Luke 12, verses 54 through 59. What degree of turbulence or conflict disruption can we Christians anticipate in our times? There are many people who think that if the church is doing its work properly, that we're going to get along with everybody, that there will be any controversy and there won't be any conflict. that everyone will love and appreciate appreciate us. Jesus wants us to be nice so that others will be nice to us. And then when controversy comes, which it inevitably well, those who are expecting peace and quiet for the Christian community become very unsettled and very disillusioned because for them approval of the world is vital and the disapproval of the world is unbearable. So what do we say about this? What is it that we can expect? Well, we should be nice, we should be kind, we should be thoughtful, we should be good to our neighbors and love our neighbors. We shouldn't unnecessarily provoke others because we're being rude or thoughtless or insensitive. Granted, all of that to think that this should be a period in which a time and era, an epic in which the church is going to enjoy peace and quiet is fundamentally to misunderstand the times in which we are living. And in our immediate context, back in verse forty nine, Jesus said he came to bring fire upon the earth. He says in Matthew 10, 29, that he came not to bring peace, but a sword, not peace, but division. It then spoke in terms of households being divided one against the other, the closest of relatives, husbands and wives and children and parents, though there will be those who will receive Jesus and his message. And then there are going to be those who are going to reject it. And that's going to put the two at odds with each other. There will be conflict. And this is inevitably the case. This is unavoidably the case if the church is being faithful. And so what Jesus does now in verses fifty four through fifty nine. is that he urges us to understand the times and to act now before it is too late. So, number one, Jesus teaches us to correctly interpret the times. Look at verse 54. He, Jesus, also said to the crowds, when you see a cloud rising in the West, you say at once a shower is coming. And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say there will be scorching heat. Jesus suddenly introduces these meteorological signs. In Matthew's gospel, we get the context within which he is doing so, and that context is Matthew 16, verse one, that there were some Pharisees who were asking for additional miraculous signs, confirming that Jesus was the Messiah. As far as they were concerned, Jesus had not done enough. Now, this means that they didn't think all of his healings, all of his casting out of demons, his raising of the dead, his calming of the sea, his walking on the water, his feeding of the five thousand that for them that that was not enough. They want more and ever more proof signs that he is the Messiah. And truly, they would never be satisfied no matter what he did. If all that was insufficient, there was there was nothing that would fulfill their expectations for what the Messiah would do. And so Jesus, in these verses, is commending their ability to forecast the weather. You see clouds coming from the West, from the Mediterranean. And you know that that means rain. They're picking up moisture as they go over the water and they come over and that means rain is approaching. And then when you feel the winds begin to blow from the south, from the desert to the south, then you know that hot weather is coming. And so he commends them for their ability to predict the weather. It's it's it reminds me of weather conditions in Southern California where I grew up. When the winds are blowing from the West, that is from the ocean, you know that it's going to be cool weather. The Pacific is very cold. And so that means typically it'll be overcast. It'll be cloudy and it'll be cool. However, when the winds reverse, which they do periodically, they're called the Santa Ana winds. They originate out in the Mojave Desert and they blow from the east to the west. They bring dry, hot weather. You can predict the weather based upon the direction in which the winds are blowing. That's, by the way, brush fire season out in Southern California, those hot winds just dry everything out and a match can can let the whole countryside ablaze. Now, this is the kind of thing that's going on then they're they're able to predict the weather. But Jesus says in verse 56, you hypocrites, you know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky. But why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Why is he called him hypocrites? Well, a hypocrite is somebody that's pretending what they are not. And so what he's saying is that you're pretending to be religious. But the fact of the matter is you are obsessed with the present time. You are devoted to predicting the weather. Without showing a similar kind of devotion to the spiritual signs that are all around you, he says you are blind to what he calls the present time. In Greek, there's two words for Time one is Kronos, from which we get the word chronology. That's the sequences of time. Then there's a time sort of passing. And then there's Kairos, which is has to do with the character of the time or the nature of the time. So that's what he's that's what he's talking about. You don't understand the nature of the time in which we are. You don't understand the present age. You don't understand what time it is, what's going on around you. What era this is, what epic this is, you're blind to that. You have all this concern about the weather. You're fixated on the weather. And all the signs and you read the signs and you look out of your windows and you look at the signs in the skies, but you don't say you don't demonstrate a similar kind of concern for the spiritual signs of all that