Luke 17:11-37 - How to Respond to the Kingdom of God

Have you personally, maybe someone you know, but maybe you personally, have you ever been thrown into a situation in life with very little information, and then told to just go figure it out and get the job done.

You're just flying blind, making decisions, and decisions that have consequences.

If you're younger, maybe this hasn't happened to you, and as you go through life, you'll experience this probably where you're just you're thrown into situations, you're given very little information, and you're expected to get the job done and do it the right way.

And if you've noticed, this is often how people operate.

It's almost like human nature.

People get into relationships with one another without any real clarity as to why they should be in a relationship with each other and what the other person thinks or what their life is about or what they're doing.

All they know is I think you're cute or you're funny or whatever.

So they get into a relationship with no clarity.

This often happens in workplaces.

You've been given a task, you've been given an area of responsibility, and your job, your boss expects you to get the job done and get it done the right way, or you might very well get fired.

An example of this, I think, is parenting.

Uh as a parent, you have kids and you don't really know what you're doing or why you're doing this, but they're here and they've arrived, and now you've got to figure this out.

And maybe you've grown up with kids around or you've been friends with people who have had kids.

But there's nothing quite as humbling as just when you when you have children and you realize we've made this life and we're responsible for this life.

You're in the hospital, and they just say, okay, it's time to go.

There's no test, there's no background exam.

There's it's just like, well, this is your kid, like go and keep them alive.

Just thrown in to figure it out.

And for the vast majority of people, this is also adulthood.

Right?

You reach an age that the government says you're now an adult, which means you can disobey your parents and you can also go fight in wars and you can take on debt, and maybe you can do all that at the same time, right?

You're an adult, you can go do this.

And so you're thrown into adulthood without much actual training, actual equipping.

With the no one's kind of helping you navigate this really well.

Sure, you have resources on YouTube or whatever.

You think to be resources, but you're just trying to figure this out.

And there's dozens of examples of this in our life.

We're just you're tossed into things.

You're not given the information you really need to succeed, you're not given helpful uh paths to success.

But how kind it is that this is not the way with Jesus.

He does not call his people to blindly follow him.

The way of Jesus is not confusing or fuzzy.

Now, no doubt there are difficult doctrines and theological elements that can be, that take wisdom and can be tricky to navigate, but those are the exception.

For the most part, following Jesus is clear.

He's revealed to us, he's given us clarity in Scripture and how we're to live and how we're to obey Him and live with the local church and use the Holy Spirit.

So as Christians, we are not flying by the seat of our pants.

And if there's any difficulty in understanding or confusion about what to do, I promise you, this has to do with us, not with God and his revelation to us.

We need to press into his word, press in with the Spirit to understand more.

God is a gracious, kind God in telling us what we should expect as followers of Christ.

In last week's sermon, we got from chapter 17, from verses 1 through verse 10, and we laid out, or I laid out what to expect in the kingdom of God.

Jesus is teaching and showing, and so Jesus is revealing what to expect in the kingdom of God.

And this week, Lord willing, we will cover the rest of the book to the end of verse 37, and which teaches us how to respond to the kingdom of God.

We've covered what to expect, and we'll go into how to respond, but I do want to do a brief review of verses 1 through 10 and what to expect in the kingdom of God.

Well, right off the bat, verses 1 and 2, we see that there's these two warnings that are given, right?

Temptations are sure to come, and woe to the one who they come by, how they come.

So it's this call to wisdom and to response.

That temptations are going to come.

So don't feel shame or don't feel like you're a bad Christian if temptations are coming into your life.

I would even say, if you've been kind of going through your week or your a few days and you think, you know, I don't think I've been tempted recently.

I don't think I've I really have many temptations in my life.

I would just question, I want to question you on that and just ask you to really press into God's word and read about sin.

Because the odds are if you're not facing temptation, you don't know what temptation is.

You don't know what sin is, or you've been calloused by it.

Your heart is hardened.

So temptations are sure to come.

Don't be discouraged when they come.

Fight them.

But there is a warning to those who bring about temptation.

Jesus is just getting done dealing with all this, the Pharisees and their false teachings and the sin that they're laying on others, the burden that they're putting on others to follow man-made laws and not God's laws, which would be a sin.

