His return

Luke 17:22-25

22 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23 Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. 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. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

This is a challenge for us in 2019.

Are we longing for the return of Christ?

Do we live our lives in expectation of it?

I lived during a time in the 70s of the many films of Jesus’ return. Pastors would preach a series on His return. We lived our lives not knowing if Jesus would come back that week! We lived with expectation and I think the Church was better for it.

What would we be doing if Jesus came back right now? Are you ready? Those were the questions.

Jesus tells his disciples there will come a day when they long for His return. May we be visited with such urgency again.

Jesus says his disciples must not go running after the false Messiahs that will come.

As if we would do that?!

Perhaps not. But what we are in danger of is for the Church to be so consumed with chasing after the latest NOW experience, the popular and the famous that our attention is taken off the real Messiah. “If only He would come” can be replaced with “If only I had this and that.”

But when he comes every eye will see him. There will be no doubt. He will supersede everything. All the WOW moments and people that we long to be like or to be near, Jesus will surpass them all. Like lightning in the sky so that everyone can see. The whole world will know.

Jesus then brings his disciples back to reality. The present reality for them is that Jesus would suffer and die first. For us our present reality is that we too may well suffer, we may struggle with defeat, we may battle

with the enemies of our soul that plague us. But we do so only for a short time. For there is a moment when the lightning will flash and what a day that will be!!!