is taking place around you. What time is it? It's the time of the Messiah, the promised Messiah. He is here. I am he. Salvation is being offered. Judgment is being threatened because of those who will reject the Messiah. And so this is a time to act. This is a time to decide. And you who are rejecting me, he would be saying to his to the Pharisees, you are in a collision course. With me. You and the authorities and their allies are in a collision course with the Messiah. There is a storm that is about to erupt that will continue all through the ages, a storm of division between those who believe and receive me and those. Who do not? That's what's behind what Jesus says in verse 57, why, first, 56, you hypocrites, You know how to interpret the appearance of the signs in the sky, but you don't know how to interpret the present time. This is a warning to us and to each generation, each generation has a responsibility to understand the time in which it is living. The First Chronicles, 1232, commends the sons of Issachar. because they had an understanding of the times and what that meant they needed to do. Conversely, Ecclesiastes 912 speaks of the folly of the man that knows not his time. Jesus, again, in Luke 1944, will denounce his generation because they knew not the day of their visitation, they didn't understand what was going on around them. Now, the interesting thing about this passage is that we show so many of the same inclinations like what? Well, like the obsession with the weather. It's a whole it's an aspect of our focus upon the present, upon now, upon temporal matters. One of the one of the two great surprises of my lifetime, one is bottled water. If you would have told me that you would buy a bottle of water rather than going over to the garden hose and turning it on and drinking out of it, I would never have believed it were possible. Spend money on water. Are you kidding? All right. That's one surprise. Here's another surprise. The success of the Weather Channel. Are you kidding? Turn on the television and watch the Weather Channel. And there are people that do it endlessly. who are absolutely obsessed. They're the weather channel junkies who sit and watch the weather channel endlessly. And think about the way that our generation has invested in knowing the weather. Think of all of the technology that has gone into this. And there are many benefits by it. And I'm not criticizing that. We all are bettered by that. We all take positive advantage of that and we're spared certain disasters, though we find over and over again that are even today, our ability to predict the weather is limited. Just ask the people of Atlanta last week about our ability to predict the weather. But think of the time, the money, the technology that has been invested in knowing what the weather is, knowing what predicting this is exactly what was going on in the first century times things. You know, the more the world changes, the more it stays the same. They had the same preoccupation that we have today, wanting to know what the weather is, trying to predict what's going to happen next, trying to predict the future. It's not just the weather that we are concerned about, by the way, just last week, I read an article entitled one of America's leading newspapers obsess with the weather. Very timely article, as far as I was concerned. There's also the predicting of the outcome of athletic events, they will be discussed endlessly. Who has the advantage and why they have the advantage and in order to predict the outcome of the game, everybody wants to know everyone else's predictions on what's going to happen. March Madness is all about predicting the outcome, and I think you can win a billion dollars this year if you get it right. predicting how the stock market is going to move, predicting how elections are going to turn out. That's the nature of our times. It's all fixed upon the temple on now, on this life, on this world. We're obsessed with it. J.C. Ryle, the great English commentator of the 19th century, urges It becomes the servants of God in every age to observe the public events of their own day. And he warns there is nothing commendable in an ignorant indifference to contemporary history. And what he's talking about there is understanding, not just the meteorological, but understanding the nature of the times in which we're living. Not just athletic events and stock markets and things of this world, but the spiritual significance of what's happening in our world, understanding where we are in the flow of redemptive history. He continues, the Christian who cannot see the hand of God in history and does not believe in the gradual movement of all kingdoms toward the final subjection of all things to Christ, he says, is blind. That person, he says, is blind. There's a sense in which Our time is the same as it was for the people in Jesus time, in the sense that the Messiah has come. This is an era in which we declare a verdict about Jesus. Is he the savior of the world or is he not? Is the son of God or is he not? Is he the Lord of all or is he not? Is he the Lord of me? Do I receive him? Do I accept him as Savior and Lord? That's the same decision that they had back then. That's the decision that we have right now. So there's a sense in which that we are in the same time that they are in. On the other hand, there's also some some specific qualities to the time in which we are living that I think we beg to be interpreted by us, beg to be understood by us. And here's the way I would characterize it. I would characterize the day in which we are living as a 400-year slide from Puritanism to Neo-Paganism. The great Yale historian, Sidney Ahlstrom, characterized the American civilization from Jamestown to the 1960s as, quote, an evangelical empire. America dominated by evangelical religion. And granted that