You Will Long To See One Of The Days Of The Son Of Man

So our text starts off with the Pharisees questioning Jesus with regard to the kingdom of God. When is it coming? What should we be looking for? And so we see that they understood something about the Messiah that was to come, that when this Messiah was to come to earth, he was going to establish or inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. And so when they question Jesus, they're asking, what should we be looking for? When is it coming? What will it look like? Now, their point of reference for this is military war victory. When you take over another people or another land and they become your slaves, there's a return to your city. There is an establishment of the kingdom. There's a lot of pomp and circumstance that surrounds it. And this was the Jews' understanding of what the coming kingdom of God was going to be like.

There was going to be all this pomp, all this circumstance, and all of the kingdoms of the earth were going to be set aside, laid waste, and brought under them because they were God's people. So they understood something about the kingdom of God, but their understanding of it was faulty. It was not accurate. They didn't understand that the kingdom of God was already in their midst. Now, they had Jesus with them. You know, they're questioning him. And they're saying, what's it going to be like when the kingdom of God comes? And to ask the question, they have to have missed the fact that he's the Messiah, or they have to have rejected it. And Jesus replied to them, and he says, the kingdom of God's not coming with signs to be observed, with all the pomp and circumstance. No one's going to say, look, here it comes, there it is, there's the parade, there's the victorious return and establishment. It's not going to be like that. In fact,

It's already in your midst. It's already around you. It's already going on. And the fact that they don't recognize that means they're unaware of what the kingdom of God is actually like, the true nature of it. They want to know the signs that are going to come. And Jesus says, there won't be any. Now, there is something we can learn from the Pharisees and their question. And it's that they had a desire to see God's kingdom come. And when Jesus taught his disciples to pray in the Lord's Prayer, one of the things he teaches us to pray is, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is something that the Jews had an interest in, and it is something that we as Christians ought also to have an interest in. We ought to desire to see the kingdom of God come. When you think of God's kingdom, I want you to think in terms of, I want you to think binarily. I want you to think in terms of one.

or the other. There are really only two kingdoms. One kingdom is God's kingdom. The one that the Jews are asking about. The one that Jesus came to establish. The other kingdom is underneath this other kingdom are all of the kingdoms of the earth. All of the hierarchies and all the stuff that's set up in this world. Kingdoms of this world. That is the other kingdom. This world. And so you have these two kingdoms, and there's some overlap of them. They're not synonymous. And we, as human beings, can only be members of one of them with regard to our eternity and our souls. We are either members of God's kingdom, or we are members of the kingdom of this world. We can't have membership in both. And it seems strange because we live here, so aren't we members of this kingdom? And I say, You have to think of where when it's all said and done and Jesus has returned and this earth has faded away and there's been new heaven and a new earth, where will you be? There will only be two places. There will only be the kingdom of God or heaven and the consequence of those who are members of the kingdoms of this world, hell. And so you can only hold membership in one of them, now and for eternity. And so Jesus answers the Pharisees.

And he says, the kingdom is in your midst. Which is not a complete answer. It's not a thorough answer. He's not taking out all of the explanations and saying, and here's how and here's why and here's who I am and here's how it works and all of that. He just says, the kingdom's in your midst. And then he turns to his disciples. And he addresses the Pharisees' question to them. He says to them, days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man and you will not see it. And this is because Jesus has a time on earth that he was to be here. And after his work on earth was done, after he had been born, he had grown, he had lived, he had ministered, he had suffered, he had been rejected, he had been killed, he had been raised, he then ascended into heaven back to his father's right hand to wait until he would return again. And yet before he left to go back to heaven,

He gave work to his disciples, those who are with him now. And if you can imagine for a minute what it would have been like to be able to look Jesus in the eye and to hear from his mouth what he had to say. It would have been an amazing thing. There would have been nothing better in your life as a Christian than to walk with Jesus. It's still popular today. Christians want to go to Jerusalem and they want to walk where Jesus walked. And they want to go to the places that Jesus was at. How much better would it have been to be there with him? These were good days. They weren't without opposition, but you had Jesus with you, leading you. The perfect Son of God. These are the glory days. If you had lived in that time, this would have been as good as it got. And when he left, it would not have been the same.

