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34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” 37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, 38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple. ~ Luke 21:34-38
Every generation lives with the reality that the Rapture of the Church could happen in the twinkling of an eye. When it does happen, Christians all over the world will disappear. Then the seven year Tribulation will begin, ending with the Lord’s Second Coming and His judgement upon all the unbelievers who refused the free gift of salvation.
After these things, He will establish His earthly kingdom for a thousand years and He will reign over a kingdom of peace and righteousness. And, even after man has known a society that all claim to desire and hope to provide, many will yet reject the Lord Jesus. Then, the very end will come and Satan and his followers will be cast into Hell for eternity. Pride, that condition that inaugurated all sin, will be defeated.
In v.34 of today's text reads, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.”
Even though we do not know when the Lord Jesus will come, He will come. And so, we live in perpetual vigilance. Since this is the case, the Lord Jesus warns us to watch our hearts, to keep a careful watch over our hearts. Our hearts are like a musical instrument. We get them tuned and they lose tune. Then we have to get them tuned again. And this is a seemingly never ending process. But, this cycle will end when we are with the Lord forever.
Keeping our hearts in tune with the Lord is the key to keeping them from being weighed down with the cares of this world. We are told to guard our hearts in the scripture. To guard our hearts literally means “to set a watchman over it” but not just any ole watchman.
We best guard our hearts by filtering our wills, emotions and thoughts through His Word on a daily basis. He is the watchman that protects our souls. And His primary means of defending our hearts is the sword of His word. We must be diligent to keep ourselves in His Word, and then He keeps our hearts.
In Jude 21 we read, "Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life." In Psalm 18:30 we read, "This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him." In Psalm 119:9 we read, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word." And, in Proverbs 2:7-8 we read, "He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones."
In today's text the Lord Jesus is speaking to all who belong to Him. He reminds us to live with such anticipation of His coming that our hearts are not burdened down with sin. The result of this will be that when He comes we won't be trapped out of walking with Him and doing His will on this earth. The imagery here is not of us sinning because we will sin, it is of us literally being under a pile of sin.
In Romans 13:11-14, we read, "11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh."
The salvation the Apostle speaks of here in Romans 13:11 is our ultimate salvation. This is our ultimate deliverance from the power and presence of sin. In the meantime, the believer is to be focused on the things of the Lord because this salvation is not just for us, it is for those who will believe through God's work in our lives. The Bible calls this our sanctification.
When we live in the light of His Coming, it gives us vigilance and vigilance turns us from sin. It’s a call to living with Him at the center of our lives. This is a tall order and we will fail at it. But, we learn that even the failure becomes a part of this process whereby He changes us from the inside out. His goal is not a changed us, His goal is that we learn of His tremendous heart for us which is not earned.
Now, when we are trapped under the burden of sin, we will not be about the Father's business which is the salvation of the lost. In fact, the Lord will not come to set up His Kingdom until the gospel has been preached to the ends of the earth. Universal judgment should lead us to this understanding and should cause us to demonstrate compassion toward those who are lost and perishing.
In v.35 of our text we read, "For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth." Due to the fact that the wrath of God will come upon all who do not believe, we must be involved in sharing our story that we have with Him with them, hoping they will see Him the way we are learning to see Him.
In v.36 we read, "Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."
The only people who will stand before the Son of Man and escape the wrath of God are those who are recipients of His compassion. We only become recipients of His grace after we have admitted that we are ruined by sin and we turn to Him for help. There has never been a cry that He has ignored.
Those who resist His grace are going to fall before Him. To stand before the Son of Man means to come into His presence and hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The Lord Jesus will declare the broken not guilty, perfectly righteous, because we trusted in His righteousness. And, the effect of that experience is that we will desire to be a part of seeing the lost come to Him as well.
Our text today ends with, "37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, 38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple."
These two verses describe a day in the ministry of the Lord Jesus fueled by a night of prayer. Here we are brought to the transition point between Jesus’ teaching on the end times, and their preparation for the Last Supper. This is how we are to do ministry. In the Gospels, the Lord Jesus withdrew to pray. It is clear in v.37-38, if we try to do ministry without bathing our efforts in prayer, we become unfocused, and unduly stressed.
In addition, in the very next chapter of Luke the Lord Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper. This teaches us that we must be careful to keep the gospel at the center of any ministry that we pursue. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus has a continuing significance to all who follow Him. Through the remembrance of His death meeting we continue to participate in his death and in the new covenant because we subsequently participate in His life because His death introduced true life.
In 1 Corinthians 11:28 Paul wrote, “Everyone should take a careful look at themselves before they eat the bread and drink from the cup.” Every time we participate in the Lord's Supper, we are reminded of our sinfulness and only He can take our sin away.
So the Lord’s Supper helps us look to Christ, and be mindful that true life can only be in and with Him. When we are aware the Lord Jesus lives in us, we are reminded that we are humanly unable to cleanse our sins. The Lord’s Supper plays a major role in the process of being reminded that He loves us and He alone is our Savior. He commanded us to seek HIS righteousness, not ours. Let's teach the lost about this wonderful teaching before it is too late for them.
