How are we doing this morning, guys? All right. It's good to be with you all if we haven't met. My name is Ian. I'm one of the pastors here. It's a joy to be able to be with you guys this morning. And we are going to go ahead and just jump on in. We are plotting our way through first John in this morning we finish up chapter two. Uh, we've been in it for quite a while and we finally finish up chapter two. Guys, we're making progress. Alright, uh, last week, as we were in the middle of chapter two, we were introduced to this idea that we are in the last hour. Do you guys remember that from last week? Uh, let me find it for you if you don't. But we looked at how we are in the last hour. It says in verse eighteen, children, it is the last hour, which means that the end is close. We we're getting ever closer towards the end of time as we know it, of this world as we know it. It's the last chapter, and it's been the last chapter for quite a while. And this hour is Hours, dragging on for what seems like a long time. But we are in the last chapter. Final hour. And this morning, as we talk about that concept, we get to talk about the return of Christ. Are you guys ready for Jesus to come back? Yeah. You guys sounded way more ready than the eight o'clock, so that's good. I'm glad for that. Uh, but we want to talk about the return of Jesus, because the return of Jesus is promised. It's not a question. It is happening. And we see this in the New Testament. Uh, I'll show you a few of them. Here's the first one. In John fourteen, it says, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father's house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself. That you, that where I am, you may be also. So we get this idea that Jesus is coming back for his people. Here's another one. Mark eight. It says, for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels? We see that Jesus is coming back, and last one in Titus says this in Titus two for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Because Jesus is coming back, that's not in question. Here's what is in question. Are you ready for it? Like, are you actually ready? Are you anticipating it? Are you excited for it? When you hear that Jesus is coming back are like, that's great. Hope it's not today. Are you excited? Our text this morning as we close out chapter two. It gives us two options for us to have at the return of Christ. Two options. The first one is confidence. Like in eager expectation or longing for or waiting for a desire for the return of Jesus. There's this confidence at his appearing. So that's the first option. Confidence. But then there's the second option to shrink back in shame. This is the idea of like, oh no, Jesus is coming back. I'm not ready for that yet. I don't know if I'm excited for Jesus to come back right now. There's things I still want to do. Like I still want to have people I still want to talk to and meet places I want to go. Or maybe it's more of the shame of like, I, I chose to live for the wrong thing. and the idea of Jesus coming back right now doesn't fill you with confidence, but it fills you with dread that when you get the picture of Jesus coming with a white horse sword coming out of his mouth, fire in his eyes, it doesn't fill you with comfort, but it fills you with fear. Those are the two options. Confidence at his return or shrinking back in shame. Which one are you? And not necessarily. Just which one do you want to be? Because I would hope we'd all want to be confident. Right? But which one are you right now? Because, guys, I want to fill you in on a secret. We want to be a church that's filled with confident people at the return of Jesus Christ. We want to be a church filled with people who, when Jesus comes back, we're confident, we're excited, we're longing for it. We're anticipating it. And that's where John is going to take us this morning of how can we be a confident people when Christ returns? How can we be a longing people for that? How can we be an anticipating people for the return of Christ? So that's where John takes us. So open up to first John, if you're not there yet. Chapter two. We're going to finish it out verses twenty eight and twenty nine. So let's read this text. We're going to take a few detours on the way. But we want to talk about how can we have confidence at the return of Jesus. So let's read verse twenty eight and twenty nine. And now little children abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. And so as we finish out chapter two, you may notice a few words that connect it to what John has just gotten done saying. These two verses are kind of a transition from him talking about abiding last week to what he's going to be talking about next week and being children of God. And so these are transitional verses, but they're important transitional verses, because in these he's talking about us abiding in God to have confidence at the return of Christ. This is important stuff. But as you read this for the first time, there might be a question that comes up. Or at least it came up in my head as I was reading it. And here's the question that I was confronted with. Can you be a real Christian and not have confidence at the coming of Christ? Because you can read this and be like, oh, he's writing to a church, little children. We see him address the church in this way all throughout the letter. He's saying, abide in him so that you may have confidence and not shrink back. And so is he talking to those who