I'm excited about this series that we're gonna start into
future things, Jesus tells the future.
And when I teach typically on Sunday morning especially,
but obviously whenever I teach,
I'm excited about helping you guys understand
the word of God.
I'm excited about the word of God that you hear
actually impacting your life.
So the Bible is not just for knowing,
the Bible is for doing, the Bible is for obedience.
Okay, we want you to live out what you learn in here, amen.
And so that's part of what I'm trying to do.
I'm also trying to help you understand the text.
I'm not making up stuff.
I'm going to the text and trying to figure out
what did God mean when he wrote this book?
And what did God mean when he wrote this particular passage?
Because I believe that the whole Bible was inspired
by the Holy Spirit, that holy men of old spake
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost is what the Bible says.
And so when we come to different passages,
I want the point of the passage to be the point of the message.
Who thinks that's a good idea?
The point of the passage ought to be the point of the message
and the point of the message ought to be the point
of the passage, right?
That's what we're trying to do.
And I also know that as we come to different particular texts,
there's different kinds of literature in the Bible.
The Bible isn't just one type of literature.
It's a lot of different kinds of literature.
There's actually a song book in the Bible.
Did you know that?
The book of Psalms is like the hymnal, the Psalms,
the songs of praise poetry that was written
by the Jewish people.
Some were by Moses, some were by David,
some were by people we don't even know.
But there's poetry in there.
There's all kinds of literature.
There's historical narrative.
There's people, the Bible is a history book.
It tells it, gives real history.
And so that's part of it.
About a third of the Bible is prophecy.
So if I never cover prophecy,
I would skip like a third of what the Bible has to say.
Who thinks that's a bad idea?
Right, that's a bad idea.
And what's amazing about the Bible is that
when it comes to this idea of prophecy,
some prophecies have yet to be fulfilled,
but there's a lot of prophecy that's already been fulfilled.
There's prophecy that was made in the Old Testament
about something that would happen in Old Testament times
and it was fulfilled.
It's already been fulfilled.
Not talking about Jesus,
not talking about anything in the New Testament,
talking about what would happen 100 or 200 or 400 years
after the start of it,
and then it actually was fulfilled.
So the Bible has this incredible track record
about fulfilled prophecy.
In fact, if you think about the Bible,
you have the Old Testament and the New Testament.
It starts in Genesis and it goes through
into the New Testament.
And then after, it's kind of in a time order,
not totally, but somewhat,
you have things in the beginning
and leading up to the inter-testamental period.
And then you have the New Testament
where Jesus shows up in the gospels.
Then at the end of Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John are all accounts of Jesus' life and ministry.
Then the book of Acts that comes after the book of John,
the Gospel of John, stands for Acts of the Apostles.
So this is what the Apostles did after Jesus left.
And then the epistles are basically the writings of Paul
and the other Apostles to churches
to give them instruction,
some some also to people who were pastors
and people that were set as leaders
in this new thing that God was doing called churches.
And that helps us understand what life now means
because of what Jesus did in this time that there are churches.
And then you have at the end of the book, Revelation.
And Revelation is clearly about what's gonna happen
in the future.
It's a foretelling of what's gonna happen.
So I say all that to say this.
There's this other thing that's going on in our world.
And that is that a lot of people have a lot of interest
in what's gonna happen in the future.
And in our country, that's partly because of what we've
experienced over the last few years.
When you read, if you're interested in all about the Bible,
how many of you guys have noticed this about,
about like movies and stuff?
There's a lot of end of the world movies
coming out right now.
Have you noticed that?
Like a lot of post-apocalyptic kind of stuff
and that can get weird.
I think there's a preoccupation with what's gonna happen
in the end.
And a lot of people think it's not gonna be good.
I wanna tell you this, I've read the back of the book
and it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be awesome.
There's gonna be some stuff that happens in between.
But Jesus is coming back.
And so you've got a couple of things going on.
Like even this last week, you look at things happening
in our world, you look at just this last week.
I watched, I saw an article last night,
a US official saying that there's a chance that Iran
is going to attack Israel like any moment now.
So Iran is on, would be on the east side of Israel.
They've already been attacked on October 7th
by the west side, by the Palestinians and Hamas.
And so if you read Revelation, if you read some
of the Old Testament, some of the things
we're gonna look at today, you'll realize that Israel's
very much in play in the in times.
In fact, it's really all, it's in a lot of ways
all about Israel.
We have a war in Russia.
We have, Russia is very much in times prophecy.
You also have, in this last week, we read today,
Jesus' predictions about some of the things
that would happen.
One of the things that's named is earthquakes.
You guys have heard about an earthquake this week, right?
And so I just timed it just right, the series.
