John 11:17-27 (End Time Victory)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

When you're about to preach a sermon on victory, you should not be surprised when you have many defeats in your week.

Last night at 2 .30 in the morning, I went to go get Shannon at the emergency room because she had an issue that turned out not to be anything serious at all.

There was confusion, even in my own heart, on how to write this sermon. This is the third version of it that is there.

I worked tirelessly, but yet I felt like the words weren't coming out. We shouldn't be surprised.

When the Lord has given us such a hopeful message in the

Bible that it's accompanied with so many trials. Eschatology really is the study of Christ's victory.

That's what it is. But yet there's no discipline in the Christian church that has caused more confusion, headaches, heartburn, and frustration than eschatology.

There's no discipline that has exposed more false teachers, that has more staunchly divided people, more difficult to understand, and kills more reading plans at the very end of them than eschatology.

You don't have to raise your hands, but how many of us have got to Revelation and said, I'm just going to go back to Genesis? I think there's no topic that's more necessary for us right now in this time that we live in to understand more importantly than eschatology.

Now, eschatology, you might not know what that word means, so let me define it. Eschatology is the study of the last things.

It's the study of the end times. It is a word that's actually made out of two Greek words.

They take two Greek words and smush them together and you get eschatology. The two Greek words are eschatos and logos or logos.

Essentially, eschatos means in Greek, the last, and then logos means words or thoughts.

So when you smush those together, you get thoughts or reflections about the end times. And that's what eschatology is.

Thoughts are reflections from God upon the end times. Now, eschatology,

I believe, is absolutely necessary, even though you may not have heard that before, and you may have heard many people say, no, eschatology has no impact on my life.

I don't need to understand eschatology. I think that's wrong. I think eschatology is one of the most important doctrines that we need to understand.

I'm not talking about, you know, the charts and the person who lives down in his cave and is talking about how, you know,

Nicolai Carpathia, that's a left -behind reference, is getting ready to rise to power, and Israel's going to get a new temple, and we all ought to be afraid.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about biblical eschatology is important for the church to understand.

Now, I could give you a hundred reasons. I'm one of those weird people that love this topic so much, and probably have read more books on this topic than any other topic.

I love eschatology because eschatology is the story of Christ's victory. So I could give you a lot of reasons, but I'm going to give you eight.

This is my introduction, by the way. So if we just get this accomplished, I'll be happy. Number one, the reason why eschatology is important is because the

Holy Spirit of God put it in the Bible. We like to say that eschatology is confusing.

Who could possibly know what it means? Who could understand it? All of the symbols and marks of the beast and signs and all of that.

Why would we ever endeavor to study something like that? We say even the scholars disagree. You read all the amillennial, the postmillennial, the premillennial, the pre -trib, the post -trib, and your mind is spinning and you're like, who in the world would possibly ever try to endeavor to understand this topic?

We don't like the genre because we don't have apocalyptic genre in our reading where symbols represent things.

We find the signs hard to understand, and we often wonder why does any of it make a difference?

I've heard many people, many, many people, even learned theologians say that they're panmillennial, which means that it'll all pan out in the end.

I understand that sentiment. I agree with it. But that sort of view causes us unintentionally to avoid the study of eschatology because if it'll all just pan out in the end, then what's the point of studying it?

God's just going to make everything work out. But the Holy Spirit put eschatology in the Bible.

The same Bible that he says was breathed out by God, the same Bible that he said is useful for teaching and rebuke and correction, the same

Bible that he says that we ought to know and study, the end times is in there.

The Holy Spirit decided it was a gift for you and I to have it. If it was not necessary,

God wouldn't have put it in the Bible. That's the first reason eschatology is important, because God put it in the

Bible. And this Bible is for us as a gift of God so that we can understand what it means.

So why would we not study something that he put in there? The second reason is that God writes good endings.

He does. God's a master storyteller. Human history is his epic, grand masterpiece.

