A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on November 8, 2026.
“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (Luke 21:20–24)[1]
Interpreting the twenty-first chapter of Luke can be challenging. The chapter begins with Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the temple, including his call for discernment and warning of what would come. This leads us to begin interpreting the passage through that one historical event. But the destruction of the temple may also serve, as Charles Spurgeon puts it, as “a kind of rehearsal of what is yet to be,” like “the uprolling of the curtain on the great drama of the world’s doom.”[2] Jesus tells of what was to come and through it what is to come before he comes again.
But such prophecies tell more than what is to come. They reveal truths about the character of God, such as the revelation of God’s judgment in our passage today. Note the vocabulary of our passage and the use of such words as “desolation,” “vengeance,” and “wrath.” The word translated “desolation,” for example, means destruction that devastates. Jerusalem would not only be attacked and conquered but rendered uninhabitable, desolate. The word translated “vengeance” means retributive justice, which in context refers to God’s righteous punishment of “this people.” And the word translated “wrath,” as it is used here, implies more than God’s anger but his holy and just response to evil.
I draw your attention to these words, because each describes a different aspect of God’s judgment, which is revealed in our passage today. This is indeed a prophecy, but it is also a theological treatise on God’s judgment, in which we see: God’s judgment is certain; God’s judgment fulfills his Word; and, God’s judgment is governed by his sovereign purpose.
God’s Judgment Is Certain (20-21)
So certain was God’s judgment upon Jerusalem, Jesus could tell his followers precisely what to watch for: “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near” (21:20). And so it happened. In April A.D. 70, around the time of Passover when the capital city’s population would swell, Roman general Titus established a blockade around the capital city, cutting off all outside provisions including food and water. Titus strategically created an urban famine within the walls of Jerusalem resulting in mass starvation.
But Jesus’ Jewish followers were warned to flee the city at first sight of a surrounding army, and many did. Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea says that the church in Jerusalem fled before the attack and settled in the foothills east of the Jordan river. But those who remained in Jerusalem became part of the catastrophic casualties of Titus’ attack, estimated to be between 500,000 and 1 million with a remaining 100,000 carried off into slavery.
Jewish historian Josephus believed the brutality of the siege was due to Israel’s unwillingness to negotiate with the Romans and surrender the rebels. But ultimately the Roman siege was merely the means of God’s judgment upon the nation of Israel for their rejection and crucifixion of Christ. And such judgment was not only a reality in that moment but a continuing certainty for all who reject Christ. As bad as those five months and following were in Jerusalem, a guilty verdict under God’s final judgment will result in an eternity in hell.
Just as the Jews in Jerusalem presumed they were safe inside the city’s walls, many “presume on the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience,” as the apostle Paul puts it, but the “hard and impenitent heart” is simply “storing up wrath” for “the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:4-5). And “just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). But just as God’s judgment is certain so also is the promise of the gospel. Because God’s judgment is righteous, it was necessary that the only righteous One, God’s only begotten Son, atone for the sins of the elect. The apostle Paul explains it this way: “God put forward [Christ Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:25-26). The certainty of the satisfaction of God’s judgment in Christ’s death and resurrection is the good news of the Christian faith.
God’s Judgment Fulfills His Word (22)
Jesus refers to the siege of Jerusalem and its desolation as “days of vengeance.” What Jerusalem suffered was not meaningless but significant in its fulfillment of the promised divine retribution. God warned Israel, all the way back in Deuteronomy, “if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field” (Deut. 28:15-16). And warnings run the gamut through the Old Testament prophets and onward to the laments of our Lord Jesus.
Outside the city he lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken” (Luke 13:34-35a). And these truths brought tears to his eyes, as he cried,
Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation (Luke 19:42-44).
In both of these lamentations in Luke, Jesus mourns what is to come upon Jerusalem, not for the city’s sake but because Jerusalem personified the people of Israel, who had forsaken the Lord their God and therefore not known him when he came. But the visitation of Israel’s Messiah was not without revelation.
God said through the prophet Isaiah,
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isa. 55:10-11).
Rain and snow fall upon the earth by God’s design, watering the earth that we may receive the bounty of her yield. The Lord says his Word is similar, going forth, always accomplishing its purpose.
In the case of Jerusalem’s desolation, God’s Word was given and God’s Word was fulfilled. But large spans of time passed between them, which can lead some to doubt the veracity of God’s Word. This is the apostle Peter’s point, at least in part, when he responds to the question, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Pet. 3:4). Peter explains,
. . . the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (2 Pet. 3:5-7).
God created the world and all that is in it in six days by the word of his power, and life began and continued. Long after the last day of creation, God destroyed the world by flood according to his Word.
Likewise, the living Word of God came establishing a new creation through faith in him. And Peter says, by the same Word judgment will come and the “destruction of the ungodly.” “Reprieves are not pardons,”[3] Matthew Henry reminds us. What God has promised in his Word will come to pass. Such is the trustworthiness of God’s Word.
God’s Judgment Is Governed by His Sovereign Purpose (23-24)
Amidst Jesus’ prophecy of God’s judgment of Jerusalem, we hear his compassionate concern: “Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people” (21:23). We may assume that among the early Christians who fled Jerusalem there were pregnant and nursing mothers. But early motherhood was not a guarantee of protection. As God’s wrath bore down upon Jerusalem, limited quantities of food quickly disappeared leading to starvation. Josephus tells us sadly of one starving mother who resorted to eating her own child to survive. If she survived, she was likely later slain or enslaved. Alas, indeed.
Such a tragic account can lead us to wonder: Why her? Why the pregnant women? Why the nursing mothers? Why children? Or, why A.D. 70 as opposed to any other year before or after? As we begin to ask questions like these, we quickly realize the limitations of our knowledge and the reality that such are the mysteries of God’s sovereign purpose. But just because it’s a mystery to us doesn’t mean it was (or is) without purpose. There is a purpose for everything that happens, and everything happens in God’s good timing, whether it be the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 or the day of our Lord’s return.
For example, as to God’s timing, the apostle Peter explains, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Judgment Day has not yet come, not because God is “slow to fulfill his promise,” but because he is patient with us that every one of his elect will repent and savingly believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. There is purpose in God’s patience just as there is in his judgment.
Jerusalem’s captives were, as Jesus prophesied, dispersed “among all nations,” a dispersion that continues to this day, since the majority of Jewish people live not in the modern state called Israel but throughout the world. But Jesus concludes his prophecy not with the Jews but with the Gentiles, that “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (21:24). Contextually, Jesus is likely referring to the Roman triumph over Jerusalem that would continue for centuries. Jerusalem would be rebuilt and reestablished, but not as the capital of spiritual Israel nor as the place of worship for God’s people. Jerusalem’s desolation had been the conclusion of what had already occurred spiritually in Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Since then, God’s people have worshiped him not under one nation nor in one place but in “spirit and truth” (John 4:24) not in a temple but as his temple in whom he dwells. And just as Christ mobilized his church on mission to the nations, so the temple is built stone upon living stone, of Jew and Gentile alike, for the eternal worship of the Lord our God.
Therefore, as we look back to the “days of vengeance” knowing that though God’s judgment is certain, Christ’s atoning sacrifice satisfied the divine justice of God. Though God’s Word promises judgment to come, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). And though God’s righteous judgment will be revealed on the last day, he chose his elect “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons [and daughters] through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4-5). The days of vengeance have become the days of deliverance, for “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among me by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Charles H. Spurgeon, “Joyful Anticipation of the Second Advent,” quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 426.
