WWUTT 2412 Discerning the Times and What is Right (Luke 12:54-59)

Jesus rebuked the crowds who were with him and said that they need to discern the times and they need to discern for themselves what is right. You can't blame anybody else for what you don't know when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Luke 12:54-56 and Reading the Times

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we've been in chapter 12 and finishing up the chapter today as Jesus has one last address he's gonna make to the crowds. So let me read it here, beginning in verse 54.

Hear the word of the Lord. He 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 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? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer and the officer put you in prison.

I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. And it's in that last verse there, verse 59, where there's a common false teaching that likes to twist and manipulate that verse.

I'll explain it to you here in just a moment. But as we have this closing address, which Jesus makes to the crowds, he says to them to discern the times, that's the first portion, and then discern for yourself what is right.

That's the second part. Now, Jesus has mainly been teaching his disciples through chapter 12, but the crowds have been there. Right at the very start of the chapter, the crowds were approaching and Jesus began to teach his disciples certain things.

The word disciple means learner. So they're actually there to learn from Jesus. The crowds want something else. Either they want to see another miracle or they want more food after Jesus feeds the 5 ,000 or something like that.

But this is pretty common for Jesus to be teaching his disciples in the presence of many others. The whole audience during the Sermon on the Mount was Jesus' disciples and the crowds. And it says that the crowds gathered there as Jesus began to teach, but he was specifically addressing his disciples right at the start of Matthew 5.

Now, here in Luke 12, we've had some exchanges that have gone to the crowds and some other things where Jesus has been speaking to the disciples. But right here at the close of this teaching that we've had over the course of this chapter, it's just the crowds that Jesus is talking to.

So in verse 54, he says 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 scorching heat and it happens.

And then addressing the crowds as hypocrites. You know, when I was living in Western Kansas, it was kind of the same sort of thing. Whenever we would see a cloud somewhere in the West, pretty good guarantee that that was rain that was coming.

It was probably even a big storm. All the way out in Colorado, we're seeing these massive thunderheads that are coming from a state away, but they're always traveling from West to East. And so sure enough, sometime later in the day, that storm would be somewhere in Southwest Kansas.

Maybe it wasn't coming right toward us, but it was gonna hit somewhere in Western Kansas. So you can see clouds that are coming from a certain direction. You know that they only travel from this way to this way.

Just about 100 of the time, it's the way the jet stream works. Storms generally travel through a certain area following the same path almost every time. It's not always West to East. It could be some else.

Here in Arizona, in Southern Arizona, we'll get storms from the South or from the North. It's not always from West to East. But again, the weather patterns will follow the jet stream. So wherever you live, you're pretty used to the way the weather will move.

You know if you see a storm coming from a certain direction, it's probably going that way. And so this is what Jesus is addressing with the crowds. You know how to do this. You know how to read the sky.

And when you see the South wind blowing, you say there will be scorching heat and it happens. Does anybody live anywhere where a South wind doesn't mean that the temperatures are going to be warmer? At least here in the United States, I think everywhere there's a South wind, it generally means that the temperatures are going to be warmer, especially as opposed to a North wind, it's usually going to be a lot colder.

Luke 12:56-57 and the Responsibility to Discern Right and Wrong

So here you've got the South wind that's going to bring a scorching heat. It's going to be bad for the crops today because of this South wind. And so Jesus says to them in verse 56, you hypocrites, you know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky.

Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? In other words, just like you read the seasons or just like you read the weather, you should be able to discern what's happening in the time in the year in which you are living.

In 1 Chronicles 12, verse 32, it speaks of Issachar that there were men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. So there were men in Israel who were gifted, who knew how to read the times.

It doesn't mean that everybody just knows how to do that, but apparently these men of Issachar were especially gifted in being able to discern what was going on, what time it was, what was the hour, what do we need to be doing now?

What should be our focus? And Israel would rely on those men of Issachar to be able to tell them. When we read of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, one of those spiritual gifts is the ability to discern between spirits.

You know, there are several places in the New Testament that will have lists of spiritual gifts, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, repeated again, a few of those gifts repeated in chapter 14 as well. And then you have Ephesians chapter four.

So there are a few places where you have lists of spiritual gifts and those lists are never the same. So one of the things that says is that these lists are not comprehensive. Doesn't mean that every single spiritual gift that anybody can have is on every one of those lists.

