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The Sudden and Sovereign Judgment (Matthew 24:36-41) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reform thinking. So I imagine a state-of-the-art
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hurricane forecasting model. Right.
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The kind you see on the news all the time during Storm season.
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Yeah. Precisely.
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You are watching the meteorologists on television and
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they are tracking this massive storm over the ocean.
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You see the cone of uncertainty. You see the barometric pressure
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dropping. You are watching the radar loos.
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And that gives you days to prepare.
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You can board up your windows. You can evacuate if you need to.
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But then I want you to imagine a totally different scenario.
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The radar just shuts off. The screen goes entirely blank.
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Oh, that would be terrifying. Right.
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You look outside and you see clear blue skies.
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Birds are chirping, people are walking their dogs.
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There's not a single breeze. Just a perfectly normal day,
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yeah. A normal day, and then without a
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single warning siren, the ground violently rips open in a
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catastrophic earthquake and the entire city collapses in an
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instant. That is just wow, talk about a
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complete paradigm shift. It is a total whiplash, and that
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is the kind of whiplash we're dealing with today because
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usually when we look at our daily routines, there is this
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comforting, predictable rhythm to it all.
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You know, Oh, absolutely. You wake up, the alarm goes off.
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You pour your coffee. You check your emails, you head
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to work, and you expect tomorrow to look pretty much identical to
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today. It is a very human assumption.
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It really is, yeah. We live under this illusion that
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history will just continue indefinitely without any divine
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interruption. But for this specific deep dive
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into the source material, our mission is to shatter that
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illusion entirely. We really need to pull the rug
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out from under that mindset. Yeah, we do.
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We are going to look at an exposition of Matthew chapter
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24, verses 36 through 41, and I'm speaking directly to you,
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the listener right now. We are putting the academic
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puzzles aside today. Good, because it is so easy to
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get lost in the weeds with this stuff.
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Oh for sure. This is not about building
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speculative prophecy charts or trying to crack some hidden
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Bible code. This text is a blaring alarm
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clock. That is a great way to put it.
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It really is an alarm. It is designed to wake up the
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sleeping St. And warn a world that is
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aggressively ignoring the catastrophic finality of
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eternity. You are spot on, and the
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contrast Jesus presents here is absolutely staggering.
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On one side, you have the relentless, aggressive normalcy
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of human existence. Right.
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Like eating, drinking, working. Yeah, planning for the future,
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getting married, building houses, just life.
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But on the other side, you have the absolute, unannounced
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suddenness of divine judgment. Which is terrifying when you put
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those two side by side. It really is.
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And to grasp the sheer gravity of this warning, we have to step
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out of our modern context and get into the sandals of the
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original disciples. We need to feel the cognitive
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earthquake they were experiencing.
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Because they were sitting right there on the Mount of Olives
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listening to Jesus say these words.
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Right. This was not a casual fireside
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chat. This was a moment that
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dismantled every thing they thought they knew about how
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history was going to play out. OK, let's unpack this setting
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then, because the context here is anything but ordinary.
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Not at all. Jesus and his disciples are
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sitting on the Mount of Olives. They're looking directly across
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the Kidron Valley at the temple in Jerusalem.
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And we need to pause and realize that this is not just any
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building. No, this is Herod's temple.
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It was an absolute architectural marvel of the ancient world.
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Yeah, some of the foundation stones were the size of modern
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semi trucks. We're talking hundreds of tons
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per stone. And the walls were covered in
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massive white marble stones and these thick plates of gold.
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The historian Josephus actually wrote about this.
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Oh, what did he say? He wrote that when the sun hit
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the temple, it reflected so fiercely that you literally had
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to look away from a distance. It looked like a snow capped
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mountain. That is wild.
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It was the absolute center of Jewish worship, culture,
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economy, and national identity. But at the same time, the
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political and religious climate surrounding that building was an
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absolute powder keg. Oh, a total pressure cooker.
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Israel is suffocating under the iron boot of the Roman Empire.
