Wednesday, March 23, 2022 PM

We'll go ahead and get started. We'll be in Luke chapter 17, we'll be reading verses 20 through 25. Luke chapter 17, verses 20 through 25. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for this day.

I pray that you would help us as we read your word together, help us to understand it and to embrace it, that by the grace of your Holy Spirit, there would be a hearty amen in our hearts according to the truth that we find here, and that you would have your way in our lives accordingly.

We pray that you would help us as we intercede for those who are in need, as we bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ as we pray together and seek your face and ask for your merciful response to our needs.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke chapter 17, verses 20 through 25. Now, when he was asked by God when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, see here or see there, for indeed the kingdom of God is within you.

Then he said to the disciples, the days will come 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 here or look there. Do not go after them or follow them, for as the lightning that of one part under heaven, the other part of heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in his day.

But first you must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. So Jesus has been talking about the kingdom of God in the gospel of Luke early on in the gospel. Jesus goes from town to town, village to village, preaching the gospel of the as he does, he performs miracles, he raises the diseased, he raises the dead even, and casts out demons, all boils down to the king has come and he's bringing a new arrangement.

Where once the evil powers were winning, now Christ is pushing them back. Where once death and sickness are the main fears, now Christ is pushing those back. And we see him preaching time and again that sinners of all kinds are to repent of their sins and to believe in him, so they would have forgiveness.

And these are the critical moments when Jesus would say to a paralyzed man or to someone else, your sins are forgiven you. Now the religious leaders were happy to see, in general, sick people get well just so long it wasn't on the Sabbath, they were okay with it.

But when he started saying things like your sins are forgiven you, well this was very troublesome to them. Now they're asking him, as usual, we should interpret their questions as those of a skeptic. They were not asking questions so as to learn or to gain information, they were asking questions to try to be critical, to criticize, or to poke holes, or to somehow just didn't know what he was talking about, to prove that he was not who he said he was.

So they asked him when the kingdom of God would come. Well, what does Jesus say? What does he say? Okay, anybody have a different translation in your midst? Yeah, he keeps on saying that, doesn't he? He says the good news of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom.

So one of the questions that we should ask is the kingdom of God in their midst. One of the first things he's got to do is to tell them that the kingdom of God is not operating like other kingdoms that they would envision, right?

Remember that Jesus, when he was in conversation with Pilate, Pilate's trying to get at the heart of why the Jews are so upset with Jesus, and if he can peg Jesus as some sort of revolutionary trying to overthrow the Roman occupiers, or even just simply to destabilize the kingship of Herod.

He'd have something to pin on Jesus and some sort of legal reason to execute him, and when he confronts Jesus about this, Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this world, it's not sourced in this world, right?

It's a kingdom of heaven, right? It's not a throne on the earth. It doesn't have boundaries and borders on the earth. It's a kingdom whose throne is in heaven, and we have a very similar connection even as Jesus said of his followers, you know, you are in the world but not of the world.

So his kingdom is in the world even though it is not of the world, and so Jesus is going to explain to the Pharisees and to everyone who's listening how the kingdom of God is different. Now, they knew what they were talking about, and they knew what the kingdom of God was.

They had all read Daniel 2. There was a statue that stood upon the earth in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, stood on the earth, and there were four kingdoms of men. There was the golden head of Babylon, and there was the silver arms and chest of Persia and the Medo-Persian empire, and there was the bronze waist and thighs of the Grecian empire, and then there were the iron legs and the feet of clay and iron, the empire of Rome.

And this was all the empires of man, and it was an image, and it's used in the expression of the kinds of images that man would make to fall down before in worship, right? An idol, the idol of the state.

Well, this was all of man. These were the empires of man, and look, they're standing on the earth. These were the kingdoms of the earth. But then something else happened. Something else happened. There was a stone that was uncut by human hands, not fashioned by man, not shaped in some fashion by men in a pleasing form that man would care for, not idolatrous at all.

And it was uncut by human hands, and it came from heaven, a kingdom from heaven, and it impacted the statue, in the feet of the statue during the time of the Roman emperors. And then this statue encompassed and defeated and became this great mountain that lasted forever while the empires of man come and go, come and go, come and go.

They understood that there was a kingdom of God. They wanted to know when it was going to show up. And Jesus says, it's already arrived. It's already arrived. As I was talking about this little piggy named Tiberius on Sunday, the Messiah has already been revealed.

Kingdom of God is already in your midst. And look, it's not going to come like with the normal observations where you have, perhaps in their day, soldiers marching and defeating another army, new standards being raised, heralds declaring who the new emperor of these lands are going to be, and the new taxes being issued, new governorships, and so on and so forth.

Those were cataclysmic things when empires went to war and one fell before the other, and great tumult ensued. And so Jesus says to them that the kingdom of God is in your midst. It's in your midst. And he said, it does not come with observation.