In fact, there's only one spiritual gift that's consistent among all the different places that spiritual gifts are listed and that's the gift of prophecy. Most of those gifts are pretty casual. And I say casual in the sense that they're not miraculous gifts.

You know, things like the gifting of charity or the gifting of administration, a gift of helps. Those are not very showy gifts. So those who like to talk about spiritual gifts, they don't really put a lot of emphasis on those gifts.

Where's all the controversy generally surrounding the gifts? Speaking in tongues, ability to do miracles, dreaming dreams and having visions. Those are the kinds of spiritual gifts that tend to be caught up in this controversy.

And there's hardly any emphasis, hardly any. I mean, I can't even remember the last time when I was in a charismatic church and they actually did a sermon on spiritual gifts and talked about, you know, those lesser gifts.

The ones that nobody's really gonna give you any recognition for, but the church needs or the church doesn't function. Now, you don't have to be doing a sermon on spiritual gifts in order to be talking about spiritual gifts.

As if we have to say that phrase exactly for the sermon to be geared towards spiritual gifts. Things like this right here, where Jesus is telling the people to discern the times. This is an instruction to be disciplined.

And if you can't read the times, at least be able to rely on those who do have that gifting to know how to read these things and be able to instruct the rest of the church in them. Some people just have that gift.

They have that knack, that discernment to be able to read what's going on in the culture. And sometimes they might sound like prophets because they can so read the times that they can say, well, what's gonna happen next is this.

And then that'll happen. And you'll be left wondering, wow, was that guy a prophet? No, he just had an ability to read the times. Sometimes I can get that stuff right, but very seldom. For example, if I could toot my own horn for a second here, back in 2015, so more than a year before Donald Trump was elected president the first time, I said he was gonna be the next president.

I still have the sermon. I could play the sermon back in which I said that. I was preaching in Romans. I don't remember where in Romans, but I said, I'm pretty sure this guy is our next president. How do I know that?

Because he says all the things that I hear Christians say whenever I go out and do it, whenever I go do evangelism, professing Christians, people who say they're Christians, but they're really not. He says all the same stuff.

I love the Bible. It's my favorite book. Yeah, just try finding a professing Christian who doesn't say that. I go to church at least every Easter, every Christmas. That's when I go to church. Can't even tell you the number of times I've had an evangelism encounter with somebody who claimed to be a Christian and said, well, yeah, I go to church every Easter and every Christmas.

They'll even name the church that they go to, but if you were to go to that church and ask them if they knew who that person was, they wouldn't even remember the last time that they saw them. It was just how Trump had that ability to say things that were just like what I hear every professing Christian, but doesn't actually show the fruit in their lives saying.

Same verbiage. So I knew that he had the attention of all of those professing Christians who said the same things. Yeah, that's my guy. That's me too. I can relate to it. The Bible's my favorite book.

I love America. I love God, Jesus first. And so as long as he said the right words, he had everybody. And so that was one of those rare occasions where I could read that and I could say, there he is. That's our next president right there.

He says everything exactly right. None of the other Republican candidates were doing that. So he was very obviously going to lead in the field. At the time, his numbers were big anyway. So it wasn't like I was just kind of throwing that out there out of nowhere.

He had already declared that he was running for president and sure enough, he got it. And I wasn't surprised that he won it again either at the end of 2024. Sometimes it's easy to read the times. Other times might be a little more difficult.

And like I said, you want to be looking for the people in your church that may have that giftedness to read the times and the rest of the church, therefore be willing to listen to the person who is able to read the culture like that or read the way that things are going.

I'm seeing a lot of people right now online, especially among Christian YouTubers saying that it's a real fascinating time because there are comedians, comedian websites, comedian interview shows, and they're inviting Christians on and asking a bunch of questions.

Comedian shows, which is really bizarre. And you would think that the sweeping move of Christianity was going to be our most published people. You know, the guys who have all the books, the guys that are speaking at all the conferences, they're the ones that are going to lead our Christian movement and there's going to be an evangelism breakthrough and all this other kind of thing.

That's not who it is. It's YouTubers. It's people with Christian channels and they're appearing on these comedian sites. Like, you know, one of the first ones I think of is Wes Hough, who appeared on Joe Rogan at the very beginning of the year.

Joe Rogan, who's a comedian, has the most listened to podcast in the world. I wouldn't encourage you to listen to it, but he does. And yet Wes Hough, who is a Christian apologist from Toronto, Canada, invited on the show to talk about all of these things about the Bible and how we know it's true and where it's been authenticated.