And yet before he leaves, he gives his disciples work to do. He says that they're to go into all the nations and they're to make disciples. Essentially, they're to carry on the work that he started and they're to carry it on until he returns. And he also knows that as they go about this work and he's gone from them, he's returned to heaven, they're going to face a lot of hardship. They're going to face a lot of trouble, a lot of difficulty. And he says to them, you're going to long. To see the days of the Son of Man. You're going to wish that you could have me back here with you. But you can't. Now this creates some tension in us. Because when we want something and we can't have it, it makes life very hard. Temptations enter. And this is what he's telling his disciples they're going to face. And he warns them specifically not to assume.

the Pharisees' misunderstanding of the kingdom of God. Don't start looking for signs and wonders. They will say to you, look there, look here. And he says to his disciples, do not go away and do not run after them. I want you to think for a minute about a time in your life when you've had some sort of tension, some sort of conflict, something that was uncomfortable to you. And your natural reaction is to want out of it, right? Something's bad, you want away from it. Now there generally are only, there are two ways of dealing with this. There are two temptations that will come to us. One is to just forget about the tension and ignore it, to quit struggling and to quit creating the tension, to do everything you can to have peace. You become very accommodating, you become very pliable, become very tolerant, all so that you can get out of the tension. But if that means giving up serving God, and if that means

going back into sin, then you recognize that that's not the way you can resolve the tension. And so what do you do? Well, you start to ignore the tension and you focus on something else. Now, what is it that the disciples are going to be tempted to focus on? Well, the same thing that the Pharisees were wanting to focus on, which was the coming of the kingdom. And do we have around us and within us a temptation to Focus on the end. And to look forward to it and to look at it. Just think for a minute, left behind. This is what I'm talking about. The whole left behind series of books. It's all about the end. And what's the point of all of it? It's to get you to pay attention to it, to think about it, to get your mind off of what's going on right now. Some of it is that it makes you useless.

In this life, because you're consumed with when Jesus comes back. What's it going to be like? What are we watching for? What are the signs? And there are parts of Christianity who are entirely consumed with this question of Jesus' return. And here, Jesus is warning against that very thing. He says, there's going to be people who say, look here, look there. They watch with... their full attention what's going on in Israel. And they're waiting to see what happens. And they're waiting because Jesus is going to come back once the other shoe drops. And yet here Jesus warns us against this sort of obsession with his return. He tells his disciples, do not go away and do not run after them. Do not concern yourself with this. Not to the neglect of the work I've put in front of you now. So am I saying we should never think of Jesus' return?

Is my goal to take away the appropriate comfort and hope that we as Christians have in his return when he will set right everything that's messed up now? No. My intention is not at all to take that away from you because that's not what Jesus does here. He doesn't take that away from them. He doesn't say, don't worry about it, forget about it. It's not important. That's not what he says. Not at all. What he says is, essentially, there's a time. when I'll come back. And it's hidden in its secret. He doesn't say this in this text. He says it in another place. He says, those things, those times and those epochs, those are to be known by the Father. But I will come back. He comforts his people and says, it's better that I go away from you right now. For if I go away from you, I'll prepare a place for you, that where I am, you may be also. And so he's gone away from this world to prepare to return.

And you can obsess about it in a way that's unbiblical. But you can fall off on the other side and say it doesn't matter. And it's equally as harmful. Because it's not a reality that we're to disregard. We're not to try to escape the life that we live now. That God has given to us. Because we're so fixated on what's going to happen later. And we face this sort of temptation in all kinds of areas of our life. When you're going through a difficult season in your life, do you ever just wish it would be over? You just kind of want to grit your teeth, hold your breath, and just plug away on through it until it's over. And all you want to think about is the end and when it's done. It's a miserable way to live life, isn't it? You wish away your children's little years, and you wish away the years where you work hard, and you wish away your single years. Wherever you're at, we're wishing them away. We're looking forward to the next. There's no way to live our lives. It's not faithful.

It's one little way in which we can see our temptation and our giving into what Jesus is warning his disciples about. We're not to try to escape where we're at. He tells his disciples, you're not to avoid or wish away your work. You have to do it. So what are we supposed to do? What will it be like when the Son of Man returns? Well, he says there's not going to be signs. And what he says essentially is, life's going to be just like it is right now. Just like it was when Noah built the ark, and just like it was in Sodom before Lot left. They were eating, they were drinking, they were being married, they were being given in marriage, they were planting, they were building, they were buying and selling. They were living life. Now can you think for a moment when Noah, in Noah's time, how long did it take him to build that boat?

