A Coming of the Kingdom

Can I invite you to turn again to Luke chapter 17? And as you turn there, we’ll pause and ask for God’s help as we study the Bible together:

Father God, with our Bibles open before us, we pray that the Spirit of God might be our teacher. We come to this immense mystery: that through the words of a mere man we may hear the very Word of God, believing that when your Word is really preached, that your voice is truly heard. So we look to the Word of God alone by the Spirit of God in order that we might meet the Son of God. For it’s in his name we pray. Amen.

This week, in a eulogy for the singer Aaliyah, who died quite tragically in a plane crash about a week ago now, Janet Jackson, in quoting somebody else, said, “We have not lost Aaliyah. We have gained an angel.” And then, as an aside, she paused, and she said in a very breathy kind of way, “That’s so true.” Watching this as I was flicking through the channels, I stopped to say, “What? Pardon? Why is that so true? And what makes that true?”

There is nothing like death to reveal the manifold confusion which exists in the minds of men and women regarding life in our contemporary world. Absent any kind of explanation regarding the origins of life that really meets the needs, and without any concept of where life all ultimately ends, men and women are forced just to get on with it, to push on through their days, some of them embracing a form of foolhardy optimism, essentially saying to one another, at least to themselves, “Well, nothing dreadfully bad has happened so far. Indeed, so far, so good. We might as well keep moving.” Others who are a little more thoughtful, perhaps of a more melancholic disposition, find themselves embracing what is really a drama of despair. They look out on the world, they see the events of their lives, and they have considered the options that are before them, and they realize why one individual, reflecting upon the issues of science, said, “[As] far as the eye of science can see, man is alone, absolutely alone, in a universe in which his very appearance is a kind of cosmic accident.”[1]

Every man or woman, boy or girl lives in the awareness of the fact that there is something more to life than the life that we actually know.

And you may be here this morning, and you haven’t essentially put it in that terminology, but for me to begin to address the matter in this way, you find that there is some kind of echo in your heart. Because you are going through your days. Oh, you’re enjoying many of them. There is so much for which to be thankful. There are issues that are rewarding. There are affairs that are demanding and so on. But when you get to the very core of things—when you’re left with yourself alone, simply gazing out into the night sky—can I ask you: Does your view of the world answer for you the essential questions which life poses? The questions “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going to, and why?”

Now, I feel confident in asking you to ask that of yourselves, because the Bible addresses every one of those questions and provides us, whether we accept or reject it, with a clear, cohesive, comprehensive view of the world. Indeed, as I’ve said in the last couple of Sundays, one of the exciting things about this point in history is that of all people, the Christian, the follower of Christ, has an opportunity to say to a confused world, “Here is our explanation for the who, the what, and the why.”

The Bible says that the world is not a mere accident, not some kind of cosmic spill, but rather, the Bible says that God created the world, and he created it purposefully. At the same time, the Bible declares that man is not merely the chance product of evolution—if you like, another cosmic accident—but rather, he is created by God, and he is different from all of the rest of God’s creation, from all the other forms of life. He was created, Genesis 1:26 says, in the image of God, and that part of the ramifications of that is that God has planted in the hearts of men and women an awareness of eternity—that every man or woman, boy or girl lives in the awareness of the fact that there is something more to life than the life that we actually know. 

That is one of the reasons why those crazy periodicals or weekly magazines or whatever they are appear at the checkout in the grocery store. If you look at them at all with care, you find not only are they bizarre, but a significant number of them are directly related to the issue of death, the afterlife, eternity, coming back again, other worlds, other planets, other places, something else, something more, something beyond. Now, why are they able to sell them? You would think that by this time, on the edge of the twenty-first century, everybody would have said, “What a bunch of bunk!” But no, they sell them, apparently. And they buy enough of them in order to keep them there. Why? Because it appeals to something that is inherent in a man or in a woman: the fact that every person here this morning knows intuitively that there is something more. Therefore, there is a fascination with death. There is a fascination with the end of time. There is a fascination to which the Bible speaks with clarity.