And then we also have, it talks about pestilences
and even in our country, and it wasn't just in our country,
but in the whole world, we had this pandemic.
You guys heard about COVID-19, or am I pronouncing it right,
COVID? I'm joking.
Obviously, we've all kind of endured that.
And when you look at what the Bible says in the in times,
there's a one world government imposing mandates on people
about how they're gonna do things economically.
And I thought that's not something I would have to deal
with in our country, but that's definitely something
that's happened, and I don't care where you stand
on any of that stuff in the sense that it just is happening.
Now, that all makes us think about,
okay, there's a future, what's coming?
And it's kind of crazy, isn't it?
So you've got all that going on.
And here's the good news.
The Bible has an incredible track record
about predicting the future.
Jesus has an incredible track record
about saying he will do things,
and then those things being done.
No man lays down, takes my life for me.
I'll lay it down that I can take it up again.
And last week, that's exactly what we celebrated.
Wasn't it?
That Jesus was resurrected.
In Jesus' ministry, we find ourselves in Matthew 24
at what some call Holy Week.
It's the week leading up to Jesus' crucifixion,
his burial and his resurrection.
And in this week, Jesus has a conversation.
We call it the all of it discourse.
Everybody say that with me, all of it discourse.
One more time.
All of it discourse.
It's called discourse because this is not a public sermon.
Discourse is a conversation.
Okay.
This is not a public sermon.
He's having like what I'm doing now,
talking to a lot of people.
This is him having a one on one conversation,
not one on one, a private conversation with his disciples.
So it's discourse in that sense.
It's also called all of it
because it's on a place called the Mount of Olives.
Right?
There's the weird way why we call it the all of it discourse.
And we'll see how that the Mount of Olives
is actually interesting in this whole thing.
But Jesus in this particular passage,
answers a question that the disciples ask.
And he gives the longest answer that he gives
to almost anything he's ever asked in Matthew 24 and 25,
answering this question that the disciples ask.
Now, there's a lot of people who believe a lot of things
about this particular passage.
And what it means and how it means
and how you can apply it and interpret it.
Who agrees with me that if Jesus says something's gonna
happen, we ought to know what he's talking about.
Okay.
And so here we are at Matthew chapter 24
and he gives us this answer,
but he gives the answer to a specific question.
Okay.
What's the question?
We've already read it this morning,
but I want you to see it on the screen here.
Here's the question.
It's in Matthew chapter 24.
And we're gonna find it in verse number,
I believe it's verse number four, isn't it?
Go ahead and put that verse up there.
Verse number three, here it is.
And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives,
the disciples came to him privately saying,
here's the question, tell us,
when shall these things be
and what shall be the sign of thy coming
and of the end of the world?
Now, how many of you guys have ever seen a press conference?
Okay.
And every press conference, they do something
that I wish they would change.
And these press conferences,
you hear the person giving the press conference
and then they go into a Q and A time, right?
And during the Q and A time,
there's no microphone with the person
not answering the, asking the question.
How many of you guys have ever seen that?
So you hear,
yes, you should probably do that.
And that's the answer.
Who agrees that it's important sometimes
to have the question right
so you can understand the answer.
Okay.
So that's kind of what's going on here.
What I wanna do today is to help you understand
the context of the question
so that when we read the answer that Jesus gives,
we'll understand what he's thinking about
and what he's trying to answer.
He's answering the questions that the disciples gave him.
And so for us to understand
what Jesus is saying about the end times,
we have to understand the teaching.
We can understand Jesus's teaching
of the Olivet discourse
by understanding three critical components
of the question that leads to Jesus's answer.
If you don't understand the question,
you won't understand the answer.
So let me give you how we understand this question
in this particular way.
First thing you're gonna see
is the context of the question.
Where did this question come from?
Why are the disciples asking this question?
Well, I wanna give it to you.
The disciples, write this down, this is amazing,
they were Jewish.
And Jesus was Jewish.
So they asked this question from a Jewish perspective.
The disciples had a view of eschatology.
Now I know that's a big word, say it with me, eschatology.
Eschatology, it comes from two words, eschaton,
which means last things, and ology is study of.
So it's a study of, or belief about,
or doctrine about, last things, future things.
The Jews and the Christians
are not the only ones that have an eschatology.
Everybody has a prediction about what,
even people who are non-religious have a view
of what could happen in the future.
What do you think global warming's all about?
Okay, so people have a view of,
there's something that could happen in the future,
and we should respond now in light of that.
Okay, so they have a view of eschatology.
So what we do too, even if you're not a Christian
and a church-going person, being in a Christian nation,
you have at least some kind of thought
about what happens at the end.
And it includes, because you're in a church today,
it includes history that's happened now.
