In this video, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss a passage from the gospel of Luke, specifically Luke 21:20-36. They delve into the context of the passage and explore its significance, highlighting themes of the Kingdom of God, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the ultimate redemption that believers can look forward to. Join them as they offer insights and reflections on this thought-provoking text. Don’t miss out on this engaging conversation that provides both challenge and encouragement for the faith journey.
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Transcript
00:00:00:36 – 00:00:26:42
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us as we start the week together. Grateful. We are grateful to have you with us. And it is great to have you with us. We are in the gospel of Luke, the 21st chapter, about halfway through the chapter here in verse 20. Remember, just context. Jesus is in Jerusalem. We are in that week that we call Holy Week, the week preceding his crucifixion.
00:00:26:47 – 00:01:01:55
Clint Loveall
Luke walks us through that week, and I think Michael with a kind of increasing intensity and I think today we take a step into that as Luke is going to present to us some difficult things that Jesus says, some kind of apocalypse uptick, which in Scripture means kind of end of the world dramatic kind of stuff. And so, you know, these are always those passages that make us scratch our head a little bit.
00:01:01:55 – 00:01:24:25
Clint Loveall
But but Luke has some reasons for this, giving us these words from Jesus. So let’s will jump in here, read a few verses, and then we’ll come back and try to unpack it for you. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by harmony armies, then you know the desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.
00:01:24:39 – 00:01:55:37
Clint Loveall
Those inside the city must leave it. And those out in the country must not enter it. For these are the days of vengeance in a fulfillment of all that is written. Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing infants in those days, for there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against the people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, be taken away as captives among the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles.
00:01:55:42 – 00:02:17:07
Clint Loveall
Until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. There will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars on earth. Distress among the nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the sun.
00:02:17:07 – 00:02:44:31
Clint Loveall
A man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now, when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near. One of the consistencies of the Gospel is that the each, in their own way, contain these sections. Some of them are kind of combined into major passages in Luke.
00:02:44:31 – 00:03:11:31
Clint Loveall
Perhaps they’re a little more scattered, but these kind of eschatological, which means end things and apart the apocalyptic, which means like an end breaking or a kind of an arriving or a dramatic arriving. They all have all the gospels have these moments where Jesus is warning people. We saw a little bit of this last week. This passage signs and persecutions that immediately precedes this one.
00:03:11:36 – 00:03:56:58
Clint Loveall
And here Jesus is simply pointing out that the day will come where things are going to be bad for the city of Jerusalem and I think, Michael, historically, Christians, if we’ve had a temptation with these texts, it’s maybe to dwell on them. I mean, I think on one hand maybe we read over them and don’t do anything with them, but on the other hand, they’ve generated a kind of fascination and almost for some branches of the church, an obsession with this idea of when there’s going to be, you know, tribulation and how long it’s going to last and what’s going to started and what’s going to happen.
00:03:57:03 – 00:04:23:24
Clint Loveall
I think we want to be careful with these words, but certainly Jesus warning his followers that there is going to be seasons, perhaps even a great season when the tensions between the faith in the world will erupt. And it will not be it will not be a comfortable it will not be an easy time. It will be difficult for the world and even for believers.
00:04:23:29 – 00:04:52:57
Michael Gewecke
So the church’s historical temptation to read texts like this from the vantage point of our present moment and right now we’re saying this from the year, you know, 20, 24, but this has happened in the year 1924 and 1824. This has always been a temptation of the church to read this kind of text in the right here, right now.
00:04:53:02 – 00:05:20:36
Michael Gewecke
If for a moment, you’ll be willing to step back from that and to engage with us in a more textual type conversation, I think there’s a lot of details and layers here that are really, really interesting and I think really helpful. First being, remember our context. Jesus was just having conversation about the people, number one, who are making money in the temple, which is in Jerusalem, which is the center of the seat of power of Jerusalem.
00:05:20:49 – 00:05:47:11
Michael Gewecke
We, I think, fail to connect with the cultural significance of this city to the people of Israel. This is the city that’s been destroyed already multiple times throughout multiple centuries of conflict and then people being enslaved and coming back and rebuilding. There’s this great pride in this particular place and the people who occupy the highest seats of power in just a few verses before this had been arguing with Jesus.
