A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on May 10, 2026.
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Look, there!’ or ‘Look, here!’ Do not go out or follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.” And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:20–37).[1]
At some point in his onward journey to Jerusalem, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God will come. It’s a question that seems out of context, given the preceding passages. But it is important to remember that Luke’s placement of this question follows Jesus’s miraculously healing of ten lepers, an event surely to have caused attention and drawn curiosity. Miracles didn’t happen every day, or any day. But everywhere Jesus went, preached, and ministered, there was miracle after miracle, including ten in one day. And this was sure to lead some to wonder if Zephaniah’s prophesied “day of the Lord” (Zeph. 3) was soon to come, when Israel’s Messiah would come and establish his kingdom forever. And so, the Pharisees ask, “When will the kingdom come?”
But beneath their question lies a deeper issue: What kind of kingdom was expected? One commentator explains, the Pharisees “were concerned about the mighty acts of the heavenly Kingdom to crush the Roman might, punish the Gentiles, exalt Israel, and establish God’s reign in all the world.”[2] They were looking for something visible, political, unmistakable, a kingdom that would arrive with spectacle and sweep away their enemies.
And if we’re honest, we are not so different. We tend to think in terms of what can be measured, seen, controlled. But Jesus’s answer dismantles their assumptions, and ours. “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed,” Jesus says, “nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20-21). The kingdom of God is already present. But, as we will see in what follows, it is also not yet fulfilled. And while its inauguration was less obvious and observable, its consummation will be sudden and decisive. In other words, there are different dimensions to the kingdom of God that we must grasp, lest we misread history and be unprepared for Christ’s return.
The Already
The Pharisees ask when the kingdom will come. Jesus responds by correcting how they think it comes: “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed . . .”It comes not with temporal signs they expected, not with armies but with repentance, not with revolution but regeneration.The kingdom is “in the midst of you,” Jesus tells them. Because the kingdom comes in the person of Jesus Christ. The King himself was standing in their midst, and where the King is there is his kingdom.
You may recall that when John the Baptist was imprisoned, he sent a question to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt. 11:3). By “one who is to come,” he meant the Messiah, the Christ, who would usher in the kingdom of God. Jesus’s affirmative answer was in what John’s disciples witnessed. “Go and tell John,” Jesus said, “what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me” (11:4-6). Though it did not align with the Messianic expectations of the day, Christ had indeed come, and with him the kingdom of God.
In contrast, the Pharisees were, looking past the very evidence of the kingdom while demanding proof of it. And this is nothing new. You can be very religious and yet completely miss the kingdom, because you are looking for the wrong kind of evidence. The kingdom of God is present wherever Christ reigns. And he continues to reign today, as he promised, with his people by his Spirit.[3]
The Not Yet
Moving to verse twenty-two in our text, Jesus now turns from the Pharisees to his disciples. The tone shifts. He begins to speak not about the present kingdom but about its future consummation.“The days are coming,” he says, “when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it” (Luke 17:22).Though the kingdom has already come in Christ’s first coming, its final consummation has yet to appear. The Christian then lives, as it were, between promise and fulfillment, presence and absence.We long for Christ’s return and the consummation of our salvation.
But such longing for our Lord’s return does not negate discernment. Some will claim special insight into his arrival. Ignore them. Some will invite you to look here and there, as if Christ’s return were a secret appearing. Stay away. There are those who are easily carried away by the sensational. Don’t be those.
When Christ returns, it will be no secret. Just “as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other” (17:24), so it will be on that day. Everyone will see it. Everyone will know about it. But not everyone will be ready for it. But ready or not, his return is imminent.
In understanding Christ’s return and the final consummation of the kingdom of God, we must keep first things first. “But first,” Jesus says, “he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation” (17:25). Before the crown comes the cross. And it was not a mistake, or an accident, or a tragedy but a victory, “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). From all eternity, God ordained that our redemption would come through Christ’s substitutionary suffering.
But what may seem obvious to us is so often missed by others. Why? Because the stuff of this life gets in the way. It’s like the days of Noah before the catastrophic flood: “They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all” (17:27). Life was remarkably normal, until it wasn’t. And so judgment came upon every soul outside of the ark.
It’s like the days of Lot before the decimation of Sodom and Gomorrah: “they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all” (17:28-29). What Jesus describes in both the days of Noah and Lot is not gross wickedness but ordinary life lived without reference to God. People were not destroyed for living but for doing so without acknowledgement, without repentance, without faith.
