Knowing the Biblical Signs of the Times Mike Bickle

Knowing the Biblical Signs of the Times – Mike Bickle

Session 10 Being Strengthened to Stand in Victory in the End Times (Lk. 21:36)Page1

Session 10 Being Strengthened to Stand in Victory in the End Times

For 9pages of extended noteson this message,go to

I.Jesus spoke as Prophet and pastor:be an Overcomerin the end times

A.Jesus prophesied thatdistressing events preceding His returnwouldcome asa snare totest all people(v. 25, 35). He called His people to be strengthened to escape thesnare of sin and fear andto stand in victory (v. 36). He warned them not to allow their hearts to be weighed down (v. 34) and gave pastoral exhortations: to take heed to themselves (v. 34) and towatch and pray (v. 36).

25“There will be…on the earth distress of nations…26men’s hearts failing them from fear…28When these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near…32this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place…34But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.35For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on…the whole earth. 36Watch…pray always that you may be counted worthy [have strength] to escape all these things…to stand before the Son of Man.” (Lk. 21:25-36)

Luke 21 is a very sober message. Jesus describes the most dangerous and the most glorious generation in human history. He outlines the physical dangers. He describes the nations in distress, tremendous upheaval, and people being overcome with fear. His emphasis in this message is the spiritual danger, not merely the outward physical dangers.He gives us vital information about what is going to happen in one particular generation of human history. We are blessed because we have reliable insider information. We know where things are going. It is not speculation. We know the Leader of the nations and what He is doing.

Here in Luke 21 Jesus speaks boldly as a prophet. He gives these strong, bold prophetic statements. He also speaks tenderly as a pastor. It is the tender pastor and the bold prophet that comes together in Luke 21. He describes two different responses. There is one group of people: many people who are overcome with fear in that hour. There is another company of people: it is a multitude filled with faith. They understand where things are going and who is in leadership over the nations.

Then He gives two different exhortations. As a tender pastor, He urges the people not to be overcome with fear, not to be weighed down, but rather He calls them to prioritize doing what is necessary to be strengthened. He makes it clear the strength is available in the grace of God, but it has to be accessed. One of the themes of this chapter is to prioritize accessing that strength. A lot of believers have a kind of “business as usual” approach to their relationship with the Lord. Things are really increasing, the glory as well as the distress. The “business as usual” approach with the Lord is not going to be adequate. He, as a tender pastor, is urging them to press in, to prioritize gaining strength, to be aware of what is happening.

I am going to readLuke 21:25-36 here from my handout, I have edited it down a bit to make it a little quicker to go through. I want to encourage you to read through Luke 21 in your own Bible many, many times. I am going to read through it twice so that you can become more familiar with the ideas, so you can follow along. There are so many thoughts, so many themes, that are taking place in this prophetic, pastoral exhortation of Jesus.

Verse 25, “There will be on the earth distress of nations.” Verse 26, “and this distress will be such that men’s heart will fail them for fear.” Verse 28, now “When these things begin to happen, look up, lift up your heads”— the breakthrough is coming—“your redemption is right around the corner.”

Verse 32, “This generation will by no means pass away till all of the things”—these things being what the Lord Jesus has described here—“come to pass,” the good ones and the bad ones. In verse 34, He gives the pastoral exhortation, the first one: take heed to yourself and do not let your heart get weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the cares of life so that that day surprises you, so that the intensity of what is happening takes you unaware, because you were not expecting what is happening. Verse 35, “For it will come like a snare”—like a trap—“on all who dwell upon the whole earth.”

In verse 36, now He gives another exhortation: “Watch and pray always that you may be counted worthy.” The better translation is that you may have strength to escape all of these things and stand before the Son of man. The idea is standing in victory without falling, without being caught in the trap, in the snare. You would stand in victory before the Son of Man.

Well, Jesus said a lot. Let’s read it again because I want you familiar with it. I will make a couple of quick comments. I want to say that this passage is so much bigger than what anybody could cover in one short session. So you will notice that on the notes there I have at the very top of the page that I have extended notes on the website, about nine or ten pages, where I take these ideas and I establish them with other biblical ideas. I am not going to take time to do that tonight very much. You could read that if you are intrigued or interested by more, thinking, “I want to know more about this idea or that idea.” We have extended notes on the internet because this passage is so important to understand.