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The citizens are dealing with crushing taxation, military
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occupation. And the constant threat of
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crucifixion for any kind of rebellion.
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Right, the Pagan authorities are dictating their lives while
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their own religious establishment in Jerusalem, the
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Pharisees and the Sadducees, is completely corrupt.
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Yeah, the Sadducees are essentially running a financial
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racket in the temple courts. They are collaborating with Rome
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to keep their own power, while the Pharisees are burdening the
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people with hypocritical legalism.
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It is a system built entirely on religious theater.
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And theological liberalism, honestly, out of that pressure
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cooker comes a very specific and I would say desperate
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theological expectation. What were they expecting,
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really? Well, the disciples, like most
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for country Jews living under that kind of oppression, were
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steeped in the anticipation of a conquering Messiah.
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They wanted a warrior. Absolutely.
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They were reading the Old Testament prophets entirely
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through the lens of their immediate suffering.
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Their timeline was incredibly straightforward and heavily
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militaristic. So in their minds, the Messiah
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arrives. He immediately draws a sword.
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He crushes the Roman legions. Yeah, he purges those corrupt
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religious leaders from the Temple and he establishes an
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earthly geopolitical Kingdom in Jerusalem right then and there.
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They wanted it all to happen by Tuesday.
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Pretty much. They assume the judgement of the
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Pagan nations and the inauguration of the golden
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Messianic Age were going to happen simultaneously in their
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immediate lifetime. They were looking for a
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political revolution. Right.
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They're looking at Jesus, waiting for him to give the
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signal to take up swords and storm the Antonia fortress where
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the Roman guards are stationed. And instead of doing that, Jesus
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does the thinkable. Earlier in Matthew 24, he looks
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at that magnificent, indestructible looking temple
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and predicts its total obliteration.
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He says not one stone will be left upon another.
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I can only imagine the absolute shock for the disciples, the
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destruction of the temple equal the end of the world.
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The 2 events were completely fused in their minds.
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But Jesus is actively deconstructing their faulty
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assumptions right there. He takes their single event
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timeline and splits it into two distinct realities.
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OK, break that down for us. What are the 2 realities?
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First, there is the near term judgment on Jerusalem, which
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happens historically in AD 70. That's when the Roman general
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Titus sacks the city. Right, Yes, he slaughters the
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inhabitants and his soldiers literally pry the stones of the
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temple apart to get to the melted gold.
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Just brutal. And the second reality?
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Second, there is the far term eschatological reality of his
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second coming, the final consummation of human history.
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How Jesus manages that tension grammatically is a fascinating
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study, honestly. Oh, the Greek text here is
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brilliant. In the 1st 35 verses of Matthew
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24, Jesus actually answers their question about the signs of the
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age. He gives them a detailed
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sequence of observable historical events.
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Right. He talks about false Christ's,
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rising up wars, and rumors of wars.
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Famines, the abomination of desolation.
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Cosmic disturbances. He gives them the parable of the
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fig tree. Yeah, teaching them that when
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they see the leaves coming out, they know summer is near.
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He's a saying When you see these observable signs, you will know
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the season of judgment upon Jerusalem is at the doors.
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But then we hit verse 36, and the entire discourse pivots on a
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massive literary hinge. The Greek phrase there is peri
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day, right? Yes, peri day, which translates
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to but concerning or now concerning.
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Whenever you see that phrase in the New Testament, it signals a
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major shift in topic. It's like he is closing one file
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folder and opening a completely different one.
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That is a perfect way to describe it.
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That shift is massive. He goes from detailing this
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highly visible progression of tribulation to describing a
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suddenness that is entirely unobservable.
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It goes right back to your analogy of the weather forecast.
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When a hurricane forms over the ocean, meteorologist track it
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for days. You see the models, you board up
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your windows, you have observable.
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But an earthquake has no forecast.
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None. You are sitting at your kitchen
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table drinking coffee and the ground suddenly rips open.
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Jesus is moving from the observable signs of the
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impending local judgement right into the tectonic, unannounced
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suddenness of the Second Coming. Which is a terrifying pivot.
