What the World Is Like Before Judgment, Part 2

Notice again here in verse 34, two people are in the same bed, which indicates a family, a filial or even a marital relationship. One of them is a believer, the other one is not. Two women are working together on their meal, they're grinding the corn. They've chosen to do it together indicating friendship.

Two men are working in the field, they're in business together. They share the same career, they're on the same floor, they're in the same shop and one of them is a believer and the other one is not. Welcome to Wisdom For The Heart.

On our last broadcast, Stephen Davey began a message that he didn't have time to complete. Today, we're going to do a little bit of review, then Stephen will bring you the conclusion to that message. It's called, What The World Will Be Like Before Judgment Falls. Questions like that have intrigued and interested Christians and non-Christians alike for ages. Everyone wants to know what it'll be like just prior to the Lord's return. As a faithful student of the Word, you're not interested in speculation. So let's see what Jesus has to say next.

You travel throughout North America, South America, Central America, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, Asia. They have a flood narrative. It's been distorted over the centuries frankly due to lack of interest, lack of care. The Chinese symbol for a boat is eight people in a floating vessel. The Peruvians believe that everyone on earth drowned in a flood except for a few people that survived and became the forefathers of every ethnicity on the globe. Cubans have their legend of an old man who learned a flood was coming, so he filled a boat with his family and a bunch of animals. A Mexican flood tradition tells of a man and his family saved during a flood by floating on a raft that he constructed. He eventually sent out a hummingbird to see if it was dry land and the hummingbird came back with a branch with green leaves on it. The Hindus of India tell of a man who built a ship and with his family of eight survived the flood and then ran aground on a tall mountain. The Peruvians believe their first ancestor dreamed a flood would destroy the earth, so he built a raft. He brought his family and animals on board. According to this legend, during those days the animals could talk. The animals were soon complaining of the long voyage. How long is this going to last?

Are we there yet? After all, the water subsided. Everybody got off the raft. The legend says the animals could no longer speak as punishment for complaining.

You might tell your kids that one. The judgment of this flood was preceded by 120 years of warning from Noah, the apostle Peter referred to as a preacher of righteousness. What was life like during the days of Noah?

Just like your life in your town. Crime? Yes. Wickedness? Yes.

Not to that degree, but for the most part a nice place to live. A little barbecuing on the weekends. Dinner out with friends. Pack your kid's backpack with school supplies. Think of the next career move. Send out wedding invitations. Go to work. Plan your next vacation.

None of which is wrong. It's life. Jesus is delivering the warning that life has a dangerous way of overshadowing the reality of eternal life. Busy events distracting people from listening to their troubled soul.

We just have to crank up the music to drown it out. So they live it up for the here and now heading toward cataclysmic judgment. Jesus goes on now in verse 28. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot.

What were those days like? They were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

In other words, there's coming, great destruction. The Bible makes it very clear. Again, we're given the details of life in Sodom and Gomorrah before sulfur came raining down. We're given description of their moral evil, the entirety of these two cities, but other cities called cities of the plain given over entirely to homosexuality. It's interesting in Judaism, the flood of Noah and the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah are typically coupled together to show the evil of mankind and the just righteous judgment of God. The Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 2 verse 6 that God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. God also predicted by the way through his prophet Jeremiah that those cities would never be rebuilt and those prophecies have come true.

These cities have never been inhabited again. But again, what is Jesus emphasizing here? He's emphasizing not so much their perversion, but their preoccupation. He's making a broader judgment statement here that can incorporate every human being, every culture, every country, every generation. Everyone is in trouble of facing the judgment of God unless they find escape through Christ. He's basically saying that humanity is in trouble with God and here's what the trouble looks like. People are busy with life but they never factor God into their cultural or personal life. He's saying here that life is most dangerous when it has nothing to do with God and God isn't even missed.

Try that out there on the street. Hey, do you miss God? Who? Miss him? I'm worried about missing my next appointment and you're in the way. Prior to any judgment from God, mankind is willfully blind to his warnings. God graciously continues to issue one warning after another. As it relates to the flood of Noah, the world has gotten the message the flood narrative to some degree is known around the world. I think of the modern world even today that has received fresh reminders. I think of answers in Genesis who built an ark. Have you seen that?

In Kentucky of all places. Marcia and I had an opportunity to tour it right before it was opened and it's rather amazing. Several million people have toured it since on national news. There's the ark.

