Luke 17:25 Commentary and Bible Study

But that glorious day is in the future, and many hard things must happen first. The Lord was ready to go to the cross of Calvary, and endure all its terrible suffering in order to make that wonderful future day possible. His people must also bear many trials before the second coming. They must see him rejected by his own nation and condemned and put to death, and it must not shake their trust in him. The hard service comes first and the reward comes afterwards.How was it that the Jews rejected their own Messiah, when they had been prepared in advance so well by the prophets for his coming? The Jews were made by God to be a picture of man’s unbelief. In spite of all their privileges and all their knowledge through the revelations and predictions of the prophets – which made the first coming of Christ impossible to mistake – they did not want him when he came. Certainly, they would have been happy to have a Messiah who had their national interests at heart, and who would elevate their nation and bolster national pride, but the message they heard from Christ was not welcome to them. By his teaching he took away all the advantages that they supposed they had. Nothing that they had received by birth made them fit to stand before God or to enter heaven. They were outside the kingdom of heaven and needed to enter in. Their possession of the law and the temple worship, and their descent from Abraham profited them nothing. The gospel was an unattractive message to them because it placed them effectively on the same footing as the Gentiles. By birth that had no better expectation of heaven than the Gentiles dogs, and their birth was what they trusted in. That was easy; that was something that cost them nothing.