Reading the Season
Introduction: Eschatology is for Living
We live in an age that is simultaneously obsessed with and terrified by the future. For many Christians, the subject of eschatology, the doctrine of last things, has become a source of great confusion, bizarre speculation, and frankly, paralysis. They have been taught to read the prophecies of Scripture with one eye on the Bible and the other on the cable news ticker. This has produced a kind of escapist piety that is always looking for a secret rapture out of the world, rather than seeking to faithfully occupy until He comes.
But Jesus did not give us prophecy to feed our appetite for speculation. He gave us prophecy so that we would know how to live. Prophecy is intensely practical. It is a light for our feet in the present, not a crystal ball for gazing into a distant future. The Olivet Discourse, from which our text is taken, is perhaps the most abused and misunderstood section of prophetic Scripture. It has been contorted to apply to everything from the European Union to the latest Mideast crisis. But Jesus is not giving his disciples a cryptic puzzle about events two thousand years in their future. He is giving them a clear, urgent, and life-saving warning about an event that was going to crash down upon their own heads, in their own lifetime.
What Jesus teaches here is basic spiritual literacy. He is teaching his disciples how to read the signs of the times, not our times, but their times. He is teaching them to have the same kind of common sense about spiritual realities that a farmer has about the weather. When you learn to read this passage for what it plainly says, the fog of confusion lifts, and you are left with the stunning authority of Christ and a clear mandate for how to live as His people in every generation. This is not about escaping the world; it is about how to stand firm in the middle of a world that is being shaken to its foundations.
The Text
Then He told them a parable: “Behold the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they put forth leaves and you see it for yourselves, know that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
“But be on guard, so that your hearts will not be overcome with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who inhabit the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying earnestly that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
(Luke 21:29-36 LSB)
Agricultural Common Sense (vv. 29-31)
Jesus begins with a simple parable, an appeal to basic, observable reality.
"Behold the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they put forth leaves and you see it for yourselves, know that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near." (Luke 21:29-31)
This is not complicated. Jesus is saying, "Use your heads. You know how to interpret the seasons in the natural world. When you see leaves on the trees, you do not need a prophet to tell you that summer is coming. It is self evident." The budding of the trees is an unmistakable sign. In the same way, Jesus says, the events He has just described in the previous verses, the wars, the famines, the persecutions, and particularly the armies surrounding Jerusalem (v. 20), are the budding leaves. They are the unmistakable signs that a great event is near.
And what is that event? "Know that the kingdom of God is near." This does not mean the final, consummated kingdom at the end of all history. In the context of the Olivet Discourse, it refers to the decisive arrival of God's kingdom in judgment. It is the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds to vindicate His people and to destroy the temple, which was the center of the apostate Old Covenant world. This was the great transition point in redemptive history. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 was the public declaration that the kingdom had been taken from the tenants who had killed the Son and given to a new people, the Church of Jesus Christ. The signs were as clear as leaves on a fig tree, and the Christians who had their eyes open saw them and, as Jesus instructed, fled the city and were saved.
The Unmistakable Time Stamp (vv. 32-33)
In case there was any ambiguity, Jesus nails down the timing with a statement that has caused no end of trouble for those who wish to project these events into our future.
"Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." (Luke 21:32-33 LSB)
This is the interpretive key to the entire discourse. "This generation." In every other instance where Jesus uses this phrase, it refers unambiguously to His contemporaries, the Jewish people living in the first century. It does not mean "the Jewish race" or "the generation that sees the signs." It means the people standing there, the people to whom He was speaking. He is giving them a forty year heads up. Before their generation passed off the scene, everything He had just prophesied, the entire collapse of the temple system, would occur. And it did, right on schedule, in A.D. 70.
To make this verse mean anything else is to engage in exegetical gymnastics in order to save a faulty theological system. Jesus says what He means and means what He says. And to underscore the absolute certainty of this prophecy, He contrasts the permanence of His word with the created order. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." This is a staggering claim to divine authority. But it also has a contextual meaning. The "heaven and earth" that were about to pass away were the covenantal world of Old Testament Israel. The temple was their meeting place of heaven and earth. When it was destroyed, their world ended. The writer to the Hebrews says that God was shaking the heavens and the earth so that the unshakable kingdom would remain (Heb. 12:26-27). That shaking happened in A.D. 70. The old world is gone. We live in the new. And the foundation of this new world is the utterly reliable, unshakable Word of Jesus Christ.
The Spiritual Danger (vv. 34-35)
The warning now turns from the external events to the internal condition of the heart. The greatest danger was not the Roman army, but spiritual stupor.
"But be on guard, so that your hearts will not be overcome with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who inhabit the face of all the earth." (Luke 21:34-35 LSB)
Jesus warns against three things that make the heart heavy and dull the spiritual senses. "Dissipation" refers to the groggy headache of a hangover; it is the spiritual fog that comes from overindulgence. "Drunkenness" is self explanatory. And "the worries of life" are the anxieties that choke out the Word. These are not just moral failings; they are forms of anesthesia. They make you sleepy. They prevent you from seeing the budding leaves on the fig tree. A person absorbed in carousing or consumed by anxiety is not going to be watching the geopolitical signs Jesus told them to watch for.
And so, for the unprepared, that day of judgment would come "suddenly like a trap." It would snap shut on everyone "who inhabit the face of all the earth." The word for earth here is the Greek word ge, which can mean the whole planet, but very often in Scripture it simply means "the land," specifically, the land of Israel. The context makes it clear that this is the meaning here. This was a covenantal judgment that fell upon the land of Judea, the epicenter of the generation that had rejected its Messiah.
The Mandate: Watch and Pray (v. 36)
The final verse provides the necessary antidote to a heavy heart and the proper response to Jesus' warning.
"But keep on the alert at all times, praying earnestly that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man." (Luke 21:36 LSB)
The command is to be watchful and to pray constantly. This is not a passive, fearful waiting. It is an active, vigilant readiness. They were to pray for two things. First, for the "strength to escape all these things." For the first century Christians in Jerusalem, this was a literal escape. When they saw the signs, particularly the armies gathering, they remembered Jesus' words and fled to the mountains, and not one Christian is recorded as having died in the siege of Jerusalem. Their eschatology saved their lives.
Second, they were to pray that they might "stand before the Son of Man." This is the language of vindication in a court of law. The Son of Man was coming in judgment against that wicked generation. In the midst of that great cataclysm, the faithful followers of Jesus would be the ones left standing. They would be vindicated as the true people of God, the heirs of the kingdom. While the old world was burning, they were found safe, not because of their own strength, but because they had heeded the Word of their King.
Conclusion: Standing in Our Generation
So what does this mean for us? The fall of Jerusalem is in our past. We are not looking for Roman armies. But the principles are perennial. The world system, in opposition to Christ, is always under a sentence of judgment. And the temptations to spiritual dullness, to dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, are ever present.
Because Jesus was faithful to His word concerning the judgment of Jerusalem, we can be absolutely confident that He will be faithful to all His words concerning us. He has promised to build His church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. He has promised to be with us to the end of the age. He has promised to return a final time to judge the living and the dead.
Our task, therefore, is the same as that of the first disciples. We are to be on guard. We are to watch our hearts, lest they become heavy and unresponsive. And we are to be a people of constant prayer, asking for the strength to navigate the trials of our own generation, and for the grace to stand before the Son of Man, not in fear, but in joyful confidence on that final day. A right eschatology does not lead us to abandon our posts. It anchors us to them, enabling us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, knowing that the kingdom of God is not just near, it is here, and it is advancing, and our King's words will never, ever pass away.