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Dunlap SDA Church

Norman McNulty

I Come As a Thief!

Father in heaven, we thank you for the Sabbath day.

We thank you for the Thanksgiving season and for the blessings that we can recount.

I just pray, Lord, that you would speak through me now and may each 1 of us hear what you would have us to hear today.

Our scripture reading is Revelation 16, verse 15.

I'm going to read that again as we begin this message.

Revelation 16, verse 15, Jesus says, "...Behold, I come as a thief.

Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame." You know, this is the third of 7 instances in the book of Revelation where the word blessed is used.

And there are 7 blessings that are given in this book.

You know we're in Thanksgiving season and so we've been counting our blessings, we can be thankful that we can be here free to assemble and worship God today, we can be thankful that we've had time to spend with family.

This has been a challenging year but we can be thankful for the blessings that have come through challenges and trials.

And we see the 7 blessings, Revelation 1, verse 3, Scripture says, 1.

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep the sayings which are written in them, for the time is at hand." Do you believe the time is at hand for these prophecies?

Revelation 14, 13 this is a blessing that is promised to those who die in the Lord in the third angels message Scripture says and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me right blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth yea sayeth the spirit that they may rest from their labors and their works do you follow them you know I'm thankful for heroes of faith who have gone before and their works follow them so that we can see that there were faithful heroes of faith that have gone before us.

Then we have this third blessing that we see in our scripture reading where Jesus says, Behold, I come as a thief.

Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.

And then the fourth blessing is found in Revelation 19, verse 9.

This is talking about the marriage supper of the Lamb which is what all of the redeemed will partake of in heaven.

Now listen, you may have had a good Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, but it's not going to top the marriage supper of the Lamb, you want to be there.

And Jesus says in verse 9 of Revelation 19, He saith unto me, write, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb, and He saith unto me, these are the true sayings of God.

Those who are part of the marriage supper of the Lamb will receive the ultimate blessing.

You have eternal life and you will be with God in Heaven for eternity.

Then the fifth blessing is Revelation 20, verse 6, 20.

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." I want to be part of, well if I'm not still alive I want to be part of the first resurrection or the special resurrection.

And then the sixth blessing is Revelation 22 verse 7 which says, "...behold I come quickly, blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book." And finally Revelation 22 verse 14, "...blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

You know, Scripture is very clear, Revelation 14, verse 12, here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God in the faith of Jesus.

Revelation 12.17 we see this great controversy warfare where it says, the dragon was wroth with the woman and went to make war with the remnant of her seed which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Listen, grace-empowered obedience is not legalism.

God will have a people on the earth who keep the commandments of God and there is a blessing for those who do His commandments that they may have right to the tree of life.

So we come back to this third blessing found in Revelation 16, verse 15.

This verse, isolated from itself, is a nice verse to study, but when we see the context of which it is placed, it becomes that much more amazing to consider.

And we're going to break this verse down here.

You know, thieves come usually when you're not expecting them.

In fact, Jesus refers to this beginning, I'll take you to a couple of Gospel illustrations, Matthew 24 Starting in verse 42, Jesus says, Watch therefore, for you know not what hour your Lord doth come.

But know this, that if the good men of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, He would have watched and would not have suffered or allowed his house to be broken up.

Therefore be ye also ready for in such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man cometh.

You know, I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist church.

I was privileged to be born into a Seventh-day Adventist home and I've heard messages about the soon coming of Jesus my whole life, and I have also heard fellow Seventh-day Adventists kind of yawn and say, oh wow, we heard another sermon on the second coming of Jesus today.

I've been in school where my classmates were like, yeah, I bet the teacher's gonna talk about the second coming again, And we've lost our identity in some respects for why we exist as a church.

We are Seventh-day Adventists by definition.

And Jesus is the very fact that you aren't looking for His coming right now is a sign that He's coming.

For it's in an hour that you don't think that He's coming that He will come.

So we go to Luke 12, it's a similar passage with a little bit more detail describing what the coming of Jesus as a thief is like.

