Signs of the Times

We continue our worship.

Turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 21, verses 20 through 33.

Luke 21:20–33

I'd encourage you to uh turn there, keep it open.

We will be uh studying this passage, going through it this morning, Luke chapter 21.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

And if you don't have your Bible with you, you can find it on page 881.

And if you happen not to have a Bible at your home, your apartment, your dorm, I just want to encourage you to take that Bible home with you after the service.

Make it your own.

It's uh our gift to you.

We would love for you to have it so that you can have a copy of God's word uh to look up his promises, to see his glory, uh, to understand the gospel.

And so encourage you to take that home with you following the service if you don't have a ready access to a Bible of your own.

Luke chapter 21, beginning in verse 20.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it.

For these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.

Alas for women who are pregnant, and for those who are nursing infants in those days, for there will be great distress upon the earth in wrath against this people.

They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

And there will be signs in in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world.

For the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

And he told them a parable.

Look at the fig and all the trees.

As soon as they come out in leaf, you see yours you see for yourselves, and know that summer is already near.

So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

And this is God's enduring word.

What is Jesus telling us here?

We've seen earlier in this passage, he's telling us that persecution is coming.

He's telling us that times of distress are coming, that judgment is coming, that that cataclysm is coming, that Jesus is coming.

I love the songs that we sang this morning.

In fact, as I was wrestling with this sermon all week and even yesterday, sat down for three or four hours just re-uh-writing sections of this sermon and really trying to capture what is it that God wants us to get out of this passage.

And and as I was sitting here this morning, it struck me.

As we were singing the songs, especially the last song, that Chris Tomlin song, as we were singing it, it really struck me everything that Jesus wants us to understand from his word, because God wants to completely reorientate our entire understanding of everything.

Our entire view of reality, of every circumstance that we face, of every difficulty that we have, of every challenge that we're undergoing, of every tribulation that we will endure, God wants to completely reorientate our entire understanding of everything.

As I was sitting there singing this song, and the thing that struck me was this we all have a narrative that we interpret our lives by.

We have a set of assumptions, a set of beliefs, a set of ideas, and we all filter our circumstances, filter our experiences, filter our reactions through this narrative of what we believe everything is about.

And as I was sitting there and thinking about it and thinking about this song of what we're singing, of saying, I know who goes before me, I know who goes beside, the God of angel armies.

And I sat there and I thought, do I believe the promises of God?

Do I believe when Jesus here is saying, tribulation is coming, difficulty is coming?

And and the people who heard this endured through it.

We talked about two weeks ago with the persecuted church that some people wake up every day with the specter of the reality that today might be the day that they give their lives for the name of Jesus Christ.

What is their outlook on life?

What do they hold on to?

What do they cling to?

And it really struck me as I was sitting here and thinking about the songs.

Life is difficult, life is hard, there are challenges, there will be tribulation, there is in this world, and it will increase as we get closer to the day of Christ's return.

And where is our hope?

Where is our confidence?

How do we evaluate and interpret reality?

When we look at the newspaper, do we grow with despair and despondency when we see all of the stuff that's going on everywhere?

We can't go one day without bad news that could turn into another cataclysmic event.

We wonder as World War III on the horizon, what's going to happen in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East?

How do we interpret life?

Is really what Jesus is driving at in all of this.

He's telling them, the Jews, the Gentiles, the church, he's telling them what is about to happen and what is going to happen until the end.

For many of us, we live in a bubble until something bursts our bubble.

And the disciples here, Jesus was trying to get their attention and they're just fascinated by the beauty of these buildings.

They walk up to the temple and they just see the glory and the grandeur of this building that had been built for 40 years, and they're enamored by it.

And Jesus had been telling them over and over again that he's about to die, and they're just blissfully unaware and they're just captivated by their surroundings.

But that bubble was about to burst.

This is the passion week.

This is the week that Jesus is going to be crucified, that they're going to scatter, that they're going to be gathered, huddling in a corner, wondering what just happened.

And how are they going to interpret things?

How are they going to understand reality?

And that's what happens to us.

We go, where is God?

When things are going well, when life is humming along, we have confidence, we have assurance, but then suddenly something happens.

Our world is turned upside down, our world is rocked, and then we wonder, where is God?

What's happening?

Why is this happening to me?

I don't deserve it.

And we become discouraged, and discouraged leads to doubt, and doubt leads to despondency.

And when we become despondent, we do one of two things.

We either want to give up or we want to give in.

We want to give up, we want to just throw our hands up and just say, you know what?

I'm just going to keep my head down and I'm just going to plug along.

We just give up on believing in God.

Or we start to give in and we think, well, I might as well just compromise because nothing's going to get better anyway.

And where is God?

And so we we either give up or we give in.

And everything in this chapter, Jesus is trying to reorientate our entire view of everything.