You guys are all in a place where you're gathered
with the assembly, the church at Glacia.
What did the view, what did the disciples' view
of eschatology, their view of last things,
not include that we know.
They didn't know this, we know it.
Okay, here's a couple things.
They did not have a concept of the assembly
in human history and eschatology.
What do I mean?
They did not have a concept of the church, the assembly.
What they understood about Jesus' teaching about the church
was that it was his assembly that was there,
the people that he assembled, right?
Ephesians 5.31 says this.
This is so important for you to understand.
Ephesians 5.31 says,
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother
and shall be joined unto his wife,
and they too shall be one flesh.
He's quoting Genesis chapter number three,
and in quoting Genesis chapter number three,
in Ephesians he's saying, hey, God's doing this thing.
Husbands love your wives,
and his Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Wives submit to your husbands as the church submits to Christ.
And so he's making this picture of husbands being like Christ
and wives being like the church.
And he says, For this cause a man will leave his father
and mother, be joined to his wife,
and unto him too shall be one flesh.
This is a great, say the next word, mystery,
but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
What he's saying is, this is Ephesians.
Ephesians comes after, it's written by Paul.
Paul at this time is not even a Christian.
Okay, when the disciples are having this conversation
with Jesus, Paul's the guy that's studying
at the field of the Gamelial,
he doesn't even believe in Jesus.
Later on, he tries to be a Christian serial killer.
So this is not written yet.
And what Paul's saying is God revealed to me something
that was not revealed before.
A mystery is something that was previously not revealed
that I'm now revealing, and that's this.
That when God set up marriage, when he planned marriage,
by the way marriage is God's idea.
When he planned marriage, he planned male and female,
husband and wife, and he planned it in such a way
that later he can point to Christ in the church
as a picture of marriage.
Not marriage as a picture of Christ in the church,
but Christ in the church as a picture of marriage.
But what he's saying is, it was something
that was previously not revealed.
People didn't know about this assembly
that he was going to do.
The church was a mystery, meaning it was not revealed
to them at this time.
They also had no concept of what we call the rapture.
Have you guys ever heard of the rapture?
Okay, the rapture is described in two places
that I'm gonna show you.
1 Corinthians 15-50 says this,
now I say this, brethren, that the flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption,
and it can't inherit incorruption.
Behold, I show you a mystery,
something that's previously not been revealed
that is now being revealed.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
Meaning, not everybody that goes to be with God
is gonna die.
There's gonna be some that are alive.
But everybody's gonna get changed.
I'm getting a new body.
And all God's people said, and the old people said, amen.
Right?
Right.
And it says, we're gonna all be changed.
How?
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump, for the trump shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.
First Thessalon, again, 1 Corinthians wasn't written yet.
This was a mystery.
Something previously not revealed.
What does that mean?
It's not in the Old Testament that they understood
without having the New Testament to describe it to them.
First Thessalonians 4, 17,
then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up.
That's the word that we use for rapture,
caught up together with them in the clouds who are them,
those are the dead in Christ that will go first,
to meet the Lord in the air,
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Who wants to go now?
That'd be awesome.
I wouldn't even mind not finishing the sermon.
So they had no concept,
real concept of the future of the church.
They had no real concept of the rapture yet
when they asked this question.
They also had no instruction from Revelation
because Revelation, again, wasn't written yet.
What did it include?
What did the, so all they knew about last things,
they knew from the Old Testament.
So what does the Old Testament, how did that inform?
What did they believe about?
What was their question?
When will all these things be?
What shall be the end of the age?
When are you coming?
What'll be the sign of your coming?
Well, it included a few things.
One thing it included was the Davidic covenant.
Have you guys ever heard of the Davidic covenant?
The covenant God made with David.
What was that?
Second Samuel chapter seven says this,
and when thy days be fulfilled,
this is God talking to King David.
Have you guys ever heard of David and Goliath?
David was a good king of Israel that God had,
and God made a covenant with David,
and this is it, a promise to David.
When that is be fulfilled,
thou shalt keep sleep with thy fathers,
I will set up thy seed after thee.
That means you're gonna have people that follow you,
which shall proceed out of thy bowels,
and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name,
and I will establish the throne of his kingdoms forever.
So he's talking about Solomon,
who does establish the temple of Solomon, correct,
the temple of God, Solomon's temple.
He established, he says verse 13,
he will show build a house for my name,
that's Solomon building the temple.
God had told David that he couldn't build the temple,
but so David just got all the,
he went to Home Depot and got all the stuff.
There was no Home Depot, you get my point.
I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be his father, he shall be his son.