Luke chapter 12 starting in verse 35, let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return from the wedding.

Now this wedding began in 1844 when the bridegroom came and he went from the holy place to the most holy place, and we as his people now wait on this earth for the wedding to be completed so that Jesus will come back and take us to the marriage supper of the Lamb." Ellen White explains this in Great Controversy.

Then the verse goes on to say, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.

Blessed are those servants to whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching.

Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to me, that's the marriage supper of the Lamb, and will come forth and serve them.

And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them, so blessed are those servants." You know there are different watches through the night where they would keep watch for robbers and thieves And that's the time where you reach a certain point in the night where you think, ok, nothing's happening and it's easy to fall asleep.

Verse 39 of Luke 12 says, And this know, that if the good man of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.

Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of Man cometh out an hour when you think not." So there is a little bit more detail in this parable, there is the first watch, the second watch, and the third watch.

And what happens you see in Matthew 25 the parable of the 10 virgins, the entire church falls asleep because the bridegroom is delayed and it's taken much longer than many ever thought for Jesus to have come.

You know, Noah only preached for 120 years of the coming of the flood, we've outdone them by 56 years so far.

But if we knew the time that Jesus was coming, we would be like, okay, we know what year it is, so when that year comes, we're going to stop being like the world.

We're going to stop playing games with church.

We're going to stop putting on this front where we come to church once a week and then the rest of the week we're not watching at all, we're just living like the rest of the world.

If we know the hour that he's coming, we would be wide awake.

And Jesus says, but you don't know the hour that I'm coming.

Don't you love me enough to stay awake the entire time so that I won't take you by surprise?

And so let me read this statement to you from Testimonies for the Church, Volume 6, page 408.

Could you discern the purposes of God and the judgments that are about to fall upon a doomed world, could you see your own attitude?

You would fear and tremble for your own souls and for the souls of your fellow men.

Earnest prayers of heart-rending anguish would go up to heaven.

You would weep between the porch and the altar, confessing your spiritual blindness and backsliding.

You know, we just kind of go along, Laodicean, lukewarm, and I probably said this last night, but we're like 8 months into this pandemic, and some of us are as spiritually comatose today as we were 8 months ago when we're just waiting for this pandemic to go back to normal so we can return to lay it as sea in normality and live the good life and go out to eat and go out to shop and just do the things that Americans enjoy doing because this thing will just settle down and then we can go back to just everything the way it was.

And then someday down the road, maybe Jesus will come again.

And this statement says, if the curtain could be rolled back and you could see yourself as you truly are in the sight of God, you would pray with earnest prayers of heart-rending anguish, weeping between the porch and the altar for your spiritual condition.

You know, the things that we would be thanking God for in Thanksgiving wouldn't be for more houses, bank accounts, money and things and stuff.

We would be praising God for the spiritual riches that come from being a child of God and of being a follower of Jesus and of having eternal riches that are promised throughout eternity.

That's what we would be praising God for.

Those are the blessings that we would be thanking Him for.

And so we go back to our scripture verse, Revelation 16, 15.

Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments.

We go back to the Gospels, Matthew 25, Jesus in speaking to the 10 virgins, there were the 5 wise, the 5 foolish, the 5 wise went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut.

And in verse 11 of Matthew 25, afterward came also the other virgin, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour, where in the Son of Man cometh." How many times does Jesus have to say you don't know the day or the hour?

And so because of that we just kind of sleep on thinking it's not going to be right now.

Then in Matthew 26, 41, just the next chapter over, Jesus goes into the Garden of Gethsemane for the greatest crisis of His life on earth.

And he asks his 3 closest friends, Peter, James, and John, watch with me.

And in verse 40 as they are supposed to be watching and praying with him.

It says, "...he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What?

Could you not watch with me 1 hour?" Well what does it mean to watch?

That you enter not into temptation, the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.

You know a lot of times we're like Peter, James and John, we're saying, oh we know what's coming with the final crisis of earth's history, we're watching, there's no way you're going to get me to buy in to following Sunday legislation.

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I Come As a Thief!

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