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It is, which leads me to ask a question that I think a lot of
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people struggle with when they read this text.
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Go for it. If the signs preceding the era
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are so visible, why does the exact arrival remain a total
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secret? Why not give the church a
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calendar date so they can prepare properly?
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Well, Jesus answers that by establishing the absolute
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exclusivity of divine knowledge, Verse 36 says, But concerning
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that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven,
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nor the Son, but the Father only.
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Notice the descending and then ascending scale of exclusion
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here. Humanity does not know.
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That wipes out all human speculation right off the bat.
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Completely. Then he moves up the ladder.
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The heavenly angels, the holy beings who stand in the very
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presence of God and carry out his decrees, they don't know
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either. And then he says the most
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shocking thing of all. Nor the sun.
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Yeah, the knowledge is locked exclusively in the secret
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counsel of the Father. And the verb used for nose there
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is oida, which in the Greek is in the perfect tense.
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What does the perfect tense mean in this context?
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It indicates A settled, permanent, unchangeable state of
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knowledge the Father knows, and that knowledge is locked in a
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divine vault that no created being has the combination to.
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Wait, I have to stop you there. This is where my brain starts to
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short circuit and I know a lot of listeners are probably
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thinking the same thing. It's.
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Just a tough concept to swallow at first glance.
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Right, because Jesus is God. We believe in the Trinity.
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God is omniscient. He knows everything.
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How on earth can Jesus stand on the Mount of Olives and say, I
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don't know? It feels like a massive
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contradiction to a lot of people.
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It does. People read that phrase nor the
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Sun, and they jump to some very dangerous conclusions.
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They assume that if Jesus doesn't know everything, he must
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not be fully divine. It is a phenomenal question, and
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it is the reason we must apply the orthodox safeguards of what
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theologians called the hypostatic.
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Union. Now, I know that sounds like
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heavy academic jargon, but the concept is incredibly practical.
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It is vital for understanding who Jesus is.
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When we talk about the Hypostatic union, we look back
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to the historic definitions from councils like Chalcedon and
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documents like the Westminster Confession.
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What they clarify from Scripture is that the eternal Son of God,
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the second person of the Trinity, took on a true physical
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human nature. He has two natures, divine and
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human, united in one person. So he is 100% God and 100% man.
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Yes, and these natures are united without confusion,
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without change, without division and without separation.
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So how does the not knowing work?
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Yeah, explain that part. In his Incarnate state on earth,
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what theologians call the state of his humiliation, the Sun
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voluntarily restricted the independent use of his divine
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attributes. Hold on, let me make sure I am
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grasping this. Are we basically saying that to
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truly be human, he had to willingly put his divine
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omniscience in a locked box for a time?
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That is a great way to conceptualize it.
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Because if he walks around with his human brain consciously
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processing the infinite knowledge of the universe every
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second, he's a really experiencing true humanity,
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right? Precisely.
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Think of it like a world class grandmaster chess player who
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sits down to play a game with a toddler.
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Oh, I like that analogy. To make the game happen, the
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grandmaster voluntarily limits his own moves.
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He doesn't forget how to play chess.
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He doesn't lose his genius. He simply restricts the use of
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his abilities to participate in that specific interaction.
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Right. Jesus did not cease to be God
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for a single microsecond. Rather, he operated in perfect
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voluntary submission to the Father's will.
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The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and
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stature. Yes, if he had constant
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conscious access to omniscience in his human brain, he could not
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grow in wisdom. His human mind was finite.
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He learned how to walk. He learned how to speak Aramaic.
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He learned how to read the Torah.
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So withholding this specific chronological knowledge about
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the Second Coming does not deny his deity at all.
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Rather, it glorifies His true humanity and His absolute
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perfect submission to the Father.
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He only spoke with the Father gave Him to speak.
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Spot on. And we have to explicitly reject
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the false teachings that pop up around this issue, specifically
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something called canonic theology.
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Yes, that is a dangerous road to go down.