are just believers? Or is he saying that, hey, some of you think you're believers, but you're not and it shows because you will shrink back at the coming of Christ. You're not excited about it. You're not longing for it. People are kind of divided on this, and there's some good reasons why. I'll show you a couple of them on each side, one on each side. The first one comes from first Corinthians says this, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one is done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. And so it's possible to read this and think, okay, you can You can be a Christian. You can be truly saved, but kind of like barely make it in, right? Like, you don't have a life of faith that matches the profession, and saving faith that you have, and the works that you have will be destroyed. They won't last. And so some people read this and say, hey, you, you might not have confidence even though you are a real Christian, but here's a verse or a passage that I think is a little bit more convincing. On the other side, what I think John is really trying to communicate comes from Hebrews ten. It says, therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. Now watch this verse. But we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed. Same kind of words that John is using in first John two. We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. I think this is I think that is more similar to the tone that John has as he's writing these couple of verses, that this is more of a warning that if you are a Christian, you will have confidence at the return of Christ. And if you are shrinking back, it might be because you aren't actually saved. And I think that's I think that's the argument John is making. Here's why I think that one. We have to remember the argument that John is making throughout this entire letter, right, that we have been saying over and over again that John is writing to make liars uncomfortable and Christians more confident, right? That's what we've been saying. And so I think that's what John is also doing here. He's writing so that real Christians would be more confident that they are really Christians, that they'd say, oh yes, I am awaiting a Savior. I'm excited for it. I can't wait for it. And so that would bring about confidence that they are really saved, but also warning liars that, hey, you might not actually be a Christian, you might not actually have saving faith. So that's an argument from like the letter as a whole. But let me show you specifically why in this text why I think John is warning them, saying if you shrink back or you shrink away, you might not have saving faith. When you look at these two verses specifically, we see a little bit of parallelism happening. So look closely. If you have your Bible look down at says and now little children abide, we see that word abide, which means to remain and be united to dwell in. So abide. And that when he appears you may have confidence. So we have this abiding leading to having confidence. And then we see an inverse happening in verse twenty nine, where it talks about if you know that he is righteous or you have confidence that he is righteous, you may be sure or have confidence that everyone who practices righteousness has been born again. So you have at the start of chapter nine or the start of verse twenty nine, you have confidence and it ends with being born of God or being united to him or dwelling in him, being connected to him. And so we get this idea that John is making a connection between abiding and being born of God, and that confidence is the connector. And so I think what John is doing as we read these verses is he's warning the churches that he is writing to. That the way you feel about the return of Jesus has implications on if you actually belong to him or not. And that's what I want you guys to consider this morning, that as you look at this text and you're confronted with the return of Christ. The way that you feel about the return of Jesus has implications on if you actually belong to him or not. And so if that's the case, we want to be a people who has confidence, right? Like, we want to have confidence at the return of Christ so that we can have more confidence in our own salvation. And so how do we have that confidence? Where does our confidence at the appearance of Christ come from? I want to start by starting by looking at where it doesn't come from, because I think oftentimes I see people placing their confidence in belonging to Jesus or their confidence at the return of Christ in the wrong things and in the wrong places. And that's not actually confidence. Confidence that's not founded on anything isn't real confidence. It's arrogance. Right. And that's dangerous. For example, let's say you have an electrical problem at your house. Okay. And it's going to be a major project. You have a lot of work to do, and you're talking to me about it. I'm like, hey, don't worry about it. Like, I'll come over. I can fix everything that's going on. I'll come over. I'll switch out stuff and like, I, I act like I'm really confident about it. Right? I say, let me do it. You don't have to pay anyone. Let me do it. I have all the confidence in the world. But what do I lack? I lack any ability to do anything with electrical wires. Right? And if you trust my confidence and let me come do the electrical in your house, what's going to happen? Your house is going to burn to the ground. Like there's no question about it. The same