Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 17:20-37
All right. Find the Gospel of Luke in your Bible. If you didn't bring a Bible, pull your phone out, grab a Bible in front of you. Find the Gospel of Luke. Find chapter 17. This morning we're going to finish Luke 17. There's an outline if you'd like to follow along in the outline that's in the bulletin. Luke 17. Our passage is verse 20 to 37. I hope at this point in our study of Luke that most of you know, Luke 19.10 says the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And I also hope that at this point some of you have sort of not only latched onto that theme verse but Luke 9.51 is in the back of your mind at this point in Luke and you remember that in Luke 9.51 Jesus made this decision to set his face to go to Jerusalem. He didn't make a straight line trip there. He's sort of taking a wandering route. But at that point in the story, the idea that Luke's trying to tell us is that Jesus has made the conscious decision to go to Jerusalem. And he knows that when he gets to Jerusalem, he's going to die for sinners, a substitutionary death on the cross. All of that's in the background of our passage this morning and the big idea is very, very simple. Here's the big idea that we're looking at this morning. The king and his kingdom have come and the king and his kingdom will come. The king and his kingdom have come and it's also true that the king and his kingdom will come. And we're going to read these verses in just a minute. First I want you to look at Luke 17 verse 20. I just want you to see how this passage begins. Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them. That's an interesting question from an interesting group of people at this point in the story of Luke's gospel. You know that the Pharisees hate Jesus and more than just hating Jesus, they've already made up their mind that they're going to murder him. They've colluded together, they've begin plotting, what are we going to do with this guy? How are we going to get rid of him? They've made the decision to murder Jesus. And here they come and they say to him, "Jesus, we want to know when is the kingdom of God going to come?" You understand that they really didn't want an answer. They weren't just sort of on pins and needles waiting for Jesus to give them some sort of theological insight that they lacked. This is a total set up question. Everything that they're doing in relationship with Jesus at this point in the story, they're trying to bait him, they're trying to trap him, they're trying to trick him. They're playing this weird game of theological doctrinal biblical gotcha and they're just trying to set Jesus up so that maybe he'll say the wrong thing and then they can pounce on him. And so they say to him here, "When will the kingdom of God come?" And Jesus gives a really interesting answer. In fact, he gives two answers. He gives one answer to the Pharisees. It's pretty short and it's brief and it's to the point. And then he gives a longer answer, a more detailed answer to his disciples. Here's what he says to the Pharisees, to those who did not believe in him. He emphasizes the presence of the kingdom of God. In other words, what he basically says you'll see in just a minute is, it's already here. Jesus, when is the kingdom of God going to come? And he looks at these guys who are trying to trick him, trying to trap him, they don't want to learn from him and he just basically says, "It's already here. It's in your midst. It's standing right in front of you. I'm the king. If the king is here, the kingdom is come." But then he looks at the disciples and he says to the disciples, "The kingdom is going to come." And he talks to them about what that's going to be like and more importantly what it's not going to be like when the kingdom comes. So to those who did not believe, he emphasizes the presence of the kingdom, to those who did believe Jesus talked about the coming of the kingdom. I want you to look with me at Luke 17. We're going to read beginning in verse 20. That's really loud. Can we turn that down? And we're going to go all the way to verse 37. Or to God says this, "Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, 'Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is.' Or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.'" And he said to the disciples, "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 or 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. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were 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, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop with his goods in the house not come down to take them away and 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 night there will be two in one bed, one will be taken in the other left. There will be two women grinding together, one will be taken in the other left. And they said to him, "Where, Lord?" And he said to them, "Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." Let's pray. Father, we believe that your word is true. We believe that it is powerful. We believe that it has authority over our lives. Our prayer this morning is simply that you would help us to understand it, help us to see how it might apply to our lives today, and help us to respond in a way that would honor you and bring you glory. We love you and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. I have some good news for you this morning. If you were here on Wednesday night, you remember this story, I shared it with you Wednesday. But if you are here this morning, you survived the ending of the world apocalypse that