Hebrews Chapter Ten, Patiently Waiting

 

Hebrews 10:13 from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool.

 

We know that this epoch begins when the Lord descends bodily in glory from Heaven to overthrow Antichrist’s army and deliver the Jews from the greatest persecution they have ever faced, Zechariah 12:10, 13:1, 14:4, Jeremiah 30:7, Matthew 24:21, 30, Daniel 8:25, Acts 1:11, Romans 11:26, 27. Why does our Lord tarry? “Consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation,” 2 Peter 3:15. 

The Lord desires all to come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved, 1 Timothy 2:4. “For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!” Ezekiel 18:32. God takes no pleasure in a sinner’s demise. We, His children, must adhere to this example. We witness to the lost, pray for those around us, and be lights in this dark and dying world. But, like our Lord whose longsuffering is salvation, we must love them, and seek their good. What is the good of the lost? Jesus Christ, and the eternal life found only in Him. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” John 3:16.

 

The Father gave His Son for us. Christ gives us time to repent and believe the gospel of grace. What have we given? What have I given? If I love God with my whole heart, and desire His kingdom above my material interests, then lost souls should be paramount for me. Do I pray for my friends, family, co-workers, etc., that I know are on the broad road to destruction? If I do not, how does the love of God abide in me?

 

God’s love, first of all, is self-sacrificing. It puts the good of others ahead of itself. Paul wrote that Christians are to, “in humility count others more significant than yourselves,” Philippians 2:3, ESV. Self-effacing love is difficult. Impossible, actually, without God the Holy Spirit taking the reins. The world’s answer to this Biblical injunction is self-esteem, or self-love, rather the opposite of the Biblical portrait of godly love, of genuine Christian charity toward others. It is God’s mercy and grace that has our Lord at the right hand of the Father, waiting. In turn, with patience we should minister to and pray for those wandering through this dying world, that they might escape the snare of the Devil, and receive the light of Christ’s gospel, and be saved.

 

But who then is God’s enemy? Who will Jesus have as His footstool when He returns in glory to earth to save the Jews and set up His millennial kingdom? Those, “who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” 2 Thessalonians 2:10. The ESV renders their unbelief as, “they refused to love the truth.” What is truth? Pontius Pilate asked Jesus that question. Jesus, in an earlier dialogue, answered succinctly. “I am…the truth,” John 14:6. Jesus is the truth. If we reject Christ as He revealed Himself as God the Savior, we reject the only true God. “”He who hates Me hates My Father also,” John 15:23. Outside of this revelation of God’s person and redemptive plan there is only idolatry, 1 John 5:21. We know that “the love of the truth” constitutes belief in the gospel. Paul writes, “that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness,” 2 Thessalonians 2:12. Believing the truth—that is, believing Jesus’ testimony of Himself—is synonymous with the love of the truth.

 

Christ’s enemies are those who, having heard the truth rejected it in favor of what Paul summarizes as unrighteousness. This passage in Thessalonians describes the brief and pathetic confrontation of the lawless one, or the Antichrist, and his pitiful effort to supplant Jesus. What Satan began in Eden, tempting Adam with godhood, he culminates with the man of sin. This is he of whom Jesus spoke, saying, “if another comes in his own name, him you will receive,” John 5:43. Having rejected the true God in the person of Jesus Christ, only the counterfeit Satan will produce is left. But the Antichrist is merely the embodiment of what fallen man wants: autonomy and godhood. The man of sin will be the pinnacle of this sinful virtue, coming in his own name, or by his own authority. Human dignity and pride will be salvaged and deified, loosing the fetters of moral constraint that comes with knowing and loving a God apart from ourselves. It is gracious indeed that our Lord tarries. Nonetheless, though we know this, and may rejoice in His mercy, our prayer ought also to be for His soon coming, that we may be with Him where He is, Revelation 22:17, 2 Peter 3:12, 13, Philippians 1:23. Horatio Spafford, who wrote the amazing hymnal, “It is Well With My Soul,” said it well when he penned, “Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight.” In the imminence of His soon return, let us all, as His children, desire no less than to be a part of the glorious company that meets our Lord in the air. Until that time, our Lord waits until His enemies are made His footstool.