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Canonic theology argues that Christ actually emptied himself
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of his deity or laid aside his divine attributes entirely to
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become human. That is a heresy.
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It absolutely is. If he ceases to be fully God,
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His sacrifice on the cross has no infinite value to atone for
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our sins. A mere human cannot pay the
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infinite penalty for the sins of humanity.
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He remained fully God, but He veiled His glory and restricted
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the use of his omniscience and His human experience.
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And at the same time, this text is a direct, undeniable rebuke
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to modern date setters. Oh ma'am, don't even get me
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started on the date setters. You see these guys on television
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or you fall down a rabbit hole on the Internet.
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And someone is claiming they have decoded some hidden Bible
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math using the book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.
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Or they claim they received a novel vision about the exact day
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of the return. Jesus says the angels don't
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know. He didn't declare it in his
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earthly ministry, but these modern speculators think they
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have the inside scoop. It is the absolute height of
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theological arrogance. Claiming to know what the Father
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has deliberately kept secret is not a sign of spiritual
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maturity, it is a sign of rebellion.
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Wow. That is a strong statement, but
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it is true. The exclusivity of this
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knowledge is designed to force humility upon the Church.
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It halts all human speculation and forces us to look at our own
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limitations. It establishes God's absolute
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sovereignty over history. We are not meant to master the
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timeline. We are meant to submit to the
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Lord of the timeline. Precisely.
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Let me push back on human nature here for a second, though.
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Is this hiddenness a design feature to force dependence on
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God rather than a bug in the Revelation?
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Oh, it is absolutely a design feature.
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Because let's be honest, human beings are completely addicted
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to mastering the future. We want the spreadsheet.
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We want the calendar. We want the exact hours we can
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plan a procrastination. Yes, we want to know when the
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final deadline is so we can live however we want, indulge in
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whatever we want until 5 minutes before the end and then quickly
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clean up our act. You have just diagnosed the
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sickness of the human heart that this text exposes.
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It is true though. If we knew the date, we would
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absolutely use it to schedule our sin and delay our obedience.
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If you announced that the world was ending next Thursday at
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noon, gym memberships would drop to 0 tomorrow.
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Oh, people would stop paying their mortgages.
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They would stop going to. Work and they would probably eat
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cake for breakfast every day. I mean, I probably would, right?
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The hiddenness requires us to walk by faith, not by a planner.
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It forces us to live in a state of constant daily readiness.
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Jesus establishes that the hour is a divine secret.
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We cannot know the when. But then he shifts gears to what
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he does reveal. He reveals the historical
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pattern of how humanity behaves right before the judgment falls.
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He gives us the historical paradigm of sudden judgment.
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And he does this by reaching all the way back to the book of
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Genesis. Verse 37 says For as were the
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days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
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Jesus uses this classic as so comparison.
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The Greek structure there is Hosper Bhutto's.
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It is a rhetorical device used by rabbis to say if you want to
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understand the future, you must thoroughly examine the past.
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He is laying the days of Noah alongside the future, coming the
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Perusia and saying look at the pattern.
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History is going to repeat itself in its spiritual
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blindness. But what is wild to me is how he
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describes those days of Noah. He doesn't focus on the extreme
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violent wickedness that Genesis mentions.
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That is precisely what makes this passage so unnerving.
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The specific Greek syntax Jesus uses here is incredibly
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revealing. In verse 38, he strings together
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a series of present active participles, eating, drinking,
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marrying, giving in marriage. And present active participles
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convey continuous, uninterrupted, ongoing action.
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He's describing the blinding, rhythmic hum of worldly life.
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What is crucial to recognize is that these actions, eating a
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meal, drinking wine, getting married, throwing a wedding
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feast, are not inherently sinful.
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Scripture blesses food, it blesses lawful drink, and it
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establishes marriage as a holy institution.
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The sin of that antediluvian generation was not that they
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participated in human society. Their sin was the sin of
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normalcy. Center normalcy.
