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On the surface, Luke 17 appears to be an apocalyptic study guide but when read in the context of Luke 15 (see parts 1 and 2 of the study) and 16 (see parts 1 and 2), it’s clear that there’s more to Luke 17 than a crash guide on the apocalypse. Being ready for the apocalypse is more than drums of food buried in your backyard.
Why does Yeshua say, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed” (Luke 17:20), then go on to talk about signs of the coming Day of the Lord? Matthew 24 starts the same way. There are these little caveats that show up, particularly in Matthew 24:8 which says that these events are merely the beginning of the birth pangs of the end.
Similarly, many have asked about Israel during the Exodus from Egypt. They witnessed great miracles like the parting of the sea, the pillars of fire etc., yet they didn’t seem to see God’s hand at work. The Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees of Yeshua’s days seem to have been equally blinded and did not see God at work. How dumb were they?
The power of pride was sarcastically underscored by a recurring line from a fictional bumbling antagonist in The Princess Bride who, being confident in his intellectual brilliance, kept exclaiming, “Inconceivable!” after his constructed scenarios self-destructed. After one too many such interjections, another character retorted, “I don’t think it means what you think it means,” suggesting the word was being used to mean impossible. I can’t think of it happening and it can’t happen are different, in that the former is a statement of pride in one’s grasp on reality and the latter is a statement of reality.
One of the biggest battles Israel fought during the trek from Egypt to the Land was against pride in themselves, false gods, anything but the Source of strength and protection. In Lev. 26:1–4 ;11–22, like near the end of Deuteronomy, the Lord details the good thing that will happen if Israel obeys God and the bad things that will happen if Israel strays from its contractual connection to the Lord and why. There are some key signatures in what Israel would give up if they give up the Sabbath and the Holy Days and abandon worship of the Lord.
The children of Israel were putting their pride in their agricultural strength and their military strength. “We willed it and it happened.”
The phrase at the beginning of verse 21 translated “act with hostility against me” (NASB), “walk contrary unto me” (KJV), “go against me” (CJB) and “remain hostile toward me” (NIV) are translated from תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי telekhu ’immi qeri, which literally means to “walk with Me qeri.”
Don’t get qeri-ed away with God
The key is the Hebrew word קֶרִי qeri (Strong’s lexicon 7147), used seven times in Lev. 26:21-46 and nowhere else in the TaNaKh. The word is derived from קָרֶה qareh (7137), which means chance or accident, according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon. A related word to qareh is מִקְרֶה miqreh (4745), which is used in 1st Sam. 6:9 and 20:26 for accident or chance and seven times in Ecclesiastes for fortune or fate.
This is a warning against treating your relationship with God like an accident, like it happens just be chance. Faith and trust doesn’t just happen. In relationships, trust does not just happen. God warns that if we treat our relationship with him in a flippant and casual manner, He will treat us the same way.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin observed that the use of qeri seven times in one passage suggests God gave a stern warning against a “casual” relationship with God.
This is similar to the “God and I have an understanding” relationship a number say they have in describing why they don’t follow His ways. The Messiah came to teach us what real faith and trust mean.
Apostles Ya’akov (James) in James 4:1-10 references a TaNaKh passage (Prov. 3:34) discussing the danger of approaching our relationship with God in pride. We are to remember that we are temporary without God. We are serving the Creator who promises to raise us up. We all are destined to die but God will resurrect us.
Here is Prov. 3:34 from the Hebrew Masoretic text and from the ancient Greek translation (Septuagint):
“Though He scoffs at the scoffers, Yet He gives grace to the afflicted.” (Prov. 3:34)
“The Lord resists the arrogant, but he gives grace to the humble.” (Prov. 3:34 LXX)
We are going to look at the difference between pride and confidence. In the letter to the Hebrews 10, we are told to have confidence in God’s promises. We are heirs to His kingdom. That is a promise, not just a passing phrase. We can’t have confidence in what we can do but we can have confidence in what God can do.