Notice how he puts it. They will not say, see here or see there. So they're not going to be able to go over here and say, this area right here, that's kingdom of God. This part over here isn't. That's not how it's going to be.

There's not going to be lines on a map. There are not going to be stone walls cutting things off from one side to the other. That's not how this kingdom works. He says the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Now, he's already been teaching about that. In Luke chapter 13, we read about the kingdom of God. He says in verse 18 of Luke 13, and he said, what is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?

It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden, and it grew and became a large tree and the birds of the air nested in its branches. Now, the image of the tree with the birds of the air nesting in the branches comes from Daniel and Ezekiel.

And every time that illustration is used, it talks about nations or kingdoms being a part of a large empire. And so that's what Jesus is doing here. He's talking about the kingdom of God being one in which all the nations will be blessed.

Kind of like what God told Abraham about Abraham's seed and you, all the nations or the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Jesus is probably thinking about Genesis 12, and he's using this familiar illustration.

Verse 20, and again, he said to what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven or yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. And in this, we have a little bit of yeast inside of a lump of dough.

It's in there. Good luck getting it out. Good luck isolating it. It's in there. It's quiet. It's secret. It's hidden. But boy, is it spreading and having an impact. And now think about what Jesus says to the Pharisees.

The kingdom of God is not coming with some observable sign in the sense of, see, it's right there or look over there. There it is. Not like that. It's already within you. Kind of like yeast inside of a dough.

It's already in your midst at work in the world, growing and having its impact. And it's going to have, according to Jesus, a worldwide impact. An impact for the nations. And he says then to the disciples, after the Pharisees asked this question, he says something very related.

He says something related to the disciples. Verse 22, the days will come 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 here or look there.

Do not go after them or follow them. So you see, there's two connections between what Jesus says to the Pharisees and his response to them. And what Jesus says to his disciples. The first connection is that when we hear about the kingdom of God and we hear about the son of man, both of those show up in Daniel chapter seven, verses 13 and 14, which we'll look at.

Secondly, did you notice that even as Jesus says to the Pharisees, the kingdom of God has not come with observable signs like see here, see there. And then he says to the disciples, don't believe them when they say the son of man, look here, look there, right?

It's the same language. So what's the connection between the kingdom of God and the son of man? Well, simply that the son of man is the one in charge of the kingdom of God. The kingdom that is envisioned in Daniel chapter two is taken up again under new images in Daniel chapter seven, rather than a fourfold statue, we have four different beasts.

And even as a stone crashes into the statue, then we have a vision of the son of man in dominion over everyone as well. So very similar structure. In verse 13 of Daniel seven, we read, I was watching in the night visions and one and behold, one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.

He came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away in his kingdom, the one which will not be destroyed.

And Jesus says to his disciples, there's going to be some days ahead of you when you're going to want to see one of those days of the son of man. Meaning we want the son of man, we want the reigning King Christ to show up and show up big.

Remember reading in the old Testament about the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord was not a boring day. The day of the Lord was generally a very cataclysmic day, a great day of judgment, a day of the Lord upon Egypt, a day of the Lord upon Assyria, a day of the Lord upon Babylon.

In this sense, Jesus acknowledges that his disciples are going to have a desire to see one of these days of the son of man, a day in which he is clearly triumphant and victorious. And he's saying, you're going to have these desires and then it's not going to pan out.

Why would they have those desires? Well, it's very simple. They were going to live in a world that was going to be very hard to live in. There was going to be a lot of persecution from the Jews, which Jesus called later on a synagogue of Satan.

They were like Cain who was of the wicked one and slew his brother. They were jealous of the Christians and they were hateful towards them. It would be difficult as well, especially when Roman persecution was added to the Jewish persecution.

And it would simply be difficult. We could think of the Macedonian Christians who suffered in poverty, the Judean Christians who suffered through famine. We could think of all the difficulties we read throughout the book of Acts.

How many times when things go wrong, really bad with the disciples say, okay, Lord, let's go. Come on. And Jesus cautions them and counsels them. And he says, look, you're going to want to see it. And it's not going to show up on your timetable, but your desire to see it will open you up to deception because they will say to you, verse 23, they're going to prey upon those desires.

They're going to prey on those desires. You want to see one of the days of the son of man and verse 23, they're going to say to you, look here or look there, right? They're going to say, oh, look at this observable sign over here or look there at that over there.

Jesus says, do not go after them or follow them. Now in the larger context, we've been studying, we've studied that in the Olivet Discourse on Sunday nights. And the temptation was going to be to stay in Judea, maybe go into a wilderness pocket there in Judea and camp out, or to even flee into the inner sanctuaries in Jerusalem, into the temple where you would expect to find Messiah.

But great danger was coming upon that region and the entire city was going to fall. And Jesus says to them, look, in days to come, when you desire to see one of those days of the son of man, where he was going to come, deliver you and judge the enemies that are oppressing you.