Well, suffice to say, a long time. A long, long time. Long enough for people to see what Noah was doing and to be concerned about why he was building this gigantic boat on dry ground. And Noah is described as a preacher of righteousness, and he would tell people why. What was Noah doing in building that boat? He was preparing for God's judgment. He was preparing. To not be swept away in the flood that was to come. And so when the flood came, he was the only one that was prepared. I didn't look it up, but I remember him being made fun of for building this boat. And everyone scoffed at him until he got on the boat. But then it was too late for him, for them. And Jesus gives Noah as an example. And he says, that's what it's going to be like when I come back. Life is going to be just as it is right now. People are going to be doing what they've always done.

And the same is true of Lot. Lot was a righteous man. He lived in a wicked city. And he pleaded with the men. You remember when the angels came and stayed with him? And the people pressed hard against the door and they wanted him to send them out so that they could sodomize them. And he says, brothers, don't do this. He pleads with them. We know that he was a righteous man. We know that he was a godly man. You remember before all of that, Abraham pleading. If there's 100 righteous, if there's 50, if there's my cousin, my nephew, and God puts off his judgment, sends the angels to warn Lot and his family. Do you remember his children's response when he warned them? Do you guys remember what happened? They just kind of laughed it off. They were like, yeah, okay. His daughter's husbands, I believe. They just laughed it off. They were like, yeah, okay.

But then Lot got up in the morning with his wife and his daughters, and they took off. They heeded what God said. They prepared for the judgment that was coming. And because they had prepared, because they had believed what God had said, they were spared, except Lot's wife. She wasn't spared. She started out well, but she looked back. All she did was look over her shoulder, and that was it for her. She was immediately judged. and turned into a pillar of salt as a memorial, as a reminder of the destruction. There was something in that city that she longed for, something that she missed, something that she wanted. And she wasn't sufficiently prepared, and it cost her. You know how hard it would be not to look at something if something crazy was going on, and the only instruction was don't look. Just don't look at it. You know how hard it would be not to look? You know how you want to peek or do something? Can I? Maybe.

What's going on? When something terrible is actually going on and you're convinced that something terrible is actually going on, what do you do? A tornado, for instance. Do you want to see the tornado over your head? No. You want to look at the tornado way over there. Then I'll look at it. Then it's interesting to me. Why? Well, because it's not a danger to me. But when it's dangerous to you, all of a sudden, you don't want to look at the danger anymore. You're happy to bury your face and hide your eyes. Because you've come to believe that there's danger. But if you don't believe there's danger, it becomes entertainment. You remember Jonah going and sitting up on the hill? Why did he go sit up on the hill? What did he want to see? He wanted to see them judged. He wasn't going to sit in the city while it happened, mind you. But he went up there and he wanted to see the judgment. And I want you to see that there's a very dangerous way of dismissing God's warnings.

Or you think they're not for you. And then they become entertainment to you. Or something to toy with or play with or put in the queue or the back of your mind for later. You know, if you listen to Dave Ramsey, he talks about life insurance a lot online, on his radio show. And he just says, people, you have to have life insurance because you're going to die. And the people who are dependent on you need to be taken care of when you die. And there's this sort of emotional, like, I've talked to a lot of people who haven't heeded this advice, and then they died and their families were left in a real lurch. And I'm left here, the financial guy, trying to help them pick up the pieces of their broken life. And I don't want to do that, so get yourself life insurance. Now, one of the things he says, he talks about, and I don't remember the percentage, is the overwhelming majority of people that have others dependent on them who don't have life insurance. So what do they...

What does a mother or a father have to believe to not have life insurance? Unless they're just independently wealthy and don't have to worry about it. They have to believe that they're not going to die right now. There's not danger yet. Now, when do people want to get life insurance? When they get sick. When do people want to get health insurance? When something hurts. When it's too late. And what do insurance companies say to those people? There's this introductory... period. It's five years long. We're not paying for your pre-existing condition until you've been paying in for a while. And so people's lives, you know, temporally speaking, are often ruined through sickness and through untimely death. Because they didn't prepare. They didn't think it would happen to them. They didn't think the warnings were for them. And they get caught like the virgins without oil in their lamps. And they scramble and they say, We need oil. Give us some of your oil. And they say, I can't give you some of my oil because if I give you some of my oil, I won't have enough. I can't help you. By the time they get situated with oil of their own, it's too late. And so Jesus uses Noah and Lot, the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, as a lever to motivate us, to move us, to move his disciples to preparation. Life's going to, when I return,