As Paul preached to the Athenians, God “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). The life we have is the life God gives, and it is good. But what about when love for this life supersedes love for God? Jesus says, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33). The word “life” here carries the sense not merely of biological existence but one’s self, one’s whole life and identity. Jesus is speaking about the instinctive human desire to save ourselves: To secure comfort, to avoid surrender, to protect autonomy, to cling to this present world. The result is a sinful love of the creation and creature rather than true love for the Creator.
Martin Luther said, “Sin curves the soul inward.”[4] The fallen flesh says: “My life belongs to me.” And so, people try desperately to preserve reputation, possessions, security, control, earthly fulfillment. But Jesus says that the person who lives this way will ultimately lose everything.
The problem is not merely possessing earthly things but treating them as ultimate. “Remember Lot’s wife” (17:32), Jesus says, who though pulled to safety by angelic rescuers, left her heart and mind in Sodom and so looked back suffering judgment in return.[5] Likewise, a man may attend church faithfully, profess orthodox doctrine, and maintain moral respectability, while still fundamentally trying to preserve his own life on his own terms. But this is not the way of the cross of Christ, which calls us to repentance, faith, mortification of sin, costly obedience, and willingness to suffer for Christ. For, only the one who loses his life for Christ will keep it in Christ.
The End and Beginning
When Jerusalem was sacked and ultimately destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, many of the Jewish Christians interpreted Jesus’s instructions literally: “On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back and fled the city” (Luke 17:31). Those who fled survived. And while it is fascinating to think about this verse saving many lives, its warning is not primarily in its practical instruction but its description. When Christ comes, it will be sudden. And it will be, as Phil Ryken points out, both “the worst day and the best day,” depending on one’s relationship with Christ.[6]
On that unexpected day, a husband and wife will be together in the home and suddenly: “One will be taken and the other left” (17:34). Likewise in the workplace, two will be working and suddenly, “One will be taken and the other left” (17:35). What will separate one from another is neither marriage nor vocation but Christ himself. And faith in Christ alone is the difference between heaven and hell. On the last day, suddenly, the separation will be inseparable.
Likely perplexed by all they heard, Jesus’s disciples respond not with “when” but “Where, Lord?” Perhaps they wonder like the man who said, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”[7] As if to say, “All we want to know is where judgment will fall so we never go there.” But Jesus replies, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (17:37). It’s a difficult saying, to be sure, but Jesus is in essence telling us that judgment will be certain and appropriate. The judgment of God will find its proper object. For the unrepentant, who stand in their own righteousness, it will be the end of this life and the beginning of eternal suffering. For the redeemed, who rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ, it will be the end of this life and the beginning of eternal life.
But neither you nor I need wait for the last day to enter the kingdom of God. Christ reigns now, not visibly in worldly splendor, but truly and powerfully. The kingdom is present wherever the gospel is preached, where sinners repent, where Christ rules by his Word and Spirit. And we enter not by works but by God’s grace alone through faith in Christ alone.
This means Christianity is not merely preparation for a future heaven. It’s living today as a citizen of the kingdom with present allegiance to the King. The question is not simply: “Do you believe Jesus will return?” The deeper question is: “Does Jesus rule you now?” Does Jesus rule your ambitions? Does Jesus rule your money? Does Jesus rule your sexuality? Does Jesus rule your speech? Does Jesus rule your private life?
But there is the not yet part of the kingdom too. Christ has come, and Christ will come again. In between the already and not yet lies living, waiting, suffering, longing, perseverance. The Christian life often feels unresolved because it is unresolved. We still battle sin. We still bury loved ones. We still experience disappointment and weakness. And yet we wait with hope.
Let us then cultivate, what J.C. Ryle calls a “habitual readiness” for Christ’s return.[8] Not date-setting, not speculation, not sensationalism, but steady faithfulness. Living the ordinary Christian life awaiting the extraordinary return of Christ.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] G.E. Ladd quoted in Dale Ralph Davis, Luke 14-24: On the Rod to Jerusalem (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2021), 69.
[3] John 14
[4] https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/things-unseen-with-sinclair-ferguson/turned-in-on-ourselves
[5] Gen. 19:17, 26
[6] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009).
[7] Charlie Munger, https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/all_i_want_to_know.php
[8] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012).
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 