You can imagine God thinking and dreaming and singing creation into existence with a glorious ending in mind.

Master writers don't write bad endings. You read some of the greatest works of literary art that have ever been penned.

They have the greatest endings. They take all of the pain and the trauma and the suffering and they elevate it to a riveting climax, and then they settle it into this beautiful reconciliation where the story ends and everything is just right again.

Everything is just right again. How much more so God, who is the author of human history?

Do we really believe that God, when he set out to write a book, killed it in the beginning with this beautiful night show and these planets colliding and all of this epic stuff, and then it kind of died down a little bit in the middle, and then there's this other climactic moment where Jesus dies on the cross, and then there's a dud of an ending?

No. That would make us poor readers.

None of us approach a Charles Dickens. None of us approach some of the great works of history,

Jane Eyre, any of them you can go through, hundreds, thousands of them even.

None of us read the first 75 % of it and then close the book and refuse to read the ending. Why do we do that with eschatology?

It's hard. It's complicated. But it's a beautiful story when you see it for what it truly is.

That's the second reason. It's a beautiful ending to a wonderful story that God has written.

We're a part of it. The third reason is that eschatology gives us direction.

You see, when we say that everything will pan out in the end, I understand the sentiment. One of my favorite theologians from Ligonier Ministries, Derek Thomas, just said this.

And as I was writing the sermon, I was like, no, I'm not going to disagree with Derek. But eschatology is not about something that's going to pan out in the end.

It's about Jesus' victory. If you believe that it's just going to pan out in the end, every time you go to church and hear a sermon on Revelation or every time

I mention AD 70, the fall of Jerusalem Temple, then you'll just shut off and you'll say, this doesn't apply to my life.

But let me ask you this question. How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you're heading? How can you know the path if you don't know the destination?

The end is important. Eschatology is our future destination as Christians.

Biblical eschatology is actually a clear destination, and you have to understand all of it in its context, but it gives us a bright hope that Jesus wins, that his victory is certain.

If that's the destination, then everything he's called us to is not a calling towards defeat.

It's not a calling towards failure. His calling to the church is a calling towards his victory.

Amen. And we're called to make progress on the things that he's told us to do.

If we believe that the world is just going to hell in a handbasket, why does it matter?

Go to church. Live out your faith privately in your living room. Talk to your friends about it, but don't go try to see

Jesus' kingdom advanced in the world because it's hopeless. There's no point. But if Christ will have victory, if Psalm 110 is right, and he's going to put all of his enemies under his feet, if Psalm 2 is right, and that he's going to inherit the nations, if Matthew 28 is right, and all the nations are going to be discipled, if Matthew 22 is right, and all the nations are going to hear the gospel, and if Matthew 18 is right, and the gates of hell can't stand against the advancement of the church, and if Romans 16 is right, that the church itself will put

Satan under its feet, if all of that's right, then it's not a meaningless doctrine.

It's a doctrine of victory. We can't forget the destination because if we forget the destination, we'll be lost along the way.

We'll be sort of out of step with what God has called us to. Let me give you an example. Imagine that I told you, hey, you and I, we're going to go on an epic road trip.

I'm going to show you all kinds of wonderful things, and you said, all right, great. I even say I'm paying for it, and you're like, all right,

I'm in. And then you ask me, you turn the car on, we're both sitting in the car, we're right outside in the parking lot, and you say, all right, where do

I go? And I say, I don't know. And you're like, what do you mean you don't know? And I say, well, it all panned out in the end.

Just go a certain direction, and eventually we'll get there. You would be like, Kendall's a fool.

You'd never take a trip with me ever again. Because you can't expect to get there if you don't know where there is, right?

Again, eschatology is important. It keeps us on the right path. It keeps us moving in the right direction that God has called us to.

It keeps us focused on the things that God has called us to be focused on. That's the third thing. The fourth is eschatology helps us worship

God. Your worship will be affected if you have a low view of eschatology.