is true if we place our confidence in the wrong things when it comes to belonging to Jesus, and when it comes to having confidence at his return, if we place our confidence in the wrong things, its unfounded confidence, its arrogance, and you're at risk of more than your house burning down, your soul is at risk. And so where are a few of these places that we find misplaced confidence? I think one that I see often is comparative morality, where you look at the people around you and be like, better than them, better than them, better than them, not better than them, but definitely better than them. And you start just pointing out your morality versus theirs. And while that seems to work in relationship with other people, do you want to know what that doesn't work in our relationship with God? Because when you compare your morality to a holy, perfect, righteous God, you are incredibly lacking. Romans three tells us that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so comparing our own morality to those around us is foolish. And it's not real confidence. It's unfounded confidence. So people misplace their confidence in that. They also misplace their confidence in God's kindness. Here's what I mean by that. You'll hear things like, well, God's a loving God. He's a good God. He's a kind God. Surely he wouldn't do that to me. Like, it kind of goes back to the morality stuff a little bit. It's like, but God's kind. He's forgiving. He's he's loving. Surely that won't apply to me. Here's a problem with that, though. He is kind and he is loving, but he's also just. And you look at Exodus thirty four and you see passages like this where it says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. And we'd like to stop there, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. God is kind. He is patient. He is slow to anger. He is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. But he will by no means clear the guilty. And praise God that Jesus came and he did what we couldn't do, right? Praise God for that. But we can't just assume the kindness of God if we don't actually have faith in Jesus. We can't assume the kindness of God if we haven't been saved by him. And another aspect of the kindness of God is what the kindness of God is meant to do. It's not to be taken advantage of, but acted upon. We see this at the beginning of Romans two. It says, do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart? I messed that word up so bad at the eight a m so nailed it that time. Uh, hard and impenitent heart. You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. God's kindness isn't to be taken advantage of. It's not just to be assumed, but it's to lead us to repentance. And so to assume the kindness of God without repenting of your sins to God. There's a problem. It's not compatible. And so we see people misplaced confidence in the kindness of God when the kindness of God actually hasn't changed them. And here's a final place I tend to see misplaced confidence at Christ's return, especially in the church. And this is a life that looks a lot like a Christian without actually being a Christian. A mouth that proclaims Jesus without a life that belongs to Jesus. They obey. They do what they're supposed to do. They go to church. They do the religious thing. They obey, but they don't belong. And they don't belong because they don't love and treasure. Like I'm reminded of Matthew nineteen with the rich young man and the rich young man goes to Jesus and he's like, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? What do I need to do to get your eternal life? And Jesus says, obey the commandments. Guys like, all right. Which ones? Jesus lists off a slew of them, primarily from the back half of the Ten Commandments. And this is what we see happen. It says the young man said to him, all these I've kept. I've done it like I've been keeping the commandments of God that you have said, what do I still lack? Jesus said to him, and I, have you ever noticed that the guy knows he is still lacking something? He's been doing all the right things, but he knows he's still lacking. And Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess. Give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. And this is the response of this rich young man who had been doing all the commands, looked like he had been doing the right thing. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. He looked good on the outside, but he lacked what was most important, which was a love and a treasuring of the Jesus he wanted to be following, of the life that he wanted to have with him. And too many people look like they have it all together on the outside. Too many people base their confidence in their religious activity, their dues and their don'ts, but they fail to love Jesus. They fail to treasure him And guys confidence in the return of Christ without love for Christ is misplaced. Confidence in it's dangerous to your soul. And so we see these ways that we can have misplaced confidence at the return of Jesus Christ. These ways where we think we're confident but it's not founded on anything because we want you to have real confidence. Lasting confidence, true confidence. When Christ returns. And some of you may be like, I don't have misplaced confidence, I just have no confidence. Like I'm scared. I'm scared of this world ending. I'm scared of my life being over. I love this world so much. I've been holding on to it. I've been living the life that I want to