Let’s start over again at verse 25. This is a strong prophetic declaration. It is meant to alert us. We are not supposed to hear this and say, “Oh well, business as usual.” Jesus said that there is coming a timeframe that will be unique in history. It will notbe distress of the nations. That is characteristic of thousands of years; there is always distress. He saysin effect that He is talking about something unique, something that is different from the unfolding of history. If it was the same, it would not be a proclamation; there would be no reason to be alerted to it if it was “business as usual” distress of the nations. This is something far more dramatic. It is going to be dangerous externally, physically. Things are going to be shaken. There is going to be trouble.

Verse 26 tells us that the real danger is not what it is happening outside, but it is what is going to happen on the inside to many people. They are going to be overcome with fear, verse 26. Beloved, fear makes us vulnerable to very bad decisions. The enemy knows if we will get overcome with fear we will lose our bearings in the midst of the struggle. Fear is far more dangerous than even the things happening on the outside.

Verse 28, He says that there is a bigger storyline. It is not only a negative shaking. He says, “When these things begin to happen lift, look up, lift up your heads. Your salvation, your redemption, the breakthrough of power is coming very soon.” Now ultimately that is Jesus appearing in the clouds as the King of the nations; that is the ultimate breakthrough. There is an increase of the power of God on the Church in the nations that is increasing more and more the closer we get to the coming of the King when He comes in the clouds.

Also notice in verse 28 He said, “When these things begin to happen.” There is a recognizable beginning of this generation. There is a generation in which these things begin and, verse 32, these things come to pass completely. Within one generation, in one timeframe, there is an observable, noticeable global recognition of all of these things beginning, and they continue toincrease. Jesus is saying that while these signs are increasing He does not want His people unaware. He does not want them to believe a lie that it is a season of disruption and in a while the leaders will come up with solutions and the trouble will go away. He says that it is not going away. It is going to get more intense, more intense. It is not going away.

A lot of preachers are saying, “Well, it is a temporary thing. Do not worry. It is all going to go back to normal.” That is not the truth. There is a generation in which it is going to escalate and never ever return to how it was. The good news that though the darkness and the distress is going to increase the manifestation of the glory of God in the Church and in the nations is going to also increase in a dramatic way.

The greatest revival in history is yet ahead. The greatest increase of darkness is yet ahead. The greatest shaking of the nations is yet ahead. People ask, “Is it going to get better or is it going to get worse?” The answer is both. The wheat and the tares will mature together at the end of the age is what Jesus said in Matthew 13. He said that the wheat—the good—and the tares—the bad—are going to mature at the same time at the end of the age. There will be the greatest revival, the greatest manifestation of God’s glory, at the same time where there is great distress and great darkness and sin escalating. It is the contrast of the two that will make that time frame so unique in history; there will be none like it.

Jesus said in verse 28, “When these things begin,look up,” because, verse 32, “know this, this generation will not pass away until all the things that began in that generation come to pass.” There is a time frame;it is one generation. He wants the people of God to be aware of the incremental increase and escalation, so as the distress and the sin is increasing, their understanding of what the prophetic scripture says is also increasing.When we see that it was prophesied in the Scripture, then we connect that there is a Leader over all this, the train is not off the track, and this is going somewhere under the leadership of a powerful King. There is a good thing that is happening as well in the midst of the trouble.

Verse 34, He gives the first exhortation. He says, in essence, “Do not just look up because the great victory is inevitable; look inward to your heart.” Because the biggest vulnerability is inside of the heart of the believer,He is talking to believers here.In this exhortation,He is not talking to unbelievers in the nations. I mean He is happy for them to hear and to respond, but He is talking as a pastor tenderly to His flock. He says, “Take heed to yourself.” Do not be casual about the seeds of lust and fear and bitterness growing in you. Deal with them because those seeds will not go away on their own; they will intensify in that hour. It is a very, very weighty but tender exhortation. I am imagining Jesus speaking in tenderness. I do not hear a rebuke or a tone of“you better get with it.” I see Him saying, “Oh,My beloved, as you see things increasing, intensify your priority to access the grace of God in your own life.Do not let the seeds of immorality, drunkenness, fear, and bitterness just creep up and grow in your life. Deal with them radically because you will be living in that timeframe where fear will be all around and sin will escalate, but there is victory. You can connect to Me. I will touch you. I will fascinate you with My beauty and My glory. I will use you as a vessel of My power. You can connect to Me. Look up. Do not just look outward to the things that are going on. Look up to Me, but take serious account as to what is happening in your own heart.” He says, “Do not let your heart get weighed down.”