was supposed to take place Wednesday. So I don't know what you did this last Wednesday. You may feel like you didn't accomplish much, but you accomplished a lot. You survived the end of the world apocalypse. Listen to this story. The E. Bible Fellowship, an online affiliation headquartered near Philadelphia, has based its prediction of an October obliteration, and that's obliteration of the earth. In a previous claim that the world would end May 21st, 2011, well that claim proved false. The organization is confident that it has the correct date this time, quote, from this guy right here. According to what the Bible is presenting, it does appear that October 7th, 2015, will be the day that God has spoken of, in which the world will pass away. It will be gone forever annihilated, said Chris McCann, the leader and founder of E. Bible Fellowship. McCann based his prediction on the blood moon, a lunar eclipse combined with a super moon that occurred September 27th. This prediction stems from an earlier prediction by Harold Camping, a Christian radio host who was based in California. In 2011, Camping used his radio station to notify people that the world would end May 21st, 2011. When that turned out to be incorrect, Camping revised his prediction to October 2011. That also turned out to be incorrect, and Camping later retired from public life. Good idea. McCann believes that Camping's prediction did have some truth. That day, understand what I'm about to read to you, I have no idea what this means, I'm just reading you the article. That day was quote unquote judgment day because it was actually the day God stopped the process of selecting which churchgoers will survive Wednesday's massacre. Following May 21st, 2011, God turned his attention and decided which non-churchgoers to save according to McCann, heavy on the according to McCann. The E. Bible Fellowship believes that God said he would devote 1,600 days to this task, bringing us to October 7th, 2015. Last time I checked, this is October 11th, so congratulations. You made it, you survived the world ending apocalypse. Look, the names and the faces change with this kind of stuff. I just happened to find this guy this last week. I was looking on my Twitter feed, and I saw this Twitter account that said the world's going to end Wednesday, and I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. I might should check that out." So I looked at the account and sort of did some digging, and this is the guy that I came up with. So, obviously, he's come, and he's gone, and he's probably going to do exactly what Harold Camping did. It's time to retire from public life and go hide under a rock somewhere, but you know that he wasn't the first guy to do this sort of nonsense, and he won't be the last. It started hundreds of years ago in the United States with a guy named William Miller, and regretfully, I have to say, he was a Baptist preacher, and he went around, and he told all these people the world was going to end, and he had decoded the Bible, and he figured all this out, and all these people sold their stuff, and they went on this hilltop one night, and they were all ready for Jesus to come back, and the sun came up the next morning, and everybody sort of said, "Can I get a do-over on all my stuff that I just sold, and liquidated?" No, it's too late. And William Miller, amazingly, this happens all the time, you would think that the people out there with him on the hilltop would say, "Okay, you're a lunatic. We're double lunatics for believing you, but fool me once, fool me twice, right?" But William Miller convinced almost all of them, "I just, I got the math a little bit wrong." Look, when it comes to world time, end of the world, end times apocalypse, your math better be pretty good. And William Miller said, "I just got the math a little bit wrong," and he convinced all these people. I just, I missed it by a few years, so he bumped his date back, the exact same thing happened, and William Miller retired from public life. And then a guy came along named Harold Camping, and maybe you remember 2011, Camping saying, "It's May 21st," and that comes, and that goes, and then you got this guy, Scott McCann, and he ends up, and he says, "No, no, no, no, William Miller, he didn't know what he was doing. Harold Camping, he was sort of close, but off a little bit, "I'm the one who's figured it out. I know when the world's going to end, I know when Jesus is going to come back, and he's come and he's gone, and you know that there's going to be another one. Maybe it's going to be some sort of weird cult group leader like David Koresh that does it next. Maybe it's somebody that we think of as one of our own who's going to release some new book, and it's going to have a scary cover, and it's going to have a catchy title, and it's going to say something like, "The world's ending. You better read my book, come to my conference, pay me money, send me a check, do something." And as your pastor, what I'm saying to you is, you just let that book sit on the bookshelf at the store. You just don't click the button on Amazon when it's time to check out. Don't listen to the people who say, "I know when Jesus is coming back, I know when the kingdom's coming, just listen to Jesus," and Jesus sets it forth very plainly for us. I'll be honest with you. He doesn't give us the answers that a lot of people want to hear. If you're looking for a timeline, if you're looking for some sort of prophecy chart, Jesus doesn't lay that out, but he does tell us what we need to know about the coming of the kingdom. And so we're going to dig in and we're going to ask this question, "What