Millions more have been reminded of that act of rescue in the midst of judgment. I also think of new discoveries related to Sodom and Gomorrah. Did you know that those two cities were not discovered until 1924, 1925 excavated in the 1960s and 1970s. The burn destruction is visible. Human bones are still mixed in with the sediment warped by intense heat buried under layers of sediment and sand some 2,000 years now. A lot of so-called scholars want to discredit it, deny it, explain it away.

But what they can't explain away is the discovery of balls of sulfur in that region that are still to this day flammable. Our own Shepherd Seminary professor of archaeology is posting videos. He lives in Jordan.

You ought to go to his site. Not now. Later. Called the Expedition Bible. If I see heads going down, I'll know I ruined this one. But God has gone viral. He'll put a video together proving some factor of Old Testament scripture.

Half a million people will watch it. Nearly 2 million people have already watched his little video vignette on Sodom and Gomorrah. He was curious about any remnant of these sulfur balls.

He'd seen two of them. He shows a picture of two of them in a museum there in the Middle East and that's about it. He talked to one scholar who said that these balls of sulfur would have burned up as planned on hitting dry land unless they had landed in the water of the Dead Sea nearby where they would have been preserved because of their composition. So Dr. Kramer correctly understood that the shoreline of the Dead Sea had receded quite a bit over the centuries and he began to explore the sediment and sand inland between Sodom and Gomorrah and the Dead Sea.

He figured out about how far he'd need to dig and he found preserved in the sediment thousands upon thousands of balls of sulfur. They're not found anywhere else on the globe. That's because they're not man-made. They're not made from some kind of cosmic recipe. They were made by God and I'm holding one of them now in my hand. I could take a candle and put it underneath this and it would burst into flame. Still flammable. I have another one in my home.

Study. It's a reminder to me that I am to warn my generation of the coming judgment of God. Are you safe?

Are you safe? For those who reject Christ, end up alive during the tribulation period, this warning here in Luke 17 is for them. It's also going to be encouraging to those who come to faith in Christ during the tribulation to know that he will set all things right and they're to look for Jesus. Now with that, Jesus describes that cataclysmic event of his arrival. Look at verse 30. So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed? That is, here he comes.

On that day, let the one who was on the housetop with his goods in the house not come down to take them away and likewise, let the one who was in the field not turn back. Remember, the descent of Jesus at this point is slow enough for all the world to tune in. Every camera, everybody with a smartphone of what happened today is going to be training it skyward to watch this glorious Lord and the hosts of heaven which include you and me descending with him as the tribulation wraps up. Now I want to break down the rest of this passage very quickly and I'll give you four descriptions of what will take place as he descends. First, there is unanticipated suddenness.

Now this is for the unbelieving world. They're not ready. They're going to race home. They're going to try to hide. They're going to try to gather their treasures, maybe dig a hole and put it away, maybe load their little cars and run for it.

We don't know. Secondly, there will be uncovered loyalties. In other words, what matters most to people will be revealed in this day. Those who don't care about Christ still won't and those who do will. In fact, Jesus adds this historical note in verse 32. Notice, remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. You could translate this.

Whoever cares more about keeping the life they've always had are going to lose everything. And the classic illustration? Mrs.

Lot. She remains to this day a classic illustration of the wrong choice, the wrong love, the wrong desire. Here she is being ushered out of the city by angels, no less. And as the flaming sulfur balls are falling, she turns back. She turns back, beloved, not because she is curious, but because she is resistant.

She turns back because she wants to go back. I've often wondered why it is that she turned into a pillar of salt, which would have dissolved soon thereafter. We're not told, but consider the fact that Old Testament believers were to add salt to their offerings to God as a testimony of their loyalty to him. So God is effectively, I believe, revealing outwardly what she is inwardly. She is entirely, devotedly loyal to Sodom.

So you have unanticipated suddenness, uncovered loyalties. Third, unexpected separations. Verse 34, I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.

Two men will be in the field. One will be taken and the other left. Now remember, beloved, this is not a reference to the rapture. The one taken is not taken to heaven, taken away in judgment, more than likely killed in the judgment of Christ as he descends. The one who is left is left alive to enter the kingdom. And those who trust in Christ, who are alive, will enter into the kingdom as mortals and there will be millions of them. It is over them that you will one day reign with Christ in the kingdom. So the one left has survived the tribulation, placing their faith in Christ now alive to enter the kingdom. And this corresponds, of course, with Matthew chapter 25, where Jesus, when he descends, will have a judgment separating the goats from the sheep. This is not the final judgment of the great white throne.