in our past, there was plenty of hypocrisy to go along. But I think if you interpret hypocrisy as the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then I think you will understand really what the previous generations were like. Hypocrisy was evil paying tribute to good by externally conforming to what good required what that meant was that there were there were public standards of morality. There was plenty of Christian influence going around restraining evil. Ricky and Lucy. Slept in separate beds. Virtually fully clothed. Why was that the late 1950s early 60s? Why was it? Because the mores of the nation were such at that time that it was thought to be far too intimate to show a married couple in the same bed under the covers at the same time. Even with long sleeve pajamas on. That's way, way too intimate. That's the way we thought about things back in the late 1950s. and early 1960s. That's the way we looked at the world in this calendar year. We have had both the Grammy Awards and the Rose Bowl. The Rose Parade feature same sex marriages. That is a sea change in terms of the outlook of a single people within What is virtually a single generation writer in one of our leading newspapers wrote an article this this past week entitled Skies World talking about the state the state of popular culture in America today. I'm going to read some of that for us this morning. He says wretched excess seems to be everywhere on TV screens phone screens in songs. on a website you turn to for news. It's an odd coincidence that LCD, the liquid crystal displays that put all of it in your face, also stand for lowest common denominator. He says, even if you turn yourself into a human spam filter, there is a sense that a gale of sleaze is blowing through American life day and night. Yes, he says, you can hide, but eventually discuss squads will find you. Adjusting ourselves to vulgarity on such a vast scale is like rust. Eventually it is going to erode standards for pretty much everything and everyone. Even hard to shock, our entertainers are aghast. At some recent public incidents. Putting those incidents on television makes moral baseness in the new normal. He says, at some point, even the devil gets grossed out. He concludes, saying, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto, we're in scuzz world. Here's one of the questions that I think the church needs to ask itself, how does one talk about sin? And Jesus, who delivers us from the guilt and corruption of sin to a civilization that no longer recognizes the concept. We are publicly talking about legalizing polygamy and prostitution, and the argument, of course, is, well, if consenting adults, that's what they want. Who are we to stand in the way of whatever consenting adults want to do a majority of young couples now cohabit before they get married. There are ministers in Canada and in Europe who have been arrested for categorizing homosexuality as immoral. They have been jailed for hate speech. We're living in a civilization that is increasingly inhospitable to Christian truth and increasingly hostile. And I think the application of Jesus words here, this don't be naive about the time in which we are living. We can expect conflict. It used to be that just the media and intellectual elite scorned Christianity. Now it's pretty much popular culture as well. Hedonism rules and relativism undergirds it. When we say what we must as a Christian community. When we distinguish right from wrong, when we distinguish truth from error, we are saying things that are offensive to our civilization. When we separate righteousness from sin, according to the Ten Commandments, and when we separate truth from error, according to Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life, we are saying that which is offensive from the to the whole a spectrum of our society who scorns and ridicules and is increasingly hostile to those who hold those opinions. So, like the sons of Issachar, we need to understand the times in which we are living and know what to do and not be naive and not think things as they always have been. Things are as they always have been. They are not. There has been a sea change in the moral and religious outlook of our civilization over the last generation. And if the trajectory continues, it will mean unmitigated disaster. for our children and grandchildren when the judgments of God begin to fall with fervency. So, number one, understand the times correctly interpret the times in which we're living. Number two, take action. 57. And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Jesus is saying, look, why have you not made the right judgment? You have to decide. You have to assess. You have to judge what is truth and what is right. And then you need to respond to it and with respect to our times. Why haven't you made the judgment? Why have you not correctly assessed the situation? Why do you remain indifferent? And I'm concerned. And why are you just swimming along with the currents of the civilization as they sweep on towards the great falls over which the whole culture is going to plunge? He continues. As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer and the officer put you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. Is Jesus concerned about lawsuits? Is that the point here? No, that's not his concern at all. But his point is, you know what to do in order to get a settlement and avoid going to prison and you know how to do it before you actually end up in court. So, again, the point is, you know how to handle some temporal affairs. You know how to get along in this world. You can predict the weather and you know what to do when there's a lawsuit. And you can avoid prison. You can avoid even the courtroom. You know how to settle with some with an accuser. So you know how to get along in this world, but you're not