will it be like when Jesus returns as the king to rule all kings?" He gives us a few things to watch for, to look for, to think about. First thing you need to see is this, and we're going, "This is the one spot we're going to go out of verse order here," but this is important. The return of Jesus is preceded by the suffering of Jesus. Right in the middle of this passage is the most important thing that Jesus said to the disciples. And you understand, the Pharisees asked the question, "Jesus looked at the Pharisees and He said, 'I'm the king, the kingdom is in your midst.'" Then He turned away from the Pharisees to His disciples to the men who believed in them, and this is the most important thing He said to them. First, the kingdom is going to come, but first He, Jesus, the Son of Man, must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. That's Luke 19-10. He must suffer and He must be rejected because the Son of Man came to seek you and to save you. I don't care what National Geographic says, I don't care what the latest we discovered the truth about Jesus on whatever news station or history station says to you, Jesus came to this earth not to tell nice stories, not to impress people with miracles, not to do nice things for other people, not to encourage you to be more moral. He came here on a rescue mission to seek you and to save you. And I know that some of you, you've been with me since Luke 1, and you say, "Okay, we get it." Again, but you can't ever get past that. He came for one central purpose. Yes, He did some teaching. Yes, He cast demons out of people. Yes, He had a lot of interesting things to say, and He helped a lot of folks, but He came to seek you and to save you. And He says to His guys, "While He's walking on the earth, don't forget, this must happen. I must suffer and die because that's the whole reason I came. If I don't do that, all this other stuff that happened is a total waste, all the miracles, the walking on the water, the feeding of the multitudes, all of these great things that you've seen, all the nice moral platitudes I've given you, they're all worthless. If I don't suffer, if I'm not betrayed by this generation, if I don't die for your sins on the cross in Jerusalem, and here's the reality. Some of you are here this morning, and maybe you're very interested in what Jesus has to say about when He comes the second time, but you really don't understand why He came the first time. You're just like the Pharisees. You don't really believe in Him, you're just sort of curious. And Jesus is looking at you in the eyeballs, just like He looked at the Pharisees, and He's saying, "The King has come," and that's what you really need to understand. The kingdom is present. Now, I'm here. In your midst, He says to the Pharisees, "I've come to seek you and to save you." And before you worry a lick about my second coming, you need to come to grips with my first coming. And some of you need to do that. Maybe you're a very religious person, even to the point where you would be willing to come to Jesus with your questions. The Pharisees did that. But maybe you've never truly repented of your sin and put your faith in Jesus Christ. And what the King would say is, "Understand, this is the most important thing about my first coming. I came to seek you and to save you, and you need to turn away from anything that keeps you from me, and you need to trust me and follow me." You need to do that first. So He says to the Pharisees, "The kingdom is already in your midst." He says right in the middle, "Before I come again, I've got to suffer." That's the most important reason I came. That's the whole point in coming, is to suffer and to seek and to save the lost. Here's the second thing Jesus says, talking to His disciples. He says, "Believers are going to desire His return long before He actually returns." So I don't know if you ever have the experience of watching the news or maybe experiencing something in your personal life, and you just sort of feel this weight of wanting Jesus to come back and to make it all right. The Bible says, "Yeah, it's going to be like that." Maybe you felt that in a hospital room. Maybe you felt it in this room when you came to a funeral. Maybe you feel it at home in your living room, watching the news of the latest disaster or shooting or whatever, and you just sort of feel this weight of saying, "Just come back." Jesus says, "You're going to feel that." Look what He says in verse 22, "The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man and you won't see it, won't be time yet. You'll be ready personally, but it's not the time. And you're going to have this desire to see me as the King, exalted overall, and it's just not going to happen yet. And it's not just you and I that feel that. The Bible describes in the book of Revelation that there are Christians who have died and are in heaven now with Jesus, right? These are people who no longer struggle with the things we struggle with. They're no longer sick. They're no longer battling sin in their life. They're glorified believers in the presence of Jesus, and they're watching things play out on earth, Revelation 6, and some of these guys look over at Jesus as they're watching things down here and they say, "How long till you go make everything right?" How long, Jesus, they're in heaven, waiting. How long till you go down there and just fix it all and punish sin and vindicate your people and get revenge, vengeance? They ask for vengeance on the people who killed them. And you know what Jesus says in the very next verse, Revelation 6, 11? He doesn't say, "Oh, that's not a nice thing to