Howdy. Well, it's the end of the world as we
know it, and I feel fine. From time to time,
it's important to take a break from all the feel
-good passages in Scripture, you know, beatitudes
and all the cutesy parts in there, and let's
just take time for the intense, cataclysmic,
and terrifying Scriptures, right? Absolutely.
This is what we have in our Luke passage today.
Not Revelation, not Daniel, the Gospel. The world
is falling apart, but in so reviewing, maybe
we can truly understand Christ. Every generation
has its own way of imagining the end of the world.
For some reason, our generation loves to put
it on movie screens. We have the film Knowing
with Nicolas Cage, possibly the greatest actor
of all time, I'm just gonna say. I mean, come
on, Con Air? Pretty amazing. But you see, it
begins with a prophecy of numbers scribbled by
a child, predicting disaster after disaster,
solar flares, earthquakes, fire from the sky,
and as every prediction comes true, and people
begin to panic. The world unravels, the sky is
a threat, the sun and its flares are the enemy.
And the adults just hope that the children will
somehow be rescued from it all. People fainting
with fear, the heavens are shaken and the world
comes undone. But then, there's interstellar.
Matthew McConaughey apparently knows more words
than just, all right, all right, all right. The
world is not exploding, it's slowly dying. The
sky is not on fire, it's filled with dust. The
crops fail, the nations collapse, the people
lose hope. And a group of explorers look to the
stars not with fear, but a longing for another
way forward. A future maybe in a faraway galaxy.
The entire story is driven by the fear that our
world can no longer hold us, but the stubborn
hope that there might still be a way through.
And just because Aerosmith needed one more hit,
we got Armageddon with Bruce Willis. So where
the blue collar workers get to save the day.
The asteroid is coming, the countdown is ticking,
the world is bracing for impact, governments
scramble, scientists argue, and somehow they
manage to get up to this giant asteroid and blow
it up. It's chaotic, it's dramatic, it's very,
very loud, kind of ridiculous. But beneath all
the spectacle is the same simple truth. Human
beings feel very small when the heavens start
attacking us. Three different movies, three different
visions of the ending, but the same heartbeat.
When the familiar sky shakes, people panic. And
the visitors to church today wonder why they
picked today to visit. But this is why the words
of Jesus in Luke 21 hit so close to home. Deep
inside we have a fear of what will happen if
we look up and discover that the world's fate
is sealed. There's nothing we could do about
it. Jesus talks about signs and the sun, the
moon, the stars. He talks about nations in distress.
He talks about people fainting with fear. He
talks about the heavens shaking. It sounds like
a blockbuster, but it's not for entertainment.
It's to prepare us. Because in all that imagery,
Jesus speaks a word that no movie would ever
dare to say. When these things begin to take
place, straighten up and raise your heads because
your redemption is drawing near. Straighten up?
What kind of words are these? If the world is
coming to an end, shouldn't we be cowering and
running in fear? Maybe find as much spam and
twinkies as you can, right? But when Jesus describes
wars, earthquakes, persecution, the disciples
lean in because they want all the secrets and
all the strategies for how to survive. But you
see, Jesus is not feeding the fear or giving
them a timeline. He's anchoring them in the faithfulness
and what it looks like when the world feels very
fragile. And Jesus says there will be signs in
the sun and the moon and the stars. And on the
earth distress of nations perplexity because
of the roaring of the sea and the waves. People
fainting with fear the powers of the heavens
shaken and then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
Now when these things begin to take place straighten
up and raise your heads because your redemption
is drawing near. Jesus doesn't normally talk
like this, right? Jesus does not use eclipses
and blood moons and astronomical patterns, right?
But these words are His, mysterious and vivid.
And so many people try to draw charts around
them and decode them and tie them to the headlines.
There were weeks before one of the most recent
eclipses when there were people that were petrified
that that was truly the end. But with all of
these, when you just let Jesus speak. He makes
sense, not by forcing him into our modern anxiety,
but rather something else rises to the surface,
something deeper, calming, steady, because the
point is not the spectacle. The point is your
posture. But before Jesus even describes the
shaking of the heavens or the roaring of the
seas and everybody wonders if I'm just referring
everyone to a chiropractor He starts with the
warning that is easy to overlook Right after
the disciples ask when will these things be?
Right after they hear that the temple is gonna
fall and their world is gonna crack Jesus doesn't
give them a date He doesn't give them the signs
to prevent it. He doesn't give them a strategy
to stop it He says, see that you are not led
astray. Why is that his first response? The disciples
are not just scared. They're looking to control.
They're looking to prevent it. The temple was
the center of their identity, their stability,
their world. And if that fell, everything falls.
