Slices
Prepare
Are you anxious about the future? How can you live with an echo of joyful expectancy in your heart, knowing that Jesus might return at any time?
Bible passage
29 He told them this parable: ‘Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32 ‘Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
34 ‘Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.’
37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, 38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.
Explore
In Jerusalem the clock is ticking. There is a growing sense of urgency about all that Jesus is teaching his followers.
Don’t get so immersed in the everyday that you take your eyes off the big picture, he says (v 34). And it’s his word to us too. Be expectant. Don’t sleepwalk through life. Be sensitive to every sign of God at work in your life and the world around you. Do everything in the light of his promised and imminent return (v 36).
This isn’t easy. The busyness, relationships and responsibilities of life can feel all-consuming. It takes imagination to see new leaves on the fig tree (vs 29–31).
English Puritan church leader Richard Baxter (1615–1691) wrote this in his long work Saints’ Everlasting Rest (1650): ‘Keep me, while I remain on earth, in daily breathings after thee, and in a believing, affectionate walking with thee! And when thou comest, let me be found so doing; not serving my flesh, nor asleep with my lamp unfurnished; but waiting and longing for my Lord’s return!’
Respond
What signs are apparent in your life, in your church, in your community, in your nation, that might point to the kingdom of God being near? Ask Jesus to help you keep watch.
Deeper Bible study
‘You will go out in joy, be led forth in peace; the mountains will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.’1
Jesus now summons readers to consider the fig tree and all other trees. What a great idea: we should join him in considering trees, reminded that a genuine concern for God’s creation is an essential dimension of his mission.2 Jesus has deciduous trees in mind: those like the oak, maple and hickory, which shed their leaves in autumn, ready to leaf again in spring and summer. When we see leaves budding on these trees, we know that summer is near. This reminds me of a tree we have in New Zealand, the pohutakawa. Although not deciduous, when it bears its lovely red flowers, we know summer is beginning. It is this kind of thing Jesus has in mind.
In verse 30, summer is a resurrection metaphor referring to the full flowering of the kingdom after the events in verses 5–21, the mission to the nations (v 21), our redemption (v 28) and the coming of the kingdom (v 31). ‘This generation’ is challenging. It can be Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, the Jewish race, wicked people,3 Luke’s contemporaries, or the end-time generation. Deciding is difficult. Then again, as Jesus tells us we cannot predict the date,4 do we need to? His summons is for us to be watchful.
The final verses challenge us to be ready whenever that day comes! We are to watch that we are not overcome by drunkenness, a huge issue in both the Greco-Roman world and our own. We are not to allow the cares of this life to draw us away from our primary commitment to our King and his business. To be ready is to be faithful. Then, we will not be taken unawares as we face death or the return of our Lord. We are to be awake and prayerful so that we may stand firm until the end.
Go for a walk. Find some trees. Consider them. Pray for creation. Pray we will be ready for Jesus when he comes.
1 Isa 55:12 (adapted) 2 Luke 21:13; Acts 1:8 3 Luke 9:41 4 Mark 13:32; Matt 24:36
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Joel 3; Revelation 5
Pray for Scripture Union
This week, all of the Scripture Union prayers relate to this article.
Gus (mentioned in the article and part of a Rooted group) says, ‘I feel like we’re family’. Please pray that wherever young people encounter the gospel, whether or not that’s inside a church, they will get that same sense of God’s love and belonging.