We saw last time when we were looking at verses 5 through 19, and he begins to tell them, persecution is coming, it's here.

And he says, Don't be led astray, don't be terrified, don't stop witnessing, don't give up.

And the only reason he can say that is he's saying, you need to reorientate your entire life around me and the reality of God's sovereign hand of providence guiding all things.

Do you understand and believe that everything is going for a purpose towards a predetermined end and that God is in the midst of everything?

That there is nothing outside of his control, absolutely no circumstance or situation that happens here or around the world that is outside of God's control.

And so he tells us to have confidence, to have hope.

And here in the midst of talking about the persecution that's going to come on Jerusalem, that's a foreshadowing of the persecution that will come before Christ returns.

And he wants us to hear this so that we're encouraged.

Not encouraged by our circumstances, not encouraged by looking around and seeing what's happening and trying to find the few bright spots.

Not encouraged by thinking that we're in control of things and that somehow we can manage and control and manipulate our surroundings to make our future brighter and better.

He wants us to have encouragement because we know the one who is seated on the throne and he is not moved and he is not shaken, and everything is seen by him and known by him and under his guiding hand of providence.

And Jesus tells them and warns them of horrific things that are going to happen so that they'll be encouraged.

Because everything that God has said has taken place and will take place exactly as He has said it.

And we can hold that with absolute confidence and an unshakable view of reality if we're seeing things properly.

And in the central section of this chapter, Jesus is calling us to have confidence.

He gives us three reasons to have confidence.

He gives us the proof of our confidence in impending judgment.

He gives us hope in our confidence in the second coming.

And then we get the ground of our confidence in the words of God, the words of Jesus.

God wants to reorientate our entire view of everything, even persecution and tribulation.

First of all, if you have the passage open in chapter 20, 21, verse 20, Jesus reminds us that impending judgment is proof of our confidence.

What Jesus is saying here, and let me just give a little bit of background.

And as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, that uh oftentimes in prophecy uh there may be multiple fulfillments, that there is a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment.

And it's like looking at a mountain range, and there's two mountains, one behind the other.

And as you're looking at it, you may see the first one, but not realize there's a second one behind it.

And so oftentimes in prophecy there's a fulfillment, but then there may be a later, fuller fulfillment that that earlier one is an illustration or a type of.

And so in Matthew and Mark, uh, as they focus on the discourse of Jesus here, they focus more on the far fulfillment of what's going to happen in the future prior to Jesus' coming.

Luke, on the other hand, in complementing what Matthew and Mark are saying, focuses on the near fulfillment of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and that is his primary focus.

And there's a harmony between them because both of those realities are true.

And so Jesus here, as Mark is highlighting aspects of this discourse, is highlighting the reality of the impending destruction of Jerusalem that is going to happen in 40 years.

And historians tell us about this destruction, and it was horrific.

We know this is referring primarily to that time because Jesus in verse 24 talks about what happens after this when they're led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem is trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled, which is the time that we're still living in now.

In 70 AD, the Roman general Titus, later to become uh the Caesar, he marched on Jerusalem and he sieged the city for for almost six months.

Jerusalem was a walled city and they gathered around it the armies so that no one could go out or come in, no food or supplies.

And basically what they were going to do was starve the people out.

In fact, historians tell us that wrote shortly after that time that the people in Jerusalem were so starved that they began to try to eat dirt in order to have some nourishment.

The famine and the starvation was brutal.

At the end of that time, the Romans came in, the walls were breached, and the people gave little resistance because they had no power left.

Some historians writing shortly after that time said between 500,000 and a million people were killed, and over a hundred thousand people were taken prisoner.

Jerusalem was laid bare, there were very few people left, the temple was destroyed, burned to the ground, even the very gold in there was stripped.

And Jesus tells them this to give them confidence.

How can the reality of judgment give us confidence?

Well, one very basic way is it happened exactly as Jesus had said it would.

We can look back at this prophecy that was given 40 years before the events unfolded, and every word was fulfilled exactly as Jesus had said.

And the fact is that we are a part of this ongoing prophecy because it talks about the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled and that we are living in those days still.

And this is one of the ways when we look at prophecy, we recognize that everything that God has said has taken place, and everything He says will happen, we can have confidence in.

We read the prophecies of the Old Testament regarding the coming of Christ, and we see it was said and it happened.

And we read another prophecy and it was said and it happened, and another prophecy, and it was said, and it happened, and then we read prophecies about the future, and we know with absolute certainty that what God has said he is going to do, and so we have confidence in God.

God wants us to reorientate our realities to the second coming and the reality that Jesus Christ is coming back, that there is going to be a day, there is going to be an hour when Christ returns and all of the events that are leading up to it, we are marching forward in history to a predetermined end that God has ordained, and we can have confidence because we know the last chapters.

