Luke 22:1-6

What was keeping the chief priests and scribes from putting Jesus to death?  They were afraid of the people.  It was a fear that the people would revolt that kept them from acting.  They feared what the consequences would be from the people.  Interestingly enough the disciples acted on similar fears – running away and abandoning Jesus at His arrest because they feared the people.

Our lives are often controlled by a fear of people.  We fear how people will react to our actions.  We fear that our actions will have real consequences here on earth.  It is this fear that motivates us.  But from an eternal perspective, we should realize that there is much more to fear.  We should be motivated not from a fear of what the world would think, but what God would think.  It is our fear of offending God that should drive our actions.

Luke 21:29-38

What do the words of Jesus and the Energizer bunny have in common?  They keep going and going and going… (Yes, I did just compare Jesus to a TV ad bunny, and yes, I’m not totally comfortable with that.)   It’s a bad illustration, but you get the idea.  The word of God continues on and will not pass away.  No matter what may happen in the world, the gospel of Christ keeps going on.

Sometimes we get caught up wondering if we have missed something.  We see the world around us and think that possibly we have missed a sign from God.  But Christ tells us that just as we can see a tree come in to bloom and know that the time of harvest is coming, so too we can know that God is coming to harvest His sons and daughters.

The world may seem to pass away, but God’s word will always remain.  We don’t need to worry that we will miss it, but keep watch and the glory of God will come in His time.

Luke 21:10-28

We often think of  our world being a big mass of causes and effects.  Something happens and we automatically seek after the causes.  We become focused on determining how or why something happened to the point we even lose sight of the fact that it did happen.  We even get caught in the trap of tracing all the causes back to God, blaming Him for everything that goes wrong in our lives.

To play with the nuances of the English language:  Results are different than effects.  Effects are the uncontrolled response to an action.  The rain falls and the sun comes up and the effect is that plants grow.  Results, I contend, are the controlled response to actions.  The rain falls and the sun comes up and as a result crops that we have planted grow.  We can’t control the causes, but we can control the results.  We can control how the causes impact or lives.

God doesn’t bring about evil in the world, but He does give us the opportunity to control it’s results.

Luke 21:5-9

When my daughter was two she had a very loose concept of time. If she was taking a bubble bath and you told her five more minutes, she interpreted that as half an hour. If you told her something was going to happen next week, she’d ask you about it again the next day. She always wanted to know when, but just couldn’t fully grasp what time was all about.

When it comes to questions about the second coming of Jesus, our biggest question is “When?”. We want to know when he will come. The problem is that as much as we want to know when, we just can’t fully grasp what God’s time is all about. As confused as my daughter was about time, so too are we when it comes to eternity.

The better question (or better answer) is not “When?” but “Who?”.  My daughter can trust that as her father I have her best in mind.  She might not understand time, but she understands that I love her.  We too can trust that God has the best for us.  We can know that He loves us and has the best in store for our lives.  When God is the answer to “Who?”, the “When?” just doesn’t matter.