He lists three categories of wrong responses and three categories of temptation. Carousing of which we will look at in a moment is talking mostly about immorality, but it is bigger than immorality. Drunkenness and the cares of life. Being preoccupied with being mistreated is what He is talking about with the cares of life. There is a whole generation right now in the nations that is getting overly preoccupied with how they feel and who is treating them right. Jesus said that is a snare that will trip you. He would say, “Get your eyes on Me; do not get your eyes on them. You will lose your way; you will lose your walk with Me. Stay connected to Me. I have a bigger narrative. I have a bigger storyline for your life. I have more power, and I have more authority than the person who is not treating you right. Do not let them dominate the narrative of your life.Whether it is a family member, a leader in the marketplace, in the government, in the church, in the neighborhood do not get preoccupied with who is treating you badly and make that the dominating narrative of your life,” He says, “because I am your Leader. I am your source. I have authority over all of that.” He says, “Because if you get weighed down, you will not be responsive to Me like you used to be.”

Beloved, when our hearts get weighed down, whether it is by the bitterness of being mistreated, whether it is by drunkenness, immorality, or all that is implied by those three categories of temptation, our hearts become weighed down which means unresponsive.There are some of you in this room undoubtedly who are not as responsive to the Lord’s leadership as you were three years ago. One of these three areas have trapped you, and you are not near as responsive as you were two or three years ago. The Lord says, “Recover. There is time. I am with you. You are Mine. You are My beloved.”

He says, “I do not want that day to come upon you unexpectedly.”Now when the Scripture talks about “that day,” it is talking ultimately about the coming of the Lord in the clouds, the second coming of Christ. The Scripture almost always connects the trends that are happening in the nations which are escalating for the years that are leading up to “that day.” So often in the Bible the day of His appearing and the years leading up to it is one continuum; it is one big story. What Jesus is talking about is the increasing distress, the increasing temptation. The increasing troubles that are escalating, they are connected to the coming of the Lord.

He says, “But I do not want you to be surprised by it. Because if you are surprised by the increase of the negative, you will get offended by it. You will become afraid, and you will respond in the wrong way. You will try to self-medicate. You will dabble a little bit in drunkenness, a little bit of immorality, a little bit of self-pity and bitterness to try to relieve yourself of the escalating trouble. He says, “You do not want to self-medicate. You do not want to find comfort and relief from pressure in those things.Because the trouble is going to increase, not decrease. My manifested glory and My leadership in your life will increase as well.” There will be a greater revelation of the Lord to His people, through His people, a greater manifestation of His power.

Then He goes on in verse 35—again here is the Prophet-Pastor—He is saying, “I want you to know this thing is coming like a snare. It is coming like a snare on the whole earth. It is coming like a trap. Everybody will be challenged by it. There is no special place in the earth, no special group of people that will go unchallenged by this.” He is talking to the Church here. He is talking about believers. As a Pastor He saying, “Do not imagine you will escape this challenge. It is an opportunity to discover Me in a greater way and to experience My power in a greater way. It is going to come upon the whole earth.”

Verse 36, He says, “Watch and pray always that you may be strengthened,” that you may be strengthened. Now it says here in the King James that you would be “counted worthy,” but there are about 100 English translations of the Bible, almost 100 of them, and almost every one of them uses the words“to be strengthened” instead of what the King James says, that you would be prayed to be “counted worthy.”

What is it that we want to be strengthened in? We want strength to escape the snare, not to escape the challenge. Yeah, I do want to escape the challenge, but what He is talking about is to escape the snare, the trap, getting caught in the trap. Avoiding being caught in the snare so that you would stand instead of fall, so you would walk in victory instead of just giving in to fear or lust or drunkenness. You would stand in victory before the Son of God. So He says, “I want you to watch and pray. I want you to access the grace of God. I want you to prioritize going deep in Me in this hour.”

Now that generation He is talking about is the greatest generation in history in which to be alive. It is not the easiest, but it is the greatest because the glory of God will be manifested in that hour like no time in history.It will also be the most dangerous generation, and it will also be the most despairing. There will be more people overcome with fear, but there will be more people bold in faith. Both groups will come to record numbers.