We don't have to fret and worry like unbelievers.

We know how it ends.

And we know it's going to end exactly the way he said.

We don't have to worry about all of the other possibilities that people say might happen in this world because we know what God has said about the end.

And so we have confidence.

We can rest in the reality that no matter how history might look, no matter how we open up, and and and whether you read Drudge Report or the Huffington Post or anything in between, it's all bad news.

But we know the one who is the author of history.

And so we shouldn't read it like unbelievers read it with despair and despondency.

We read it looking and re and realizing the signs of the times that Christ is going to return.

And that is our hope and our expectation and the reality that we orient our lives around.

There's a few other truths, and let me just mention them in passing.

When we read this section of the destruction of Jerusalem and what happened, there's a few things we learn here.

First of all, God is just.

We see the justice of God, that that there is judgment that comes.

The Jews as a nation were God's covenant people.

They were the nation that God adopted, they were recipients of God's glory, they received the covenant, the law, the worship, and the promises.

But that God is no respecter of persons, and that all those who are under his judgment who have not turned to Christ face this reality of God's judgment, that judgment is certain and unavoidable.

And we see that God is just, that he is no respecter of persons.

But one of the things we might miss here, embedded in this, is the reality of deliverance.

And let me show it to you and explain historically what happened.

That God is the God who delivers.

And look at what he tells them in verse 21.

He says, Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let those who are out of the city, uh out in the country, uh not enter it.

Let not those who are out in the country enter it.

This was completely counterintuitive.

If you saw your enemy coming, where would you go?

You would go to the safest place possible.

If you were out in the country and out in the field, you would go to the walled city.

Because that was going to be your most likely place to survive.

But what Jesus tells them is exactly counterintuitive.

He says, when you start to see your enemy come, flee to the mountains, run, scatter.

If you're out outside of the city, don't run to the city, run away from the city.

And friends, the believers in Jesus Christ, that's exactly what they did prior to Jerusalem's fall.

In the end of 66 A.D., beginning of 67 A.D., historians tell us that there was a man by the name of Cestius Gaelus who attempted to attack the city.

And as one author writes, happily the city was able to defend itself against this attack, and the Romans retreated.

Yet the first church in Jerusalem remembered the words of Jesus.

When they saw the advance of the Roman legions, they knew that the city's desolation was drawing near.

And according to one ancient historian Esubius, they gathered their belongings and fled across the Jordan River to find refuge in the city of Pella.

And so God's people were spared the destruction that fell upon the city of Jerusalem because they believed the promises of God.

Even the promise of the judgment that was to come.

And God delivers those who are His, He did, and He will, and we can trust in God's goodness even.

Knowing that judgment is coming.

Well, Jesus told his disciples that judgment was coming, and the very reality of this certain fulfillment gives us hope of every other prophecy.

It gives us confidence of the second coming.

The second coming is the hope of our confidence.

Jesus moved seamlessly from 70 AD to his second coming.

In fact, the only where we're in that one verse in between, verse 24.

He goes from 70 A.D.

to his second coming, and all of the reality in between is found in that one verse in the times of the Gentiles.

Jesus warns of unnatural disasters.

We have natural disasters, but what Jesus is talking about here goes beyond natural disasters.

They're unnatural disasters because they are realities that are reflective of the judgment of God.

These were things that the Jews would have understood from the Old Testament.

And in Joel chapter 2, verses 30 and 31, Joel writes, And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.

Joel 2:30

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

Similar language is found in Isaiah 13, 10 and Hagai 2.6.

Daniel writes in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, I saw the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him.

Daniel 7:13

And to him the Son of Man was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed.

The certain in the eyes of the world becomes uncertain.

The fearful realities of natural disasters become terrifying.

And look at what Jesus says.

He says that they'll be so terrified, verse 26, people will faint with fear.

He says that there is going to be a reality that's coming prior to the second coming that unbelievers will look at and they will have no frame of reference.

They will be so terrified that they will be overwhelmed with fear.

That when things begin to unfold, the only thing they can do is panic and fear and be terrified and faint, being overwhelmed with that reality.

But what is the response of believers?

You see, we have a different orientation, we have a different vision, we have a different understanding, there's a different narrative that's informed by the Bible.

Look at what Jesus says, Verse 28.

He says, Now, when these things begin to take place, duck for cover.

Is that what he says?

When these things begin to take place, just hang on and hold on tight and cover your heads.

And he says, when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads.

Because your redemption is drawing near.

He says, when the world starts to fall apart and people begin to cower in terror and faint, that the believers have a different reality of everything.

And so at the very moment that things begin to fall apart, he says to us as believers, stand up, raise your head, stand up in confidence.

Because your redemption draws near.

We don't see things as the world sees things, we don't interpret them like the world does.

We have a completely different narrative about everything.