If he committed aniquity, I will chase him
with the rod of men, and with the stripes
of the children of men, but my mercy shall not
depart away for him as I took it from Saul,
whom I put away before thee.
And thine house, here it is, and thy kingdom
shall be established forever before thee,
thy throne shall be established forever.
So he's saying, there's gonna be someone in charge
of your throne, it's gonna be the line of David,
and it's going to be forever, more on that in a minute.
So they are thinking, David's son is supposed
to sit on the throne.
At the time of the disciples, who was king of Israel?
Nobody except the Romans had taken over, who's with me?
Okay, so are they kind of excited about someone
being in charge other than Rome?
Who agrees that if Canada took us over,
we'd want those Canadians out of here, right?
They have mediocre bacon, it's just not good.
This is how they're feeling.
So what are they thinking about last time?
There's gonna be someone who comes and sits on a throne
and it's David's throne.
They also included a forerunner like the Messiah
to come before the Messiah.
They knew that when the Messiah came,
there's gonna be someone that comes before him
to prepare his way.
Isaiah 41 to 5 says this, the voice of him that comes
before him, that cries in the wilderness,
prepare ye the way of the Lord and make straight
the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill
shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough place is plain, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Now you may think, well, that sounds like John the Baptist.
Well, yes, but that's not, this particular thing
is not talking about what happens in Jesus' first coming,
it's talking about what happens in his second coming.
So there's another forerunner to come, interesting.
Malachi 4, 5 and 6, behold, I will send you Elijah,
the prophet before the coming,
and great dreadful day of the Lord.
You see what I'm saying?
The day of the Lord is not Jesus' first coming,
it's Jesus' second coming.
So he's saying there's gonna be someone coming
that's like Elijah before God comes back to clean house,
come back in judgment, right?
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers of the children
and the heart of the children to their fathers,
lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
So they think, okay, there's gonna be a Messiah,
he's gonna be David's son, he's gonna sit on David's throne,
there's gonna be a forerunner coming.
They also believe that there was a time of trouble
or tribulation, they knew that there was gonna be a time
of trouble before this day of the Lord,
that Jerusalem and Israel would be the center of the world
and that there would be a regathering of the people
of Israel together towards Jerusalem.
Well, where did that come from?
Well, here, let me give you a couple of verses.
Zechariah chapter 14 verses two to four.
I'm gonna put all my notes on our website
because I know it's a lot.
Verse two, for I will gather all nations against Jerusalem
to battle and the city shall be taken
and the house is rifled
and the women ravished and half of the city
shall go forth into captivity
and the residue of the people shall not be cut off
from the city of the Lord, then shall the Lord go forth
and fight against those nations as when he fought
in the day of battle.
Crazy.
Jeremiah 30 verses seven through nine.
Alas, for that day is great so that none is like it.
It is even the time of Jacob's trouble.
This is a reference I believe to the tribulation
that is coming.
But he shall be saved out of it for it shall come
to pass in that day, say to the Lord of hosts,
that I will break his yoke from off thy neck
and I will burst thy bonds
and the stranger shall no more serve themselves of him,
but they shall serve the Lord their God and David,
their king whom I will raise up unto them.
He's saying that at the end of this tribulation,
the Messiah, the son of David is gonna sit on David's throne
and this time of Jacob's trouble will be resolved.
That's what they knew, that's what they were looking for.
They also believe that the Messiah was coming
to establish a kingdom in Jerusalem.
I mean, you guys have ever heard this verse
at the time of Christmas,
for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given
and the government shall be upon his shoulder
and his name shall be called wonderful counselor,
the mighty God, the everlasting father,
the prince of peace of the increase of his government
and peace there shall be no end upon the throne of,
whose throne is it?
David and upon his kingdom to order it
and to establish it with judgment and justice
from henceforth even forever,
the zeal of the Lord of armies.
That's what hosts mean, shall perform this.
This is what they're thinking,
it's what we believe about the second coming,
that Jesus is gonna be on the throne of David in Jerusalem
to rule and to reign.
That's what they believed.
Now think about this,
that's all part of their eschatology and more.
They also had it, not just a view of eschatology
or in things that was informed by all that I just told you.
They also had a view, now think about now,
with all of that how they viewed Jesus' ministry.
Who agrees the disciples were eyewitnesses of his ministry?
They saw things happen, for instance,
they viewed John the Baptist as this forerunner
that was coming, Matthew 3, 1-3.
And those days came John the Baptist preaching
the wilderness of Judah and saying,
Repent ye the kingdom of heaven is at hand,
for this is he that I was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah,
saying the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
prepare ye the way the Lord make his paths straight.
Some of the disciples were actually disciples of John
before they were disciples of Jesus.