Life's going to be just as it is right now. And those who haven't heeded my warnings and haven't prepared themselves for that day will not have time then to do it because they neglected the season, the time of repentance. So do people ever heed God's warnings of judgment? Yeah, sometimes they do. You know who did? Nineveh did. It made Jonah mad. And he was wrong for being angry. But there it is, this leading city. of unbelievers. And here comes a prophet from Israel. God's going to cut you down. And what do they do? From the greatest to the least of them, they repent. They turn away from their sin. And how does God respond? He honors their faith. And he averts his judgment. He doesn't destroy them. I tell you that to say, if the Ninevites can heed God's warning, can turn away from their sin while there's yet time, how much more so ought we? And will God deal differently with us than he did with them? So preparation is the theme of our text. It's one thing to look forward to Jesus' return. It's another thing to prepare for it. You know, when you're in high school, there's this line of demarcation in your life. There's a coming of age. You become an adult. Graduate high school.

I'm an adult. I can vote. I can buy tobacco. I don't have to listen to anybody anymore. You know how well most 18-year-olds do when they hit that day? They looked forward to it for a year. I can't wait, Dad. You just think. I'll show you. When they turn 18, they've been looking forward to it for a long time. You know what they do? What? Fall flat on their face. Life's hard. They didn't prepare for it. They looked forward to it. They anticipated it. They had all kinds of misconceptions about what it was going to be like, but they did not prepare for it. That stumbling that many of us have faced as we got out of high school or got out of college or bought our first houses or got married or whatever it is, that stumbling for lack of preparation is given to you as a reminder, as a warning.

To know that there's further preparation and more important preparation for you to be doing than that. And if you stumble at so small of a thing, it ought to give you pause. It ought to slow you down when you consider Jesus' return. And you ought to think, I need to consider whether I'm really actually prepared or preparing. I think it's a foolish thing to think you're prepared. You should always think in terms of preparing. Because he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved. It's not something you do and then it's done and then you just go on living your life. It's something you start and then you continue to do. And so consider your own soul and its readiness. Are you preparing? Consider the souls of those that you love. Are they preparing? Consider your neighbors. Consider your co-workers. Are they preparing? Are you helping them prepare? What do you want for them? What do you want for you?

When Jesus returns, what do you want for you? What do you want to be said of you? What do you want to be done for you? Where do you want to be? What does the Lord want for you? 2 Peter 3.9 says this, The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. And so God has been merciful to us, not just in sending Jesus to live and to die, but he's been merciful to us in warning us and telling us he's coming back. And when he comes back, he will come back as a judge. And not one of us here, not one of us on this earth will have a thing to say to him that will, in the least way, take away any of our sin. We won't have anything to say, anything good to commend ourselves with.

other than what he's done in us, if we're Christians. And so he warns us and he says, now's the season, now's the time. In Hebrews it says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the past. And I became angry with them and struck them down. The Lord is patient, not wishing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. This is his desire. This is why he warns us and calls us to prepare. Will we heed his call and turn away from our sins and return to him before it's too late? Jesus carries on in verse 33, and he says, It's the life that we live in this world. It's our love for it. It's our affinity for it. It's our overwhelming, insatiable appetite to have what we want now. And none of us are exempt from these desires. We could all write a list. Here's what I want my life to look like. Here's the deficit I think I've been given so far, if we're honest.

When I got married, I thought marriage was going to be like this. And you know what? We're running in the red. It's not what I thought it would be. I thought having kids. I thought getting older. I thought becoming a grandparent. I thought working for 25 years. I thought there's this deficit. Life's not how we thought it would be. Is this the life that you seek to keep? Is this the life in which you expect to be repaid? He who seeks to keep his life will lose it. Remember Lot's wife. It's what comes right before this. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it. That's what she did, and that's what happened to her. But whoever's willing to lose their life, remember Lot. He ran away from the city and didn't look back. He left all of his stuff, all of his belongings, all of everything he had, even his wife. He lost it, and through it he was saved. Jesus says, when the judgment comes, when I return, two will be in bed, husband and wife.

