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We come now to the Word of God and this is the high point in our worship as we hear from God, Luke 21 is the text we're looking at. For those of you who are visiting with us, just a brief word. We are going through the gospel of Luke, word by word, verse by verse, and having a wonderful time in doing that. It is Luke's record of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We find ourselves in Luke 21 in the last week of His life before His crucifixion. It is actually Wednesday of that week. He will be crucified on Friday. Wednesday He spent teaching in the temple and then in the evening He left the temple ground, took His disciples, went to the Mount of Olives, sat down with them and instructed them about His Second Coming.

On Thursday they make the preparations and celebrate the Passover. On Friday He is crucified. On Sunday, He rises from the dead. This is Wednesday, two days before His death. He has told them He will die. He has told them He is leaving. He is here telling them He will come back. There will be a long time interval between His leaving and His returning, illustrated in the parable of the man who went on a long journey, which our Lord told earlier.

He is describing what the world will be like in the time between His first coming and His second coming. It will be a world filled with trouble. The disciples expecting that the Messiah would only come one time, and that He would come and fulfill all Old Testament promises of the golden age, that He would come and the world would be filled with peace and there would be war no more, and men would beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning hooks. There would be a time when death was mitigated and if someone died at the age of 100, they would die as an infant. There would be a time when even the animal kingdom natural enemies would no longer be a threat to one another. The desert would blossom like a rose. All the glories of the prophetic promises they expected when the Messiah came the first time. So they're having to deal with something brand new in their understanding, and that is the Messiah coming, coming to pay the penalty for sin to provide salvation. And then going away and returning at a future time....