An Underlying Question

Now, the Bible not only addresses very clearly the origins of the world, but it also speaks clearly to the issue of the conclusions. And the reason I begin in this way this morning is because in Luke chapter 17, in the verses before us, Jesus is essentially tackling the questions of the Pharisees and the unspoken questions of the disciples concerning how everything is going to wrap up. And what the Bible tells us is that it knows nothing of a history that goes on forever. The idea of history going on forever is just, frankly, boring. The Bible doesn’t speak of it in those terms. Nor does the Bible understand history as simply fading away, for that would be anticlimactic—in the way that a dreadful movie ends, you know, where there’s no end to it; where you’re sitting there, you think there’s another twenty minutes to go, and all of a sudden, the credits come up. And you say, “I paid good money for this?” And it just trails off to nothingness. And you walk out saying, “What is the point of that? The end never made any sense at all. It just trailed away to nothing.” And there are people—they live their lives, and they say that’s how history is: eventually, it will just trail away to nothing. “No, not so,” says the Bible.

Nor does the Bible suggest that history goes round and round in circles. For if the notion that history goes on forever is boring and that history simply fades away as anticlimactic, then the idea that history goes round and round in circles is absolutely hopeless. And that is why some of the most famous thinkers, writers, in the twentieth century, having embraced the notion of total hopelessness, have then, in a consistent response to their view of the world, determined to kill themselves, thereby raging against the pointlessness of their existence—and nobody a better illustration of that than in the tragic end of Ernest Hemingway. Believing that he is living his life, which he sees as a short journey from nothingness to nothingness, in his opulent home in Idaho, he takes his favorite shotgun, he puts the butt of it on the floor of his vestibule, he puts the barrel of it into his mouth, and he takes himself out. Tragic, but logical. For he is living within the framework of his own worldview: “It is totally meaningless. Therefore, I’m checking out. It is the only way I can express control over my circumstances.”

Now, it is in this world that the Bible, then, speaks with tremendous clarity. And what the Bible says is that history is moving towards a climax: that the world isn’t simply going to run down through lack of energy, nor is the world about to explode in some massive, catastrophic nuclear holocaust. Rather, what the Bible says is this: that history as we know it will end when the purpose for which God made the world has been accomplished; that the creator of the ends of the earth is working everything out according to the purpose and counsel of his will; that nothing is out of control, nor will it get out of control ultimately for the believer; that we’re not trapped in some dreadful rat’s cage, that we’re not blown around on the winds of meaningless chance, but our lives are being ordered, and history is moving towards a final destination.

Now, that establishes, in one measure, hope; but it also brings with it, as we see here in Luke chapter 17, an essential and vital warning. The kingdom of God, Jesus is teaching, is a reality. He is inviting, as the King, men and women to enter his kingdom—to repent of their sins and to acknowledge that he is the person he claimed to be. If they will come in childlike trust, then he will welcome them into the kingdom. Failure to receive his welcome, failure to turn from self to Christ, will leave men and women facing the awful consequences of sin all by themselves. And Jesus, as I say to you, is addressing at least an underlying, unstated question on the part of the disciples. And the question is this: “What will it be like the day when the Son of Man is revealed? What’s it going to be like when it all ends? If it is moving towards a climax, and if there is going to be an end, tell us, Jesus, what is it going to be like? Give us some indication so that we’ve got an idea of how we ought to be living our lives.”

Now, why do I say it’s an underlying question? Well, because the way in which Jesus teaches his disciples is clearly addressing a fundamental question in their minds. So, for example, in verse 26, he says, “As it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man.” “I know you’re wondering what it’s going to be like. Well, let me tell you. Think about Noah, and then think about that.” Or in verse 28: “It was the same in the days of Lot” as it’s going to be in the day of the Son of Man. Or in verse 30: “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.”