So this is fitting right in with their eschatology,
their view of what was gonna happen,
that there was a Messiah coming
because there was somebody like Elijah
that's now saying, prepare the way the Lord.
It's the same message, so they thought that.
Then think about the, of course, from that time
to then the week that I'm talking about,
what did they see Jesus do?
They'd seen Jesus do all kinds of miracles.
He taught like nobody could teach, he taught with authority.
He taught, he healed blind people, he healed the sick,
he healed the lame, he raised the dead.
And they're excited because he picked them, right?
This Messiah that's coming,
who's gonna be the king on a throne,
is now here and he's doing things that,
maybe even more than we thought would happen, right?
Then it comes to the week right up to
the week, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection,
and it starts with this triumphal entry.
In Matthew 21, 1-11, it says this,
all this was done that it might be fulfilled,
which was spoken by the prophets saying,
tell you the daughter of Zion, behold,
thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass,
and a cult, the fold of an ass, and the disciples went
and did as Jesus had commanded them.
They understood that passage and said, now the Messiah,
Jesus is telling us to go get a cult,
a donkey, and he needs it to fulfill prophecy.
Woo-hoo, it's starting.
This is why they said what happened, right?
So they're excited and they brought the ass,
the cult, and put them on their clothes,
and they set them there on,
and a very great multitude spread the garments in the way,
others cut down branches from the trees
and straddled them in the way,
and the multitude that it went before,
and that followed cried saying,
Hosanna to the son of David, did you catch it?
Hosanna, save us now we pray.
That's what Hosanna means.
Save us, deliver us from what?
From Rome.
That's what they were saying.
Deliver us from our trouble.
We have certainly gone through Jacob's trouble.
We're not in charge.
We should be in charge.
We need David back.
Where's David's son?
Here he is.
This is a guy who's raising the dead.
Let's save us now we pray.
Are you with me?
And the multitudes that went before and followed,
cried saying, Hosanna to the son of David,
blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.
That is the actual, that blessed is he
that comes in the name of the Lord,
is a quote from a Psalm and from other parts
of the Old Testament that's talking about
the coming of the Messiah.
Hosanna in the highest.
And when he was coming to Jerusalem and the city was,
all the city was moved saying, who is this?
And the multitudes said, this is Jesus,
the prophet of Galilee.
Then he moves right from that to going to the temple.
If you read, I won't take time to read it.
I'm running out of time.
But in Matthew 21, Jesus goes into the temple
and he cleanses out the temple and says,
you're making my father's house like a den of thieves.
He says in verse 13, 21, I will read it.
Here we go.
And said unto them, well, verse 12,
and Jesus went into the temple,
cast all of them that sold about in the temple
over through the tables, the money changers
and the seats of them that sold does
and said unto them, it is written,
my house shall be called the house of prayer.
But ye have made it the den of thieves.
What does he call it?
In verse 13, my house.
You're messing with my house.
And the blind lame came to him in the temple, he healed him.
And the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things
that he did and the children of crying in the temple
and saying, Hosanna to the son of David.
And they were really excited
because they believed he was the Messiah.
No, they did not, they rejected him.
And he said unto them, here's what these say.
And Jesus said unto them, ye have never,
ye have ye never read out of the mouths of babes
and secondlings that has perfected praise.
They're saying, you should say that you're not the Messiah.
And he's saying, actually, I think they're right.
And he left them and went out of the city of Bethany
and he lodged there.
Later on, he's arguing with them
about who the son of David is.
Again, he's doing that in Matthew 23, 1 through 36.
This is all leading up to it.
He pronounces in 36 verses woes against the Pharisees.
He's calling them out for their unbelief.
Okay.
And who agrees with me?
23 comes right before 24.
Okay.
At the end of 23, got your Bible, go to the end of 23.
This is right before he asks the question.
You gotta get this.
He pronounces woe to the Pharisees.
He pronounces judgment to them, right?
And when you get to verse 37,
you see him say this,
Oh, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings?
And ye would not.
What he's saying is,
in the second coming it says that when the Messiah comes,
he's gonna, he's like, they will be my people
and I will be their God.
And what he's saying is,
I've come to be your God and you've rejected me.
He had just told parables about how that there was a master
who had a vineyard and he kept sending people,
sending servants to the vineyard
and they kept rejecting the master
and they were rejecting his servants.
That was a picture of the prophets.
And then he sent his son and it says that in the story
that they killed the son, right?
And he basically says, you guys are stupid
because you think that I'm,
we're gonna get the vineyard if we kill the son.
No, you're gonna get in jail if you kill the son, right?
And they perceive that they were talking about
that Jesus was talking about him
and here Jesus kind of comes to this point
and he pronounces Jerusalem, hey, you've rejected me.