live. And I don't know if Christ comes back right now if I'm actually ready for it. So if you've been having misplaced confidence. Or maybe you have no confidence this morning. I want us to build our confidence. I want us to have true, lasting confidence at the return of Jesus. And so where do we find it? Go back to First John chapter two. And we'll focus in here on verse twenty. It says, and now little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink back in shame at his coming. So what makes us confident at the appearing of Jesus, or abiding or closeness to God, is what builds up a confidence at Christ's return. But the inverse is also true. If you don't have confidence, if you do, shrink back at shame and shame. If you aren't anticipating the return of Christ, if you are finding yourself loving the world more than loving Jesus, It's probably because you're not abiding. It's probably because you're not remaining. It's probably because you're not dwelling. You're closeness with Jesus impacts the confidence that you have at his return, because this is yet just another motivation for us to abide in Jesus. Last week we saw that abiding in Jesus or taking refuge in him, is what keeps us from being deceived by the world around us, right? That's what we looked at last week. That's what John was saying. And now John is saying, here's another motivation for you to abide your confidence. He's saying, abide so that you aren't deceived when the Antichrist come. And now he's saying, not only does your abiding keep you from being deceived when antichrists come, abiding also gives you confidence when the Christ comes. That's what John is doing. He's wanting you to see how important your abiding is, not only to remain from being deceived, but also to give you confidence when the Christ comes. That's the cure for being scared of the end of this world. That's the cure from worldliness. That's the cure for lack of confidence. It's abiding in Jesus. You can say it like this. Abide in Christ to have confidence at the return of Christ. Abide in Christ to have confidence at the return of Christ. But what is abiding like? What does it actually mean to abide in him? Because that feels like a very intangible word. Like we know we're supposed to abide, but what does that actually mean? And I think far too often we tend to equate abiding with a fifteen minute quiet time in the morning, followed by a thirty second prayer. And we're like, I did my quiet time, so I'm abiding. It's like, that's not what John has in mind as he's writing this. That's not what Jesus had in mind in John fifteen when he talks more about abiding. Now, don't get me wrong, like a morning quiet time is a really good thing. I practice a morning Bible reading and prayer time. I think it's wise. I think it's good. I think it's a helpful way to start your day, to be entrenched in the Word of God and seeking his face. But if all you're doing is spending twenty minutes in the Word of God at the beginning of the day and nothing else throughout the day, I would question if you're actually practicing an abiding life. Because abiding literally means to remain in, to dwell in, to make your home in, to be connected to. And you can kind of think about it like this. I think a lot of times we try to treat abiding in our souls. We try to treat our treat our souls more like a battery being charged instead of a light bulb being connected and plugged in. to where we think a morning quiet time. Fifteen minutes in, I'm going to get recharged for the day. I'm going to go throughout my day, I'm going to go to sleep, and then I'm going to wake up in the morning. I'm going to recharge again. I'm going to put my soul on the charger, and then I'm going to take it off. I'm going to go throughout my day. That's not abiding. The reality is abiding is this ongoing connectedness. It's this ongoing dwelling with our Savior. Our souls aren't like batteries that need recharge. They're like lights that need to stay plugged in, connected to, remaining in. We don't just need a recharge, we need to remain connected. And so how do we do that? John colors this in a little bit more in his gospel account, as he recounts the words of Jesus in John fifteen. This is what he says in John fifteen one through eleven I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch, and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full. I don't want to camp out in here too long, but I want to point out three things about abiding that we need to know if we're going to be an abiding people. The first one is abiding comes from unity in Christ. You can't abide if you don't belong. You can't abide in Jesus if you don't belong to him. That's the idea of I am the vine, you are the branches. Branches are connected to the vine. And it's foolish to think that you can abide in Jesus and not belong to him. And I think far too often we think we can just go through this life mustering it up on our own. And I'm convinced there may even be people in here this morning who you're trying to abide. But you don't yet belong to Jesus. You're trying to save yourself. You're trying to put confidence in your own works and your own abilities in whatever for your salvation. You're not putting it in Jesus. If you want to abide in him, you first have to belong to him, and you can only belong to him through faith in him. And that's a gift from God. And so my heart and my prayer for you this morning, if that's you, that you would have your eyes open to the beauty