Let me read you a quote by David Murray. He's Scottish, so it's David Murray. I'm not gonna read the quote in Scottish.

Worship should be the end of all theology, but especially of eschatology. When we think of the resurrection, the defeat of Satan, the final and perfect judgment, the new heavens and the new earth, the eternal fellowship with Christ and his church, we surely cannot but amplify our worship of God.

If our eschatology does not result in greater worship of God, then we are either in error or we are approaching the truth in the wrong spirit.

You see, what we've done in the last 200 years, we've bought into an ideology called dispensationalism, or we've at least been influenced by it, where all of our energy is thinking about the great tribulation, the

Antichrist, the mark of the beast, the wars and rumors of wars, the plagues, the famines, the earthquakes, the blood moons, the falling stars.

All of that has caused us to be defeatists. The reason the church in America is not advancing is because we believe that everything is getting worse and everything is gonna crash in upon itself and that the mark of the beast is getting ready to happen.

Don't take the vaccine or the Antichrist is gonna come really soon. It's probably gonna be Dr. Fauci. We've done this sort of false prophecies that have been a part of the church for the last 100 years and we've totally missed the point.

The point's not the struggle. The point's the victory of Christ. If we believe this way, where everything is just doom and gloom and everything is about reading our newspaper to find some new evidence about why the

Antichrist is gonna rise in the year 2022, I'm gonna give you 22 reasons and all of this stuff. If we do that, we're gonna be a paralyzed church because we're living basically for a grand defeat instead of living in light of a glorious victory.

I think Murray is right. If we forget the doctrine of the end times, then we will live as a paralyzed church and we will live as a church that struggles in its worship.

I mean, how can you praise God if you believe that everything is getting worse and worse and worse and that the world has just as much control over things as God.

If you believe God is sovereign and he's leading the church towards a glorious future, it changes your life.

It changes the way that you live. If you think that the end, the heavenly Wonka -vator that's gonna zap us all out of here, it's just two weekends away.

You're not gonna go outside and plant beautiful trees that are gonna grow for 100 years.

You're not gonna sit down with your children and try to disciple them so that their children's children's children will know the

Lord. You're gonna live like you're getting ready to escape instead of living like you're building something that'll last for generations.

That's where we've been stuck as an evangelical church. We've given up on trying to reach the world so that we could get ourselves ready for an escalator ride to the sky.

And it's crippled us. It's caused us not to have ardent, vibrant worship.

The fifth thing I would tell you is that eschatology helps us serve with zeal. Knowing that God wins in the end invigorates our service.

When we see verses that say these light and momentary afflictions aren't even worth comparing to the glory that's gonna be revealed when

Christ comes, do we believe that? Do we believe that our cancer, do we believe that the car wreck that crippled us, do we believe that the pains and the sufferings and the trials and the persecutions, we believe that all of that is accounted as nothing in comparison to the victory that Christ is gonna win for His people.

Or are we myopic and we say that, no, these things are bigger than God. And if we live that way, we won't serve with zeal.

We'll hunker down in our foxhole and we'll wait for Jesus to come and save us. Jesus has saved us.

He saved us for a purpose. That purpose is to go to the nations and share the hope of the gospel. Not to live as fearful.

To live courageously. To know that He's using us. You know,

God's still working in the world. Did you know that? Did you know that God is more powerful than the forces of darkness?

Did you know that Jesus is still on His throne? Did you know that Christ is still reigning? Do you know that these silly little presidents and these silly little senators and these silly little

House of Representatives folks are nothing compared to the monarch

Christ? And He's using you. You belong to Him.

I want you to think about it this way. If you believe everything is going to hell in a handbasket, what motivation would you have to get involved?

If life is just about surviving instead of thriving, then you won't work, you won't build, and you'll continue to eke out an existence of mediocre good enough relationship with God until you punch your ticket to heaven.