Now, when you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, what Jesus is saying both here in Luke 17 and elsewhere in the Gospels is that the day of Jesus Christ will be unmistakable, worldwide, sudden, inescapable, and, for those who are not prepared, calamitous.  The day of Jesus Christ will be unmistakable. Nobody will be saying, “Do you think this is it?” There won’t be any question. It will be worldwide. There will be no place you can be on the whole of God’s earth where you’re not aware of the fact that Christ has come. Thirdly, it will be sudden, so that no chart or diagram will be able to prepare you for the instantaneous moment when it comes. And also, it will be inescapable. There will be no place one is able to be whereby we say, “I’m sorry. I was out. I missed that one.”

Throughout history, Christians have disagreed over their maps and their charts and their diagrams while all the time agreeing on the central fact: Christ will return.

And therefore, on account of this, the notion of the day of the Son of God is absolutely calamitous for those who remain unprepared for it. Every single person in this room will see Jesus Christ face-to-face, the Bible says. The only question is whether we will meet him in the welcome of his friendship, having embraced him by grace as our Savior, or whether we will bow down underneath his foot, meeting him as our eternal Judge.  And in a well-heeled, organized, sensible group of people such as this, there’s hardly a person here who has not prepared for that eventuality in life. That’s why you have annuities. That’s why you have retirement funds. That’s why you have insurance policies. That’s why you have prepared, because you know you’re going to punch out. And when you punch out, you know that there will be people left and you’d better care for them. That makes sense.

Well, listen: if—when—you punch out, you’re not coming back as a squirrel. You’re not coming around on the roller coaster of life again. You’re not going to become an angel! (“That’s so true.”) If that is not the prospect, and if you are going direct to an encounter with the face of Christ, what in the world is it possesses you sir, madam, young person, teenager, intellectual, clown—what is it that possesses you to prepare for time and not prepare for eternity? Especially in light of the fact that in the very core of your being you know there is eternity, ’cause you can’t deny it. That’s why you think about it. How could you even conceive of it? How could we, in time, conceive of eternity, unless God put it in there? Are you prepared? Are you ready?

See, what this passage in its essence is all about is a call to faithful readiness and a reminder of how urgent the call is in light of the unmistakable suddenness of the day of the Son of Man. And when you read this passage carefully, as with other passages of the New Testament, it ought to encourage you to say no to idle speculation, to say no to always be fiddling around with maps and with timetables. Indeed, it provides us with a wonderful opportunity to affirm what is a credo for us: namely, that the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.

All throughout history, since the beginning of the Christian church, those who are truly Christ’s have been looking for the appearing of Jesus. And equally so, they’ve disagreed as to the timing of the events on the eschatological calendar. One thing you can guarantee for certainty is that if you take five individuals who equally believe that Jesus is coming, you will find that there are five disagreements, at least, over exactly when he will appear and how he will appear and so on. Teaching us what? That the central issue is the central issue, and the peripheral is the peripheral, and if you make the peripheral central, then the central will become peripheral. And throughout history, Christians have disagreed over their maps and their charts and their diagrams while all the time agreeing on the central fact: Christ will return.  We will meet him. It will bring separation. It’s going to be sudden. There’s no way out. Therefore, when we focus on that, we realize that throughout history, all have agreed that the final solution to the problems of the world is in the hands of the King of Kings, who is someday going to make the kingdoms of this world his very own. And it is this King, here in verse 20, who is responding to the question that has been asked of him by the Pharisees.

Two Answers

You say, “That was a long introduction.” Yes, it was. “Having been asked by the Pharisees,” verse 20, “when the kingdom of God would come…” This question was on the top of the Pharisees’ agenda. They had read the Old Testament prophecies. They had lived with all that had been engendered through the intertestamental period—four hundred years of prophetic silence. And so they were concerned: “When will this messianic kingdom come? When are we going to get our destiny and our discovery of God breaking in here?”