And he gives this warning to them.

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and were cast into the sea that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

And most commentaries think what Jesus means by these little ones is all these stories he just told.

Lazarus, right?

And um the prodigal son, sinners, tax collectors.

Don't lay wicked, sinful burdens on these people.

So there's a warning here to not be passive when sin comes, and a warning to not lead others into sin by our own self-righteous, man-made standards.

And then another expectation is to that there should be this rebuking and forgiving culture in the local church.

Verse 3 Pay attention to yourselves.

If your brother's brother sins, rebuke him.

And if he repents, forgive him.

And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, you must forgive him.

And as we said last week, this requires a lot of wisdom.

We've got to use a lot of wisdom when we go to give a brother or a sister a godly rebuke.

The first thing is we need to actually probably have a relationship with them.

If you know them to be a Christian and they know you and you see something in their life, and that you have a relationship with them, you should go and say, brother, sister, you know I love you, you know I care about you, and I care about the Lord.

And I just want to tell you the way you're living is not in accordance with the scriptures.

It's not what God would have you to do.

And I'm not saying that because I'm looking down on you, I'm saying that because I love you.

So that's a wise biblical rebuke.

You don't just go around looking for people who are sinning according to your standards, standards that you think you can get from the Bible, but the Bible doesn't say, and then say, and just giving out rebukes because you think that's your job.

Not at all.

But with this comes then the forgiving.

As I mentioned last week, never rebuke someone if you're not prepared to forgive them.

And you might think you're prepared, but search your heart.

Do not rebuke someone until you're prepared to forgive them.

Because this is also commanded.

If they do it again and they repent of it again, forgive them.

If they do it again and then they repent, forgive them.

And we talked about the difficulty of this, how how this relationship between forgiveness and what's it mean to forgive someone?

And how people kind of disagree a little bit on this.

But what we're called to do is, as far as it depends on us, be prepared to forgive someone.

So the forgiveness transaction, if you will, does require someone to repent.

And then you extend forgiveness to them because they've repented.

Right?

And then that relationship is reconciled at that point.

But until the one, the person who does the sinning repents, there can't be true reconciliation.

Right?

Now you can still love them, you can still be in relationship with them, but until their sin has been acknowledged and they've repented of their sin to God and to you, that relationship cannot truly be reconciled.

Right?

But as far as it depends on you, you're doing the work so that when they're when they repent, you're ready to forgive them.

You've done the work, you've dealt with the hurt, you've done all these things so that you're ready to show them forgiveness.

And there's a sense of, it's like when, it's like when you think about what Christ has done for you, how he's shown you mercy and forgiveness, you're ready to do the same for them.

You are, of course, are not their savior, you are not their master or their Lord, but you've been shown great mercy, so you are ready to show great mercy.

We cannot assume a relationship has been completely reconciled when there is still unrepentant sin going on, right?

And the second part of this is then restoration.

And restoration comes when that trust is then built back, and you're able to kind of restore the relationship to what it was.

And there's this idea that in order for true forgiveness to have happened, the relationship must be restored to the way it was.

I don't think scripture says that.

I don't think we're called to that.

There are situations and people who've done tremendous harm.

And you can, when they repent, genuinely forgive them.

Genuinely forgive them.

However, it would not be wise to act as if the relationship is what it is, that it never changed.

Right?

So there might take years of time together to feel like that relationship has been restored.

And in some ways, it might never be restored this side of glory, but this side of heaven.

And I think we need to be okay with that.

Having said that, you are still commanded to forgive.

Right?

You're still commanded to show mercy and grace.

So what you can't do is say, Well, this person hurt me, and I think a lot of bad things about that person, and I have a lot of negative thoughts toward that person, and it's all good because God's gonna take care of it in the end.

Right?

Praise the Lord, that wasn't his attitude toward you.

Right?

We must be a people who are genuinely doing the work of repentance and forgiveness.

But we must know that there are certain relationships and situations that will not be fully restored this side of heaven.

But nonetheless, we must be prepared to repent when someone calls us out on our sin, and prepared to forgive when someone repents.

In verses five and six, we're talking we're taught about our faith.

What to expect is that our faith is not in the size or the quantity, but it is in the object of our faith, Christ.

