Luke 12:54-56
As you’re making your way to
our passage in Luke, let me remind you where we are as you’re flipping
your pages. at a place where Jesus has left
his ministry in Galilee. He’s making his way to Jerusalem
where he will suffer and die for the sins of his people on
the cross. He’ll be placed in the grave. He’ll rise again from
the dead. He’ll minister 40 days. He’ll be ascended into heaven
where he continues his priestly ministry, praying for us and
cheering us on in the race of this Christian life. that we
have entered into by faith in Jesus. But on Jesus way to Jerusalem,
he encounters all kinds of people who are confused about what church
is or what the kingdom is or what the Bible calls us to be
and do. And so here Jesus in our passage
today challenges. He challenges his audience with
an understanding of the times. And I thought it would be very
helpful for us to make this very contemporary. We are living in
very strange times. And so this passage may give
us some insight in how we are to see what is around us. So let us give our attention
to the word of the living God, Luke chapter 12, beginning at
verse 54. Jesus also said to the crowds,
when you see a cloud rising in the West, you say at once, a
shower is coming. And so it happens. And when you
see the South wind blowing, you say, there will be a scorching
heat and it happens. You hypocrites, you know how
to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you
not know how to interpret the present time? Let us pray together. Lord, we make our prayer the
words of the song that we sang a few moments ago. Speak, oh
Lord, as we come to you to receive the food of your holy word, take
your truth and plant it deep in us, shape and fashion us in
your likeness that the light of Christ might be seen today
in our acts of love and our deeds of faith. Speak, oh Lord, and
fulfill in us all your purposes for your glory. And we make this
our prayer in the name of your savior, our savior, your dear
son, the Lord Jesus. Amen. A couple of weeks ago,
I read an article and it stated something like this. The year
2020 has been something of 1974 as we began the year with impeachment. It’s been something of 1918 with
an epidemic. 1918 was the year of the Spanish flu. It’s been 1929 with the decline
of the stock market. And now we find ourselves in
1968 with a fight for widespread injustice. And on a positive
note, I’ll add this. This was not in the article I
read, but We’re a lot like 1961, where we have just sent our first
manned space rocket in the air again, and the space race for
Americans is back on. Isn’t that an interesting perspective?
Just in 2020, it’s had strong connections to 1974, 1918, 1929,
1968, and 1961. Is that all? Is that all that’s going on?
If you wake up each morning and make your way in your bathrobe
out the front lawn and pick up your newspaper and you read the
headlines, is that the only way to interpret the world we live
in? Well, not according to the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is
speaking to the crowds. He’s speaking to the Jews, the
Pharisees. Well, he’s calling them hypocrites. And he says,
you know, you can get your weather app out, right? That’s the most
important one on our smartphone, isn’t it? We get the weather
app out and we look at it and we say, well, I know what the
weather was. And we go pump our gas and the guy around the corner
is pumping his and you say, it’s hot, isn’t it? kind of nod a
little bit or we go in the grocery store and say it’s going to rain.
We talk about the weather. We’ve reduced our reality, our
topics of conversation to headlines and to weather. But is that all? Is that all that is taking place
in this world? No, there’s way more taking place
around us. There are far more realities
that are making themselves manifest. But Jesus is in a sense here
saying you’ve got to have the eyes to see. Otherwise, you’re
like the Jews, the Pharisees, the hypocrites. All they think
about is the wind blowing from this way and it’s going to get
hot or the wind blowing from this away and it’s going to rain. One of the things we like to
say as we make our prayers for our church is that we want to
be a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to go to our
doctor’s offices, our schools, our places of business, our workplaces,
our neighborhoods as we walk and see our next door neighbors
and all the rest. In our spheres of influence,
we want people to see that we know Christ. And dear friends,
if all you can talk about is the weather, if all you can talk
about are the headlines, this world is in pitiful shape, isn’t
it? For there is far more going on and far more at stake in this
world. And so I think Jesus’ passage
here is very helpful for us to be able to say more when we’re
witnessing to others. It’s helpful for us to think
through what is going on in 2020 and how should we think about
it eternally? How should we think about it
biblically? Well, let’s take a peek if we can. The first thing
I think we need to understand is that we are living in the
present evil age. We are living in a time that
Jesus and the apostles called the present evil age. Make your
way through Paul’s 13 epistles, make your way through the gospels
and Jesus and Paul, and then you get to Peter and John and
the other New Testament writers. They all affirm that this world
is not the way it should be. This world is a dark and dying
world. This generation is a crooked
and depraved generation. We say at the beginning of our
pastoral prayer every week, let’s join our hearts and minds together
as we ask for God’s help and blessing as we live in a dark
and dying world and in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation.