Now, the reply that Jesus gives here in the second half of verse 20 and into 21 ought to make at least some of you, I hope—I earnestly hope it makes some of you say, “Oh, I remember something that fits in here.” And you’re saying to yourself, “There was that story that we did a hundred years ago, when we were studying in Luke chapter 12—actually, Luke chapter 11—where Jesus had cast out the demon of dumbness, the mute demon.” And as a result of that, there had been amazement on the part of the crowds, and there had been antagonism. And some within the crowd began to say, “You know, he is casting out demons by the power of demons. He’s actually casting things out by the power of Satan.” And Jesus said to them, “Listen, guys, that doesn’t even make any sense. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. You can’t have Satan working against Satan.” And then, this is what I hope you remember: he said, “If I cast out demons by the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God is present among you.”[2]

See, the Pharisees had a real problem with this. It didn’t stop them from keeping asking the question, but they consistently didn’t like the answer. Jesus says to them, “The kingdom of God is not one that you will be able to determine by careful observation.” “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation.” I don’t want to beat this to death, but I’ll tell you, that ought to be a big, loud, warning, rattling claxon going off for everybody who wants to constantly get out their chart and by careful observation pin it home, you know. At least be slightly humble about it, you know.

It’s not going to come by careful observation. And he says to them, “I’ll give you two reasons as to why it won’t. The first is that the kingdom of God is within you”—or, better still, “is among you.” You see, this they couldn’t grasp. He reads from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth—Luke 4—which is pivotal in our whole study of Luke’s Gospel.[3] I don’t think there’s been a study when I haven’t gone back to Luke 4, because that’s really the cornerstone of the whole thing. “The kingdom of God has come,” he says. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[4] And these Pharisees looked at this, and they said, “Well, I know that he’s raising people, and he’s healing people, and he’s doing these things, but we don’t see this as this fulfilling of Scripture. This is not the kind of kingdom we’ve been looking for.” Jesus says, “The reason you’re not going to be able to get at it with your observations is because the kingdom is here, and you don’t see it. Here, in my person, there is the saving and judging of men and women: saving those who come to me in childlike trust, judging those who remain stubborn in their rejection of me.”

And the second reason—and he comes to this in 22 and following—that you’re not going to get to the issue by careful observation is because the final coming of the kingdom of God will take place so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it will swallow up all and any attempts at defining the details with any degree of accuracy. It’s going to come on you so fast, so furiously that you’re not going to be able to pinpoint it with your maps and with your timetables.

Further Explanation

Now, it’s the question of the Pharisees that triggers that response. And then Jesus, as he does so often, moves from the question raised by someone in the crowd or by the religious leaders, and he turns to his disciples, and he says, “Let me just say a word or two more to you folks about this so that nothing takes you unprepared.” And in verses 22–37, what you really have is Jesus providing the disciples with a further explanation concerning the coming of the kingdom.

He begins by pointing out, in verse 22, that they will have times when they will long to see Christ in all of his glory. They will long to see him in the dark days of following him, and yet they will not see him. And throughout the pilgrimage of these apostles, they must have longed, in the martyrdom that so many of them faced, that Christ would come in all of his finality and all of his fullness and establish his kingdom. He’s telling them now—he says, “The time is coming when you’ll actually long to see this, but you’re not going to see it.” And when men are longing for the return of Christ, they are susceptible to all kinds of deceivers. And that’s why he says, in verse 23, “Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’” When the faithful are longing for the return of Jesus, they will be susceptible to the false teachers. And in every age, men have sought to cash in on the distinctively Christian conviction that humanity is heading towards a conclusion at the return of Jesus Christ.  And the instruction of Jesus is very clear: “Don’t go running down those dead-end streets.”

Now, in the eighteen years or so that I’ve been here, we’ve had a number of these rumblings. There was a classic little book; I think it was Fifty-Four Reasons as to Why Jesus Christ Will Come Back by the End of the Year. I can’t remember who wrote it. Frankly, I don’t care. I thought it was a lousy book then, and I think it’s even lousier this morning, because it was bogus. And yet so many people in the congregation used up a tremendous amount of pastoral energy wondering about the nature of what was conveyed on this dead-end street. Don’t go running down those streets. They’ll say, “Here!” They’ll say, “There!” They’ll say, “Look!” They’ll say, “Come!” Jesus says, “I’m telling you now so that you’re aware of that. Don’t go down those streets.”

