But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of the heavens, but [my] Father alone.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
But as the days of Noe, so also shall be the coming of the Son of man.
The Lord has just said that no one knows the day or hour. Now He points back to Noah's flood to show what the world will be like when He returns. Two questions follow. Which coming does He mean? And what made Noah's generation a picture of the last days?
The word translated "coming" can also be read as "presence." Whether a public display is in view depends on what is joined to it.
"Coming" or "presence," used of our Lord's future, does not by itself mean a public display. Display comes in when other words are joined to it, such as "Son of Man" (as in Matt. 24:27, 37, 39), or a term that plainly adds it (as in 2 Thess. 2:8), or facts like 1 Thess. 3:13. These additions show not only His presence, but the display of it.
This verse uses that very title.
The title "Son of Man" at once prepares you for a judgment connected with the earth and with persons living there. No doubt the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven, but He comes to judge the world and the people on it.
Noah's world was not only violent. It was a world at ease with itself.
These were times of ease and worldliness, when all mankind was rising up against God. Yet they picture the scenes that will meet the Lord as He appears from heaven to judge the world… The same self-security and love of ease will mark the day when the Lord is revealed, just as it did before the flood. Then, as long ago, men will be absorbed in the ordinary matters of daily life.
Another writer puts the emphasis on how such things become the whole of life.
People of the world will keep going their own independent way. They will still concentrate on the material things of life: eating, drinking and marrying. These things are not wrong in themselves, but too often they are the only object of men's existence.
Some expect the world to grow better and better until Christ appears. Noah's day says otherwise.
Some would have us believe that before the Son of Man appears in the clouds of heaven, this earth will be covered from pole to pole with a beautiful robe of righteousness… But the short passage just quoted tears up all such empty and deceiving hopes by the roots in a moment. How was it in the days of Noah? Did righteousness cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea?… Scripture answers, "the earth was filled with violence."
That generation did not lack warning. They simply paid no attention to it.
He describes the effect of all Noah's preaching… "They were unaware." Did they not have plenty of testimony? Plenty. For a hundred and twenty years Noah, who preached righteousness, pointed to the coming storm, which Enoch had predicted too. They had plenty of testimony, but paid no attention to it… The flood caught people by surprise in Noah's day, and His return will catch them by surprise in the same way, when He comes Himself to judge the earth as Son of Man.
Why does the Lord point to Noah and not to Enoch? Noah came through the judgment; God took Enoch away before it.
Here is another proof that our Lord, in this setting, speaks of the Jewish disciples of the last days, represented by those standing around Him then, and not of the Church. His illustration comes from God keeping Noah and his household safe through the waters of the flood. But the Holy Spirit, through Paul, pictures our hope by the pattern of Enoch, caught up to heaven, completely away from the scenes and circumstances of judgment here below.
Noah did more than believe in private. His faith passed a verdict on the world around him.
Warned of what is coming on the world, he accepts and acknowledges the judgment, and he takes God's revealed way of salvation; and so he condemns the world. Note this: faith "condemns the world." It is not only belief in a sacrifice that saves, and power to walk with God. It also says of the world that it has completely turned away from God, and that it is going to be judged.
The same position belongs to readers now.
What He has predicted about His coming intervention in power is something completely new. It will mean a far greater overthrow for evil men than the flood brought. We believe it and expect it because He has said it. We too have been warned by God.
- Warned — Noah's generation heard a hundred and twenty years of preaching. The flood surprised them only because they ignored it.
- Unheeding — eating, drinking and marrying are not sins. They ruin a life when they become the whole of it.
- Unchanged — the world will not grow righteous before He comes. Violence, not righteousness, filled the earth in Noah's day, and the Lord says it will be the same again.
- Unmistakable — "Son of Man" marks this coming as a public display. He comes to judge people living on the earth.
- Unharmed — God carried Noah safely through the judgment, and Noah's faith condemned the world that was about to be judged.