WHEN OUR REDEMPTION DRAWS NEAR

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on December 8, 2021 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: December 8, 2021 from Luke 21:25-28

Theme: The signs of the coming of Jesus will be a distress to the world but comfort to His saints.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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When will our Lord’s second coming occur? We’re taught in the Bible that no man would know that day or hour. Not even the angels of heaven. In fact, even the Lord Jesus Himself said that He did not know. It was something known only by the Father (Mark 13:32). But the Lord Jesus did give us some signs to watch for.

As we’ve been studying together from Luke 21, there were things that would happen in this world that were not to be taken as signs. We found those things described for us in verses 8-19. And then, the Lord told His disciples about the specific events that would occur in 70 A.D., when the temple would be destroyed by the Roman armies and the city of Jerusalem left in ruins. He described those events in verses 20-24. But even that was not to be taken as an immediate sign of His second coming. That second coming would still not occur until sometime in the future.

But now, when we come to verses 25-28, we find that He said this about the promise of His return:

“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:25-28).

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There are many things that people interpret today as signs of the immediacy of the Lord’s return. They look to cultural and political events, or to the increase of natural disasters or plagues, or instances of extreme persecution and hostility to the faith, or even the serge in what appears to be false teaching and demonic activity in the world. People often not only point to these things by themselves, but also to the seeming increase in the occurrences of them as a sign of the times. And it’s important to recognize that these all may be events that Jesus is about to return. Jesus described them as”the beginnings of sorrows” (Mark 13:8). But they are not mentioned in the Bible as definitive signs of the immediacy of His return.

There are some things that are mentioned in the Bible, however, that indicate to us that the time is very soon. For example, Jesus said that “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). The apostle Paul said that “that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first”—that is, a great apostasy from the faith—“and the man of sin is revealed”—that is, the antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:3). The Lord Jesus said the sight of “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (Matthew 24:15; see also Daniel 11:31), would be a sign that a great tribulation was about to begin; and He said—in words very much like our passage this morning:

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:29-31).

Our Lord gives us a clear indication, then, of some of the signs that would indicate the immediacy of His return. We’re to watch for them. But He only gave us enough of a description of those signs as was necessary to keep us on the alert, but not enough to distract us from our work of ‘doing business till He comes’ (Luke 19:13).

One of the fascinating things to discover from our study of this morning’s passage is that only Luke, in his Gospel account, gives us the encouraging message we find in verse 28. Our Lord said that “when these things begin to happen”—that is, the very signs that will cause the whole world to be struck with fear—we are to “look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” Dr. Harry Ironside said it well;

The believers in the Lord Jesus Christ need not be in distress because of present world conditions. We know that God works everything according to the counsel of His own will, and we can trust Him and not be afraid. As these signs begin to come to pass they serve to tell us that the coming of the King draweth nigh, and so our hearts are encouraged as we look up and wait for our blessed Lord’s return.¹

One of the great things we learn from this morning’s passage is that the signs of the coming of Jesus will be a distress to the world … but that the same signs will be a comfort to His saints.

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Notice first …

1. THE SIGNS (vv. 25-26).

In verse 25, Jesus said, “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars …” As far as we know, these signs didn’t occur during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. And while there have been some phenomena in the heavens, there has not yet been a combination of such signs recorded in history. These events seem to be unique, and clear signs of the coming of the Lord. The Book of Revelation describes events like these in the passages that detail the first four of the ‘seven trumpets’ in Revelation 8:7-13; or the first four of the ‘seven bowl judgments’ in 16:2-9. These kinds of signs in the heavens are spoken of in the Book of Joel as signs of the immediacy of the ‘day of the Lord’:

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
The sun and moon will grow dark,
And the stars will diminish their brightness.
The Lord also will roar from Zion,
And utter His voice from Jerusalem;
The heavens and earth will shake;
But the Lord will be a shelter for His people,
And the strength of the children of Israel (Joel 3:14-16).

Those are signs that would be manifest in the heavens. But the Lord also went on in the second half of verse 25 to speak of signs upon the earth; “and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring …” These kinds of signs are spoken of in the second chapter of the Book of Haggai as occurring in the latter days. God spoke through the prophet Haggai of a future building of the temple:

“For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:6-7).

And note how our Lord, in verse 26, describes the responses of men to these events: “men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This is described for us vividly in Revelation 6, at the opening of the ‘sixth seal’:

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:12-17).

Will people actually die of heart attacks over distress and horror at the signs they see? Perhaps so. It seems clear that they will recognize these as signs of the terrible judgment of God.

This leads us, next, to consider what our Lord said about …

2. THE COMING (v. 27).

In verse 27, our Lord said of the people on the earth, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” The glory of the Lord is often associated in the Scriptures with clouds. The glory of God appeared to the people of Israel on the mountain in thick smoke at the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19:18). The glory of the Lord also filled the temple in the form of a cloud (Exodus 40:35; 1 Kings 8:10). He led the people of Israel through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud (Nehemiah 9:19; Psalm 78:14). And since the Lord Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh, then His heavenly rule over earth will also be made manifest in a cloud (Revelation 14:14-16). When He returns to this earth in power and great glory, it will be as Revelation 1:7 puts it;

Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen (Revelation 1:7).

Note also that, in verse 27 of our passage, our Lord describes Himself as “the Son of Man”. That is a name for Himself that He has taken from Daniel 7:13-14; where we read—again—that He comes in clouds:

“I was watching in the night visions,
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
He came to the Ancient of Days,
And they brought Him near before Him.
Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Which shall not pass away,
And His kingdom the one
Which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).

What a dreadful sight this will be to the unbelieving world! Men will tremble to the very core of their being when they behold the signs of it.

But what will be a cause of fear and dread to this world will be—to our Lord’s followers—a cause for rejoicing. That leads us, finally, to consider …

3. THE COMFORT (v. 28).

Jesus said, in verse 28, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” We have already been redeemed from the condemnation of sin by the blood of Jesus on the cross. But what is being described here is our redemption becoming fully completed—both in spirit and in body. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17;

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).

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In 1 Thessalonians 4:18, Paul wrote, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” These words of our Lord should also be a comfort to us; for though the signs of the coming of Jesus will be a distress to the world, they will indicate the full completion of our redemption; and for that reason, will be a comfort to those of us who trust in Jesus.

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¹H.A. Ironside, Addresses on The Gospel of Luke (Neptune, NY: Loixeaux Brothers, 1947), p. 627.