of Jesus this morning, that he would call you out from death to life, that he would give you the gift of faith so that you could rightly see him, so that you could belong to him, so that you can abide in him. Abiding starts with union with Christ. So that's the first thing. Here's the second thing. Abiding in Christ requires His Word. Abiding in you. Abiding in Christ requires His Word, abiding in you. Look at verse seven. It says, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you guys. This is where we start to get pretty practical. I think far too often we think of abiding in Christ just as being in the word, and it's great. You need to be in the Word of God. It's impossible to abide without being in the Word of God. But it can't just be us reading the word. We have to have the Word of God dwelling in us, remaining in us, which means that we need to establish rhythms of meditation, memorization. We need to constantly be putting ourselves under the teaching of God's Word, because we can't convince that spending two percent of our day in the Bible is going to be what keeps us abiding in him. And just for you math people, that's about thirty minutes. Yet we expect thirty minutes of reading to be what makes us abide. That's why Jesus says, have my words abide in you. Don't just read it, but have my words read you. Have the words of Scripture calling you out, convicting you, encouraging you, comforting you, giving you boldness and courage when you need it. Have the words of God richly dwelling within you. Not just you reading the Bible for fifteen minutes a day. We want to be people. If we want to be an abiding people, we need to have the Word of God abiding in us, frequently applied to our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. And that leads us to the last part about how we abide. Abiding in Christ requires obedience to Christ. Abiding in Christ requires obedience to Christ. You can't be an abiding person and not be an obeying person. It's not compatible. You can't say you abide if you don't walk consistently in obedience. Not perfectly. We're not perfect, but is there a trajectory of obedience in your life. Because look at what Jesus says in verses nine and ten, As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love and key in here on verse ten, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Obedience isn't simply just a fruit of your abiding. It's the means of your abiding. Far too often we think that abiding in Jesus produces obedience. Yeah, abiding in Jesus produces obedience, which it does. But your obedience is also part of how you abide. That's what Jesus wants you to know. That's what John is writing to us. That we need to abide in. Part of our abiding requires our obedience. Your obedience isn't just fruit of abiding, it's part of your abiding. So that's what we see about abiding from this passage in John fifteen. If you want to grow in your confidence at the return of Jesus, we need to be an abiding people. And so then the question becomes, how do you know if you're doing that? How do you know if you're actually abiding? How do you know if that's your reality? I think, John, back in our first John text this morning in verse twenty nine, he clues us in on this. He says that if you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. So you remember at the beginning how we made that connection between being born of God and abiding in Jesus? Remember that connection. Please nod so I know that you're paying attention. Yes. Great. We made that connection. That abiding in Jesus is connected to belonging to Jesus and being born of him. And so how do you know if you're abiding? Well, you've been born again. And how do you know if you've been born again? Well, according to verse twenty nine, we see this idea that if you've been born of him, you know that he is righteous and you practice righteousness. That's how you know if you've been born again. That's how you know if you are an abiding person, if you know the righteousness of God in such a way, a transforming way, that it produces righteousness in your own life. That's what John is saying, is how you can know you abide. What can give you confidence at the return of Christ is your knowing of God that produces a righteousness in your life from him. John is making a logical progression here in these two verses. He's saying that when you know Jesus and you abide in Jesus, you know that he is righteous. So when you abide and you know him, You know that he is righteous. And when you know that he is righteous, it produces righteousness in you. And when both of those things are happening, happening, it's proving that you belong to him, that you've been born of him, that you're united to him, that you're abiding in him. So you're knowing of Jesus, and obedience to Jesus is proving that you belong to him and that you abide in him. And that produces confidence and readiness at Christ's return. So, church, I want you to have confidence. I want you to have confidence at the return of Jesus Christ. But you can't muster up confidence on your own. The confidence that you can have as the return of Jesus only comes from a place of abiding, a place of knowing him and letting the way that you know him change the way that you live because you know that he is righteous and so you act righteously. You can have confidence that Christ return. You don't have to be worried about it. You can be ready for it and you can be ready for it. By the way that you abide. You could