And so we look with hope and anticipation of the reality of the second coming of Christ and the reality that our redemption is drawing near.

The full expression of our salvation is coming.

And so we have confidence in the midst of chaos.

Confidence in the sovereign power of God, in the plan of God, in the providence of God, in the purpose of God.

When everyone's ducking for cover, Jesus says, stand up.

And we can only do that because we have a complete different narrative of everything.

So we look at fulfillment of prophecy in the past that gives us confidence for the future.

We look for at the second coming and it gives us hope, but there's a third reason for us to be confident.

Jesus' word is the ground of our confidence.

We see this in verses 29 through 33.

Jesus gives a parable of a fig tree and don't read too much into it here.

He says, look at the fig tree and all of the trees.

He says, When you see a tree begin to bud, what do you know?

Well, in North Dakota, we know it's June.

He says, when you begin to see the tree to bud, what do you know with certainty summer is coming?

You know the signs of the time.

You know when you begin to see it that there is a sure certainty of what's going to come after that.

And he says, here, so also when you see these things take place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Verse 32 is a very perplexing verse.

Uh many different interpretations of it.

It's difficult to understand.

I don't want to spend a lot of time in it.

Clearly, Jesus is not saying he says that this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.

Some skeptics say, well, you see, Jesus thought that everything was going to happen in the lifetime of his hearers and it didn't happen.

He didn't return, so Jesus was wrong.

Clearly, that's not what Jesus is saying here.

He could be talking about the quickness in which things are going to take place, that it may be that the generation that begins to see what is happening at the second coming is alive through all of it because it happened so quickly.

And that's that is a possibility and a very plausible possibility of what this passage is saying.

I think there's another interpretation of it.

Generation can also refer to race, not just it can refer to a defined group of people in their ethnicity rather than by the year that you were born.

And I tend to lean towards this.

If that's the case, what Jesus is referring to specifically of the Jewish people, the Jewish race, and that what I believe he's saying here is that this generation, this race, the Jewish people, will be preserved from now until the second coming of Christ, because they have a purpose and plan in God's redemptive history.

And quite honestly, every race, every ethnic group that loses its homeland, this is a sociological reality, loses its identity within two or three generations, with one exception.

The Jewish people.

Every generation, when they lose their homeland and they get assimilated into other cultures, it takes no more than two or three generations when they lose their national identity, except for one people.

The Jewish people that God has preserved for 2,000 years through persecution and genocide because God has a plan and a purpose for them in redemptive history.

But let me close with this.

What's the ground?

Look at it of everything that we've said this morning, of reorientating our life for everything.

Look at what he says in verse 33.

Heaven and earth will pass away.

Everything that you know about reality, everything that you know about life, everything that you think is certain and sure in this life will pass away.

But my word will not pass away.

What is the ground of our confidence?

What is the bedrock, solid foundation of everything that we hope for and believe?

It is the enduring, abiding word of Jesus.

I like red letter Bibles, but sometimes they confuse us because we think that the red letters are Jesus' word and everything else is somebody else's, but every word in the Bible is Jesus' word equally.

And every promise in here is a promise for us to hold.

Jesus has promised to forgive the sins through his death and resurrection.

He says that all who come to him know in no wise will he cast out.

He's promised to never leave us or forsake us, to be with us always, even until the end of the age.

He's promised that his Father's eye is always on us.

He has promised that he ever lives to intercede for us.

He promises that he will provide for all of our needs.

He promises that if we ask, he will give us more than we can ask for or imagine in Christ Jesus.

He's promised if we ask and seek and knock, that we will receive.

He promises that to guard our hearts and to give us perfect peace if we trust in him and look to him.

He promises to heal the wounds of body and soul.

He promises to break the power of canceled sin, to give us victory in this life, right here and now in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The promises of God are the reality that we orientate our life about everything.

He promises to prepare a place for us in his Father's house.

And he calls us to lean on the promises to take him at his word.

What he said happened.

What he said will happen.

And every promise in between is ours.

Are you living your life based on the promises of God?

Are you resting?

Are you trusting in Jesus?

Are you taking him at your word?

Or are you looking around in fear?

In anxiety, in doubt, in despair, in despondency.

Are you leaning on the promises?

Are you taking him at your at his word?

Are you trusting in Jesus?

Let me pray and let us close in song.

Father God, every every word in the Bible is true.

Every promise is trustworthy.

And every promise that you have given to us between your first coming and your second coming is for us and our children and our children until Jesus returns.

That we trust in, that we rest in, that we rely on, that our entire view of everything is oriented around.

That we don't see as the world sees.

We don't look at things through eyes of skepticism and doubt, but we see through eyes of faith because we see you are on your throne.

And that you are trustworthy and true.

And so we trust in Jesus.

Help us to trust in Jesus, we pray.

In His name.

Amen.