If we rightly understood and weighed the circumstances under which the Lord took his seat on high; the state of things here; the sense of His rejection which led Him at the close of His ministry (Matt. xxii. 43, &c.) to quote Psalm 110 as indicating the course He was about to take, we should at once apprehend how morally necessary it is that His coming again should be the eager, constant expectation of His people here on the earth during His absence.
The Lord Jesus is called to sit down above until His enemies are made His footstool, and there He is now waiting; and the fact of His quoting Psalm 110 when He did, proved that He was aware of His rejection, -which was fully perpetrated at the stoning of Stephen.
He is set down at the right hand of power. All power has been given Him in heaven and earth. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the promised seed, the true Son of David, but being rejected; the Jews having refused the sure mercies of David, the times of refreshing, which should come from the Lord's presence on earth, are postponed, and He sits down at God's right hand waiting until His foes are made His footstool. Being rejected by His earthly people, He foregoes His right and rule for a season; but this very fact makes His return necessarily the first expectation of His people, as also the true criterion of the state of their hearts respecting Him.
Scripture supplies us with four reasons why the coming of the Lord should be the first of our expectations. First, It is the Lord's own desire to come. To the true heart there could be no greater incentive or motive for any expectation or desire, than the simple assurance that it is its Lord's own desire to come. And is it not so? He says that He goes away until His foes are made His footstool; thus plainly intimating that it is because of His foes that He, for a time, is absent, and therefore it is the time of His patience, as John says, " the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." He waits and has patience until the time of His returning arrives; but His heart is set on it. He says, " I go to prepare a place for you," and " I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." (John 14) When pressed by the chief priests and Pharisees, who sought false witness against Him to put Him to death, He says, " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Insulted and afflicted as He was at that moment, He casts His eye forward and scans the day of His power, in contrast to the scene of shame and contempt which He was passing through. The most glorious announcement the Spirit gives of Him is, " Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him." (Rev. 1:77Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7).) His own reply, when the Spirit and the Bride say " Come," is, " Behold, I come quickly." The assurance of the angels to the disciples who lingered gazing after Him as He was taken up (Acts 1:1111Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)), is " This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." His reiterated warning to His disciples, was that they should watch for His return. He describes to them the fatal consequences which should befall them if they in heart should say, " My lord delayeth his coming:" the servants would then eat and drink with the drunken; there would be grievous intermixture of His servants with the world, and the worst forms of priestly domination would prevail in the Church; while, as shown by the parable of the ten virgins, the aspect of His people in the world would be that of sleep, until the cry of His coming should rekindle the flame of life wherever it was in the souls of any.
But not only did our blessed Lord set forth in the most forcible language the evil consequences of losing sight of His coming, but He also declared to them the blessing that should accrue to them if they were found waiting for their Lord. Such faithfulness of heart is so grateful to Him, that He pronounces, " Blessed are those servants whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily," He continues (His heart disclosing how He appreciates such a state of soul), " verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them." No attitude, no condition of soul, so pleasing to Him as watching and waiting for His return; and to those who are thus engaged, there will be unbounded manifestations of His satisfaction in the rich servings of His love, and it could not be otherwise. If His people are true to Him they must be widows here, during His absence, and their heart demands it of them that they should wait for Him from heaven. (1 Thess. 1) It is His own desire to come again to receive us unto Himself, and, therefore, surely the heart that is true to Him, that is near to Him, must respond to this, the desire of His heart; and keep ever before it the Lord's return, as its first and leading expectation. It is evident that souls had got away from Him, and were not in communion and nearness to Him, or they never could have lost the freshness and blessedness of looking for His return. The soul near Him would have imbibed His own purpose and desire, and would have been the more earnest in it as it felt the desolation here during His absence, and the misrule of everything because it was not the day of His power.
And this brings us to the second reason why His coming should be our first expectation, namely, Because His rights will not be established until He comes. What righteous soul, not to say what loving heart, can survey the disorder and misrule of this world now in the hands of man, under the god of this world, without being oppressed with
the sense that its rightful Lord is not here, that the King of kings and Lord of lords is neither owned nor ruling. We know that He is the rightful Lord, that God hath set all things under His feet, and yet we see not yet all things put under Him. (Heb. 2:99But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9).) We know that it is man's day, and therefore we judge nothing until the Lord comes, until the day of His power. The spiritual must have the sense that the Lord is not reigning. They feel that He whose right it is is not in His true place; that His place is occupied by another, and hence the faithful servant is in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. I am formally and characteristically here at the Lord's supper announcing the Lord's death until He comes. I take this place; it suits me during His absence, allowing nothing else to characterize me till He comes. The knowledge of His rights not yet entered on, but usurped by another, the greater it is, the more are we separated from the world-the system which rejects Him and occupies in men's hearts His proper
place. We know that every knee shall bow to Him, but we see around us no recognition of His right and rule; and the more we are conscious of this, the more must we, because it is righteous, desire that He whose right it is should come and reign. He cannot reign until He conies. The power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ were displayed in the holy mount. That was the kingdom of God come with power, disclosed for a moment to a few faithful ones on the earth. How blessed and how wondrous! It is impossible for me to have a true feeling sense of His right to rule over things here, and to see how everything is out of course and used against Him, not to be earnest and longing for the day of His glory when He will come and reign. I cannot be truly in His kingdom and patience without an eager longing for the time when He shall take to Himself His great power and reign. Hence no sooner does the seventh angel sound, saying, " The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ," than there is the response, " We give thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come: that thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned." The apostle (1 Tim. 6:14- 1614That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: 15Which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; 16Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. (1 Timothy 6:14‑16)) exhorts Timothy of the " appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." That was to be his incentive to keep the commandment without spot, unrebukable, because He, in the suited time, would display it; He the blessed and only potentate, King of kings and Lord of lords. The heart necessarily turned to the time when He should be set in His true place, and in the full exercise of His power; and, therefore, in the Second Epistle he characterizes the saints as loving His appearing. It is His right to reign. He is now waiting until His appointed hour arrives; but every faithful servant is in His kingdom and patience, and, in the sense of His right, must, as he feels it and is oppressed by the confusion and evil here, desire above all things, and look out for His coming. Nay, the more troubled we are, the more we shall find out that our rest and our relief will be only when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven. So that the establishment of His right will also be our gain, which is another reason why we should desire His coming.