Why do we say such things? Well, think about the grand themes
of the Bible. There are three I think of. There’s
creation, there’s the fall, and there’s redemption. And those
three words, those three grand themes can help us understand
what’s going on around us. Creation, God made the world
and everything in it. He gave us benediction at the
end of every day. Behold, it is good. Behold, it
is good. Behold, it is good. Day one, day two, day three,
day four, day five. But on day six, he said, It is
not good. And he made man. And then he
said, it’s not good. He made woman. And so man and
woman lived on this earth. And God said, behold, it is very
good. And so at the end of his creative
work, he made a world and everything in it beautiful, wonderful, perfect. But sin entered the world and
sin not only created or subjected the creation to futility and
curses, but we understand from Genesis three, that men and women
and boys and girls all born from Adam and Eve, would be subjected
to the present evil age, or as we might call it from a biblical
theme, we all live east of Eden. Remember that Adam and Eve, after
they sinned, were cast out of Eden. They were put out of the
garden. God protected the garden with
the sword of the cherubim, lest they go back in the garden and
take hold from the tree of life and eat that tree from that tree
and live forever in their sin. God left open the way of redemption. But you read through the rest
of Genesis after Adam and Eve are put out of the garden, their
first two children, they get into it and one kills the other.
And then out of their grief is born Seth and Seth is a godly
one in the midst of a dark and dying world. Read Genesis 4 on. There are strong, strong, strong
stories of awful things that take place. Men and women and
boys and girls who do not live a God fearing, but a Godless
life. Yet there’s Seth and there’s
his offspring after him. And there’s those little phrases
in the book of Genesis where it reminds us that a small number
of people, a remnant of creation, built altars and worshiped Yahweh
as their God. And dear friends, we’re still
in that predicament, aren’t we? There is a remnant of us living
in a godless generation. But there is a remnant of us
who look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. He
saved us. He’s redeemed us. He’s washed
us and he has cleansed us. And the wages of sin, which are
death, are delayed because of the grace and mercy of God. We’ll
face death at some point in our lives, but at our deaths, our
souls will be made perfect and enter into heaven. And it’s a
great day of the resurrection. Jesus will raise the dead, our
bodies and souls united together forever in glory. But we live
in this tension. We live in this present evil
age. We live in the days of godlessness.
We live in the days of false teaching. We live in the days
of the Antichrist. We live in the days of politics and strife
and man killing man and on and on the list of cultural sins
we could go. But we are a remnant of godly
living among the godless. And so that’s the first thing
I think that it’s helpful for us to see as we look at what
Jesus is saying about how we must interpret the times correctly.
We live in the present evil age. I think we know it. We see it.
We understand it. We believe it. There is living
proof of it. Well, in addition to living in
the present evil age, we also we also live in the day of salvation. We live in the day of salvation.
God is a God of mercy. God is a God of grace. What do
we know of God when Adam and Eve sinned, when they ate the
forbidden fruit? Well, they went and hid themselves.
They had sewed together fig leaves and tried to cover up their their
sin, their shame, their nakedness. But God in his mercy didn’t leave
them there. He came looking for them as he
had done day by day. He came walking in the cool of
the garden. He didn’t find Adam and Eve, but he came looking.
Where are you? Where are you, Adam and Eve? And they hid because
they were naked. They were afraid. Their eyes
had been opened to sin. But God came looking for them.
And the first sacrifice we see in the Bible, it’s not a sacrifice
from a fig tree. That wouldn’t do. God took the
life of an animal and he took the skins of that animal whose
life he had just taken. And he covered the sins of his
people. so that they might walk before
him and learn of his grace and learn of his mercy. And throughout
the history of God’s people from that point on until Jesus came
to this earth, it was the blood of bulls. It was the blood of
goats. It was the blood of lambs. It was the life of birds and
animals that would ultimately point to Jesus, but would hold
back God’s wrath until the perfect spotless lamb of God could live
in a perfect life and hang on the cross to die for our sins. All these pointed to Jesus. And
so this is the day of salvation, him we preach. Earlier this morning in our town
hall meeting during the Sunday school hour, as we prepared to
show you the needs with our sanctuary renovations, one of the things
we decided to do instead of just say, here’s the problem, here’s
how much, now give us money, and shake you by the ankles until
all your coins dropped out. We said, no, we want to remind
you why we’re here. Because it could sound like we’re
here for the sake of a building. And isn’t it wonderful to have
a sanctuary? It is. But is that the main point of
our ministry? No, the main point of our ministry as we gather
as God’s people is to worship God and tell the world about
Jesus. It is the day of salvation. Our
job is to be like Noah in the days of godlessness. As he saw
those boards to build that ark, as he hammered those nails for
those hundred years to build that great ship, that great ark
of salvation. Can’t you imagine much like we
experience today, People ridiculed him. What kind of God do you
believe in? Why are you building that great
big boat in the middle of the arid, dry, ancient Middle East? Well, because God’s going to
send a flood. I don’t see any clouds. God’s going to send a
flood of his judgment, and he is going to judge man for their
sin. But if by faith we get in this
ark, He will save those by shutting them in and rescuing them from
the great deluge of his judgment. Friends, today is the day of
salvation. What did our passage from Isaiah say as we heard God’s
assurance of pardon? Seek the Lord while he may be
found. Call on him while he is, you
say it, near. The story of Noah and his family.