Now, in my files, I’ve got myriad illustrations of this. I chose just one, from 1982, April 24. This is from the Times—that is, The Times, from London. But anyway… Oh, you didn’t for a moment think it was the New York Times, did you? Or the LA Times? “The world has had enough… of hunger, injustice, war. In answer to our call for help, as World Teacher for all humanity, the Christ is now here.” And then it goes on under these headings to tell us how we will recognize him, who he is, what he’s saying, and when we will see him. “He has not … yet declared his true status, and his location is known to only a very few disciples.” You can guarantee that one! “One of these [disciples] has announced that soon the Christ will acknowledge his identity and within the next two months will speak to humanity through a worldwide television and radio broadcast.” For two months I sat by my TV, waiting, longing, hoping. (If you believe that, we need to talk some more.) “His message will be heard inwardly, telepathically, by all people in their own language. [And] from that time, with his help, we will build a new world.” See, this is perfect. Because people will then be able to verify the truth of this subjectively: “Oh, I heard him. Did you hear him?” “Oh, I definitely heard him.” “Yeah, I was watching such and such a program, and I heard him.”

Jesus says, “Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ ‘Here he is!’ Don’t go running after them. And let me tell you why,” he says—verse 24: “For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.” In other words, the coming of the Son of Man will be so sudden and so inevitably and universally visible that there will be no room for anybody to misconceive exactly what’s going on. That’s why he uses the picture of lightning lighting up one side of the sky to the other—a kind of twenty-four-thousand-mile, round-the-globe lightning display where everybody says, “Did you see that? It was lightning!” “No, it wasn’t. I think it was just a flashbulb from my camera.” “No! It was lightning!” He says that’s how it’s going to be. “The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes … up the sky from one end to the other.” “But don’t think that this is about just to happen any minute now, because the things I’ve already told you,” verse 25, “need to take place: my suffering, my death, my resurrection, my ascension, my rejection by my own people. And there will be suffering and rejection which is in the interim phase which precedes all of the great denouement that will be represented in the arrival of the kingdom of God in all its fullness.”

“And so,” he says, “since some of you are inevitably saying to yourself, ‘Well, exactly can you tell us, give us an inkling of what it will be like?’”—said, “Let me give you a couple of illustrations from the Old Testament.” “As it was in the days of Noah, so … [it will] be in the days of the Son of Man.” What does that mean? Well, what was distinctive about Noah? He built an ark. Well, does that mean that what we need to do to look for the days of the Son of Man is to look for some guy called Noah who is building an ark somewhere in a desert region? Clearly not. Indeed, he makes it perfectly plain: “The reason,” he says, “I mention Noah is because it was business as usual. People were marrying, eating, drinking, giving their daughters in marriage. Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.” They were overtaken by judgment in the very moment that business was going on as usual. They kissed their wives goodbye. They played soccer with their kids. They went down the pub. They did all the things they were routinely doing. Life was just going on. And then the judgment came. “That’s how it’ll be,” he says. And the same is true if you think about Sodom and Gomorrah. People were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building. They’re just going… They’re just doing their thing! Business as usual. And “the day Lot left Sodom,” verse 29, “fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.”

To live only in the now and the benefits that I presently accrue is to actually deny myself the possibility of real life and true happiness.

After being invisible to the eyes of the world since his ascension, Jesus will suddenly be revealed at his second coming, and it will be a visibility to all believers and unbelievers alike. They’re going to realize in that moment. And so, verse 31, he says, “On that day no one who[’s] on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down [and] get them.” “If you’re up relaxing on your patio,” he says, “don’t run down and gather up your stuff and take it with you.” Why would this be surprising? That’s exactly what they say on the airlines: “In the case of an emergency landing, leave your hand luggage exactly where it is. Don’t go fool with it! Don’t be jumping up there to try and get your favorite briefcase or your favorite fountain pen or whatever else it is. Leave everything where it is, and get off the plane! Make for the immediate exit and get out!” That’s what Jesus is saying. On that day, any preoccupation with stuff, any preoccupation with the now, any preoccupation with the claptrap that we’ve put together or the lifestyle that we’ve come to love is simply going to be an indication of the fact that we are unprepared for his coming!