Yeshua the Messiah seems to have touched on in Matt. 23:11-12 in His rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees which precedes His touching on the signs of the Day of the Lord in Matthew 24:
“But the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Matt. 23:11-12)
People hold themselves up as great leaders, great teachers of God’s word but what is greater, the teachers or God’s word and the God who gave the words? When you see in TaNaKh and in Paul’s writings about “boasting in the Lord,” that is something to be proud about. Our world is in an horrific condition. What we can boast about is that God is going to fix this world. Messiah Yeshua is going to have to rule in the Messianic Age with a rod of iron to finally clean up this world but the cleanup started at His first coming and is continuing to happen now through the Holy Spirit.
‘Must … be rejected by this generation’
That brings us to the Master’s prophecy that the Messiah “must … be rejected by this generation” (Luke 17:25). This is a very odd thing to throw into this. Lev. 26 foreshadowed an indifference toward God that turned into arrogance towards and contempt for God and fighting against God.
That is foreshadowed with Yeshua’s touching lepers to heal them (in the accounts in Luke 5 and Matthew 8). God instructs Israel in Leviticus 13–14 that lepers must be removed from the congregation because they are “unclean,” and what is “unclean” pollutes that which is “clean” (Haggai 2). Yeshua’s taking on uncleanness while healing the uncleanness was foreseen in the iconic messianic prophecy of Isaiah 52–53.
“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.” (Isa. 53:3-7)
The term sorrows in “man of sorrows” (v. 3) is translated from מַכְאֹב mak’ob:
- מַכְאֹב mak’ob (H4341); from 3510; anguish or (figuratively) affliction: grief, pain, sorrow.
- כָּאַב ka’ab (H3510); a primitive root; properly, to feel pain; by implication, to grieve; figuratively, to spoil.
The grief this Servant was acquainted with (v. 3) is חֳלִי kholi:
- חֳלִי kholi [318b; H2483]; from 2470a; sickness
- חָלָה khalah [317c; H2470a]; a prim. root; to be weak or sick
God is trying to roll back and take away our sin and our attraction to it, which causes our suffering. Therefore, the Servant foretold in Isaiah would take on human pain and sickness, both mental and physical, and be reviled as God-cursed because of it. Our ancestors as well as us in this day have to give our sin to Yeshua and He asks us to give it over to Him for Him to take away from us. Give it to the Messiah and leave it behind.
‘Remember Lot’s wife’
We have this one-liner, this warning to “remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:35) thrown in here. It is followed by a maxim that seeking to save one’s life will fail and losing one’s life paradoxically will lead to its preservation. The lesson with Lot’s wife’s leaving Sodom and with Israel’s leaving Egypt is to trust that what lies in the God-directed unknown is better than trappings and lifestyle of the God-less known.
When Lot left Sodom, the fire came down and they didn’t even know what hit them. We talked about salt a lot when we were going through Matthew, salt preserves and purifies the offerings. We need to leave the old man and the old life behind, which is what Lot’s wife failed to do. Sometimes we are more comfortable in our misery than walking in faith towards the unknown that is better than where we are now.
Even in places where the people were in horrible misery, such as Corinth and Nineveh, God saw that there were people there who would listen to Him and repent.
‘Abomination of desolation’
There’s this curious phrase “abomination of desolation” Yeshua references (Matt. 24:15; Mk. 13:14) from the prophet Daniel (Dan. 8:11, 13; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) referred to times when the Temple would be defiled in a horrific manner. That pointed toward in literal translations of the phrase as, “detestable thing that causes horror.” This abomination of desolation occurred several times in Israel’s history. This happened before Daniel’s time with the removal of the Tabernacle at Shiloh. It came in his youth with the destruction by Babylon of the Temple that Shlomo (Solomon) built. It would come later to the early second Temple with the defilement of the altar by Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) and by Pontius Pilate who put up his Roman banners in the Temple and with the ultimate destruction of the Temple by Rome in A.D. 70.
We are warned in God’s word that pride is the deadliest sin, the root of them all.
Speaker: Jeff. Summary: Tammy.
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