And then he says this, verse 38,
behold your house.
Now this is interesting, before he called the temple, what?
My house, now he calls it your house.
Your house is left desolate.
A few days earlier, Christ had referred to the temple
as his father's house, but the blessing and glory of God
were being removed from Israel at this time.
When Christ here departs from the temple,
as we see in verse one of 24, the glory of God goes with him.
Ezekiel 11, 23 describes Ezekiel's vision
of the departure of the Shekinah glory
and that it goes from the temple
to the Mount of Olives in this vision.
Jesus leaves the temple and where does he go?
Through the temple to the Mount of Olives.
Exactly the same route Christ follows here.
And then he says this, before he goes, he says this,
for I say unto you, your house is left desolate,
Iqabahd, you've rejected me,
so now there's this rejection, verse 39,
for I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth
until ye shall say, blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord.
I'm not coming back to you Israel
until you recognize me as the Messiah.
That's what he's saying.
I want you to hear clearly from me
that the church has not replaced Israel.
I will bless them that bless thee
and curse them that curseeth thee,
the Bible says to Abraham.
And I think we're in a dangerous place
if we as a nation go against Israel.
That doesn't mean they're perfect.
Clearly they've messed up.
But this is what Jesus said.
Now, get this, do you understand the way
that the disciples are thinking?
Here is the Messiah, he's coming,
he's clearing out, he's pronouncing judgment.
That's exactly what the Old Testament says
is gonna happen and we've got the inside track.
You remember stories that we learned
where the disciples were arguing with each other
about who would be greatest in the kingdom?
Remember that?
They're not arguing over who's like the coolest
or who's the best or whatever.
They're saying who's gonna get the best positions
because Jesus is coming to set up his kingdom,
his administration, his authority,
and we wanna be in charge, right?
That's what they're talking about
because they believe the kingdom is coming
and they believe he's coming any minute.
Then Jesus says one more thing
and he asks him a question, look at 24.
This is Matthew 24, look at verse one and two.
And Jesus went out and departed from the temple
and his disciples came to him
for to show him the buildings of the temple
and Jesus said unto them,
seeing not all these things.
Now this is interesting.
Anybody ever watched the movie Hoosiers?
Remember that movie?
And it's about this like small town farm basketball team
and the guys are saying, hey, how are you preparing your team
to go to the big city in Indianapolis
to play in this huge gym?
And the coach says, well, my team hasn't hardly been out
of this county.
They've never seen a house that was more
than two or three stories tall.
So I'm just taking them to the big city
and they've never seen something like that, right?
I think of that when I think of this.
The disciples who are living in these small rural areas
and galley coming to the temple and they see
they see Herod's temple and this is gigantic monstrosity
of a thing.
Some had said that to not see Herod's temple
is not to not have ever seen a fine building in ancient times.
I mean, it was an incredible place,
taller than anything that they've ever seen.
This amazing thing and Jesus says to them,
seeing all these things,
verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here
one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.
So not only has he said that he's the Messiah
and shown himself to be that,
now he's saying that the temple's gonna get destroyed.
So they are just like, how excited are the disciples?
They are really excited.
So that's where we get to number two,
the wording of the question, I will be quick.
Here's the wording.
And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives,
the disciples came unto him privately.
So is this a public sermon?
No, this is just him talking with his disciples,
saying, tell us when shall these things be?
And what shall be the sign of the coming
and the end of the world?
When, think about this word, when.
The disciples thought at this moment
that the when would be very soon.
They thought that these things would be immediate.
When are you gonna, is this gonna be Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, like next week?
When are you coming?
Could it be tomorrow?
Could it be by the end of Passover?
They were thinking it was immediate.
Then it says these things.
This referred to what Jesus was talking about,
the desolation and destruction of the house of God in Jerusalem,
the final work of the Messiah to bring to a culmination
his own kingdom.
The disciples had seen Jesus have authority over nature.
Peace be still.
What man or a man is this, even the winds and the seas obey him?
They had seen him have authority over demons.
Right?
What is your name?
My name is Legion, for me or many.
Hey, don't, if you're gonna throw us out, throw us into the pigs.
Right?
Over sickness, over even death.
Lazarus come forth.
They had seen all that.
And so they expect a nation to rise up against him
and for him to usher in that new kingdom.
When are you coming?
When are you gonna stop being an itinerant preacher
and when are you gonna be king?
What is the sign of your coming?
How will we know when this is happening?
The darkness, the stars, the angels, the trumpets.
See, here's the thing.
They say, you're gonna be king.
They saw this as a single coming.
Even though Jesus had told them about the cross and the resurrection,
they didn't see that.