Are you ready for his coming? Are you ready? Can you leave? You leave any moment? Can I? Or is all my life completely tied up with earthly things—all my hand luggage, my fields, my stuff? I’m tempted to sidestep it. I should “remember Lot’s wife.” What happened to her? She became a pillar of salt. How did that happen? Well, because when she was running away, she looked back. The outside of her was running; the inside of her was staying. The fact that you and I are running to church, or that I’m running routinely up to this pulpit, is not necessarily synonymous with the fact that what you see on the outside is true about what’s going on in the inside. I may be running one direction on the outside and running another direction on the inside. “Remember Lot’s wife!” he says. She didn’t know whether she was coming or going. She looked back to where her heart was, and that was the end for her. If she had kept going, kept her eyes in the right direction, she, like the others, would have been saved. Remember Lot’s wife.

History warns us against these kind of attachments. And so that’s where verse 33—a statement that Jesus has made, presumably, on a number of occasions[5]—fits so perfectly. He says, “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” In other words, to live my life seeking everything now and apart from Christ, to focus only on stuff and on material things, to live only in the now and the benefits that I presently accrue is to actually deny myself the possibility of real life and true happiness.  But if I am prepared to give all of that up and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all of these things will be added unto me,[6] and I’ll make the discovery of genuine life and real happiness. Are you ready?

And that’s when you come to verse 34: “I tell you [the truth], on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left,” and “two women will be [going to work] together; one will be taken and the other [will be] left.” What’s Jesus saying? He’s saying family attachments and friendly relationships won’t prevent a separation which is inevitable, final, and unrevocable. The fact that your wife attends Bible study and is a good upright Christian and she drags you here on a Sunday—you think that if you’re in the same bed as her on the day when Christ returns, that somehow or another, as long as you hang on to her, you’ll go with her? Not a chance! She will go to Christ, and you will go to judgment. You think that because your business colleague has spoken to you often of Christ and that you have come to an understanding of his truth, that you have given intellectual assent to the claims of Christ, but you remain unprepared to bow beneath his lordship, that if Christ returns on the day when you’re in the lab together, that you’ll be able to say, “I’m with him”? It won’t happen! One will go; the other will remain. The only person to be with is to be with Christ! Family attachments, human friendships cannot prevent the separation that will take place when Christ will welcome the faithful and when the unbelievers will be ushered to judgment.

An Enigmatic Conclusion

Now, there’s an enigmatic conclusion, isn’t there? In verse 37: “‘Where, Lord?’ they asked.” I found myself saying, “What do you mean, ‘Where, Lord?’ After all of that they come out and say, ‘Where, Lord?’ What do you mean, ‘Where, Lord?’” I don’t even know what “Where, Lord?” means, to tell you the truth. Does it mean “Where will that take place? Where will the people be left? Where… What…” You know, “Where?” And then, just when you’re hoping that Jesus’ll clear it up, he replies, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.” You say, “Oh, perfect! It’s all fitting in now, you know. Just tie a bow round it. We’ve got it, you know.”

But you know, there is something that is teachable in this, isn’t there? Because it’s a reminder to us of the very things that Jesus is saying: it is not by your observation, it’s not by your ability to constrain these things that the kingdom of God will come. And the best I can do with it is this: to recognize that just as the location of a corpse in the wilderness is obvious to the distant traveler from the crowd of circling vultures, so when the Son of Man appears for judgment, it will be in an unmistakable manner, and no one will need to ask, “Where?” The day of the Lord will be sudden, will be unmistakable, will be worldwide, will be separating, and will be absolutely calamitous for those who are unprepared. Are you prepared?

Now, let me finish full circle. We started talking about how Christianity gives a cohesive and comprehensive and cogent view of the world. Contemporary Western thought says, essentially, to men and women who aren’t thinking, “All the religions of the world are the same.” That is just not true. The religions of the world today don’t merely disagree on secondary issues; they also disagree on central issues. The religions of the world this morning disagree about the answers to the basic questions with which we began.