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That is a heavy concept. It was total, consuming
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absorption in the temporal to the absolute exclusion of the
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eternal. They lived their ordinary lives
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as though God's Word were weightless and as if divine
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judgment was a fairy tale. I think we often picture the
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days of Noah as this cartoonish scene of people standing outside
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the ark, shaking their fists at the sky, openly mocking God with
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pitchforks. Right, like some villainous mob.
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But what Jesus is describing is just a functioning society.
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They had a booming population, they were building cities, they
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had agriculture, they were planning weddings.
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They were just busy. It is like spending your life
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savings buying custom luxury furniture for a house you know
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you are getting evicted from tomorrow morning.
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Oh. Man, you might arrange the
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couches perfectly, you might pick out the best drapes, but
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you do not own the house anymore.
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The eviction notice is on the door.
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You are obsessing over a reality that is about to end.
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That continuous action of eating and drinking is then violently
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interrupted in verse 39. Jesus shifts the grammar
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entirely there, doesn't he? He does.
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He moves from those ongoing present participles to sudden,
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decisive, blunt aerist verbs. He says the flood came and swept
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them all away. The verbs are elfin and Aaron.
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Exactly it grammatically, in acts of theology, the relentless
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continuity of worldly life is instantly, violently shattered
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by a definitive, unrepeatable act of God.
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And we need to point out that Jesus Christ himself is
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authenticating the reality of a literal global flood here.
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We absolutely must draw out that implication for biblical
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authority. We have to thoroughly reject the
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liberal critical scholarship that has invaded so many
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theological institutions. The ones that try to reduce the
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Genesis flood to a localized myth.
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Or a regional river overflow. Or a poetic allegory meant to
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teach a moral lesson. The Lord of glory, Jesus Christ,
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grounds the reality of His future global judgement upon the
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historical fact of the past global judgement.
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If the flood of Noah was just a localized myth, then the second
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coming of Christ is built on a fairy tale.
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The analogy completely collapses.
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But it is not a myth. The flood was a historical
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reality, and the judgement it brought with sudden, universal
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and utterly lethal. It really makes me evaluate how
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we operate. Today I want to ask you to
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listener to look at your own calendar for a second.
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Look at your schedule for the next week.
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Yeah, take a hard look at it. Are your lawful daily routines
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your job? Your mortgage payments?
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Your kids soccer practices? Your vacation planning?
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Your grocery shopping? Are those totally normal things
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acting as a cloak for spiritual sleep?
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Because the people in Noah's day, we're just doing the stuff
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of life. They were entirely unaware until
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the water breached their front doors.
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The terrifying reality of that phrase, they were unaware is
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that their ignorance was not an innocent lack of information.
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They were not victims of a failure to communicate.
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Noah was building a massive, incomprehensible structure, an
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ark on dry land for decades. The patience of God waited.
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The warning was physically looming over their society, but
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they willfully refused the warning.
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Their unawareness was a culpable, willful heedlessness.
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They chose to be deaf to the message.
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Jesus is warning us that a life packed with perfectly normal,
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respectable concerns can still be a life completely empty of
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readiness for eternity. Which is a sobering reality to
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wake up to. So Jesus takes this massive
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global scale of the flood, an event that wipes out millions of
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people, and he suddenly narrows the focus.
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He zooms the camera lens all the way in from the macro to the
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micro. He goes from the whole world
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drowning in the deep to just two individuals standing right next
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to each other. We get to verses 40 and 41,
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which detail the surgical separation at the field and the
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mill. The imagery Jesus uses here is
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brilliantly structured to resonate with his 1st century
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audience. He says.
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Then two men will be in the field, 1 is taken and one is
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left. Two women will be grinding at
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the mill. One is taken and one is left.
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We're looking at a micro level surgical judgement.
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Jesus gives us two parallel examples of lawful
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complementarian 1st century labor.
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The men are engaged in the heavy outdoor agricultural work of the
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field. This is plowing, sewing,
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sweating under the Mediterranean sun, dealing with the dirt.
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And the women are engaged in the vital domestic provision of
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grinding grain. A 1st century hand mill
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consisted of two heavy basalt stones.