There’s a very final moment in that story where the animals
went in two by two. And don’t we think it’s so cute?
You know, every little baby knows the story of Moses. I mean, the
story of, they know that too, but the story of Noah and, you
know, we’d sing the little songs, the animals went in two by two.
Don’t you think it was a little more somber than that? We’re
going in so that we don’t die. by a flooded earth. You know,
we put that up on the nursery wall of our children. That, that
would really, shouldn’t that scare people? God flooded the
earth by his judgment, but two by two, the animals went in and
then what happened next? God put Noah and his family in
his sons and their daughters or their wives and their children.
And then it says, God shut the door. That’s a moment of finality,
isn’t it? Nobody else is going in that
arc. And who went in? One family, one husband, one
wife, three boys and their spouses. Out of all the people on the
face of the earth since the expansion from the garden, God shut the
door. And dear friends, there is a
time when there will no longer be the preaching of God’s word
on this earth. There will no longer be evangelism and there
will no longer be missions because God will shut the door. He will
call an end to the times and he will come and he will bring
his redeemed into heaven. And he will send those not redeemed
into everlasting punishment. And so this is a present evil
age that needs to know of this day of salvation. We need to
preach Jesus, trust Jesus, follow Jesus and tell others not about
the weather and not what went on in Seattle or Atlanta or Minneapolis
or Washington, D.C. or Richmond or Raleigh or whatever.
Those are interesting things. We need to speak of the ultimate
hope of salvation through faith in Jesus. That’s the only cure
for this world. That’s the only cure for this
present evil age. And it is the day of salvation.
And so as Jesus encourages us this day from Luke’s gospel to
understand the times, we understand the present evil age. We understand
the day of salvation. But I want us to be encouraged
by this third point today. It’s a time for us to be confident.
This is a time for confidence for Christians. This is a time
for us to look to God, look to Jesus, live by the Holy Spirit,
know our Bibles, and as it were, wear our glasses that help us
see this world aright. Only by faith in Jesus, only
by knowing the scriptures, only by looking at this world through
the lens of eternity and God’s kingdom values can we understand
what’s going on. Yes, there are problems in our
country. Yes, it’s like 1918 again. It’s like 1974 again,
1929 again, 1968 again. There are problems galore. And
lawmakers in Washington can’t fix it. City councils can’t fix
it. Mayors can’t fix it. Police chiefs
can’t fix it. Only Jesus can fix these things. And so this is a time for us
not to say, woe to me, the stock market has crashed. Woe to me,
there’s civil unrest. Woe to me, there’s Chaos galore. These are terrible, horrible
things, but there’s a bigger picture, isn’t there? There’s
a grander perspective. And if we look back through history,
it’s been like this before. Maybe there’s new technology
or more people who knows, but we’ve seen epics and periods
and stretches of history like this. And it was a time for those
Christians to live confidently. And it’s time for us to live
confidently. And so we look to God, the sovereign
king of the universe who rules and reigns all things. There’s
not a maverick molecule, including COVID-19. And there’s not a planet
or a galaxy or a deep, dark bit of space over which he does not
rule and reign. We look to Jesus, the author
and perfecter of our salvation, the great high priest who can
make all things new. He can change hearts. He can
remove racism. He can remove injustice. He can
remove all the things that are wicked, that destroy the world
and this present evil age all around us. We can live by the
Holy Spirit. This world will sell us short.
Its values and its principles can do nothing for us. But by
God’s grace filled with the Holy Spirit, understanding the word
of the living God, knowing our Bibles, and wearing the glasses
that God gives us with a Christian world and life view, we can understand
and see the greater picture. And it’s way more than a weather
forecast, isn’t it? It’s way more than the news headlines,
because we understand that there is a purpose and an end and a
goal to history. And it’s the God of salvation
through his son, the Lord Jesus, coming to make all things new. Let me ask you this. Do you see
it? I sure hope so. And that’s Jesus’
charge to us this day. Pray with me. Our Lord, our God,
our Savior, our King, give us eyes that see and ears that hear
and hearts that perceive all that is going on in this world,
but all that is going on in the heavenly realms, the heavenly
places where you sit and rule and reign, and you are working
out your sovereign, perfect, and holy will for your everlasting
glory and our eternal good. Give us eyes that see, we pray
in Jesus’ name, amen.