He's been on other shows and not just him, but other Christians have been invited on what are otherwise not seen to be Christian shows. But some of these Christian apologists are appearing on there and able to share the gospel.

This is an interesting time. And we're seeing that here through the first half of 2025. So pray for that, because God is working in the midst of that. People who are watching these podcasts and stuff like that, or what do you call the video casts?

I don't remember.

Anyway, vlogs.

Nobody calls them vlogs anymore. Nobody uses the term blog and vlog, I don't think. But anyway, just a great way to use the medium that's been afforded to us through social media can be a cesspool sometimes.

In fact, it's a cesspool most of the time, but it's great to see these glimmers of light as God has been using it to share the gospel all over the world through channels that are getting millions and millions of views.

This is the time in which the gospel is desperately needed. Of course, the gospel's always needed. But right now, when we see things going the way that they're going in the culture and so many different directions, there are controversies around every corner.

How do you keep up with every controversy? How do you become an expert enough in that controversy that you can know how to speak into that? Frankly, folks, I don't think we've been, that any of us are meant to be experts in that.

There probably are people who know more about those subjects than others. And I don't think there's any reason to even say probably, there are. Some people know more about those subjects than others. But how do you speak into a situation like that if you don't know the situation very well?

Just share the gospel, it's needed. In any situation, in any conflict, in any kind of fad that pops up, you don't have to know all the nuts and bolts of it to know there are sinners involved in it. And those sinners need to know that the judgment of God is upon them unless they turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved.

Jesus is addressing these crowds here and saying, you should be able to recognize what time it is. If you can discern weather patterns, so you know whether it's going to rain or it's gonna be hot today, then you have a basic concept of what it means to read the times.

You can read the weather, you can read the times. And this specifically would be talking about how the Son of God is right there in front of them. The Messiah that you've been waiting for, he's here. And if you knew the scriptures well, then you would be able to know the times.

Now, one of the things behind this as Jesus is addressing the crowds with this is he's putting it on them, the responsibility on them to read the times or to know what is right. Because that's what's coming up next.

Why do you not know how to interpret the present time, Jesus said. And then verse 57, and why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Who is it that the crowds would typically rely upon to tell them what is right and wrong?

The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the teachers of the law, the scribes, those who were of the Sanhedrin. They're teachers they would rely upon to tell them about the times and to tell them what is right and wrong.

But Jesus is putting the responsibility on the crowds. You should be able to know this. The Pharisees obviously are not going to tell the people, oh, here it is, this is the time of the Messiah. Look at these scriptures and what it says.

Hey, remember that John the Baptist guy preparing the way? Well, here it is, Jesus is the guy. The Pharisees weren't gonna tell the people that. Our Messiah has come and he's Jesus of Nazareth. They hated Jesus.

They were plotting on how they could put him to death. So Jesus puts it on the crowds. You need to discern the times. And you're not gonna be able to blame your false teachers when that day of judgment comes.

Well, they led me wrong. As I've said before, regarding the relationship between a false teacher and the student or the disciple of the false teacher, it's a symbiotic relationship. The reason why these people go after these false teachers is because the false teachers are telling them things that they like, that they want to hear.

It appeals to their flesh. And so they accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, as Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 4. So the teacher is using the people, manipulating them for the teacher to be able to get what they want.

But the people go after the teacher because the teacher is telling them what they want. So that's the symbiotic relationship that exists between the false teacher and the student who follows it. But the student's not gonna be able to stand on the day of judgment and say, well, it wasn't my fault.

I was just doing what my teacher told me. They have a responsibility as well. You have a responsibility, my friends, to know what time it is, to know the reality of the situation that we are in, to see what's happening within the culture, and to know how we ought to speak into our current context.

And it's upon you to know what is right and wrong. You need to be able to discern that for yourself. And if you were in a church that has a pride flag waving out front, you end up before God on judgment day, and you go, I didn't know.

Are you serious? The flag was flying out front your church. You know what that means, and you should know what the Bible says. That's on you, and it's on nobody else. Nobody's gonna be able to blame anyone else for the judgment that they receive on judgment day.

You're gonna have to answer for your own sins or your own ignorance. Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right, Jesus says. As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer and the officer put you in prison.

