The grace of God is a powerful, enduring force that transforms lives and offers hope for the future. It explores how God's grace, exemplified by the beauty of a sunset and the enduring love within family, provides strength through life's difficulties. It emphasizes that God's grace is not temporary but a constant presence, teaching believers and preparing them for the blessed hope of Christ's glorious appearing. The sermon urges believers to actively anticipate Christ's return, viewing it not as a distant event but as a glorious culmination of God's plan.
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A number of you have surprised me this week by asking about our writing commitments. You have encouraged us because, as you know, we do not write in the English language but in the Spanish language and we are encouraged that some of you are aware of that and perhaps pray for us in this particular ministry. I brought along this morning three books that have been published in recent times because I'm taking them home to my children. leave with my children, I have three children, and they're up in British Columbia, Canada, and each time a book comes out we usually take them a copy to add to their library. They're all bilingual and they read both Spanish and English.
Our writing commitments fall really into three categories. The first category is related to translations. And many years ago now we had the joy of translating from English into Spanish A book that was published by Pickering and Ingalls, I think away back around nineteen forty-nine. I remember just after I was married, my father gave me a copy of that book as I took grace and left for the Dominican Republic. It was edited by J.B. Watson, who for many years was the editor of The Witness Magazine. And the book is called The Church, a Symposium of Principles and Practices.
And many of the well-known Bible scholars in our church circles back at that time contributed papers to that book. So we translated it into the Spanish language. I worked with a Dominican colleague on that project. And then the book was published down in Buenos Aires in the Argentine. That has been circulating for many years in the Spanish-speaking world. You sometimes wonder about your work and how many people actually read it. I was up in New York about two years ago, and there was a man from the Argentine who really became our chauffeur and took us to all the meetings in the different parts of that great city.
And one night we're driving through the streets of New York, and he was talking to me about a book that had been a great blessing to him. And he said, the subject is the church, but I don't remember the name of the author. and I never didn't even go through my mind there are so many books on the subject of the church and then he said but I remember and he described what the cover of the book was like and then I knew that that was the translation so you are encouraged now and then by those who read and are helped by the work you do through translations I have with me this morning this little book that perhaps some of you read in English This is the beautiful book that Marion Carter, who was a veteran missionary in the Dominican Republic, wrote just a year before she died.
She was a widow for many years. I believe she came, she lost her husband when she was around fifty-five years of age. That's even considered retirement age today in North America, but that woman went back to the Dominican Republic and for twenty years did a most remarkable work for God. And she wrote out this simple but beautiful story. We were with her when she passed into the presence of the Lord. And in those days, she asked me, Jim, would you translate the book into Spanish for our Dominican friends? And we translated this book, which in Spanish is Memorias Devonia Mariana Carter.
And of course, it's all about the people she knew and loved in the Dominican Republic. Another aspect of our work in literature has to do with the history of the Dominican Republic. And I think many of you here this morning probably knew personally Mr. and Mrs. Duncan Reed. They were pioneer missionaries in the Dominican Republic. They came from Scotland and arrived there around the year nineteen twenty. Mr. Reed died in nineteen eighty-five and around nineteen ninety his wife Now in Leeds, England, passed into the presence of the Lord. When Mr. Reed died, his only child, the daughter, came from Leeds, England, and asked me, Jim, would you go through my dad's papers?
So we went through his papers and books, and we found three boxes filled with sermons. Nobody knew that Duncan Reed wrote out all his sermons. If you had seen him preach, you wouldn't have believed it. I don't think he actually took the sermon to the pulpit, but he wrote it out. He must have read it many times, and then he would go and deliver the message. But we found this boxed. The first messages were written in nineteen twenty-three. He wasn't in the Dominican Republic very long. They're written in long hands. And they are dated and also the place where the message was given.
Then as the years went by, he used the typewriter. And eventually, just about eighteen months before he died, he prepared his last message for a large conference in Santo Domingo. And all down through those sixty years, we have these messages with the dates and the places. So I wrote an extended biographical sketch of the life of Duncan Reed. And then we chose about thirty of his sermons. They were not written for publication, so we edited them, and we published this book, Un Dominicano que parese escocés, in English, a Dominican who looks like a man from Scotland.
And that was one of the highest tributes, I think, that was paid to Duncan Reed just after he died. A close friend of mine wrote an article on his life, and it was published in our major newspaper. And the article ended with that phrase, here comes Duncan Reed, a Dominican who looks like a man from Scotland, a man who'd lived his life in the Dominican Republic and served God there and died in Porta Plata in nineteen eighty-five. The other aspect of our writing is in the area of theology, and this book was published in nineteen ninety-two, Facetas del Caracter de Dios. on the character of God.