He says, when they say to you, look here, look there, they're totally off because when the son of man comes in judgment, it's like he's gonna come from everywhere, right? It's not going to be here or there, it's going to be everywhere.

For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines at the other part under heaven, so also the son of man will be in his day. And we've also studied that image on Sunday nights, that lightning that we think of in terms of the brightness and the loudness or the quickness and the power, the electricity and so on and so forth, the lightning is used time and again throughout scripture as an image of judgment.

And it is a helpful example of judgment in the sense that it is swift, but in the sense that you can see it travel across the sky. I don't know if you get to see a lightning show like that, but it's pretty impressive.

And the judgment that was going to come, that the rest of this chapter is going to reference, was going to be something that was manifest throughout the entire region of Judea, not like, oh, over there or over here, come check this place out over here.

He says, no, no, no, when my judgment comes, the one that you desire, it's going to be coming from everywhere, as we had in history. There was a Roman legions from the north and the south and several avenues of chaos.

And he says in verse 25, but first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And so he gives them the timing of it. He gives them the timing of it. So the Pharisees ask the question, well, when's the kingdom of God going to show up?

He says, well, it's already in your midst. A little bit earlier, he was casting out demons. And he said, if I cast out demons by the power of God, then the kingdom of God is already in your midst. It's already here.

Don't you understand this? Jesus said in Luke 16, that John was the greatest of the prophets. And since John, the kingdom of God has been preached. So he's, you know, John's the forerunner of the Messiah.

He's the one who announced the coming of the King. Here's the King. So Jesus said ever since John, now the kingdom of God is being preached. So Jesus is correcting the Pharisees' understanding. The Pharisees were going to look for something far off.

They're going to look for something incredibly cataclysmic, an entire shifting of geopolitical forces upon the face of the planet. And Jesus corrects them and says, no, that's not how the kingdom of God comes.

And he's already given several examples already in the gospel of Luke. And the kingdom of God advances within us, among us, in our midst as the rule of Christ is being submitted to. Throughout his ministry, there are those who rejoice in him and submit to him and those who do not, those who reject him and resist him.

And Jesus has several parables about that. But the kingdom of God advances according to the rule of Christ. And he rules in his people, and then he also is sovereign and judges those who oppose him. And we see that prior to what Jesus says about the lightning and the son of man being so in his day, prior to that, we see Christ's death and resurrection.

He's going to suffer many things to be rejected by this generation. It's important for us to remember that Jesus is the final word on the kingdom of God. It does no good for us to, well, the kingdom of God is, or the kingdom of heaven is, those are synonymous terms.

Jesus gets to say what it is, right? Jesus gets to say what it is. He gets to define it. He gets to tell us what that is. He explains it. He establishes it. He rules it. And he suffered and died and rose again to bring it all to pass.

Hebrews 2 .10 says that he is our captain, trailblazing the way through suffering to glory, bringing many sons to glory. Philippians 2 tells us that in his humbling and his condescension, that he became one of us, taking upon human flesh and suffered and died, even the obedience of death to the cross.

For this reason, God has also highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name. For this reason, for his humble obedience, for his death upon the cross, as he says here in verse 25, he talks about his death and rejection.

So, the kingdom of God comes by the rule of Christ and his servants and against his enemies. It has come because of his death and resurrection and ascension. We are to let Christ define his kingdom so that we are not deceived, so that we are not deceived either by our own desires or by those who would entice us away.

As Paul said, the simplicity of Christ. And Paul says to one of the churches that he was jealous before them with a godly jealously because he had betrothed them to one husband, that is Jesus Christ. I think it's important for us to remember in our current context that people today look around at how things are going.

Was it Russia-Ukraine or China-Taiwan or the Royal Canadian Mounties versus preachers or whatever the conflicts are. And we have a right desire to see that God would act in a very strong and decisive way and judge the wicked and save his people.

And that is a good desire. It's a desire that Jesus' disciples had. But he also cautioned them and said, look, it's on my terms, not yours. So don't let those good desires be opportunity for others to deceive you.

Meanwhile, let's recognize that God has his way of doing things, his way of orchestrating things. And none of us would have come up with the idea that the Messiah would have to suffer many things and be rejected by his generation to bring about the kingdom.

That wouldn't have been our way of doing it. And certainly today, we don't appreciate some of the things that go on, but we have to trust in the one who is the king and how he's arranging things. And the kingdom of God is still among us.

Christ is still reigning. And by submitting to him and following him, following the lamb wherever he goes, Christ is praised and God does his will on earth as it is in heaven. Which again is one of the first times we see in the Gospel of Luke about the kingdom of God is where Jesus tells us to pray for it.

We should be praying, thy kingdom come. Not with observable signs, oh, look here or look there. Praying God's kingdom come means God's kingdom within us, among us, in our midst, the reign of Christ more and more evident.

All right. Well, let's turn our attention to some prayer requests tonight.