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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Luke 10:12
Comments
This fearful warning is to be delivered, because there are consequences to unbelief which the unbeliever would like to put out of his mind. Christ is of course speaking of the coming Day of Judgment, though Luke does not use these words explicitly. That coming day is the day we should all think carefully about. The people who rejected the gospel delivered to them by the seventy, could get away with their rejection only for a short time; the day awaited them, and they would do well to remember it. Some may yet be brought to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God before that day comes, when they consider that dreadful scene, because fear may awaken us, even if fear, by itself, cannot bring us to know God. But they are to think not just that the day will come, but they are to consider what that day means for them personally. Conscience adds to the weight of this consideration, and reinforces the message that, in rejecting Jesus Christ who has come down to earth to be the Saviour of the world and even come to their town or village, to their very door, they have done something worse that Sodom. Sodom was of course a proverbially wicked city, which every Jew was taught to regard with horror. This statement of the Lord was therefore especially shocking: that those who rejected him would be judged more severely than Sodom. ‘But we are not guilty of the terrible sins of Sodom’, they would have answered. ‘No, but you have seen so much more than them, and you have rejected light from heaven.’
Application
There is a trick which the self-righteous play to minimise their sin in their own eyes. It is a dishonest trick and it is exposed by the Lord here. The self-righteous man measures sin by what can be seen externally, and he hides everything else from view. But Christ judges righteously, and he judges according to what a man knows. Increased knowledge means increased responsibility before God. What we do with his message may render us more guilty than those we regard as the worst of men in this world. This is why the children of believers have to be so careful how they listen to the instruction from the word of God.
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