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Two women would sit facing each other, grabbing a wooden peg and
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passing the heavy upper stone back and forth to grind the
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wheat into flour. It was for the household's daily
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bread. It was communal, necessary,
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exhausting work. Jesus places this eschatological
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separation right in the middle of a mundane Tuesday afternoon
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at work. And here is where we need to
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clear up a massive, widespread misunderstanding.
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Yes, please. Let's tackle this.
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When people read the phrase, one is taken and one is left.
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A lot of modern readers, especially in Western
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Christianity, immediately filter that through the lens of a pre
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tribulational rapture. They picture the left behind
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books and movies. Right.
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They imagine the Christian being suddenly taken up into the
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clouds, the safety in the rapture, while the unbelieving
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Co worker is left behind on earth to face the horrors of the
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tribulation. They read taken as the ultimate
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good thing and left is the ultimate bad thing, but that
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completely violates the context of what this text is actually
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saying. Rigorous contextual exegesis
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demands that we interpret the words taken and left based on
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the analogy Jesus just established in the preceding
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breath. He just said as were the days of
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Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
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So we have to ask, in the days of Noah, who was taken away.
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Verse 39 gives the explicit answer.
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The flood came and swept them all away.
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The wicked, the unbelieving world were the ones taken in
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lethal judgement. Yes, Noah and his family were
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the ones left behind on the cleansed Earth to inherit the
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new world. Therefore, when Jesus uses the
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passive verbs parallel banati for taken and a pheati for last
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right after that analogy, the contextual parallel holds firm.
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When Christ returns at the end of the age to establish his
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millennial reign, the wicked are the ones taken away in swift,
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lethal judgment. The righteous are the ones left
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standing to inherit the earthly Kingdom.
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Reading it backwards ruins the grammar and misses the
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terrifying nature of the warning.
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Let's unpack those Greek verbs, because the passive voice used
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there is absolutely chilling. Parallel Banati and Afuti.
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People in the field and at the mill are not acting, they are
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being acted upon. They do not get to make a choice
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in that moment. They are acted upon by a
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sovereign force. Men and women do not determine
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their own fate in that split second.
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The judgment slices right through the closest of human
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proximities. You have two guys working the
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exact same soil, sweating under the same sun, talking about the
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same crop yields, maybe even sharing a water.
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Jug. One is swept away by the wrath
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of God, the other is preserved. You have two women, men, knees
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touching, hands on the same grinding stone, talking about
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their families. One is eradicated, the other
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remains. This completely shatters the
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illusion of safety by proximity. Shared space is not shared
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salvation. You cannot be saved simply
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because you work next to a Christian in the cubicle.
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You cannot be saved because you live in a historically Christian
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nation or because your parents were devout.
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You cannot be saved because you sit in a church Pew every Sunday
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next to a gingly spouse. A husband might be completely
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ready, while a wife remains hardened in unbelief.
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A mother might be preserved while a son is swept away.
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External association provides 0 coverage when the Son of Man
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arrives. The separation is absolute.
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There is no middle ground. There is no purgatory.
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There is no third category for the mildly interested or the
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culturally religious. You're either taken in wrath or
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preserved in grace. If judgement slices through the
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closest of human proximities with no middle ground
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whatsoever, what is the deciding factor for who is left standing?
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Because it clearly is not their diligence at the hand mill or
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their work ethic in the field. Both people were working.
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Both were engaged in lawful labor.
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One wasn't robbing a bank while the other was praying.
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They were doing the exact same task.
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So what's the difference? The deciding factor is
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exclusively their relationship to the central figure of the
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entire text, the Son of Man. We must draw out the Christ
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connection here. Jesus refers to himself as the
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Son of Man. This is not a title of mere
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human solidarity or an acknowledgement of his humanity.