So naturally, they want to know how to prevent
it, how to hold on to the life that they know.
Jesus knows that when people are afraid of losing
the world they know, losing their comfort, their
security, their control, that's exactly when
the false prophets show up. It's been two millennia.
There have been plenty. And Jesus knows something
about human fear. Fear makes us vulnerable to
the wrong voices. It makes us cling to certainty.
It makes us follow those who promise safety.
And this is exactly why Jesus adds, many will
come in my name, do not go after them. Because
when people are terrified of losing what they
love, their temple, their community, their comfort,
false prophets always show up. And the dangerous
ones are not the ones who come and say, oh, go
follow Zeus. Oh, go follow Baal. Is that even
really a temptation? It's the ones who say, I'm
speaking for Jesus. I can fix it. I can stop
your shaking. I can preserve what you care about.
Not everyone who claims Jesus is sent by Jesus.
Not every voice promising safety comes from God.
And Jesus knows that when the world trembles,
the greatest threat to the disciples is not the
shaking, it's the seduction in the voice that
tells them exactly what they want to hear. The
wrong voice, the wrong Savior, the wrong fulfillment.
And so before anything else, Jesus says, do not
be led astray. But is Jesus then getting into
literal things that are going to happen? As much
as we're tempted to look and to say, oh, there's
an earthquake, oh, there's a storm, oh, there's
a solar flare, oh, there's a Nicolas Cage film,
Jesus is looking instead to use the language
of the sun, the moon, and the stars because scripture
mirrors what we feel. when the world shakes.
In the Old Testament, it meant upheaval and turmoil.
The prophets reach for the sky when the words
on the ground are just not big enough Amos in
8 9 says I will make the Sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight Joel in
231 says the Sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood before the great and awesome
day of the Lord Isaiah in 13 10 the stars of
the heavens and their constellations will not
give their light the Sun will be dark at its
rising and the moon will not shed its light Ezekiel
32 -7, when you are extinguished, I will cover
the heavens and make their stars dark. The prophets
are not describing astronomy. They're talking
about the collapse of our certainty. They're
saying that when the empires fall, when the nations
tremble, when the familiar world gives way, the
sky goes dark. Jesus is pointing us to the prophets
who say that when the sky, the kingdoms fall,
the empires collapse, then God intervenes, the
stars are dimmed, the sun is darkened, and the
sky is destabilized because the world no longer
makes any sense. We've seen the nations in distress,
haven't we? We've seen perplexity. We've seen
the sense when leaders don't know what to do
and people do not know who to trust. We've seen
fear so thick that we feel it when we walk into
a room. Jesus is speaking the language of people
who watch the sky and feel the ground shift beneath
their feet. He's speaking to us. Have you ever
had that moment when your world suddenly felt
unfamiliar? When something that had always been
stable suddenly wasn't. Maybe a marriage that
cracked. A diagnosis that came out of nowhere.
A job that vanished or a career that disappeared.
A friend who walked away or managed to betray.
A new story that made you wonder what the future
was going to look like for your kids. The world
feels like what Jesus is describing, that the
sun is dimmed, the moon is out of its rhythm,
and the stars are moving the wrong way. But the
world didn't actually end. It felt like the world
that you knew was falling apart. That's the space
where Jesus is naming. Because He knows what
it's going to feel like when the temple is destroyed.
And the Jewish people are going to be exiled
out of Jerusalem. It's going to happen in the
next few decades. As much as we like to talk
about Israel being eternal, the nation of Israel
as a physical place has never been eternal. It
was shattered in half after Solomon. It was overthrown
and destroyed in 722 and 586 BC. The temple was
destroyed a few decades after Jesus spoke in
70 AD. And the Jewish people were ejected in
135. Israel as God's people are eternal. But
as a nation, by definition, it never has been.
And the people were going to experience that
very soon. Jesus says one of the strangest things
though, your redemption is drawing near. The
world is falling apart and people are supposed
to be positive? How does that make any sense?
Are we supposed to be happy about all the terrible
things that are going on? Are we just supposed
to be in denial? about what's happening all around
us. Everybody gets your floaties. But it's tempting
to think that danger is always going to come
from the outside. From the armies, from the disasters,
from the enemies, from the unknown. But sometimes
the world's upheaval, it comes to us through
the very people and relationships that we trust
the most. There was a man, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
He was a man of deep faith, a pastor, so clearly
a troublemaker, a theologian, a resistor of tyranny.
He was part of a circle within the German military
intelligence to overthrow the dictator. He was
cautious, careful, devoted, and he trusted his
closest friends like Hans Oster, implicitly.