So Jesus teaching about forgiveness, and they hear this hard teaching, and they naturally say, Lord, increase our faith.

And Jesus says, if you have faith like a grain of a mustard seed, and you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.

Jesus is using, I think, hyperbole to point out that it's not about the size, the volume, if you will, of your faith.

He uses this absurd example, the tiny grain of a mustard seed, the seed of a mustard seed, if you just had that much tiny faith.

You know, this is in this day and age, or when this was written, they didn't have microscopes.

They didn't know about microscopic things.

So for them, like a mustard seed, a grain of sand, these would be some of the smallest things that they know about.

So Jesus using this hyperbole to say, if you had almost non-existent faith, sure, you could take a plant and plant it, a plant, take it up and put it in the sea, and it would it would thrive.

No, he's saying, listen, it's not about the size of your faith.

It's about the object of your faith.

It is about what your faith is in.

So if you're going through your days and you're frustrated, like I just need to increase my faith.

I need to be a bigger faith person.

If I just had more faith in my life, then these things would happen or these things would work out.

I'm just gonna tell you right now, that is false.

This isn't a kind of a thing that you can just increase.

But what you need is clarity.

You need to be able to see more clearly who God is.

And the more clearly you see who he is, the more you will trust him, the more confidence you will have in him that he is who he says he is, and he will do what he says he will do.

That's the demand, that's what we need.

Not just some kind of thing that's kind of pumped up, and now we're we're feeling like we have bigger faith, and we just we're gonna start kind of asking God for bigger things, and then we can just, you know, if we just say it without doubting, it'll happen because we got big faith now.

What's the con where's the confidence at that point?

It's not in Christ.

It's in your faith in Christ.

And it's it's easy for us to be confused about this.

It's easy to kind of let our eyes just kind of drop down from fixating on Christ and looking to who he is, just down a little bit to ourselves.

Well, what about me?

Do I have enough faith?

Look to Christ and worship him.

Behold who he is.

Our confidence is in the size of our faith.

Is it the size of a mustard seed?

Or is it the size of a pebble, or is it the size of a baseball, or whatever?

It's not that at all.

Our confidence is in the object of our faith.

It's in Christ.

And then Jesus is telling them about this ordinary obedience.

Talks about a servant coming from a field, your servant, and he comes in, and his job is to then he's been serving in the field, he's gonna come in, he's now gonna make dinner and do all these things to serve.

And that's just expected.

That's what is expected from the servant.

Verse 10.

So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants.

We have only done what was our duty.

So we're not getting caught up in, are we like how are we doing on the grade card of following Jesus?

Are we getting A's?

Are we excelling?

Are we getting gold stars?

Are we kind of head and shoulders above the rest?

Are we really like making a name for ourselves so that we can get a promotion or something?

No.

We're servants and we're just doing what servants do.

We're forgiving people, yeah, that's what servants do.

We're forgiving people who've really hurt us, but they've repented.

Yeah, that's what servants do.

They haven't repented yet, but we've done, we're working to forget to work this forgiveness in our own hearts so that when they repent, it's a genuine forgiveness we're offering.

Yeah, that's that's what servants do.

Man, I'm sacrificing so much time and energy to the church.

I'm trying to pour into people and I'm not getting a whole lot of feedback.

I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

Yeah, man, that's that's what servants do.

Hey, I'm I'm I'm laying my life on the altar for Jesus, and I'm gonna go do be a missionary, I'm gonna move across the world, I'm gonna sell everything I have, and I'm gonna just give myself to these people.

Yeah, sure.

That's what servants do.

Yeah.

I'm gonna I'm gonna pray for my family.

I'm gonna disciple my children, I'm gonna live countercultural.

That's that's what servants do.

See, our pride is so insidious that even the things that we think are kind of like big gestures, kind of a big deal, you know?

And she's like, well, that's just what servants do.

You say you're my people, you're my followers.

That's that's what followers do.

They follow, they follow their king who called them to lay down their cross, to lay down their life and pick up their cross and follow him.

That's what a servant does.

So we don't get prideful, we don't get a big head about these things.

We just faithfully follow the Lord.

And when things don't go our way, trust the Lord with that.

When people sin against us, all right, that's we trust the Lord with that.