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It is drawn directly from the apocalyptic vision of Daniel
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Chapter 7. In Daniel's vision, the Ancient
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of Days takes his fiery seat, and one, like a Son of Man,
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comes with the clouds of heaven, and he's given dominion, glory
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and a Kingdom. All peoples, nations, and
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languages must serve Him. By using this title, Jesus is
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establishing himself not as a rural rabbi, A moral
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philosopher, or a good teacher. But as the sovereign apocalyptic
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judge who possesses everlasting dominion over the cosmos, he is
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the one riding the clouds. He is the one executing the
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separation, and Jesus gives us this incredible typology with
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the ark. The historical event of the
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flood is the foundation, but the grace of God in the flood is
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located entirely in the ark. I think we often miss this.
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We do. Noah wasn't saved because he
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possessed some inherent sinlessness that allowed him to
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magically tread water for 40 days while everyone else
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drowned. He was saved because he was
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safely enclosed behind the pitch covered wooden walls of the Ark.
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The wrath of God rained down from heaven, the subterranean
26:11
waters burst from the deep, and the ark took the beating while
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Noah rested inside. Christ is the true and better
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ark. He is the singular instrument of
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divine salvation. If you are outside the ark, the
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water takes you. If you are inside, you are safe.
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This reveals Christ perfectly fulfilling the threefold office
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that we see throughout Scripture, prophet, priest and
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king. Break that down for us.
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As prophet, he is standing on the Mount of Olives perfectly
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for telling the coming judgement.
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He declares the truth without error, warning the world of the
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wrath to come. And as king.
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As King, he is the Son of man who will return to execute this
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absolute surgical separation in the field and the mills.
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He holds the sovereign authority of life and death.
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And as priest, he went to the cross to bear the wrath of God
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for his people. He makes himself the only refuge
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from the very wrath he is pointed to bring.
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He drank the cup of God's fury so that those hidden in him
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would not face a single drop. You know, it is amazing how
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realizing we are totally depraved and completely
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incapable of saving ourselves actually makes the imputed
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righteousness of Christ the most beautiful part of this passage.
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It really is because at first glance, this text is terrifying.
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Swept away, sudden judgment. No warning.
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People vanishing from the mill. But this Christ connection flips
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the tone entirely. It moves from sheer terror to
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magnificent, unshakable hope for the believer.
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It flips the tone because it completely removes the crushing
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burden of self salvation. Like the generation of Noah,
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humanity is spiritually dead. We are utterly in bondage to the
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temporal world. The people ate and drank because
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they were spiritually blind to the impending wrath.
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We are incapable of awakening ourselves from that sleep.
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But when you realize that your salvation depends entirely on
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being hidden in the ark, being closed in the perfect imputed
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righteousness of Jesus Christ through justification by faith
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alone, the terror of sudden judgment becomes the promise of
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sudden vindication. When the Son of Man appears, if
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you are in Christ, he is not coming to sweep you away in
28:13
wrath. He is coming to eradicate sin,
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to wipe away every tear, and to bring you into the fullness of
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His earthly Kingdom. You are the one left standing.
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Which means this magnificent hope requires an immediate,
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practical response from us right now in our everyday lives.
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What are we actually supposed to do with this on a Tuesday
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morning when we are sitting in traffic or answering emails?
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This brings us to the urgent application and the evangelistic
28:37
zeal this text demands. First of all, if we believe
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this, it exposes the absolute bankruptcy of worldliness.
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We have to confront the seeker sensitive pragmatism in modern
28:47
churches that tries to make the bride of Christ look identical
28:51
to the culture just to get people in the door.
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And we have to confront the prosperity gospel that promises
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your best life now. Because let's be totally honest,
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if your best life is right now in this temporal world of eating
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and drinking, the text warns that you are destined for the
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flood of God's wrath in the next.
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We must apply what the Reformers called the third use of the law.
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The law of God not only exposes our sin and drives us to Christ,
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but for the believer it functions as a guide holy
29:18
living. How do we live in light of this?
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The command here is not monastic withdrawal.
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Jesus does not tell the man to drop his plow, sell his farm,
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and go stare at the sky on a mountain.