00:05:47:25 – 00:06:11:04
Michael Gewecke
And if you go back a couple studies, Jesus has just in no uncertain terms, lambasted the religious leadership, the people who would have been at the very highest part of the pecking order in Jerusalem and called them out as being hypocrites. And in fact, in taking the money given inside the temple to benefit themselves and not the widows and those who have most needs.
00:06:11:04 – 00:06:33:05
Michael Gewecke
So what Luke is doing in one sense here is to say that because of this hypocrisy, the day is going to come when ultimately this seat of power will fall, that it will no longer rest upon us a strong foundation. And if you’re an American in the 21st century, I don’t know what the equivalent of that would be.
00:06:33:05 – 00:07:08:51
Michael Gewecke
Maybe for us something like saying that Washington, D.C. would have this, except it’s not for many a religious city. So that’s not even a perfect analog. My point here being that the idea of Jerusalem falling is not just one of geopolitical odd geographic reference. It’s also has a historical sense. It has a theological sense. It’s this idea that the people who were once the people of Israel, those people called by God, they’re going to experience a destruction of unmistakable, painful level.
00:07:08:56 – 00:07:35:04
Michael Gewecke
And then what’s going to follow that is a new move. And Luke hints to that, and I think we’ll get to that towards the conclusion of today’s study. But there’s just we should be careful. This is the that boiling down my point now. We should be careful to not make this a kind of a future foretelling kind of text in our present day and miss all of the subsurface of importance that Jerusalem has in Jesus’s day.
00:07:35:09 – 00:07:39:09
Michael Gewecke
And if we’re willing to see that there’s a lot more here than meets the eye.
00:07:39:14 – 00:08:19:16
Clint Loveall
I think so. And I also think we have to be aware of the kind of overarching themes here. You know, Jesus has said a great deal one of the not maybe not even one of, I would argue, the largest theme that connects the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is this idea of the Kingdom of God. And depending on which gospel you read, might determine how strongly it’s emphasized, but it’s in all the Gospels that the kingdom of the world and the Kingdom of God are not compatible, that that they are opposed to one another.
00:08:19:21 – 00:09:02:34
Clint Loveall
It’s not the Kingdom of God isn’t just a cleaned up version of the world. It’s going to replace the world. It is the Upside-Down Kingdom. It is going to set everything right. It is going to replace that which is. And these passages, I think, come from that idea of replacement, the idea that what God is going to initiate and Usher starting in the covenant, fulfilling itself in Jesus and one day consummating itself with the new kingdom, is going to overthrow the kingdoms of the world, even Jerusalem, who will be the center point, which will be the center point of that tension.
00:09:02:34 – 00:09:27:46
Clint Loveall
The Gentiles are going to stomp through Jerusalem. And then as we move to the second part of that passage, verse 25, now we talk about universal signs. There will be signs the sun, the moon, the stars. We start looking beyond the earth for this idea that the world that is coming is going to replace the world that is.
00:09:27:46 – 00:09:49:24
Clint Loveall
And that’s a significant part of this kind of language, these kind of texts. We I think we have to read these out. I don’t know if I’d go so far. Michael’s to say we have to read them differently than we read, say, a parable. But I think we have to be conscious of what we’re reading so that we understand the nuance of it.
00:09:49:24 – 00:10:34:28
Clint Loveall
And and I think what’s behind all of this is that idea that the Kingdom of God is not going to come quietly and and just sneak its way in. It’s going to usher itself in dramatically and it is going to replace and consume and change and conquer what is, you know, the nations will be thrown down. They will faint from fear that this is dramatic kind of language in which Luke is painting a theology, a theological picture for us of God’s ultimate victory over the worldly kingdom.
00:10:34:31 – 00:10:36:38
Clint Loveall
That currently is.
00:10:36:43 – 00:11:00:43
Michael Gewecke
Two quick things. And I think it’s important to remember here that in verse 24 we see in clear detail evidence of the fact that Luke is a part one, Part two book we’re reading. Luke That’s part one, but part two is acts, and Acts is going to tell this story about the beginning of the times of the Gentiles that will be fulfilled.