Friends will be working out in the field. I'll take one and not the other. I want you to see here what Jesus is teaching us is that his judgment will be particular. There's a time in which he deals with us corporately. And it's a season of grace when he deals with us corporately. And he's merciful to us for the sake of our heads and our leaders. That's a kindness that he gives us. But when he returns in judgment, there will be no... grace or kindness for the people we're connected to. Their holiness or their righteousness or their obedience is not going to be of any benefit to us personally, even down to a husband or a wife. And so while we acknowledge that God deals with us corporately or federally and he deals with us as not constantly individually, but as a group of people, when he returns in judgment, he will not deal with us that way.

He will deal with us individually. Each one of us will stand before God. I will not stand there with Vanessa. My kids won't stand there with me. You'll stand there by yourself and give an account. You parents, your faith will not save your children. And you children, your parents' faith will not save you. And so the disciples respond, where, Lord, where is this terrible thing going to happen? Where is it going to be that families are torn apart and And judgment rolls down. Where is it going to be? Jesus says where the body is, there also the vultures will be gathered. Now, do you ever look up in the sky and see those black birds circling way up high? And they're way up there, circling around. Those are turkey vultures, turkey buzzards. And what they do is eat rotten flesh, carrion. That's what they do. That's what they live on. They're nasty-looking animals, filthy creatures. They have a purpose, though. And how is it that those birds find,

The dead body. Isn't that the mystery? And that's the analogy Jesus uses here. You don't have to know how those birds find the analogy, find the dead carcass, but you know that when you see them in the sky, you can know with complete certainty something is dead. And they have found it because that's what they're for. That's their whole purpose is to eat it. So where, Lord, where is this judgment going to happen? Wherever it's needed. And there's nowhere where you can hide from it. In Revelation, when Jesus' return is described, it says that the wicked are going to cry out that the rocks and hills would fall down on top of them, that they would be buried at the bottom of the sea in an effort to escape God's judgment. And yet, what did Jonah say of himself when he was at the bottom of the sea in the belly of the fish? He said, even there, O Lord, I was not hidden from your eye.

where the body is, where the judgment is necessary, God will meet it out. There's nowhere where we can hide to avoid it. So what is the application to us? Well, it's very simple. It's to prepare for Jesus' return. To prepare ourselves and to see to the preparation of others. You know, when a ship's sinking, the work of the crew is to go man the lifeboats. And it's not for them to jump on it. It's for them to see to it that other people have been cared for and gotten onto the boats and been cared for and protected from the danger. That's what it means for us as Christians in this world. We're to be ambassadors for Christ. We're to look first to our own souls and see to our own preparation, and then we're to be the lifeboat tenders who see to it that other people make it onto the boat before the ship sinks.

Not to do this work, to prepare, you have to believe a couple of things. First, you have to believe that Jesus is going to return to judge the earth. Those who die without life insurance have believed at some level that they weren't going to die, at least not yet. So they didn't prepare. If we're to prepare our own souls and the souls of other people, we have to believe that Jesus is going to return. And when he returns, he will separate every sheep from every goat from the time of Adam and Eve until the time he returns. Not one will escape his eye. You have to believe that. If you don't believe that, you won't prepare. The second thing that you have to do to hedge yourself in the direction of preparation is you have to fear God. You have to know that he hates sin and he can't have anything to do with it. And that can be an overwhelming or discouraging thought to you, but only if you don't consider that he sent his son to save us from it. Then it's no longer a discouraging thought to see our sin

or another person's sin for what it is, because we're not without hope in that situation. You have to believe that Jesus is coming back. You have to fear God because he hates sin and can have nothing to do with it. And then you have to seek mercy and forgiveness through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what you have to do. That's what you have to call other people to. There's all kinds of other answers for how to deal with sin, other ways of explaining it away, ignoring it, justifying it, and what have you. But that is the only way that works, is to seek.

mercy and forgiveness and pardon through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And it's not something you ought to be ashamed of. It's something you'd be made fun of for. Weak-minded people. That's what they would have said if Noah, building this boat here on the dry ground, idiot. Lot, why are you running away? Because he believed something was true. And he acted. This is our only hope in life and death. This is what Jesus is teaching his disciples. Don't look over here. Don't look over there. Don't be distracted. Don't have your attention and your eye turned away from what is necessary and required of you for your good. Remember the flood. Remember the destruction of Sodom and flee like Noah and Lot did, not like Lot's wife. Noah and Lot were sinners just like you and I. They heeded God's warning before it was too late. And they prepared a way for us and set an example for us of what we ought to do. We're to prepare.

So that when the time comes, we're ready to flee the coming judgment. That we might be saved just as they were.