They didn't see the church age.
Can you imagine how excited they were?
This may have been the most excited these guys ever were
when they were following Jesus.
They thought over who would be the greatest to the point that Jesus
had dressed it in the upper room, not long after the events of
Matthew 24.
They argued about that back in Matthew chapter 20.
Even after the resurrection, even after Jesus came back,
they were asking these kinds of questions.
If you look at real quick at Acts 1-6, he says, write that down.
I'll tell it to you.
1-6, when they were therefore come together, they asked him,
when shall these things be?
They are literally asking the word coming is the word peruse.
The idea of the presence and the arrival.
What will be the indication that you are finally here in your
full and permanent presence as the Messiah king sitting on
David's throne.
That's what they are asking.
You get it?
That's the question.
What is the end?
Last word.
The end of the age.
The word is son Talia, which is used of a completion or a final
culmination of a series of planned events.
The disciples would have seen this as Jesus' full manifestation
of the end of the age.
The disciples would have seen this as Jesus' full manifestation
of his messianic power and glory ushering in his kingdom.
The phrase end of the world was also used in Matthew 1339-49
talking about the parable of the wheat and the tares.
It is also used at the end of the Great Commission where Jesus
tells them, and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.
So what was their question?
Their question is, when are you coming back to be king?
They are not in the mind of the fact that you are coming back to
be king.
Their question wasn't about the rapture because they didn't know
anything about the rapture.
Their question was a Jewish question about the end of the
world.
So what is the application of the question?
Number three, the application of the question.
There is this really crazy part.
Do you remember when Jesus started his ministry, one of the
things he does is he goes back to his hometown.
You guys remember that?
And he goes into the synagogue in his own town and they ask him
to speak.
And so they bring the scroll of Isaiah to him and he reads
Isaiah 61.
This is what he read.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has
anointed me to preach the good tidings unto the meek.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty
to the captives and the opening of the prison unto them that are
bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
When Jesus gets up and he reads that and he stops there and he
closes up the scroll and says, today this is fulfilled in your
ears.
What does he not read?
Look at what he doesn't read.
Verse two, and the day of vengeance of our God to come for
all that mourn.
Isaiah has this messianic proclamation.
When Jesus comes he quotes it but he doesn't say to proclaim
vengeance because that's coming at the second coming.
See, they didn't understand that Jesus was coming two times.
They thought he was just coming one time.
Does that make sense?
And when Jesus came the first time he wasn't coming to bring
vengeance and wrath and condemnation.
He was coming to give forgiveness.
He was coming to offer himself as a sacrifice.
He wasn't coming to condemn the world but that all the world
through him might be saved.
He became wrath on the cross.
He came the object of God's wrath on the cross.
Does that make sense?
God poured out his wrath for your sin and mine on Jesus on the
cross.
When he comes back the second time he's coming in judgment.
He's coming in judgment.
He's coming to restore and to keep the promises that he made to
Israel.
That's why he's coming.
When the disciples see Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey
and pronouncing judgment on Jerusalem, they believe Jesus is
about to set up his program of judgment and kingdom building
into place.
Jesus told them the building of the temple is going to be torn
down and keeping with their theology.
They thought this was a sign among others of what could happen
quickly.
The answer to the question to the disciples, when are you going to
say that you will be able to see the true true fruition of your
kingly rule and reign making wrong, right and judging the
nations.
And that's when Jesus says this, Jesus answered and said to
them, take heed that no man deceive you.
For many shall come in my name saying I am Christ and shall
deceive many and hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you
be not troubled for all these things must come to pass but the
nations that come in your name say I am the very cause of
the kingdom and there shall be famines and pestilences in
diverse places and all these things are the beginning of
sorrows.
Then shall they deliver up to you to be afflicted and kill you
and be hated of all nations for my name sake and many be
offended and betray one another and hate another and many fall
And the same shall be saved.
And this gospel, here it is, of the kingdom,
shall be preached into all the world for a witness
unto all nations, and then shall the end come.
That's Jesus' answer.
He goes on to say much more, but I'll stop there.
When is that?
Well, there's multiple views on when this is being described.
Okay, some people think, now this is according to us,
from our perspective.
What Jesus just described, when did this happen?
Some people believe that it already happened in the past.
Okay, there are some people that teach
that all that Jesus just described already happened.
Because here's what it did happen.
The temple did get destroyed.
In 8070, exactly what Jesus said would happen happened.
There's not one stone upon another.
They literally, the history tells us that the gold
that was in the temple melted down because of the heat
when it got invaded.
And they literally plucked up every stone from that temple
to get the gold out of from in between,
and it was just leveled.
The only thing that is there standing there today
is the western wall.