Luke 12:58-59 and the Warning of Final Judgment

Now, this is a parable that Jesus is giving here. It's an analogy about being taken before the courts. It's not a direct one-to-one relation, okay? Where, okay, now, no, who's the magistrate and who's the judge and who's the officer?

We are trying to discern that in the spiritual realm. That's not what Jesus is trying to do here. And as I've said oftentimes with a parable, a parable has one point. We can dissect a parable so much that we're trying to read things into every little bit of symbolism that really ends up twisting the parable.

Look for the point of the parable first before you see any other symbolism that's in there. What's the point? Judgment's coming. And you need to settle with your accuser now. Who's your accuser? Well, your accuser on the day of judgment is going to be God.

Well, unless you're looking at the context of Romans 2, Paul even says, your own thoughts can accuse or excuse you. Romans 2 .15, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

So you are going to have to give an account for your careless thoughts, your careless words, your careless actions on judgment day. So settle with your accuser now. And how do you do that? By turning to the Lord Jesus Christ who paid our debt with his death on the cross, justified even by his resurrection from the dead, all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

If you don't, judgment awaits and you'll be cast into eternal punishment. Now, Jesus says in verse 59, I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. I said at the very beginning, there's a false teaching that twists that verse to mean something that it doesn't.

Do you know what it is? The Roman Catholics use this verse as proof or evidence of purgatory. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. But again, you're missing the point.

It's a parable. It's an illustration that Jesus is giving. Is it possible for you to pay your debt in hell?

No.

Is it possible for a person who owes a debt to be able to pay off that debt in prison?

No.

I just read a story recently. What was this story? It was somebody, oh, I remember what it was. I was actually reading the account of Madeline Murray O 'Hare and how she and some of her family were kidnapped and they were held for ransom.

Well, held for ransom. They were robbed. And then the guy who kidnapped them, who used to work for them, so he was an atheist himself, he ended up killing them in a very brutal and gruesome way. But the money that he stole from them, he ended up losing and it was stolen from him in return.

And then he was forced to have to pay it back. So he was sent to prison. He had to pay the money back, but he couldn't do it. He ended up dying in prison of cancer of some kind and he couldn't pay the money back.

Of course he couldn't pay the money back. He can't work a job that makes enough money to pay back the degree of money that he stole, which I think was like a half million dollars or something like that.

So it's kind of absurd the way that our prison system is set up, where if a person steals something from somebody, they go to prison. No, what they should be doing is paying it back. That's making restitution.

Instead, they go to prison where somebody else pays for them to be in prison and then the person that they stole from is just out that. They never get it back. It's absurd the way that our justice system is set up in this way.

But anyway, the whole point that I'm making here is when you get thrown in prison, you can't pay it back. And so that's the point of what Jesus is saying here. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.

How are you going to be able to do that? You cannot pay off your debt. Purgatory cannot pay off your debt. It's not possible. We owe a debt so great that we could never pay it back. It's been paid for by Christ.

And when he died on the cross, he said, it is finished. There's nothing more to pay. You don't go to purgatory and burn off 10 ,000 years worth of sin time in order to purify yourself that you may appear before God.

That's in the Bible nowhere. So the Roman Catholics, even the Eastern Orthodox will take this passage and they will twist it to mean something that it doesn't. It doesn't mean that you go into hell and pay off your sin debt with a purgatory sentence.

It means that when you are cast into judgment, there's no way for you to pay it back and you will be there forever. That's the point that Jesus was making. And as he's addressing the crowds with this, it should be enough to startle them in their pants to realize I need to be more discerning.

I need to recognize what time it is that the savior is here. And I need to recognize also what is right and what is wrong. And as far as discerning the times goes, that's the big one. Knowing that today is the day of salvation.

Life is short, judgment is coming. How can I be saved? Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And my friends, for the rest of us, that's a message that we need to be sharing with a lost and dying world.

We need to discern the times and see there that the time is short. The time for the gospel is now. Heavenly father, I thank you for what we have read. I pray that it is convicting for us, though it may be that Jesus was addressing unbelievers.

There's something about this that needs to shake us to our core. That we not just be lackadaisical in the days that we are in, but we recognize the urgent need for the gospel to be spoken into a culture that is very quickly and rapidly coming into judgment.

We need to discern for ourselves what is right and what is wrong and call out sin and point to the gospel. Give us a heart of boldness to do those things even in our present day. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.