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He does not tell the woman to abandon the mill and let her
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family starve. The command is holy watchfulness
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in ordinary callings. We are to work heartily unto the
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Lord, fulfilling our earthly vocations, but we must do so
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with a heart firmly tethered to heaven.
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We hold the things of this world with a loose crip.
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Right. Watchfulness doesn't mean
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quitting your job to live in a bunker reading prophecy blogs
29:52
all day. Watchfulness means maintaining a
29:54
pure conscience. It means confessing your sin
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quickly when you stumble. It means engaging in your lawful
30:00
daily routines, managing your spreadsheets, changing your
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baby's diapers, mowing your lawn, talking to your neighbors
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in such a way that if the sky were to split open at any split
30:09
second, you would not shrink back in shame.
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You are living corumdeo before the face of God while you do the
30:15
most mundane things. If this separation is as
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terrifyingly sudden as you describe, it completely changes
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how I view my commute to work tomorrow.
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You have to view your 401K, your vacation planning, and your
30:28
office politics through this eschatological lens.
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It completely shifts your priorities.
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But let me ask you this how does a believer maintain this state
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of high alert vigilance without succumbing to a constant state
30:39
of paralyzing anxiety? Because waiting for the sky to
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RIP open sounds stressful. The believer avoids paralyzing
30:46
anxiety by intentionally pointing their faith back to the
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finished work of Christ. Anxiety comes when we stare at
30:53
the unknown hour. Peace comes when we stare at the
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known Savior. You do not know the day, but you
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know the judge, and the judge who is returning is the one who
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loved you and gave himself for you.
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You are hidden in the Ark. Furthermore, this vigilance
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cannot just be a private internal peace.
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It must translate into evangelistic urgency.
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If you truly believe the separation is sudden, final, and
31:15
absolute, you cannot remain passive about the souls of the
31:18
people around you. You work in the office next to
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people who are heading for eternal destruction.
31:23
You sit at the Thanksgiving table with family members who
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are outside the Ark. We must reject the cowardly
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ecumenical unity that prioritizes social politeness
31:32
over eternal truth, true love warns.
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If you see a bridge is out and a car is speeding toward it, you
31:39
do not politely wave. You scream and wave your arms.
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We must proclaim the exclusive gospel of Jesus Christ, resting
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entirely in the sovereign grace of God for the results, while
31:50
pleading with men and women to flee the wrath to come.
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Let's bring all of this together.
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The core truth we have seen today is that God the Father
31:57
alone knows the exact time of the consummation of history.
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It is a locked secret. The world, utterly absorbed in
32:04
its eating, drinking and temporal planning, will be
32:07
caught completely unaware, just like the generation of Noah.
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And when the Son of Man arrives, the final separation between the
32:13
righteous and the wicked will be sudden, irreversible, and
32:16
absolute. Two in the field, 2 at the mill,
32:19
one taken in wrath, one left for glory.
32:21
The text forces us to reckon with the majesty of Christ and
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the reality of impending justice.
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It strips away our reliance on shared proximity, religious
32:30
heritage or cultural respectability.
32:33
The sole determining factor of your eternal destiny is whether
32:37
you are found by faith within the true Ark, Jesus Christ.
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It is a severe mercy that we are given this warning while there
32:44
is still time. It really is.
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I want to leave you with a final thought to Mull over as you go
32:48
about the rest of your day. Our world operates under the
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deeply flawed assumption that delay equals cancellation.
32:54
People think that if the judgement hasn't happened yet,
32:57
it must not be real. The scoffers say where is the
33:00
promise of his coming? But what if God's silence and
33:03
God's delay are not a surrender of his timeline?
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What if that delay is the very mechanism of His mercy?
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What if he is giving you the exact amount of time you need,
33:12
right in this specific moment to flee to the Ark before the door
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swings violently shut forever? Do not let the rhythm of your
33:18
daily routine blind you to the catastrophic finality of
33:22
eternity. Evaluate your readiness.
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Look at your alarm clock with new eyes tomorrow morning and we
33:27
will catch you on the next deep dive.