kind of say it like this that abide in Jesus. To live for Jesus, to be ready for the return of Jesus, abide in Jesus. To live for Jesus, to be ready for the return of Jesus. That as you abide in him which is seen in the life that you live, confidence is going to be stirred up. Readiness is going to be stirred up. Anticipation is going to be stirred up in you for the return of our Savior. And so, church. Let's be an abiding people. Let's be an abiding people, a people who are known for loving the Word of God and not just loving the Word of God so much and that we are in it, but we're in it so much that it's actually in us that we dwell on it. We memorize it, we meditate on it. We apply it to our life. Some of you this morning, you need to establish a rhythm of reading and prayer because you're not abiding. Some of you need to meditate on what you're reading, not seen as the whole goal of reading the Bible just to read it, but to be applying it throughout the day of our life. And some of you need to let the word convict you and empower you to walk in obedience. We need to be an abiding people, an abiding people who dwell with God. But I don't want us to just stop there. I want us to not just be an abiding people, but I want us to be an anticipating people. And I think that's the natural progression when you abide in Jesus, because when you abide in Jesus, you're knowing him more, you're loving him more, you're being transformed by him more. And as you that happens to you, you anticipate his coming all the more as you know more of who Jesus is. You long for more of him. You long for him to return and make this entire world right. To save us from this world that we live in. And so as you know him more, as you abide, it produces this desire for him to come, this anticipation for him to return, to gather his people. And so we don't want to just abide, but we want the abiding that we have to establish anticipation in our life, a longing and a waiting in a preparing. I think about it like this sometimes I've got four kids and I went to the Boundary Waters last spring, and as we get home, my kids are waiting outside in their pajamas and rain boots, and they have a sign that says welcome home, daddy. And they have little cards made for me. And then they run and they give me big hugs. Like they were excited. They were ready. They were anticipating. They were prepared. They were so excited for me to come back that they prepared for me to come back. They anticipated it. Do you treat the return of Jesus in the same way, longing for it, desiring it, wanting him to come home? He's your Savior. He loves you. He saved you, and you want him to return. You want him to bring you home with him. And so you long you anticipate and you prepare, because that's the purpose of these parables. At the end of Matthew twenty four into Matthew twenty five. You should read those this week, because they show us what a life of anticipation for the return of our master looks like. So we want to be an abiding people, but not just an abiding people, but a anticipating people waiting for the return of Jesus. So as a way to practice that, here's what I want to do. I want to close out by reading part of revelation nineteen. So I just want to read it over you. It's not going to be on the screen if you're one of those. Close your eyes and imagine this. People like, this is for you, okay? Even if you're not, try. It says revelation nineteen eleven through sixteen. Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and his thigh. He has a name written King of kings and Lord of Lords. That is what the appearance of our Lord looks like. In church. Listen to me as one of your pastors. It would break my heart if that were to happen right now, and to see some of you shrink back in shame. That you see Jesus coming with a sword out of his mouth, fire in his eyes, and instead of being comforted and confident, you're scared. You shrink back in shame, saying, I didn't. I wasn't ready for this. I didn't live my life the way I had ought to. I didn't live devoted to the King. I didn't live faithfully. Break my heart. But instead, can you imagine how sweet it would be? If this is what we see. Like our skylights bust open. And we see Jesus robe dipped in blood. On a white horse sword coming out of his mouth, fire in his eyes, ready to make all the wrong things right. Gathering his people together, Army behind him. And we're not scared. We're confident, we're excited. We've been waiting for it. Finally it's here. We can say, I know him. We're like little buddy, the elves out here like I know him. And we're ready. We're excited and we can't wait. If that's who you want to be, may you be an abiding person. May we be an abiding church, confidently waiting and anticipating the return of our Lord and Savior. Amen. Let's pray. Jesus, we long for your return. I confess that I can often be enamored by things of this world. But, God, how much better are you? How much better is life with you? God, I pray that we would be a church filled with people that are confidently awaiting your return. Excited and expectant. Anticipating. God, we know that that only comes when we're connected to you, when we have closeness with you, when we're abiding in you, when your word is abiding in us and we're walking in obedience to you. So God grow our love for you, grow our desire for you, so that we can say with David in Psalm twenty seven, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Come, Lord Jesus, come.