That kind of motivationless effort abounds in three great institutions on planet

Earth. Communism, true socialism, and a church that doesn't believe rightly about eschatology. When we understand eschatology rightly, we see that Christ is going to gain total victory.

He's going to ensure that His church advances. The gates of hell won't stand against it. All the nations will be discipled.

Every tribe, tongue, and nation are going to confess Jesus in the end. That Satan is going to be bound. That death is going to be defeated.

That Jesus is reigning. His enemies are going to be triumphed over. The curse is going to be ended. Your back pains and your swellings and your high blood pressure are gone.

Tears are going to be wiped away. Death is going to be killed. How can we be pessimistic when we know this? If God told you,

God would not do this. Let me preface this. But if God told you, you're going to win the masters.

All you got to do is grab your clubs and go down to Augusta. And it's a formality.

You play, you win, you're going to get the green jacket. You say, well, I'm not a good golfer. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. You're going to win. It'd be foolish if that were the case that you would just stay at home and say,

I could never win. Let me say it this way. If God said to you, this is another example that would never happen.

God said to you, you're going to win the lottery. I'll even give you the exact numbers. All you got to do is fill out the card and it's yours.

Would you really stay at home? Or would you go to Cumberland's as fast as you possibly could and fill out those numbers?

Again, God would never do this. But if God has promised you something, why would you sit on it?

We do that all the time with eschatology. God has promised us that he's going to have victory in this world.

And yet there's so few that are standing up. There's so few that are taking hold of these promises.

There's so few that are preaching the gospel to their neighbors and to their coworkers and to the people that they live around and serve with and work with and their friends and their families.

There's so few that are making war with their sin, believing that we live in a spiritual battle.

There's so few that are trying to take back territory from Satan. If we know

Christ, why are we sitting down? Why are we not a militant church? And I don't mean militant in a way like the world.

Why aren't we believing and hoping in the gospel and proclaiming it to the nations? And when I say church,

I don't mean Shepherd's Church, although if it applies, let the Holy Spirit do his work. I mean the church universal.

Why are we so stuck in our sins? Why are we not growing? Why is the church collapsing and shrinking in the

West? Why are children being sent out of the home ignorant of the faith when the parents had every opportunity to disciple them?

Why are we living like defeatists when we've been given a story of victory? That's number five.

Number six is that eschatology gives us a right view of dominion. We were created by God to have dominion.

Did you know that? Genesis 1. God spoke us into existence.

He crafted us with his hands. He breathed life into our nostrils, put us in a garden, and he says you will be fruitful and you will multiply and you will spread out to the ends of the earth.

And what does he say after that? You will rule over it, subdue it, and have dominion. The earth was created for human beings to have dominion over.

And God called that plan very good. Well, if God called that plan very good, why would he abandon and scrap it in the

New Testament? When Jesus says, go in all the world and make disciples, do we not see that he's telling us how to be fruitful and how to multiply and how to spread out to the ends of the earth and how to rule over the earth and have dominion?

By making disciples of every tribe, tongue, and nation, by making disciples of our neighbors and of the people that we work with, sharing the hope of Jesus Christ.

And then when they ask us for the hope that we have, 1 Peter says, we tell them the hope that we have and we teach them how to obey everything that Christ has commanded.

That is dominion. We don't have dominion by nuclear warheads and sniper rifles and anything else.

We have dominion through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are to reclaim this world for him.

And we don't do it without him. We do it with him because he said he, that's his mission. We do that until the job is complete.

You see, one of the things that irks me so badly is that most of our views of eschatology end in defeat.

That Jesus has to come and rescue us at the end. Do you know that communism has an eschatology? Their eschatology is that the whole world will be won over to communism.

Socialism has an eschatology. Buddhism has an eschatology. They all think they win. Why is it that we think we lose?

Especially when God has told us that we don't. The reason we don't lose is because God doesn't lose.

The reason that God doesn't lose is because Christ died to claim the victory. We live in that victory as his people today.

The church is the helpmate of Christ. Have you ever heard it said that way?