And yet, in a twist of fate, it was Hans' diary
that recorded all the resistance work that betrayed
Bonhoeffer. to the Gestapo. It was not because
he meant to. He never meant to betray him the
way that Judas betrayed Jesus. But the very thing
that symbolized trust and connection, purpose,
became the instrument of vulnerability. What
was closest to him became what led to his downfall.
And there's a parallel here. When we look at
someone like Judas, who was one of the 12, one
of the closest ones, the inner circle, Jesus
was wounded and handed over, condemned not because
of a stranger, but by someone who was closest
to him. The lesson for us is sobering. Even the
things that we treasure the most, the people
we hold dearest, The ones who we believe to be
faithful and safe can be the very ones that bring
about our harm. Even what seems like loyalty
in the grand cosmic scheme of things can play
a role in the trials that we face. Sometimes
the ones that we care for are the ones who mock
the very torment we experience. And this is where
Jesus comes alive when he says, do not be terrified.
He doesn't say everything's going to be fine
as long as you pick the right friends. He doesn't
say your trust will always protect you. He says
your redemption is drawing near. The platform
for the gospel is not stability or safety. It's
not being perfectly aligned with the people around
you. It's built on the faithfulness in the midst
of uncertainty. It's built on enduring in the
suffering. Because suffering, whether it's from
the enemies outside or from a twist of faith
in the closest allies we have, it doesn't just
lead to the platform for the gospel. That is
where the gospel is found. See, Bonhoeffer's
courage in prison, his witness, and even his
death became testimony to God's work in the midst
of the collapse. Like Jesus facing betrayal in
the garden like the early church scattered in
persecution What looked like defeat became the
stage for God's redemption revealed? so when
we see Everything falling apart in our lives
That's exactly when God is saying to lift up
your head Because that's when Jesus is coming
near The kingdom of God is always advancing but
just not always in the places we expected. You
see, the Son of Man is coming in a cloud with
power and great glory. When the world feels like
it's falling apart, that's not the moment when
God disappears. It's the moment God draws near.
Not to crush, not to punish, but to redeem. He's
not telling us to run, to hide. to hoard, to
build bunkers, or to try to figure out the news
cycles. He's not even saying to figure out exact
meanings of what every sign is. But he's saying
to take a posture that doesn't make sense to
us. Look up and hope. Because the one that we're
looking for is coming. He's not leaving. See,
the signs, they're... meant to tell us that Jesus
is still on the way. The more everything is falling
apart, the better it is. Because it means that
God is coming even faster. You see, as much as...
As much as this microphone is annoying me to
no end, the cosmic signs do not show anything
being calm, predictable, or neat. It's neither
hopeless, and it's not out of control. Jesus
wants us to know that the shaking of the world
is not a failure, it's the beginning. It's the
same way that the labor pains are not the death
of a child, it's the signal that the child is
about to be born. And Jesus says, when these
things begin, straighten up, because you are
people expecting redemption. See, God is not
done. Christ is not gone. Redemption is not just
a metaphor. Bonhoeffer lived through one of those
moments when an entire nation was terrified of
losing its identity, its sense of stability,
its place in the world. And into that fear, There
were loud and confident voices that claimed to
speak for God, promising to restore order, strength,
pride. And Christians followed those voices because
they sounded like hope, though it was counterfeit
and wrapped in religious language. But Bon Hafer
echoed Jesus' words. He said, the great masquerade
of evil has played havoc with all our ethical
concepts. We must learn to regard people less
in light of what they do or fail to do, and more
in terms of what they suffer. Bonhoeffer led
with long obedience in the same direction. Because
when evil tries to take everything, faith stands
up. When the world is on fire, disciples lift
their heads. When fear says hide, Christ says
hope. The thread is not fear. or anxiety or speculation.
Because the Christian posture in chaos is not
to collapse, it's to hope in Christ. As Bonhoeffer
said, the church is the church only when it exists
for other people. In a world full of earthquakes
and headlines and shifting empires, in a world
where the sky sometimes feels dark, Jesus doesn't
say, be afraid and run away. He says your redemption
is near. The world is not stable because Christ
is. You cannot control the shaking, but Christ
redeems it. The world may look the least like
it should, but that's often when God is closest
to revealing Himself. So the end of our world
is not the end of God's work. Whatever it may
look like, whichever actor may be portraying
it. Jesus is the true temple. And when that temple
was destroyed, salvation was not stopped. It
was unleashed to the ends of the earth. So when
the world breaks, grace leaks out to all people
in a way that we have not figured out yet. And
when our safety dissolves, Christ is more easily
seen. So don't look for escape. Don't look for
weapons. Don't look for false saviors. Look up,
because when our world finally ends, that's when
the kingdom of God truly begins. Thanks be to
God.