pray. You shouldn't want me to go do that." He says, "You just need to wait a little bit longer. Wait a little bit longer." Saints in heaven, the saints on earth, Jesus says that's the way it's going to be. You're going to long to see even just one of the days of the Son of Man, but it's not time yet. That's how the Bible ends. If you've ever made it to the end of the Bible, Revelation chapter 22, John gets to the end. He's seen this great vision. He's going to put in the capstone on the Scriptures. And one of the last things he says in the Bible is, "Come, Lord Jesus." It ends with a prayer. Please come. We are ready for you to come. Things are a mess. We've ruined it. We want you to be recognized as King. Come, come, come, please come. And he says, "Wait." You're going to desire his return long before he actually returns. Verse 3, "Believers are going to be seduced by false messiahs and false predictions." This is pretty easy in the text. Verse 23 and 24, Jesus says, "They're going to say to you, 'Look here, look there.' Somebody's coming. Something's happening. It's a blood moon. It's a messiah. It's this. It's that." Jesus just says, "Don't listen to them. Don't go out there. Don't follow them." He says, "Let me tell you what it's going to be like when I come." There's lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other. So will the Son of Man be in his day. One of the things I love about West Texas is a good thunderstorm where it just rattles the house and rattles the windows and you can see the lightning and it's dark and it lights up the house. And Jesus says, "Look, when I come back, it's going to be like this big thunderstorm and the lightning crashes. You don't have to look at your buddy and say, 'Was that lightning?' What was that? You know what it is. You can see it from this side of town to that side of town. Everyone knows." He says, "It's going to be like that. Don't worry about all these people who say, 'Oh, it's a blood moon. Well, it's this. Well, it's that. Well, it's the next thing. It's the date. We've decoded it. We finally know. No. When he comes, you'll know it'll be like lightning that crashes from one end of the earth to the other. Everyone is going to know. On that day when he comes back and is playing, is lightning crashing right in front of you. You don't need to call up Chris McCann and say, 'Was that it?' I'm not sure. Was that it? You don't need to call me. Don't put me on speed dial, pastor. I think Jesus just came back. Was that it? Can you verify? You're not going to need to do that. It's going to be obvious to everyone." So he says, "In the meantime, don't worry about those who try to lead you astray with this theory or that theory." Here's the fourth thing he says, and I lumped all this together because Jesus lumps it all together as he talks about a couple of guys. The return of Jesus will be unexpected. People will be busy with everyday life and wickedness will be great in the earth. And again, I didn't just run out of room on the outline and have to mash three points into one. Jesus makes all of these points when he talks about two men, Noah and Lot. His return will be unexpected. People are going to be busy with just everyday life and wickedness will be great in the earth. Look at verse 26. He says, "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of man." What were they doing in the days of Noah? Well, they were 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, as it was in the days of Lot, what were they doing in the days of Lot? Well, they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur, rain down from heaven and destroyed them all. So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed? It's going to be unexpected. He says, "In Noah's day, people weren't waiting on a mountain for the flood to come. They didn't expect it. In Lot's day, there wasn't a watch party in Sodom for when God was going to blow the city up. It came without warning. It came unexpectedly. And he says, "It's going to be exactly the same when I come." Don't worry about the watch parties. Don't worry about this big countdown. It's going to be unexpected. Things are going to be busy. This may not sound like a very spiritual thing, but just understand that Jesus is a pretty spiritual guy. And when he wanted to describe his return, this is one of the things he said. He said, "Look, think back to Noah's day. They were eating and drinking. They were having dinner, breakfast, lunch, and they were getting married and doing married things. It was just normal life. What was it like in Lot's day? Well, it was pretty much the same. Folks were having dinner. Folks were trying to make a buck, buying and selling. The farmers were out getting ready for next year's crop or whatever, and it's just sort of busy-ness of life was going on, and Jesus says, "It's going to be that way. People are going to be busy with lots of different things." But he's also making the point that wickedness is going to be great. Of all these Old Testament characters he could have picked out, he picks out these two guys, Noah and Lot. If you've been in Sunday school and your class is studying the gospel project, we just talked about Noah. In Genesis 6.5, it leads us right up to the flood, and Genesis 6.5 says that in Noah's day, God looked down on what he had created, and he saw that the intentions, every intention of the thoughts of our hearts were only evil continually. That's a lot of superlative words in one sentence. Very intention, not just of your actions or your words, but of the thoughts of your hearts. Every part of you to the core of who you are was only evil continually. That's