I had great joy in writing that book, and it now is circulating in the Spanish-speaking world. The same editors, Editorial Carribe, have a book down in Miami. It is on the subject of the destiny of glory that awaits the Christian. The title in Spanish, Destino de Gloria, is slightly larger than this book. It's not a prophetic study, but it's a study of death, of resurrection, and the transformation, and then a look into heaven itself. And then we have two other books that are extensively outlined, and one of these days we'll sit down and write them.
One is called The Stasos de la Glory of Enidera, Glimpses of Coming Glory, and is based on the last part of each one of the seven letters in the book of the Revelation, where the Lord Jesus just for a moment takes the curtain and he moves it aside when he says, and I will. And then you have often symbolic language of what he's going to do for those who belong to him. And in that symbolism, you have glimpses of the coming glory that awaits each Christian. The other book that is outlined is on Christology, and that is a serious study, and we're working on that slowly.
It deals with the person of the Lord Jesus. And in that study, the great columns in the New Testament are four. His deity, His humanity, the single personality, not two persons. And within that single personality, the twofold nature of the Lord Jesus. So those of you who asked, I just urge you to go on praying that God will give us the time, the interest and the ability to go on and leave in the Spanish-speaking world some of these things that we have enjoyed so much. Now our subject in the morning, as was mentioned, is the grace of God.
We spoke yesterday about the sunrise which fills the life with colors and life and hope and vitality. And how when the grace of God comes into our lives, it does the same thing. It fills our life with newness and hope and blessings. But there is something else the grace of God does for all of us. It leans over our shoulders, so to speak, and it whispers in our ears, the best is yet to come. I came home once in the city of Porta Plata, late in the afternoon from the office. And Mr.
and Mrs. Reed were home in Scotland on furlough, and Grace and I were relieving them. And they lived in an old house, beautiful architecture, up on a little rise in the city of Porta Plata, looking out over at the Atlantic Ocean, and to the west you could see some of the hills in the far distance. And I came home and picked up the newspaper. I was seated out on the porch reading the day's news. And my little girl, Grace Lynn, who couldn't have been more perhaps than three or four years of age, she came out and stood quietly beside me. And I'm reading about China, problems in the Middle East, and other tragedies in the world.
And this little voice says all of a sudden, Daddy, who painted the sky? So I put down my newspaper, and sure enough, out to the west was this spectacular sunset. We have it every day in the tropics. If the sunrise is beautiful, the sunset is truly spectacular. There's an explosion of colors all through the sky, and especially if there are a few clouds around, it's absolutely unbelievable. I looked at this little girl and wondered where this question came from. And then I found out through grace that she spent the whole afternoon in among some of the young ladies from the church who had come up to be with grace and to prepare backgrounds for flannel graph material.
I don't know if people still use flannel graph, but in those years that was a means of teaching boys and girls through illustrations, the Bible stories. You cut out the figures and you prepared them, but you had to have backgrounds. And here were the girls with colors, and they were painting the backgrounds, and some of them were of sunsets. And Graceland spent the whole afternoon watching this. And then she came out on the porch and saw the sky far more brilliant and beautiful than anything she'd seen in the afternoon. And a little girl asked her father, Daddy, who painted the sky? Well, it's beautiful to know that you cannot turn the grace of God off the way you turn off a light bulb.
The grace of God comes into our lives and it stays with us right to the end. We've already sung that beautiful song by John Newton, Amazing Grace. And at the end of one of those verses, you have that very lovely phrase, and grace will see me safe home. So the grace of God is with us in this present age. It's here to help us get through. It's not easy. Pardon the stories from my own family, but my son, when he was born, he was around maybe ten or eleven years of age.
He came seven years after our second daughter. And one day he's beside me and he said to me with a long face, he said, Dad, it's a rough life. Now look at this little boy. wondering how could it be a rough life? And he said to me, I've got three mothers, my real mother, and my two sisters, and their mothering me. It's a rough life. Well, Paul could say that in a real sense. And you think of his life, he lived a rough life. Many of God's people who have not suffered persecution, but in many other ways, Life is not easy and the grace of God is here to help us to get through this experience, but it doesn't leave us.
It keeps telling us the best is yet to come. And that brings you down in Titus chapter two down to verse thirteen. Titus chapter two and verse thirteen. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Now the previous verse, you have the grace of God teaching us, and in that teaching it's preparing us for a glorious future. And the verse begins, verse thirteen, looking for, not waiting for.
You see, you can wait for something and forget about it in the meantime. and you can be occupied with other things. You know way back in your mind that something's going to come or something's going to happen, but it isn't really a first priority in your life. You're just simply waiting for this to happen. That's not the word. The word is looking for. There's passion here. There's desire. There's great love. There's something very important about to happen, and you are looking for it. In our country, the Dominican Republic, Grace is often active with ladies' meetings, usually in the afternoon, and sometimes she leaves and goes off for a meeting, and I go on with my studies at the computer.
