Luke 17:20-37

Once being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, Here it is, or there it is, because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Then he said to his disciples, The time is coming when you will long to see the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.

People will tell you, there he is, or here he is.

Do not go running off after them.

For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.

But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation, just as it was in the days of Noah.

And also it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

People were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark.

Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

It was the same in the days of Lot.

People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.

But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and saw for rain down from heaven and destroyed them all.

It will be just like this on the day of the Son of Man is revealed.

On that day, no one who is on the housetop with possessions inside should go down to get them.

Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.

Remember Lot's wife.

Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it.

And whoever loses their life will preserve it.

I tell you, on that night, two people will be in one bed.

One will be taken, the other left.

Two women will be grinding grain together, one will be taken, the other left.

Where?

Lord, they asked.

He replied, Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.

You may be seated.

Let's pray and ask the Lord to speak to us through this passage.

God, we um as we look at this text, Lord, we asked for you to work in our lives.

When we walked through that door, Lord, you knew what was going on and the burdens that we came in bearing.

And we asked, Lord, that this morning we would encounter you, that you would lift the burdens from our life, and that you would give us your yoke, which is easy.

And Lord, that we could just follow you.

So lead us, be the good shepherd that leads us in the path that we're supposed to walk in.

Lord, quiet our souls.

Give us those green pastures, give us quiet waters.

And as you bless us, Lord, help us to be a blessing to those that are around us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So Luke 17.

We're finally, we're finally gonna finish Luke 17.

We've been working on this for a while, and we finally get to come to an end with this chapter.

So Jesus, in this text, he says, history is going to repeat itself.

Just like the sudden judgment in Noah's day, just like the sudden judgment in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Son of Man will be revealed and God's wrath will be poured out.

Do you see, as we went through this text, did you see the repeated word that was there?

What's the most repeated word in this text that stands out other than prepositions?

It's the word day.

It's this nine times we see the word day.

This whole passage relates to a time, a specific time.

We see the word when twice.

We see the word generation, we see the word day.

Jesus wants his disciples to put something on their calendar to schedule something in.

There's a day coming dedicated to the Son of Man.

We don't know when it will happen, but we know it will happen, and we know that it will catch some people by surprise.

In 79 A.D., 79 A.D.

Mount Vescivius exploded.

This volcanic mountain is located on the western side of Italy.

A heat wave came from this mountain at around 495 degrees Fahrenheit.

These heat waves came from this volcano and instantly killed the residents of Pompeii.

When the excavators of the site began to pull back the fifteen-foot layer of ash, and they filled in the voids with liquid plaster, they discovered the shapes of humans that were caught off guard by this sudden explosion.

And that is the picture that Jesus wants for his disciples to have as they consider this future day.

As we go through this text, there's some kind of background information that you need to have in order to really have a good, strong grasp of this text.

What if you could?

Why don't you hit the escape button and then try to relaunch?

Hit play again up there at the top.

It must be there we go.

Did you see the son of man referred to you in the text?

If you are a Bible scholar, it should ring a bell for you of like, wait a second, this isn't just some fancy new title that Jesus decided to give himself on the fly.

No, this is a title that Jesus uses to weave himself into an eschatological picture.

Eschatology is the term, fancy term that we use to refer to end times events.

How the world is going to wrap up, the future time.

And so Jesus here in Luke 17 uses the term the Son of Man.

And what this should have done for his disciples who were Jews and were familiar with the scriptures, it should have reminded them of the writings of Daniel 600 years earlier.

Daniel used this passage, and I want to show you this in Daniel 7.13.

Daniel 7 is this vision that Daniel has.

He's in Babylon, he's in exile as a young Jewish man, and he has this vision that's confusing to him.

It ends up being a description of the rest of time, from basically 600 BC all the way through till the end of days, past where we are at today.

This vision encapsulates all of that time frame.

And near the end of this vision, the end of it says this, Daniel 7.13.

It says, In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven.

He approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence.

He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power.

All nations and peoples of every language worshipped him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

This is written, the Jews have this in their text.

They know that this is a prophecy of the future.

And so if you are a Jew at the time of Jesus, you're waiting, you're anticipating this future arrival of the Son of Man.

It's a key text.

And what are the descriptors of the Son of Man here?

What does it say?

It says, the Son of Man, notice he comes with the clouds of heaven.

That's really important because we're going to see some other passages in the New Testament that use this very same language.

We also see here that he is escorted by the ancient of days.

This is God the Father escorting the Son of Man to the earth.

The Son of Man is then given authority, glory, and a kingdom.

Do you see that?

He's given authority, he's given glory, and he's given a kingdom.

It's so that every people, nation, and language should serve him.

His rule, it's everlasting, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.

This is a beautiful picture, a beautiful picture of a government that is stable.

Can you imagine an economy?

Can you imagine a civilization that is going to be based upon an individual that has perfect authority, glory, a kingdom whose ruling does not end, who is endorsed by God.

This is just such a thing to anticipate, right?

Could it be true?

Could it be true?

There's a bunch of other stuff that we don't have time to get into that's there in Daniel.

Someday in our church we'll study in depth, Daniel, because it's a great, it's a great book.

But I want to keep going with this theme, the Son of Man.

In fact, in Ezekiel, 90 times Ezekiel uses this same term to refer to himself.

And so Jesus uses the term Son of Man numerous and numerous themes from Ezekiel to suggest his desire to identify himself as the eschatological, again, end times prophet, who, like Ezekiel, had the last word about the destruction of Jerusalem and the restoration of the kingdom of the God of Israel.

That's from the Baker Encyclopedia.

Jesus, when he's talking to his disciples here in chapter 17, and he's talking about the future, he uses a coded word, the Son of Man.

And it should have brought to mind, it should have brought to mind this future picture of a new kingdom coming upon earth.

I want to show you one, two, three, four, five other verses from Matthew, where Jesus uses this same term, the Son of Man.

The first is Matthew 16, 27.

Notice there it says, For the Son of Man is going to come in his father's glory.

What did it say back in Daniel?

It says that the ancient of days is going to escort the Son of Man to the earth.

Here in Matthew 16, 27, it says, For the Son of Man is going to come in his father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

As we're going to go through these verses here in Matthew, it's going to fill in a little bit more of the picture about why the coming of the Son of Man, why this day is so important, why it is so significant.

Look at Matthew 19, 28.

Matthew 19, 28 says this.

Hey, I like when things are renewed, right?

Library renewals, you know, when people are renewed.

You know, I like renewals except for like subscriptions.

Those are not, those are the ones I'm like, I'll cancel that, right?

But this is the renewal, bringing back to life, making things new.

The renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

So here's another piece of the picture.

Speaking to his disciples.

When this day comes, the Son of Man's day, when it comes, the disciples will sit on that throne judging, judging.

Now here's a problem.

Here's a little trivia for you, right?

Twelve thrones.

But what happened?

How was Jesus betrayed?

By one of the twelve.

Wait, so there's twelve thrones where there's going to be the judgment of the nations, but yet one of the twelve betrays Jesus.

We got a problem here, right?

Who's going to be the twelfth apostle to sit on the throne?

Now there's a lot of people who say, well, we look at the quarter of the New Testament's written by the apostle Paul, who was clearly an apostle.

So maybe it's Paul, but the early church established and appointed a man named Matthias to take this role.

And in fact, as Paul writes his letters and as the book of Luke unfolds, there are references to the twelve after Judas' death.

So it seems that the twelve apostles, the twelfth would have been Matthias, and that those are judging.