One Will Be Taken
One Will Be Taken
40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
Matthew 24:40-42
Many different ideas have been born from these verses in Matthew but what exactly was Jesus trying to say with this. When you look at the context both of the passage and also of the people he was speaking with, you realize that he’s talking about the difference inside people and not outside.
The Jews in those days very easily divided the saved and lost by blood and location. If you were a blood Jew, a pure and undefiled descendant of Abraham, you were saved. If you were from Israel, and even more Jerusalem, you were saved. That is how they thought and you could imagine how these verses would have troubled them.
Jesus doesn’t mention blood, descendant lines or birthplaces in his division. In fact, the way the people are so close suggests that many could be family. What a thought for a Jew that a brother could be saved and another lost.
We make the same distinctions sometimes. We divide Adventists from others. We divide our church with others. We divide our day of worship from others. We look more on the outside than the inside for salvation.
What Jesus does however is different. From the outside, the people look the same but it’s the inside hearts of the people that determine salvation or loss.
The other thing of course, brought up especially in verse 42 is that it can happen at any time. We may be at work, or asleep, or on a journey when the Day of the Lord comes. We can’t just believe or think, well I’m going on vacation so obviously Jesus won’t come during this time. No. We must be ready at every moment.
God bless,
Pr. Steven Couto