So, for example, when your grandson asks you the question, “Grandpa, where was I before I was born?” the answer is “You were nowhere before you were born. You were purposefully created by God so that you might know him and love him and serve him.”

The Buddhist child says, “Where was I before you were born?” The answer of the Buddhist grandfather is “Well, you were somewhere before you were born. You were in the great cycle of samsara. You were somewhere between dying and living again; being born and dying; being reborn, dying, and so on.” That is Buddhism. The unsatisfactoriness of life, the dukkha of life, can only be addressed for the Buddhist in the hope that somehow or another, in that endless cycle of dying and being reborn, we can escape from that into a better sphere of existence than we’ve known before.

The Hindu says that God has incarnated himself multiple times, hundreds and thousands of times. Christianity says that God has been incarnated only once. Therefore, there is a fundamental disagreement. We can’t both be right. The law of noncontradiction demands that we can’t both be right.

And I say to you again: here in the Scriptures is a view of the world, its origins, and its conclusions which is cohesive and cogent and comprehensive. So you tell your friends and neighbors, “Don’t bank on coming around as a squirrel. You ought not to bank on a second chance.”

In that same article… And with this I stop. In that same article that I was quoting from the New York Times—yesterday’s New York Times—the Afghani leader representing the Taliban is at great pains to try and deal with this situation: “Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil [was] compelled today to explain that the people of Afghanistan have great respect for Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus was not only a man of wisdom, but also someone who ‘cured lepers’ and ‘brought the dead back to life.’” You say, “Well, that’s good. I mean, is there any wrong with that?” No, there’s nothing particularly wrong with it so far. And I can’t read the whole article, but as the article goes on, it concludes in this way: “The gathering had taken on a hostile air. The foreign minister seemed to realize this and returned to the more ecumenical tone of his religious commentary. He said, ‘We will end this conference by saying, praise be to Jesus Christ.’” This is the Muslim leader. “‘We will end this conference by saying, praise be to Jesus Christ, who will eventually come as a Muslim and will follow the teachings of Islam.’”[7]

Now, for those of you who giggled, may God help you, and may it only have only been nervous laughter. Because this is the ultimate expression of blasphemy. It should be hell to us that Jesus would be blasphemed in this way. Jesus made Muhammad. Jesus created every existent particle of the universe. And at the feet of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess, to the glory of God the Father, that Jesus Christ is Lord.[8]

This morning is a moment of opportunity. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you watching? Are you waiting? Are you hoping? Are you praying? Are you comforting one another with these words in the dark days of your lives as you go through difficulties and as you see the challenges of family life and the rearing of your children and bereavement and loss and all these other things that a confused world has no answer for? Let the pessimist look down. Let the fearful look around. Let the Christian lift his eyes and look up.[9] For all will be righted when the King comes. And we will behold him face-to-face in all of his glory.

Father, I pray that you’ll write this truth on our hearts, ’cause some of us are growing real soft on the exclusivity of Jesus. We’ve been buying the contemporary mythology, and it’s deadened our zeal for Jesus. This helps us understand that the devout Muslim is not about to give up anything—and I admire him for his devotion. Forgive us, Lord, when we’re prepared to sell away the store so that everybody will think how unbelievably tolerant we are. We want to be socially tolerant, we know we have to be legally tolerant, but we pray you’d save us from the kind of intellectual tolerance which thinks that two and two equals whatever you want it to be. Get us ready, we pray. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

---

[1] John Herman Randall Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926).

[2] Luke 11:14–20 (paraphrased).

[3] See Luke 4:14–21.

[4] Luke 4:21 (NIV 1984).

[5] See Matthew 10:39; Mark 8:35; John 12:25.

[6] See Matthew 6:33.

[7] Barry Bearak, “Afghans Present Aid Team’s Sins, Complete with Theology Lesson,” New York Times, September 7, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/world/afghans-present-aid-team-s-sins-complete-with-theology-lesson.html.

[8] See Philippians 2:10–11.

[9] G. T. Manley, The Return of Jesus Christ (London: Inter-Varsity, 1960), 27.