But I know more or less when she's coming home, and all of a sudden I hear the sound of a horn. I know that's the horn of my car, and I get up from my study, I go across the room to a window that looks out over the carport, and it's empty. And I realized it's another car that's gone by on the highway with the same horn that I have. So I go back again to my studies. And we go on, and then all of a sudden you hear a car door shut, and you know the sound of your own car door when it shuts, and I'm up again and I go to the window, but it's the neighbor who came in and threw the door and shut it. Not my car. I do that sometimes four or five times. I'm looking for the arrival of my wife.
the one that I love and care for. That's the word, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. I don't want to be too personal this morning. I don't want to upset you in any way. But when was the last time that you put your head on the pillow at night and before you went to sleep, you thought, I wonder if it will be tonight. Or the last time you got up in the morning and getting dressed and ready for a new day, it went through your mind, perhaps it will be today. It's that attitude that Paul is talking about here when he writes to Titus, looking for, anticipating, hoping for the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
And then he adds, it's the blessed hope. And it's the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Let me ask you today, is it a fantasy? Is it a religious myth? In the days of the Apostle Peter, there were those who joked and said, Where is the promise of His coming? People doubted just a few years after the promise was made. and they're taunting the apostle, where is the promise of his coming? Those of you who are Americans perhaps know that one of your greatest contemporary writers, Gore Vidal, who lives today in angry exile in France, who has written many books that have touched the lives of millions of people in your country and other countries around the world, last year...
He brought out a new book, and the title is Live from Golgotha. No doubt about it. This is a religious book. I haven't read the book. I have read a review of the book, not in the Christian magazine, but in the secular press. And there is no doubt about it. The whole purpose of the book is to mock Christianity. When you read the book according to the reviewer, he attributes to Christ and his followers the most unbelievable and even scandalous activities, some of them including homosexuality.
This was written last year, is now being read by millions of people around the world, a man who mocks the Christian faith. I also read in Time magazine a review of this man, a very long review. Someone traveled over to France, had this interview with him, and in the interview, Vidal said to the journalist, Christianity is such a silly religion. And then he went on to speak specifically of the second coming of Christ. And he said, so many promises and so much fundraising, and still he hasn't come.
Now we live today approximately two thousand years after the Lord Jesus said, If I go away, I will come again. Two thousand years is a long time. No wonder some people look at us and they say it's a myth. Or some go to the extreme of saying about Christianity, it certainly is a silly religion. Well, we listen to the comments And we come back to this book, which we believe with all our heart is the Word of God. And in this book, there is a firm promise that Jesus Christ is coming back again.
And if you take that promise out of our Christian faith, you're left with a story in which there is no final chapter. you're left with a whole system of truth that doesn't go anywhere. It's this message that he's coming back again which will bring this whole work of God to its glorious climax. Paul doesn't have a doubt about it in the world. And he says, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing place. I want to suggest to you this morning he's not talking about two distinct events.
If I may speak very kindly and openly to you this morning, when you think about the coming again of the Lord Jesus, if you divide it up into so many compartments, you're going to end up with the second coming and the third coming and the fourth coming and the fifth coming. But he came once. and he's coming again the second time. If you go back and think about his first coming, well, when did he come? Was it when the announcement was given to Zachariah about the birth of John who would be the forerunner?
Is that the beginning of the coming? Or is it related to Mary who received the announcement and the miraculous conception? Is that when he came? Or is it when he was born from a virgin? Or is it his life? Or do we think about his passion and death and resurrection? Well, all of those things are involved in the first coming of the Lord Jesus. You can't take one event and say, that's when he came. You put it all together and you look back and you talk about the first coming of the Lord Jesus. Now he's coming again.
He's coming for the church. We're going to meet him in the air. He's coming in judgment for the nations. And you can go on with all the things related to his second coming. But they are all facets of one great intervention of God at the end of history. And he will bring it to climax. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And Paul calls it the blessed hope. and the glorious appearing. Let's take the word blessed hope. You know, some of us now, my wife held out her hands to me the other day, and she said, look at that, Jim. You see the marks of arthritis, the bumps, and some of the knuckles.
And of course, I see her sometimes holding a finger like this, and I wonder, and then I know it's pain, and there's nothing much she can do about it, and she holds it, and she pulls it and eventually the pain goes away. But she never did that twenty years ago, ten years ago. There are things that come into our lives with the passing of the years. We seem to be taking more medicine than we took in all the previous forty years. We go to see the doctor more in a year than we did in the previous thirty years. Something's happening to this body. It's growing older and along comes the preacher. And he talks about the resurrection and the transformation.