That's later. But this judgment is separation. The goats are taken away to judgment and the sheep are left to enter into the kingdom.

Now what that means is that they're going to be surprising, disturbing, devastating, painful, unexpected separations. You notice again here in verse 34, two people are in the same bed, which indicates a family of a filial or even a marital relationship. One of them is a believer. The other one is not.

Two women are working together on their meal. They're grinding the corn, the chores of life. They've chosen to do it together indicating friendship. One is saved. The other one's lost.

Two men are working in the field. They're in business together. They share the same career. They're on the same floor. They're in the same boardroom.

They're in the same shop. And one of them is a believer and the other one is not. No one is getting into the kingdom because they belong to a family with Christians in it.

I've asked many people about the Lord over the years and they'll tell me about their grandfather. No one is going to live with Christ because they have Christian friends or because they work with Christians. This is a clear indication it's possible to live with Christians and work with Christians and hang out with Christians and beheading for the judgment of God. I knew this full well as a 16-year-old unconverted missionary kid. So troubled in my conscience, I would slip out of my bed at night and tiptoe down the hallway and look in the bedroom of my little brother because I knew he said he was a Christian and I wasn't.

And I wanted to know if he was still there. On this terrible day of judgment, spouses, family members, close friends, business associates will be separated and that separation will last forever. One more description.

I'll call it universal devastation. The disciples want to know where the unbelievers are taken. Verse 37, and they said to him, Where Lord? And he said to them, Where the corpse is, there the vultures will go gather.

How's that for a blunt answer? It's going to be a place known for death and decay, utter devastation. I thought all Jesus did was go around giving the golden rule to everybody. He's saying the vultures will be waiting. The world objects to that kind of grim thought, grim response. Again, any warning of judgment is ridiculous.

Can't be true. But it ought to be a grim response because he's referring to judgment. One author puts it this way. If Jesus is speaking the truth about judgment than he is, how could it be anything other than grim?

And I would agree. Judgment is grim. Judgment is devastating. Judgment is painful. You don't put cushions on an electric chair hoping it will make people a little more comfortable with the idea of judgment.

You don't paint smiley faces on balls of sulfur thinking that maybe it will make people feel a little happier about it. It's judgment. The judgment of God is coming. It's coming to pass in different ways. As Jesus points out here, it's going to come again at different times.

But here's the good news. You can avoid it all. You never have to face the judgment of God.

You can avoid it by coming to the King, by claiming Christ as your Messiah. He took the wrath of God on your behalf. He died for you so that you can be forgiven and forever rescued from his judgment.

So are you safe today in him? Thank you, Father, for giving us this conversation heavy as it is enlightening, fearful for those of us who believe a reminder of all we have been rescued from. May this be a reminder as well, Father, that we live in a world that is perishing. We're surrounded by dying people who upon their death will face an irrevocable judgment of God. It gives us a little different perspective on our lives, Lord, and I know that's what you wanted to do with the disciples is remind them that life is more than stuff.

This life is a brief prelude to a glorious kingdom and after that the eternal state of a new earth, a new heavens. And so we pray together as believers in this auditorium today for anyone here who is blind, spiritually, willingly defiant, that this truth will penetrate deeply, that you will open their eyes to understand it is real and with us be rescued from the wrath to come. Make us testimonies in our world, Lord, with those family members and associates, those who live around us.

Give us opportunity. Give us courage to take opportunity to understand that everything they're doing in their lives is in a very real way an attempt to somehow tamp down the despair of an empty life. So make us ambassadors, we pray, delivering to our world the news that you, Lord Jesus, you are the King, you are the Messiah, you are Lord God, Jehovah in the flesh. We thank you that we can confess that truth even today. We thank you in Jesus name.

Amen. That was Stephen Davey and he called this message, What the World Will Be Like Before Judgment Falls. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey is the president of Wisdom International and your teacher for this daily Bible program. If you haven't already, I invite you to sign up for a free membership in Friends of Wisdom. Once you do, you're going to begin receiving resources from Stephen that will help you walk wisely through life. Friends of Wisdom receive an email from Stephen each Tuesday. He might send an encouraging article to help you better apply God's Word to your everyday life.

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