When the dreams and desires of our life are not lining up the way we think they should, we trust the Lord with that.

That's just, we're following Jesus.

He knows what I need, he's gonna provide.

We're just we're just servants, we've just done our duty.

And when you can wrap your mind around this, but when you can wrap your heart around this, your affections around this, how freeing it is.

Just to understand the life that you've been called to is ordinary, simple faithfulness to God.

Because of what Jesus has done for you, he's redeemed you.

You were dead in your sin, as the Bible says.

You were a slave to sin.

And Jesus comes and he frees you from that, he gives you new life, he gives you, adopts you into his family, he gives you a name, belonging.

So, yeah, this is just what we do as followers of Jesus.

It's a part of God's family.

It's ordinary, it's simple, it's so good.

There's so much life to be had.

So Jesus is teaching what to expect.

What to expect as followers of him.

This is what to expect.

And now he gets this kind of how to respond.

And he uses this example, this story in verse eleven.

On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

As he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

When he saw them, he said.

To them, Go show yourselves to the priests.

And as they went and they were cleansed, as they went, they were cleansed.

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.

And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

Now he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus answered, Were not ten cleansed?

Where are the nine?

Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?

And he said to him, Arise, go your way, your faith has made you well.

We know from verse 11, Jesus is heading to Jerusalem.

He's been on this long journey from Capernaum, heading to his crucifixion.

And he just got done with all this teaching about the Pharisees and to the Pharisees and everyone who's listening.

Now he's heading to Jerusalem.

And on his way, he's passing these lepers.

They have a skin disease.

And according to the Old Testament law, they were to stay away from people because they were unclean.

So they had a terrible disease that made their life very painful.

And then on top of that, they were supposed to stay away from people.

So they could not go and offer sacrifices.

They could not be a part of the community.

They were outcasts.

And no doubt, obviously, they had heard about what Jesus was doing and his power and all these things.

And so they cry out to him, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

Have mercy on us.

What a powerful cry.

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And Jesus said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests.

Obviously, as they're going, right, they're healed.

So what is required of that is their initial faith and obedience.

Right?

They believe Jesus can do this.

That's why they're crying out to him.

We know you've done this.

They've heard stories, they've probably seen people who've been healed.

And so they know he has the ability to do it, and they're crying out to him.

And then they must obey his instructions.

Go and show yourselves to the priests.

They obeyed.

Ten were cleaned, ten were healed.

Only one came back.

Now there's all kinds of theories about why the other nine didn't come back.

Maybe some of them just wanted to be healed, and once they got healed, they're fine.

Maybe they forgot.

Maybe they just were focused on getting to the priest.

But something in their life radically, radically changed.

For who knows how long they had been lepers.

Whatever they were before that, husbands, carpenters, teachers, whatever their identity was before that, it was stripped from them when they became lepers.

It didn't matter who they were before.

It didn't matter their intellect or their wealth or any of those things.

It was all stripped from them and they were outcast.

They were outside the city, outside the people.

They were rejected.

So here comes the Messiah, the one who can actually change their life here and now, cleanse them, heal them from their disease, and they cry out to him.

And what's he do?

He heals them.

He shows them mercy.

He's under no obligation to do this, he's under no command to do this, but yet he's a merciful God and a merciful Savior.

He shows them mercy, and in their response, they obey.

And when they realize they're clean, they realize their life has been brought back together.

They realize that all of the things that they've been longing for could be years or decades, longing to be back with their family, to be able to hold their children again, loved ones, to go to the temple and offer sacrifice again.

When all that was restored to them, when their life was given back to them, what did they do?

Sure, they were probably grateful.

But were they grateful enough to return to God and thank him?

Sure, they were happy that they weren't lepers anymore.

They're grateful that they were, you know, all these things, but were they willing to go back and to acknowledge and to thank God for what he had done?

The one who returned was a Samaritan.

If you don't know, Samaritans were outcasts themselves.

So the Jews looked down on Samaritans, viewed them as dogs by the Gentiles or by the Jews.

And here, the one who would have been, in the eyes of the Jews, the farthest from the kingdom, the farthest from honoring God or being loved by God, a Samaritan.

What's this brother know?

And he knows what happened.