what it was like in Noah's day. And you know what the Bible says about Sodom. It was a city that was gross in immorality. Sexual immorality was rampant. We read later in the Bible that they were also greedy and inhospitable to people, and Jesus says, "It's going to be wicked." The earth will be wicked when I come back. Don't have any illusion that you're going to march triumphant as a church, and you're going to Christianize every corner of the globe. It's not going to be like that. These two kingdoms are going to grow up side by side. The gates of hell will not stop my church. It is going to grow. It is going to spread. You are going to make disciples of all nations, but wickedness will increase. And when I return, the earth is going to be a wicked place. If you ever just sat down, maybe when you're watching the news, maybe when you experience something painful in your life and just think about how bad the world is, you ever do that? You ever just sort of get that feeling that we are literally going to hell in a handbasket. Sometimes I have people come talk to me and they want to talk about the latest tragedy or the latest cultural development or whatever. And they sit down and they say something like this. I just don't see how God could be patient with us much longer. How bad can it get? This is going on here and that's going on there and surely God's not going to put up with this much longer. And some people come and they want to believe that Jesus is coming tomorrow because of how wicked it is today. Can I tell you something? You go back and you read Christians from every generation, including the guys who lived right after Jesus went back to heaven. Every generation, they all thought that. You are not the first person to feel that or think that. You can go back and read guys from England and Europe, you can go back and read people from Africa, you can go back and read Christians all over the world of every generation. And they have this feeling as they look around, how much worse could it get? Surely God's not going to put up with us that much longer, is he? The reality is that we are wicked and that the earth is a bad place and that there are lots of terrible things going on. And the fact of the matter is God may not be patient with us much longer. Just sort of have a little bit of historical perspective to say we're not the first generation to think that. We're not the first people who have walked on this earth who thought it can't get worse than this. Surely God's going to send Jesus back soon. People have been saying that for years and decades and centuries. And when you see this last point that wickedness will be great in the earth, be slow to look around and say, well, that newest development, that's so bad, that's just going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, that's going to tip us over the edge, Jesus has got to be coming back soon. Be slow because people have thought that before. And Jesus says right here it's going to be like the days of Noah. It's going to be like the days of Lot. I'm going to come unexpectedly. People are going to be very, very busy with life and wickedness is going to be great. That's going to be how it is. And you don't get to determine when wickedness is too great. That's not your job. That's God's job. So Jesus says this is what it's going to be like when I return. One last thought about Noah and Lot, I didn't put this on your outline, Noah and Lot. If you read the New Testament, the New Testament has some positive things to say about these guys. So for example in Hebrews 11 and the sort of this list of heroes who were faithful people, Noah was listed and it says Noah had faith in God and he's commended for having faith in God. And in 2 Peter, Peter talks about Lot and he describes Lot as a righteous man who was agonized by the wickedness that he saw all around him and Sodom and Gomorrah. So the New Testament says some nice things about these guys. But have you read the Old Testament? Noah and Lot had issues, both of them. They both had issues with alcohol and they both had issues raising their children. And you can go back and read the stories if you're not familiar with them. All I'm saying to you is this, Noah and Lot are not our heroes. And sometimes we take these Old Testament characters and we put them on this pedestal and we say, I want to be just like Noah, I just want to be just like Lot. You really don't. Trust me. Here's one positive thing we can say about Noah and Lot. For all their shortcomings, for all the sins they struggled with, they knew where to look for salvation. They knew that they couldn't do it themselves. They knew that they needed to trust God and believe in His promises. And if you learn anything from those two guys, in addition to what Jesus is talking about here, take that away and say, I need to realize that I'm no different than Noah or Lot. There's only one hero of the Bible and it's not me and it's not you and it's not Noah and it's not Lot. It's Jesus Christ. And you need to make sure that you have looked to Him for salvation. Noah got that and Lot got that. Here's the last thing I want you to see in the passage. Jesus talking about judgment at the end. He says, judgment will be swift and decisive. Swift and decisive. I give you a few verses, you can look these up on your own. Judgment will be swift and decisive. One of the shortest verses in the Bible, here's an easy one to memorize. Luke 17 32, remember Lot's wife, it's a good verse. Remember Lot's wife. If you don't know the story, you can go back and read it, but as she was fleeing with her family to safety, she did one thing that God