Under several referenda a majority of Queenslanders have rejected the daylight-saving adopted by southern states. There is a strong body of opinion (in the south-east corner) favouring it and some businesses have even suggested a separate summer time-zone for the south-east.
We lived in the south-east with small children during the earlier daylight-saving trial and personally found it an unhelpful burden. Now that we live in the north, sunrise and sunset are already half-an-hour later and any logic in daylight-saving is completely gone.
The whole issue is raised in the world of electricity and electronics, communication and trade. There was a time when life was much simpler - governed by and organised to fit into the time between sunrise and sunset. By contrast we are today ruled by clocks and the telephone.
In the Second World War, the Allied occupation of the Philippines came to an end in 1942. General Douglas MacArthur made his famous promise, "I will return." And return he did - in October 1944. For Filipinos suffering under Japanese rule, those few years may have seemed forever until the liberation came.
Titus had been with Paul on some of his missionary journeys (Gal. 2.3; 2 Cor. 2.13). Paul had left Titus in Crete "that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town" (Titus 1.5). The Christians in Crete needed much instruction, and Paul writes to Titus, "You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine" (2.1). Such "sound doctrine" will be the source and motivation of authentic Christian living.
Paul writes, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men" (v. 11).
He is referring to the incarnation - the coming of the very Son of God as a human being into our human history. As John puts it, "The Word - in the beginning with God, fully divine, through whom all things were made - became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1.14).
The purpose of this first appearing was salvation. Before he was born, he was given the name Jesus (meaning "the Lord saves") "because he will save his people from their sins" (Mt. 1.21). At his visit with Zacchaeus, Jesus said, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Lk 19.9-10). On another occasion he said that "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10.45).
From the time when Peter had identified him as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt. 16.16) Jesus "began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life" (v. 21).
There was a point in his ministry when Jesus "resolutely set out for Jerusalem" (Lk. 9.51). It has been commented that the Gospel records are unlike any ordinary biography. A disproportionate amount of space is given to the events of the last week of his life and his death and resurrection.
"The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." Because of the cross, the grace of salvation is available to all.
Paul writes to Titus that we are waiting for "the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" (Titus 2.13,14).
The first appearing of the Son of God was in humility. In Philippians 2.6-11, Paul writes graphically about Christ Jesus as the one "in very nature God" who "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant." "He humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" God has exalted him and given him "the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
There will be a second appearing of the Son of God, all his glory restored and visible. That was taught again and again by Jesus himself. It would be more than his continuing invisible "presence" as the risen Lord. It will be a return in glory and judgment which will herald the end of the age.
The disciples seemed to think that the destruction of the Temple might signal the second coming of Christ and the end of the age (Mt. 24.3). Clearly, while that event would signal very troubled times for the Jewish people, the end was not yet. The Son will come "at an hour when you do not expect him" (v. 44). We are to "keep watch because [we] do not know the day or the hour" (25.17).
The book of Acts begins with the disciples still asking the question, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1.6) But even then it wasn't for them to know times or dates. Their task was to be Christ's witnesses throughout the world (vv. 7,8).
Just then he was "taken up before their very eyes". His physical presence disappeared from view. Suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them - "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (v. 11).
We live between the times of his first and second appearings. The disciples were told not to spend their time looking into the sky. He has given you lives to live, work to do. Now is the time for action, not for speculation. We are to live on the basis of God's grace for salvation and with the certainty of his final glorious coming.
Faith and life are closely bound together. It isn't possible to live an authentic Christian life without grasping the basics of revelation, the incarnation, redemption, salvation... But it is imperative that the lives of Christians are "in accord with sound doctrine." In other words, what we are - the lives we live - must flow from and be consistent with sound doctrine. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 2.8-10, the salvation which is by grace through faith needs to result in the good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to do.
The grace of God teaches us "to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (Tit. 2.12). The very purpose of the first coming was "to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" (v. 14).
We live between the times. It is both fulfilment and opportunity - to live the life and to give the life to a broken and needy world.
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