11-16-2025

“WHETHER SOONER OR LATER, JESUS IS NEAR”

Text: Luke 21:5-28 – Pentecost 23

Sunday November 16th, 2025

Trinity - Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our crucified and risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

       Our text for this 23rd Sunday after Pentecost is the Gospel Lesson from Luke 21 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray:  Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that we need not guess or worry about when you will come again in glory.  Remind us that baptized into you and sustained with your word and your body and blood we are ready no matter what or when.  Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Most of us have had the experience in which a person is explaining something—maybe an event or an episode in a book or a movie—and he gives so many details and takes so long that you get a little frustrated. He can’t seem to get wherever he’s finally going. One could, being a bit crass, blurt out, “What’s the point?!”

In a sense, this Gospel reading is a bit like that. It’s twenty-four verses describing what it will be like as the end of time approaches, when Jesus comes to judge and take his own to himself into the glories of heaven.

But the details in describing the end here are both long and hard to understand. It will be an event like no other, ever.

Even now, while still in time, it’s hard enough to view and understand all things around us—the intricacies of nature, the vast array of stars in the heavens, the complicated interactions among peoples, the ways our bodies work. Much harder to get some sort of grip on what it’ll be like at the very end when Jesus returns and has all people gather before him.

One of the challenges with a passage like this is to figure out if there are specifics here to grasp or if the Holy Spirit is simply attempting to catch our attention to make us keenly aware of how critical it is that we stay close to Jesus by whatever means we can.

Indeed, this is a bit like reading the seemingly strange events recorded in Revelation, where John is trying to convey things of the world and the church that are, in essence, beyond our understanding. He uses such picturesque and figurative language that is clearly beyond rational thinking.

So let’s be clear here. The details of what is being described in this text are not nearly as critical as is the out-of-this-world importance of having faith in our Savior Jesus and letting him keep and guide us all the way through our lives until the end comes.

To help us keep our eyes and faith fixed on Jesus, let’s focus on a few particular words of this passage, ones at the end of the whole Gospel reading, just verses 25 through 28, and let’s see what they might hold for us this morning.

Luke gives us as signs of the end some things great and terrible that everyone will see. Things like roaring sounds as of a sea, people fainting from fear, and the shaking of the heavens all point to the fearfulness of the coming of the end of time and the beginning of eternity.

And then all will see Jesus coming, coming in power and great glory. There are other places in the New Testament describing his arrival that speak of all the angels being with him, of trumpets blowing, of great light shining, and so on. It will indeed be an event like nothing ever seen before!

Even just a pondering of these words can bring great fright to a person. Think on it! Earthquakes, great thundering and storms like never before, with even the heavens being shaken, will make any normal person most afraid.

But what is it to be like for the believer?

Here’s the critical point for us this morning. The unbeliever, who now senses that his accountability to God is coming due, that he never did enough to satisfy God’s holy demands, but, even more, that he simply rejected the Jesus who now gathers all before him to be judged, will be “fainting with fear” (v 26)—stooped over, with head hanging low, low in great regret.

As opposed to that, Jesus says, “straighten up and raise your heads” (v 28b). The believer stands up tall, raises his head, looking to the Jesus in whom he trusted. He trusted in this Jesus because this Jesus fulfilled his promise to save, save by paying the full debt of the believer’s sin and sinfulness when he died on the cross.

He trusted Jesus to keep him in his faith until the very end. And he trusted Jesus to come and retrieve him from this vale of trauma and trial and take him to himself, into the glories beyond all glories, those of heaven!

What’s interesting is how Jesus labels this end of all things for the believer. He says, “Because your redemption is drawing near” (v 28c).

So just what is redemption? It can be identified in a couple of different ways. Redemption is a buying back of that which was lost or stolen. Or, one could say, it’s paying the price for freedom from that which kept one a slave to something.

Our goodness was lost when Adam and Eve sinned against God and brought that lost condition upon all of mankind. What they did is make all of mankind, their descendants, just like them. That lost condition makes everyone, then, a slave to her or his sin and sinful condition. It’s not possible ever to free oneself from that slavery.

So when we think of the redemption that frees a person, a believer, from that lostness and their slavery to sin, we really have two redemptions. Well, maybe three.

The first is when Jesus gave up his life to pay the sin debt, the debt that men of all places and of all time accrued against God. That redemption took place two thousand years ago when Jesus died on the cross.

The second redemption took place when the person became a believer, when he first began to trust in the one properly called the Redeemer, Jesus. That typically comes through the washing of water with the Word of God, Baptism. That redemption stays with the believer ever after that. But when the person dies, he needs redemption from the bond of death.

The third redemption, then, is when the believer is raised from the dead and goes to be with Jesus. For every believer, redemption is truly near, near because by the faith given by the Spirit, it’s only a matter of time until this final redemption is completed.

A couple of years ago, a movie came out entitled The Firing Squad. It recounted the life of a drug dealer, of how he was dealing drugs in Indonesia, where to be caught was an automatic death penalty.

There were several times he had come in contact with those who wished him to become a believer in Jesus. Of course, life was too good for him even to consider anything other than the lavish lifestyle he was leading.

But, alas, he was caught. After some time in prison, as believers spoke to him often, and as the time of his execution came closer, the beauty of the lives of those confessing their faith to him caused him to begin to explore the Scriptures. He started reading the Bible and became a believer.

He, too, now beautifully demonstrated the words of this passage when it came time for his execution, for he did indeed stand up and raise his head high, even at that moment before the firing squad. His final redemption was indeed near, in the next few moments! He now had no fear of death, for that was the door by which he would go to be with Jesus.

As we ponder our own end, it might well bring a bit of fear. It’s not something anyone can experience or rehearse ahead of time. When the day comes, it’s going to be brand new, something we’ve never faced before.

Yet because God has remade us into people now counted holy by God, because he is with us at all times, because our sin debt against God has indeed been paid by Jesus, there is no reason to fear death itself, but there really is only eager anticipation to be with Jesus.

Yes, our redemption is near, as near as our own deaths or as near as the approaching last day. For whether our time to meet Jesus is soon or still a long way off, He, as Our Redeemer, Is Always Near—with us and in us.

All we can ever do is thank God for the gift of faith and thank him for the home he has already prepared for us with him. Yes, all praise be to God.

Years ago, many retail companies had systems of giving gifts to their customers. The way it usually worked was for the customer to do something—collect something, save something—to get the gift.

For example, some companies asked the customer to save receipts. Other companies had them save bottle caps and later the snap tops of soda cans. Then there was this very popular approach: The store gave stamps, and when you collected enough, you could choose from among various prizes. They called it “redeeming” the stamps.

But actually, all the gimmicks required that one had to do something to “redeem” the prize. The prizes were things like sets of glasses or dishes, maybe even figurines of one sort or another.

Yet the real redemption, that of being redeemed by Jesus, comes not by something we do but by what Jesus did and does. And we get not something that breaks or fades; we get that which goes on forever.

God not only does something; he does everything, and always, always, for our greatest good: eternal life with him. We, then, look forward to the final redemption, the redemption of our bodies to join our souls at the Last Day (Lk 21:28). Amen

The Peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  Amen.