Christ is the true and better Adam. What does that make us? The true and better Eve. What was

Eve's job? To be the helpmate of Adam. What is our job? To be the helpmate of the church. What does that mean?

Helping Christ accomplish his mission of winning back the world for God.

When the Old Testament says that the glory of God will cover the earth as the water covers the seas, I don't know if you've been in a boat, but in the sea there's a lot of water.

It's almost entirely water, right? God's glory is gonna cover the earth that way.

We're the helpmate of Christ to help him accomplish his mission. Not to sit on the sidelines.

I love how David Chilton says this. David Chilton wrote an excellent Revelation commentary.

He's like me. He started out to write a 50 -page book and it turned into a 700 -page treatise, but this is what he says about Revelation.

Revelation is not a book about defeat. It is a book about dominion. Revelation is not a book about how terrible the

Antichrist is or how powerful the devil is or how terrifying the world will one day become.

It is, as the very first verse says, the revelation of Jesus Christ. It tells us about his lordship over all things.

It tells about our salvation and the victory in the new covenant, God's wonderful plan for our life.

It tells us that the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our God and of his

Christ, and it tells us that he and his people shall reign forever and ever.

We often live like this world belongs to the world. Jesus said in Matthew 28, everything in heaven and on earth now belongs to me.

We live in Christ's world. It belongs to him. All the people who think they have power are usurping his authority.

They're the squatters that shouldn't be here. The church has the job to take the gospel to the nations to tell them whose world this actually is before it's too late.

The seventh reason why eschatology is important. Have I made my case yet?

Eschatology prepares us for the current war. You know, we're in a battle. The New Testament calls what we live through a spiritual battle.

It says there's spiritual weapons and spiritual armor that we have to put on. This world that we live in is a battle.

The world is not lying down and giving up. The world is still raging, and our job is not to throw in our arms and say, well,

Jesus called me to be tender, meek, and mild, and I'm not going to tell you anything that offends you. I'm not going to tell you the gospel that would rub against your lifestyle.

So look at me. I'm just a super sweet sugar and spice Christian. That's not the story of the

Bible. The story of the Bible, we love people so much, we go to them and tell them that there's only hope in Jesus, that their life won't get them anywhere but hell.

You think about an army. I was in the army, and I can tell you that we did not do what

I'm getting ready to say, but if you ever think about an army who's getting ready to go to war, would they go without a plan?

Any brigade that's going to take a particular hill, would they go without talking about which part of the hill was the most opportune to strike?

Would they not examine the enemy's troops and figure out, well, we don't want to go here, we want to go there?

Would they not study the landscape and find the weak points in the hill and say that this is how we need to get there, this is what we need to do?

They would have studied it. They would have done everything possible to understand how they can have victory. That's the way we are supposed to live as Christians.

We study culture. We study the world. We study what's going on in the world, and we take the hope that we have in Christ, and we say,

Lord, how would you use me? Here I am. Send me. We don't throw up the white flag as Christians.

We take the powerful gospel of Christ to the nations. Soldiers, Army, Air Force, Marines don't act like the battle doesn't matter.

They work really hard to make sure that they win the war. I think that's what we're supposed to do. We're to work really hard as people who are going to be held accountable for our life that's been purchased by Christ to see

Christ's victory in this earth. Eschatology helps us understand a completed battle.

What I mean by that is that when the soldiers in World War II, this is an example, when they took over the beaches of Normandy, they didn't celebrate, crack open a few beers, and get their grill out and start making hot dogs.

They knew that Normandy was not the end goal. Normandy was the start. They knew that if they didn't eventually take

Berlin, then the whole war would be fought for nothing. As Christians, eschatology is our

Berlin. Eschatology tells us what the last hill that needs to be conquered is.

And what is that? A world that is filled with worshipers of Jesus Christ.

We don't throw up our hands because the news depresses us and the daily wire gets us angry and CNN makes us vomit.

