Luke 17:26-30

On one hand, Jesus says that just before His return will be a time of great tribulation, unlike anything that has occurred in history. But here, He likens that same time to the days of Noah and the days of Lot. He mentions people eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, and building.

So, this is the apparent paradox: One part of the Olivet Prophecy describes the absolute worst of times, with everyone’s survival threatened, and then another part alludes to people pursuing normal activities of life, as though nothing unusual is happening.

We will begin with what Jesus intends by mentioning “the days of Noah” and “the days of Lot.” In Christ’s descriptions, He gives us the activities of the people immediately before sudden destruction. But we should understand that these activities by themselves—the eating and drinking and so forth—are not actually any sort of sign. Mankind has been doing these things from the beginning. Christ’s point in these illustrations is not that the world before His return will be overflowing in good times, but rather He is emphasizing how unexpectedly God’s judgment can fall. He is saying the future destruction will happen suddenly, just like what happened to the people of Noah’s day and the residents of Sodom.

Luke 17:24-33

In the midst of this instruction regarding the conditions that are going to exist at the time of His return, He specifically draws attention to the awful state of unreadiness, being unprepared, that the people are going to be in then. I want you also to see that the instruction is not to the Pharisees. The instruction is to His disciples. He is warning they better be prepared because the people in the world are going to be going through their normal routines. They are not going to be prepared. They are not going to be ready. There is more than that there. He does not just say, be aware of her. He says, Remember! almost as if He is concerned that all of us, all of his disciples, are in danger of forgetting. Urgency! Was she urgent to leave? Was she ready to leave? No she was not.

Luke 17:27-30

Now there, that sets the context. We are talking about the time of the end. He says that the general idea is that these people were doing what?

Most people's attention on earth is going to be on secular things. Their attention is not going to be on the return of Christ; their focus is in the world.