He knows his life has been radically changed.

That he was as good as dead and has been given his life back.

So he runs back to Jesus to give him thanks.

And Jesus says, makes this profound statement.

And was not one found to return and give praise to God?

Jesus is testifying to his deity that he is in fact God, except for this foreigner.

Here Jesus was heading to crucifixion.

He was heading to his death to atone for the sins of his people.

And here he had healed, and they have just rejected him.

No doubt they were grateful, but they weren't gonna change their life, let alone go back and thank God.

This brother comes and he kneels.

He thanks him.

His face falls at the feet of Jesus.

And how easy it is for us.

We know our Bibles, we know the salvation story, we we know what the resurrection of Christ means.

And we're thankful.

We appreciate God.

We know he holds the stars in the skies, we know that he's sovereign and he's good and all those things.

Man, I'm just too busy right now to come and thank you.

I mean, this is convicting.

How many of you, you're all, you all woke up this morning?

You're all here.

How many of you woke up and gave God thanks that he gave you this day?

That he gave you something you do not deserve as a gift, a day to enjoy.

And he's given you thousands of those.

How many of us, and I'm preaching to myself on this, we read about the gospel, we sing these hymns, we're grateful.

But does it make you fall on your knees before God?

Give thanks.

Or is it kind of like, hey God, thank you for this as you kind of go on your way.

Thanks for the meal, thanks for this, and you mean it.

But you when was the last time, brother or sister, when you went and you went on your knees before the Lord and gave him thanks for what he's done in your life?

That you were also dead in your sin.

That you were outcasts in the kingdom.

As the Bible says you're actually enemies in the kingdom of God.

And here he comes to you and he brings you into his kingdom.

He shows you love and mercy and grace.

And so we respond with thankfulness.

We respond with a humble heart, thanking him and walking in obedience.

Because we did not deserve this.

We did not deserve any of these things, and yet God has been merciful to us.

And after this, there's a question that comes from a Pharisee about the kingdom.

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them that the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, Look, here it is, or there.

For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.

This is typical for the Pharisees, the religious leaders, to be looking at the kingdom, looking at the Messiah, and missing it altogether.

They just miss it.

Here he is.

And they're like, so when is when's it gonna come?

It's right here.

How easy it is to miss.

When you have a preconceived idea of what salvation is, or what heaven, or what heaven is, or what the kingdom of God is or what it means to follow Jesus, a preconceived idea about what it means to be a Christian, you can really have your world rocked when you realize sometimes how far apart your idea and concept is from God's word and what is actually true.

It's easy for us because we have our lens of what we're looking for.

To be a Christian is to be kind and to be merciful, and then God's gonna give me good things.

He's not gonna give me bad things, he's gonna bring good things into my life, and he's gonna keep me, and it's gonna be good.

That's your idea of what the Christian faith looks like.

Then you're gonna miss it.

Right?

Because when it actually comes, when suffering comes, when you're called to face persecution and contend for holiness and kill sin and do all those things and be rejected by people and to be thought terrible terribly by outsiders, and all those things happen, you're gonna be shaken.

You're gonna miss the whole thing because it's not what you thought it would be.

Jesus is teaching them.

It's not coming in that way.

You're not gonna look over on the hills and just see armies kind of coming in.

You're not gonna look to the heavens and just like say, hey, here come the angels to free us from the Roman uh government, and we're gonna re-establish the kingdom here.

It's not coming like that.

Like here it is, or there it is.

This is the amazing thing about the kingdom of God in the local church, which is the kingdom of God, and we're outposts of the kingdom of God as churches.

So when you see a local church gathered on the Lord's day, that's the most visible, tangible reality of the kingdom of God that we have.

So, what has the kingdom of God been doing all around our community and all around the world this day?

They've been gathering.

And here, right now, in our midst, it's the kingdom of God.

It's not some governmental power coming in or some kind of technology bringing about some kind of radical change.

It's Christ and his people walking in his ways.

But they're not looking for that.

They're looking for earthly thinking, tangible, men, soldiers, wealth, prosperity.

Verse 22, and he said to his disciples, so the Pharisees ask the question, he answers them, and then I was saying to his disciples, and the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.

And they will say to you, Look there or look here, do not go out and follow them.