Therefore Peter writes, " Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end, for the grace which is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:1313Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; (1 Peter 1:13).) His coming, His exaltation, will confer the greatest blessings on the saints. First, the resurrection of the bodies of the saints does not take place until He comes. " Christ the firstfruits, then they that are Christ's at his coming." (1 Cor. 15:2323But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (1 Corinthians 15:23).) " Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." (Phil. 3:20,2120For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:20‑21).) When Christ enters on the day of His power, the first display of His power will be the resurrection. The moment He ceases to wait-when He takes to Himself His great power, even before there is a manifestation of His rule on earth, and before His appearing to the earth-the resurrection will take place; and the first action of His power will be to clothe His body, the Church, and all those who without us could not be made perfect in glorious bodies like unto His own. Again, John says, " 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." We cannot see Him as He is until He appears; and if we desire to be like Him, we must desire to see Him as He is. His own desire is that we should be with Him where He is, that we may behold His glory; and until He appears we cannot appear in glory; for it is when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, that we also shall appear with Him in glory. Our appearance in glory is a consequence of His appearing. How many and how blessed are the provocations to our hearts to desire His coming? How suited it is that so much and such varied blessing for us should be thus inseparably connected with His coming. Our happiness in any blessing depends greatly in the happiness of those we love, and surely in our hearts we could not desire to reach perfect blessing while our Lord was still waiting for the consummation of His glory and position, and therefore it is grateful to us that our perfection in blessing occurs simultaneous with His coming to rule in all the largeness and fullness of His right. If the resurrection of the body be desired by us-and it is the full consummation of the eternal life given to us in Christ-the sense of eternal life in us now reaches on to the full manifested power of it. For if the Spirit of Christ dwell in us, He that raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwelleth in us. The consummation does not take place, and it is suited and consistent that it should not take place, until the dawn of the day of the Lord, of which it is the first act of His power. Hence we wait for His coming " until the day dawn, until the day-star arise in our hearts." His coming will bring perfect blessing for us. We do not see Him till then; we are not like Him till then. The more our hearts are taken up with Him in His absence, the more must we desire His coming when all these varied and marvelous blessings will be perfected to us. A saint who departs is truly with the Lord, and in full and uninterrupted rest and nearness to Him, but he has not a resurrection body: he does not see Him, he is not yet like Him, nor can be until He comes. And more than this, we are not consciously or knowingly re-united with those gone before until He comes. It is when He comes that " the dead shall rise first; and then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be forever with the Lord." These are the words with which we are to " comfort one another." We do not pass the judgment-seat of Christ until He comes, that wondrous moment when all we have been, in the presence of His long-suffering and continued grace, will be brought forward and stand out in contrast. This cannot take place till He comes; and, lastly, there will be no rewards or defined sphere for us in our relation to Hint until He comes. How could there be? Spirits absent from the body, present with the Lord, could have no definite sphere or reward until the Lord had come and taken to Himself the power " whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself." Surely, then, our hearts are not truly estimating the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, if we are not desiring His appearing and kingdom. And if our hearts are thus true, if we are in any degree impressed with the force and conclusiveness of the above reasons for desiring the coming of the Lord, the fourth, and last, reason would be simple and only natural for us, namely, that our hearts would not consent to suggest anything else to Him but to come. Hence the Spirit and the Bride say " Come." There is no other suggestion to offer; no other action of our Lord could meet the necessity of the heart but His coming, and, therefore, it can suggest nothing save " come." If it could suggest anything else, it would imply that there was something which would be of more value to us than His coming, or be a substitute; whereas there can be nothing else so precious or so valuable to us. His coming is so connected with the desire of His own heart, with His rights, and with our great perfect blessing, that the Spirit who acts for Him here can say nothing else but " come." Neither can the bride; it is the one breathing of the heart of the bride. Nothing else can she say but come." If we are in the Spirit we must say " come," for the desire of the Holy Ghost is for the day of His power, and His coming for the Church is the beginning of it, the day-star of it. The Bride, in the affection of her heart, and every one partaking of her affection, can say naught else but " come."
In conclusion, I may repeat that I have not here drawn any distinction between His coining and His appearing, my object being to set forth the moral of both rather than the details; and to engage the souls of saints with their Lord's desire and His right, as primary even to their own gain, great and wondrous though the latter be, as we have seen. The heart that is true to Him will readily discern the difference between the earlier and later actions of His coming; between the moment when He no longer waits but rises from the throne, and the full glow and power of the day when He appears, and when " every eye shall see him."
May He keep our hearts in such simple allegiance and devotedness to Himself, that we may not afford ourselves any other suggestion to Him but that which alone suits the love and fidelity of our hearts, " Even so come, Lord Jesus." Amen.