And though we're very conservative and not Pentecostal in nature, you can't help the hallelujah that comes out when you think about the new body on that coming day. It's a blessed hope for all of us who know and love the Lord Jesus. We walk with him. We talk with him. And he fills our heart with his joy and with his presence. And he's leading us on. And we think of that moment when we will see Him. That is the blessed hope from our point of view. But on the other hand, it's the glorious appearing. Now, when you think of the glorious appearing, I always think of the world.
This world that saw the Lord Jesus for the last time when He was hanging on a cross. His body was full of open wounds. covered with blood and perspiration. That crown of thorns on his head was a grotesque sign. That's the last time the world saw him. People came walking into Jerusalem that day, and they looked over at this spectacle, and then they took their fist, and they beat their chest. That was the sign. This is an awful thing. Look at that horrible thing. and then they moved up. That's the last time the world saw Jesus Christ.
Peter says that when he rose again from the dead, he was only seen by his witnesses, by those who knew him and loved him and followed him. The world never saw him again. When the Lord Jesus comes back in the fullness of his second coming, for this world it is the glorious appearing. Let me try and emphasize what this means. If I ask you today, who came the first time? And you think about it. Who came? Well, you go and listen to John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And the Word became flesh. and dwelt among us. So we ask John, Who came? And the answer is God. Or we listen to Paul. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And so we say to Paul, Who came the first time? And the answer is God. Then you can ask the second question, How did he come? And the answer is appalling. He came in lowliness, in abject poverty.
Alfred Edersheim, the author of The Life and Times of Jesus, one of the classic works from the Christian Jewish view of the Lord Jesus, believes that Mary came from the poorest of the poor in Galilee, and so did Joseph, her promised husband. These are not affluent people. Galilee was the place of the heaviest population that came from all around. There was such a mixture of language that they had an accent the way they spoke. Peter had that accent. It was recognized when the Lord Jesus was crucified as he stood around the fire.
We know where you come from. You come from Galilee. That's where all the poor people lived. And Mary came from there. And then they went down to Bethlehem. You know the circumstances. There was no place for them. That doesn't mean that Joseph had a thousand dollars in his pocket and couldn't find any place. If he'd had a thousand dollars, he would have found a place. But here are people almost destitute. There was no room for people like that. And so the Lord Jesus is born in a cave on the outskirts of the city amongst the animals. That's how God came into our world in lowliness and in humiliation.
And John writes in his gospel, he came to his own. His own didn't recognize him. They didn't believe. This was the transcendent God who had come down to visit and to live with us for a period of time. Now let's go to the second coming and ask the same question. Who is coming? Well, you remember that day when the disciples followed the Lord Jesus out of Jerusalem? They're on their way to Bethany. I don't think they reached Bethany. To go to Bethany from Jerusalem, you go up the Mount of Olives And Bethany was on the far side, on the slope, going down towards the south.
But I don't think they reached there. It was on the way there. And on the Mount of Olives, the Lord Jesus stopped with the disciples, and they're talking together. And then all of a sudden, in this brilliant cloud of glory, he moves up and away from them, and he's received in the cloud, and he disappeared. No wonder they're standing there. probably with their mouths open, looking up into the sky, they can't believe what they've seen. And then the messengers come, and this is what they said. This same Jesus, who was taken from you in the same way, Jesus is coming back.
So we ask them, tell us again, who is coming? Jesus is coming. You think of Paul as he writes to the Thessalonians, we're waiting for God's Son from heaven, even Jesus, who has saved us from the wrath that comes. Paul, who is coming again? His answer is Jesus, the man who lived in the world, who finally died outside of Jerusalem and was buried, and then rose again from the dead. This same Jesus. He is coming again. Now the second question, how is He coming? Well, here in the verse we've read this morning, it's the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
You can't take that phrase and break it up like this. The glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. That is one phrase in the original language. It refers to the same person. The one who is coming from other scriptures we know is Jesus. How is he coming? He's coming surrounded by all the glory of the great God and all the majesty and the glory of his eternal person. He burst back into history. Can you imagine the shock of the world in which we live today when Jesus, who was despised and rejected two thousand years ago, who is laughed at and mocked at today by men like Vidal, when Jesus comes back, not the way he lived here in the world two thousand years ago.
but surrounded by the glory and the power that is His by right, He bursts into time. No wonder on that coming there, they're going to run into the caves to try and hide from the one who comes in power and majesty. The Lord Jesus talked about that. The Son of Man will come with glory and great power. He bursts into time. In all of that radiant glory, it will startle and change the world, the coming again of the Lord Jesus in that sense. And Paul says, looking for, anticipating, longing for the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
As we close our service, let's take our hymn books this morning and sing a hymn that encourages us in this thought. And it's hymn number twenty-three. Rejoice. The Lord is King. Your Lord and King adore. Mortals give thanks and sing and triumph evermore.