For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.

But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

So Jesus is now speaking of his second coming.

Right?

We can call this the first advent when he came two thousand years ago, and then there is the second advent when he returns.

And he's speaking about his return.

He's heading to Jerusalem where he will be crucified.

He will die, he will be buried, he will be resurrected, defeating the consequences of death and sin.

And then he will eventually ascend into heaven.

And he's telling them that he will come again.

But in the meantime, there will be days that are horrendous.

Days when people will be looking about, wishing for the end of time to come.

And there will be those who are deceiving.

The deceivers will come and say, hey, here comes the kingdom, he's coming.

And we've even had this in our day.

And this is it.

Right?

And you just know right then they're wrong.

They're wrong.

You don't have to check their work, they're just wrong.

Nobody knows.

It will come when no one is expecting it.

It'll come in a way where no one can ignore it.

Everyone will know what's happening.

Before then, first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

Clearly, Jesus is speaking ultimately of his crucifixion.

This final and total rejection by the people of Israel, and in a sense, through the Romans by the Gentiles.

All of the world has rejected him.

His disciples have fled.

They've recanted in a sense and fled for a moment.

He's been rejected.

And he's not just suffering physical beatings.

He's not just suffering the whips and the crown of thorns and being nailed onto a cross.

He will suffer the consequences of your sins.

He will suffer the consequences of the sins of his people.

He will endure the wrath of God.

So when we talk about what's expected, we talk about obedience to God.

What is in store for you without Christ, on your own, standing on your own two feet, what is in store for you is the wrath of God for your sins.

Understand that might not be comforting to anyone, and that might even be challenging for some.

But that's what is due you.

Romans 6 tells us the wages of sin is death.

For you, that's what's in store for you.

And if you're a Christian, what's happened is Jesus has said, No, I will take that wrath on me.

I'm not just going to die.

My blood isn't just going to be spilt, just like just like death for anyone else.

Like, well, just, you know, the heart stopped working.

And then that was it.

No, Jesus endured the wrath of God for you.

That's what makes salvation marvelous.

It makes it amazing.

It's not that just the blood kind of went out and his lungs stopped working.

It's that he endured the wrath of God for you.

So that you could what?

So you could be brought into his family, so you could have eternal life.

So that's why we joyfully obey.

That's why we contend to forgive.

That's why we walk in the ways of Jesus.

This was no small thing that he has done for us.

This suffering of many things.

But it must happen.

It's the next thing to happen.

And then eventually Jesus will return.

And he will return.

And here we are 2,000 years later, and Christians have been ever since then teaching and preaching and understanding this passage to say Jesus is coming back.

Might be in our lifetime, it might be in 3,000 years.

We don't know.

We have no idea.

But when he does come, Jesus says in verse 26, just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

They will be eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise it was in the days of Lot.

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

But on the day when the Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.

So it will be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

On that day, let no one who is on the house top with his goods in his house come down and take them away.

Likewise, let the one who is in the field not turn back.

Remember Lot's wife.

Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

I tell you, in that, in that night there will be two in bed, one will be taken and the other left.

There will be two women grinding, grinding together, one will be taken and the other left.

And they said to him, Where, Lord?

And he said to them, Where the corpse is, excuse me, where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

This story in Matthew and Mark and here in Luke brings about a whole lot of questions.

Questions like when and where?

And it's so significant and it seems odd, and so clearly it makes no sense why people have spent so much effort trying to figure all this out and have answers to all these questions.

Now, obviously, even within our local church, there are people who disagree, they differ on when the rapture will happen.

When Christ returns, will there be this tribulation time and the church brought out then, or will the church be taken out of the tribulation after the tribulation?

And what's that mean?

And all these things and all these questions.

We've got to remember first, Jesus is speaking to these people.

And the first thing he does is he reminds them these two stories that they would have been very familiar with Noah and Lot.

And what's he getting at here?

Be prepared.

It's going to happen.

He's not saying eating and drinking, marrying and building and buying and selling all these things are sinful things.

What he is saying is there seems to be this kind of here and now-ness of the world that distracts and entices and dulls our senses and keeps our eyes off of God and off of eternity.

But Jesus will return.

It will be unmistakable.