told them not to do and she looked back towards the city and God just very petulantly and angrily turned her into a pillar of salt just for turning her head around on a swivel. Is that how it went? Here was a woman who had rescue and life in front of her. And where was her heart behind her? Don't look back, don't go back to those things, don't long for those things, you understand that Lot's wife was not killed because of the direction that she turned her head. She was killed because her heart loved the things that she was running away from. And Jesus says, remember Lot's wife is a picture of the judgment at the end and he says it's going to be swift and decisive. That's it. Once the day comes and it is slow in coming, but once it comes, it will be swift and decisive. And then Jesus talks about these people being taken. There's going to be two people here and one taken, two people here and one taken. And a lot of people look at this passage and say, ah, he's talking about the rapture. He's going to take the Christians up to heaven and leave all the bad people down here on the earth. That's not what he's talking about. He says, look, there's going to be one here and one taken and one here and one taken. And look at verse 37, they, the disciples, here's the one question they ask, where? Where are they going to be taken? Does Jesus talk about heaven? It doesn't sound like heaven. He says where the corpse is there, the vultures will gather. It sounds like he's talking about judgment to me. You can look up these verses in Matthew and in 1 Thessalonians and you can just look at them carefully and understand this. The ones who are taken in these passages are not zapped up to heaven to live forever with Jesus. And to judgment in all of these verses, Jesus is making the point to his disciples, look, you don't need to worry about all these predictions about people who I'm coming. He's close. It's next week. It's Wednesday. It's the blood moon. You don't need to worry about all that. What you need to worry about is first that you understand why I came in the first place. I came to seek you and to save you. The Son of Man must suffer. It has to happen or everything else is a waste and you need to get that and you need to accept it into your life. And you need to realize, look, you're going to long for his return long before he returns. And if you don't make it to see him return and you die and you go to heaven, you can just sort of join the guys up in heaven saying how much longer, how much longer, we're ready, how much longer. And Jesus says, just wait a little bit longer. And he admits it's going to be a wicked place when I come back and you say, well, it's a wicked place now. Well, it's going to be wicked when he comes back. Jesus is realistic about that. But he says, eventually, at an unexpected time, when people are busy with many, many different things, I'm going to come back and when I do, it's time for judgment. It's going to be swift and it's going to be decisive. And I think the big takeaway for you and I in this passage is not just to make fun of and laugh at the people who keep trying to guess when he's coming back, but it's to say, am I ready today? Do I realize today that the kingdom of God and this king who's going to rule all kings is not just a down the road thing, but it's a today thing? And that he looked at the people who were skeptical. And what he said to them is, the kingdom's in your midst. The king and his kingdom have come. And yes, they're going to come in a greater way someday, but they're already here. And you need to come to grips with that today, that the son of man came to seek you and to save you. And he demands your allegiance, not just at the end when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, but he demands it today. Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for your word. We're grateful that in your wisdom, you inspired men like Luke to write down things like this that we needed to hear. And we have all sorts of people who want to predict the end and talk about the return of Jesus and lay out their dates and their calendars. Help us to care more about what Jesus says than they say. Help us not to be led astray by the latest fad, the latest prediction. Help us to prepare our hearts today for when Jesus comes back. Father, let us not be caught amongst those who when Jesus returns are running and are hiding. Let us be among those who celebrate. And we do pray with John, and we do pray with the saints in heaven that he would come. We long for that. We see out of frustration in our own world that we can't fix things. We can't make them right. We can't make this place what it was meant to be, but we believe that Jesus Christ can and we believe that he will. Father, thank you for the hope that we have. Not only of a savior who bled and died for our sins, but one who's preparing a place for us, one who has promised to come back for us, and one who said that he'll make it all right and all new. Father, we pray in Jesus' name, in faith, amen. I want you to stand and we're going to sing together. If you have a public commitment or decision you want to share with us, you can do that. I'll be up here at the front, Chris is up at the front as well, and we'd love to visit with you or pray with you if you have something you would like to share with us or need somebody to pray with you. We're going to take just a few minutes. We're going to sing a couple of songs. We're going to respond to God's word, and so we encourage you. Use this time for worship, use it for meditation, use it for repentance, use it for prayer. Tyler, you guys lead us and we'll sing.