applying the same good sense and logic and reason to the spiritual realm, to the eternal realm. You're neglecting that you're all caught up with how to get along in this world, but. You're not giving due consideration to the eternal. And so the point is, get right with God and do it now before the judgment day. Do it in verse fifty eight on the way in this life. Now decide. John three thirty six, Jesus says, whoever believes in the sun has eternal life, whoever does not obey the sun shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. There's a verdict, you see, that that has to be rendered right now. The wrath of God is upon us. We are born into that situation. If we're to escape it, it's through the sun. Those who believe have eternal life. Those who don't believe are under judgment. They're in the situation of the individual being described, described by Jesus here as the accuser who is taking you to court and you are going to be dragged before the judge and you're going to be thrown into the eternal prison. And verse fifty nine, I tell you, you will never get out until you've paid the very last penny. The very last penny here is that widow's might, it's a we hardly can calculate the lack of value in that that that element of currency. But what Jesus is talking about is an infinite debt, a debt that can never be paid about which attention is not being given. You're not paying attention to the eternal. You take care of the temporal. You balance your checkbooks. You make sure you show up and work on time. But the spiritual that's being neglected. There isn't the urgency that there ought to be about getting right with God. And then if that applies to our civilization today, the times in which we are living as we urge people to get right with God, we are speaking into a spiritual and religious vacuum of ignorance. Why? Because gone is the concept of God as righteous and holy and gone is the concept of man and sinful and under the curse of God and gone is the concept of judgment and of hell. Jesus saying, need to understand that the time in which you are living with time is that time between. The cross and final judgment. And now is the time to get right with God, understand the time in which you are living. Second, Corinthians six, one today is the day of salvation. I say, if I seek the Lord while he may be found. and understand the rate at which our whole civilization is plunging into the abyss. So there's really a twofold message individually, get right with God, do it now, do it today, don't delay, don't wait, don't think, oh, tomorrow, later, some other time when I'm older. When I've had an opportunity to enjoy a little fun in the world, that's when I'll get right with God. No, do it now on the way, not make sure it's before the Judgment Day, because then you'll be thrown into a prison out of which you will never. Escape. And I know it's popular to talk about hell as a place that's the lock is on the inside and people don't want to get out, I don't. I'm very skeptical about that idea. Jesus calls it a prison. The rich man in the parable, the rich man, Lazarus. Wanted out. A drop of water on his tongue is all he asked for to give him a little bit of relief in the suffering, in the flames. In terms of the parable. And as our civilization is racing away from God and God's truth. all across the whole spectrum of the spiritual and the moral. What can we do if we understand that that's really what's happening? We're watching a continual trajectory, a slide away from Puritanism to paganism. What can we do? And I think the answer is pray, pray for our civilization, pray for our nation, like the Apostle Paul grieved for his countrymen. Because they were apart from Christ, that must be our outlook, praying that God in wrath would remember mercy. In the language of the Prophet Habakkuk Habakkuk three to. Praying that he will not give us over to our sin. In the terms of the Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter one. Not just abandon us to our our sin and let us go our way into increasing degradation and depravity. But that in Raffi would remember mercy, that he'll stay his hand, withhold his judgment, pray for national repentance. And let it begin in the church, because the judgment of God begins with the people of God, pray for repentance, pray for renewal, pray for revival. Because, like I said, if the trajectory is correct, if I'm reading the times the way I think that they need to be read, it would appear that the time is short and the need is enormous that a spirit of repentance sweep over this nation, that there be a national revulsion at the vulgarity and the crudity of this civilization. That has become uncivil and barbarous in terms of its moral habits and practices. Let there be national repentance, let there be national revival and a turning of the masses of the people to God in Christ. Is this a gloomy outlook, my answer to that accusation is. Don't be naive. Read the times, understand where things are and understand the urgency for each one of us individually and for the whole collectivity. The church, the nation, Western civilization. The whole world. And pray. That the great mass of the people will turn to Christ. Who alone is able to save us as we pray together. Our father in heaven. With the Apostle Paul. We have great depth. of grief for our countrymen. And pray, O Lord, that that your Holy Spirit would move powerfully across the length and breadth of your church and of our whole nation and our whole civilization. It is our hearts desire and prayer that our neighbors might be saved. Send another Pentecost, O Lord, we pray. Revive us and we will be revived. In wrath, remember mercy. Revive your church in the midst of the years. And glorify yourself. Through the conversion of the masses. And let it begin with the conversion of our own hearts. In Jesus name, Amen.