00:11:00:43 – 00:11:36:55
Michael Gewecke
This cosmic gospel, this great good news that’s going to extend beginning in Jerusalem. This is essential. This is how acts begins beginning in Jerusalem. The gospel is going to just slowly and evermore grow in concentric rings, leaving that geographic region until it’s traveled around the entire known world. And here that the idea is while there will be this kind of cosmic collapse of Jerusalem, while this city will experience destruction and things will be reset, that will not be the end of the kingdom.
00:11:36:55 – 00:12:00:40
Michael Gewecke
It will, in fact, been the place where that movement has been birthed and the place that has fueled the fire that grows all around the world as as the kingdom continues to be proclaimed by disciples. And interestingly and surprisingly, if you were a Jew, the Gentiles. And so Luke is already tipping us off to that. The second thing I think this is so important, we find it in verse 28.
00:12:00:45 – 00:12:29:15
Michael Gewecke
This all comes to an end, a climax in this idea. When you see these things stand up, raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near. And this is where I think the church has sometimes gotten it wrong, is we read texts that are supposed to be encouraging of the body. A reminder. No, no. When you are bowled over, when you are struggling under the weight of this moment, look up, literally pick up your head and look.
00:12:29:15 – 00:12:59:13
Michael Gewecke
That’s when you’re redemptions come here. That’s a that’s a beautiful gift. That’s a gracious invitation. And oftentimes the church reads these apocalyptic texts. We read things that like these signs, the distress, the nations being confused, the fear, the foreboding. We read all of that and we miss the point that’s being taught here that these are things that should result in you stopping to look at those things on the ground and you should start looking up because that’s from where your health is going to come.
00:12:59:13 – 00:13:17:58
Michael Gewecke
And when Christians get that wrong, when we begin to interpret signs and then start levying that as evidence either against other people or say, Hey, look, I have the secret decoder ring, I know the answer, and so I’m going to do this or this or this. No. Yes. When you see this thing, you should pray. And you might ask yourself, well, should we pray all the time?
00:13:18:00 – 00:13:43:27
Michael Gewecke
Yes, that’s the point. When when things are in tumult, that’s when God calls us to himself. And I just think there’s a more cosmic kind of lesson here if we’re willing to see it. It doesn’t take the sun and the moon, the stars being just being distressed and that being a sign. It’s it’s you waking up today and again turning to heaven, turning to the one from whom you find the source of your life.
00:13:43:31 – 00:13:51:45
Michael Gewecke
And then in that relationship, then realizing that your redemption is coming, the kingdom is coming year. That’s that’s good news.
00:13:51:50 – 00:14:17:08
Clint Loveall
I think we said last week that one of the mistakes we can make with a passage like this is to forget that it was intended for other people before we got a hold of it. Not to say that it doesn’t have something to say to us, it certainly does. But as Luke’s readers would have read this for the first times, they would have known the destruction of Jerusalem.
00:14:17:13 – 00:14:56:53
Clint Loveall
They’re reading this on the back side of the destruction of the temple. They would have known the difficulties that were being that were growing for people of faith, the oppression, the abuse. There would have been the first martyrs already. There would have been some persecution. And so the idea that they were to pick up their heads and and look because their redemption is drawing near, this is a this is a deep, resounding note of encouragement for a church that is beginning to know some struggles.
00:14:56:58 – 00:15:30:37
Clint Loveall
It’s very interesting that that in our time, Michael, we have not not invented, but we have kind of become comfortable with the idea that faith makes things easy and that being a Christian is somehow a path to, you know, an easier settled kind of life. The early Christians, they knew that to be false. They weren’t tempted by that idea because to undertake the life of faith was to put themselves at odds with the world around them.
00:15:30:37 – 00:15:55:24
Clint Loveall
That was lots of idols and polytheistic and could get them killed. They were they they were at the very outset acutely aware of the tension between the faith in the world and to some extent, those of us who live in comfortable places where there’s freedom of religion maybe have a harder time resonating with it. But but these people knew that.
00:15:55:24 – 00:16:20:27
Clint Loveall
And so when they would have read these words, they wouldn’t have been formed, they wouldn’t have been terrifying. They would have said, yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re living right now. And they would have heard a word like, Take your stand and raise your heads because your redemption is near. As a reminder that their ultimate hope was not found in the world, but found in the return of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
00:16:20:27 – 00:16:29:06
Clint Loveall
And so I think we we need to remember that in order to make ultimately to make sense of these kind of passages.
