, quickly come.” Amen!