Have you guys ever heard of the western wall?
It's the retaining wall.
It's not even the wall of the temple.
It's the wall of the retaining wall under the temple.
That's all that's left.
So there are some that say when that happened back then,
that was Jesus, that was the fulfillment of what Jesus said.
There are some people who think that it's describing
the whole church age, that what Jesus is describing
in this passage is right now.
And you look at it, how many, this talks about earthquakes,
are there earthquakes?
Are there pestilences?
All those other things.
So there are some that say, well,
we're going through the tribulation now,
and then eventually the tribulation is gonna come to an end,
and Jesus is gonna come back in his second coming.
That this would be what many call the post-tribulational
rapturous position.
That Jesus is gonna come back,
and really they kinda have to merge Israel
and the church together to do this.
There's no rapture of the church,
it's the rapture of Jews in anyway.
This is a replacement theology a lot of times.
So that's people who think that it's present.
Here's what I believe the Bible's teaching,
and this is what I'm gonna teach you the next couple of weeks.
I believe that Jesus is describing something yet future.
Okay.
This view is that the rapture of the church will happen
before what happens, and Jesus' answer to the disciples.
And I'm gonna give you biblical reasons for that.
These predictions are seen as predictions
of the end of the Jewish age, and that's still being future.
It's a prediction of how God will come,
and will make all things right.
Jesus is coming to make all things right.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
And it's a prediction of what's gonna happen yet
in the future.
You come to the end of a sermon like this.
I know that's a lot of context to get to the answer,
but how should you live as a result of some of the things
I told you today?
I wanna tell you this, God has got it under control.
God has it under control.
He's not up in heaven going,
how am I gonna get this to work out?
What am I gonna do?
Oh no, there's a war in Israel.
Ah, ah, ah.
God doesn't sweat.
He doesn't twiddle his thumbs.
He's not there ringing his hands.
He's got a plan.
And there are might be some of you even today,
you're like, this guy kind of maybe sounds a little bit crazy.
He thinks that he can tell you what's gonna happen
in the future.
Can I tell you, you're in the Bible too.
I want you to look at one last passage.
You guys ready?
Second Peter.
Chapter three.
Peter says this.
One of Jesus' disciples, by the way.
This second epistle, beloved, I now write into you
in both which I stir up in your pure minds
by way of remembrance.
That you may be mindful of the words which were spoken
before by the holy prophets
and of the commandment of us, the apostles,
of the Lord and Savior, of the Lord and Savior.
Knowing this first, that there shall become,
that there shall come in the last days, scoffers.
What are scoffers?
Scoffers are people that like mock.
People that don't believe.
People that make fun.
Walking after their own lusts and saying,
where is the promise of His coming?
For since the fathers fell asleep,
all things continue as they were
from the beginning of creation.
He's saying, people say, you said a Messiah's coming,
you say that God's coming back.
They've always said that.
He's never come back in judgment, is what Peter says.
For this they are willingly ignorant of
that by the word of God, the heavens were of old
and they are standing out of the water and in the water,
whereby the world that then was being overflowed
with water perished.
He's saying, you don't think God comes in judgment,
don't you remember Noah?
Don't you remember the worldwide flood?
Verse seven, but the heavens and the earth which are now,
by the same word are kept in store,
reserved not into water, what?
Reserved unto fire against the day of judgment
and perdition of ungodly men.
But beloveded, be not ignorant of this one thing,
that one day is what the Lord has a thousand years
and a thousand years as a day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise.
What's the promise?
That he's coming back in judgment.
The Lord's not slack concerning his promise.
He's not up in heaven owing you anything
because you're like, oh, he's never coming back.
Why has he not come back yet?
Here it is, are you ready?
He is long suffering to usward,
not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
Why is Jesus not come back?
Because he wants people to be saved.
But you need to be saved.
Jesus promised that he would come.
It was promised that Jesus would come.
And it was promised and foretold that when he came
that he would be crucified, that he would be killed,
that the chastisement of our peace would be upon him
and by his stripes we would be healed.
It was also prophesied that he would resurrect
and that by faith in him our sins could be forgiven.
The time for salvation is now.
We're not promised tomorrow, we're promised today.
Today is the day of salvation.
And the only thing that needs to happen next
is for that trumpet to blow and the rapture to happen.
There's coming a day when it's gonna be too late.
Today is the day of salvation.
So what's my message to you?
The Lord's not slight concerning His promise,
but is merciful to us.
Not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
How do you know it's talking about the second coming
and not the rapture?
Come back next week.
Careful children, goodPut, good me good.
Where do you go?
With things where the heart beats fast before it called.
Our love, are those who have lived,
have not this enough to let them say it,