00:16:29:11 – 00:16:51:32
Michael Gewecke
It would be wise for any Christian with some years of faith to spend a little bit of time exploring this word that you spoke of earlier apocalyptic literature. We could help provide you with resources of this would be interested. You would be interested in this. Go to the comments and ask a question or reach out to us at the office.
00:16:51:32 – 00:17:16:48
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to talk to you. But Clint, I mean, this is a genre people reading this. This isn’t the first time they’ve read things like this. In fact, I could show you I don’t know that we have time today. There’s in Daniel the Old Testament book. There’s direct references that Luke is pulling in here into this text. I’m specifically coming in on the cloud comes from nearly a direct quote from a section of Daniel.
00:17:16:53 – 00:18:02:27
Michael Gewecke
So the readers here are steeped in their scriptures, the Old Testament. They’re steeped in other forms of writing that has these elements of the the cosmos, the sun, the stars. These these things mean something to them that we may not 1 to 1 sync up with in our own experience. So it would be, I think, for any person who’s been in the faith for some time, there would be something to learn and reading a good book about what that type of literature served to do within the early church or why it came to be a book like Revelation, of course, is maybe example par excellence of of that kind of theological vision, ranging from poetry
00:18:02:38 – 00:18:26:54
Michael Gewecke
ranging to teaching and everything in between. And I just think that if we’re able to see the richness of that, we’re going to be able to discover while this may not be the most devotional text, this is likely not one you’re going to take and you’re going to pray in your prayer closet tomorrow morning. This is a kind of text that reminds us that God’s plan is cosmic.
00:18:26:54 – 00:18:52:31
Michael Gewecke
It is going to ultimately affect every inch, every centimeter of the entire universe. It is this upside down kingdom. And when it comes, then we will see that sort of man coming like a like a cloud in with power and great glory. And that’s the moment when we’ll know that redemption is near. But the promise in the end is redemption.
00:18:52:31 – 00:19:13:39
Michael Gewecke
And I think if all of this has sounded confusing or if it’s felt like it’s been hard to track, just remember the upshot at the end of this is despite destruction, despite cosmic influence, redemption is at hand. God will be faithful. Jesus is coming back. And that’s the message that the early church would have resonated with.
00:19:13:44 – 00:19:49:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah, And and I think that anybody who has been through a struggle of some kind can appreciate the commitment of faith that it takes to say that when life is painful and hard, when the world seems out of control and frightening, that we affirm that God’s kingdom is coming, that Christ has conquered the world for the early Christians and for the Christians of this day and age when we live in hard moments.
00:19:49:33 – 00:20:17:06
Clint Loveall
And yet don’t give in to them, look beyond them to the hope we’ve been given in the Gospel. We are standing in a long, beautiful line of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers in faith who have in their own moments in the language of Luke here, take your stand and raise your heads. And if you’ve ever had to do that, you know how difficult it is.
00:20:17:18 – 00:20:45:49
Clint Loveall
This is not this is not shallow language. This is this is a description. This is an example and an expression of one of the most difficult moments of faith. When faith in the world interact and leave us wounded and and troubled, and yet holding on to the promise that the kingdom of God is coming at hand, that the Son of God is coming again.
00:20:45:54 – 00:20:57:42
Clint Loveall
Those are those are foundational moments in the story of the faith. And if you’ve been in those moments, then I think you have a deeper appreciation for a text like this.
00:20:57:46 – 00:21:19:06
Michael Gewecke
I think that’s an excellent summary of the conversation. Hope that you have found something both challenging and encouraging in today’s conversation. We’d love to have you subscribe so that you can stick with us on the study of Luke that we’re doing now and other studies like it in the future. Certainly go the comments. Let us know if you have any questions or thoughts and get this video like and share it if it’s been helpful for you.
00:21:19:21 – 00:21:21:48
Michael Gewecke
That said, friends, we will see you tomorrow. Until then, be blessed.
00:21:21:48 – 00:21:22:48
Clint Loveall
Thanks for being with us.