No one will have questions of who he is or what he's doing.

He will return and it will catch everyone by surprise.

And what you don't want to be doing is just kind of living for this day, living for this life.

No doubt we all have to eat and drink.

There's weddings, there's marriages, there's building.

Making plans.

They're selling.

All that stuff will happen, has to happen.

We're going to do that.

But we cannot let those things distract us.

Pull our eyes down.

And how easy this is.

Just ask anyone who's planning a wedding or building a house or selling something.

They're just the cares of the world.

They pull at us.

Keep our eyes down here.

They're the kind of thing that keep you from getting up and getting on your knees and giving thanks to the Lord.

Because you got stuff that you gotta do.

God knows you're thankful.

So easy to let the things of this life entangle us and deceive us.

And the thinking is, and I've lived for thousands of days, I probably at least have one more.

Jesus hasn't returned for 2,000 years.

We probably have a few more days or a few more years.

Maybe after college, I'll really get serious about my faith.

Or maybe once we're married, we'll really get serious about our faith, or once we have children, or once this thing's figured out, or once I can stop working two jobs, or whatever it is.

We give these excuses.

We need to look to God and prepare ourselves for his return.

And when he returns, there will be a judgment, there will be a separation.

There will be a clear distinction between those who are who belong to him and those who do not.

Those who walk in his ways, their confidence, their faith is in Christ, who he is and what he's done, and those who do not.

And there will be people who are married, people who are close workers together.

They've lived life together, they're doing life together, but it's clear separation.

Whatever is going to transpire, it would seem that it'll be a significant event, unlike anything else.

In this time, their roofs were flat and their stairwells were outside of their house, and they go kind of so you're saying don't go in your house to go get anything, just flee.

If you're in the field, don't go back.

And there's all kinds of thoughts about when this transpired.

Personally, I think that part right there is speaking about 70 AD when the Rome came in and destroyed the temple.

I think, though, it's going to be really similar when Christ returns.

So I think prophetic language can have this dual meaning at times, where it's speaking about something to come here and here.

And from over here, it looks like they're compacted together.

But as time comes, you'll see they're more separated apart.

They're separated apart.

And Jesus is giving this warning to them of all these things that are going to happen.

You're not going to know when?

It's going to happen.

Don't be caught up loving the things of this world.

Don't be caught up doing that.

It's coming.

Then there's this final question.

And they said, Where, Lord?

Which, in one sense, for their perspective, is probably a natural question.

You know, we've grown up, if you've grown up in the church or you've around Christianity, you understand this to be like a global thing.

It's happening everywhere.

So it's a little bit confusing.

And Jesus gives this confusing response, it would seem at first.

Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

Well, what does that mean?

And there's lots of different interpretations.

I was studying this and I was surprised at how many different takes people have.

Brilliant, smart, godly people who just are like, it's this or it's that.

Some people think that he's talking about the church and angels.

Where the church is, there you will see the angels gathered.

Some people think it's speaking of the Romans.

When the Romans come, their insignias had bodies on them and uh vultures or eagles on them.

It could be that.

I mean, it just the list goes on.

But what Jesus is giving them is an answer that's saying to them in a sense it's not about getting the when and the where.

Because that's what we do.

We make that same mistake.

Okay.

But like, when's it gonna happen?

Where's it gonna happen?

And Jesus is like, no, this is about you being prepared for when it happens, it will happen.

And so as we live as Christians, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we know now how we're called to live, and we know what to expect from the future, and so we walk in joyful obedience.

We don't need to be caught up terribly in all the events of the world and just kind of like, well, is this it?

Is this the end times?

And is this happening?

Is that happening?

And kind of get our big wall and our chart and all those things out.

You can dive in and study this.

I encourage you to do that.

But you need to be ready for your life will come to an end here on earth.

And I'm just telling you, for some, that's gonna be much quicker than you think.

You just feel like you have time or you have years, and you and you don't.

You don't know what the Lord's got for you.

Be prepared to meet your Maker, to go and to enjoy heaven with your creator.

Today is the day of repentance.

Today is the day to take your faith seriously and walk in the ways of Jesus because He loves you.

He's called you to life in Him.

So let's joyfully live out the life that He's called us to.

Let's pray.