12:54-56
Jesus then turns to the crowd and calls them all hypocrites! We look at the weather and can often read the signs of what is to come. We know when stormy weather is likely on the way, or when good weather is on the way. Yet the people did not know how to make any sense of the times they lived in. They did not realise that sin was their biggest problem, despite a mountain of evidence. They did not recognise that Jesus was the Son of God, again despite an increasing mountain of evidence. We think we are clever, but we fail to notice the blindingly obvious.
12:57-59
“Judge for yourselves”, God calls on us to use our common sense. Mankind battles against God all the time. Look at our own society. We do not want to listen to what God says on marriage, sexuality or even humanity. We pretend that God does not exist and think ourselves wise to do so, more sophisticated than our ancestors. We would be far wiser to seek peace with God than to continue our fight against Him. We all know that one day we will die. The atheist “hope”, is that after we die we just become nothing. It is not much of a hope, even so it is false. We will all be called to give an account.
By the way, we should not take these words here as a detailed description of what judgement will be like, ie we should not waste our efforts speculating on who the adversary is, who the judge is, what it tells us about eternal punishment etc. The point that Jesus is making is that there will be a final reckoning and we would be well advised to settle things long before that day.
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