We don't do that. We look at the world and we say every tribe, tongue, and nation has not been discipled yet.

I've got work to do. Every tribe, tongue, and nation hasn't heard the gospel yet. I've got work to do. There's not a

Bible translated in every language. I've got work to do. And we keep working and we keep laboring and we keep looking beyond our 9 to 5 job and our family by training our family, by living intentionally, by going to war for the sake of Christ.

Eschatology teaches us why we fight, when we fight, how we fight, who we fight, and where we fight.

And we fight with the weapons of Christ. Word, prayer, sacraments, the church, evangelism, discipleship.

We know our weapons. Are we going to let them rust? Are we going to use them for the glory of God?

Now you're like, maybe thinking, Kendall, why are you going off on a big, long list of why eschatology is so important?

It's because I never get to preach on it. No, I'm just kidding. The reason I'm bringing up those first seven points is because eschatology is incredibly important, but it's also in our text for today.

Eschatology, understanding the end times, is actually littered throughout the Bible. The first eschatological statement is

Genesis 3, where it says that Christ will crush the serpent's head. The last eschatological statement is when all the curse is finally removed and we live with Christ forever in His kingdom.

It starts with the crushing of the serpent. It ends with a completed kingdom. The end times is all throughout the

Bible. If you don't understand eschatology, I don't think you'll understand the entire mission of God. So today, as we look at John 11, 17 through 27, this is the last time we're going to look at this passage.

We're going to look at how eschatology underpins this passage. The last two weeks, we've talked about how

Jesus is Lord over death, how Jesus is Lord over the resurrection. Now we're going to talk about how He's Lord over the end.

So with that, turn with me to John 11, 17 through 27, and let's talk about these things together.

Verse 17, So when Jesus came, He found that He had already been in the tomb, that's

Lazarus, four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem and two miles off, and many of the

Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. Martha, therefore, when she had heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet

Him. But Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You. And Jesus said to her,

Your brother will rise again. And Martha said to Him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day, eschatology.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.

Why do you believe this? And she said to Him, Yes, Lord, I have believed that You are the

Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world. Lord, we thank

You that we have the freedom to meet here today, that we have the freedom to park our cars and not worry about who's watching, that we have the freedom to dive in to a statement of what

Martha said about the last day. Lord, I pray that that freedom would continue.

I pray that our church would be riveted by the words of Christ and the gospel of John for however many years we continue in there.

And Lord, I pray that even if it doesn't continue and it becomes difficult for us to meet as a church, or the powers that have squatted in Your territory threaten us and assail us like what happened in the book of Acts.

Lord, I pray that we would not have fear, that we would not be discouraged.

Lord, I pray that we would be encouraged, that we would see these light and momentary afflictions as not even worthy of comparing to the glory that will be revealed on the day of Christ.

Lord, I pray that we would see Your Scriptures rightly. Lord, I pray that we would live in the victory of Christ.

And Lord, I pray that that wouldn't be a shallow thing. Lord, I pray that all of the wicked, vile, disgusting pastors, quote -unquote, who preach a shallow victory in self -help in Your beauty,

Your health, Your wealth, Your material possessions, Lord, I pray that You would crush that kind of shallow, superficial ministry and that,

Lord, we would see the robust, deep, unbreakable victory that You have brought in Christ.

Lord, it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Obviously, this topic is too big to cover in one week.

I'm currently writing a series of blogs on the topic, and I don't even know how long that will take.

I think I've got it marked out right now up to 30 weeks or more, so it's a big topic.

It's all over the Bible. But all I want to do today is I want to accomplish four things. Just as a very, very big, 100 ,000 -foot overview,

I want to know what the Jews believed about the end times. I think that's important. Martha says, I know that my brother will be raised on the last day, so we need to know what she thought about that.

We need to know what Jesus thought about the end times and when it would begin. We need to know what the last days are going to look like for all of us who are going to be facing them.

And then finally, we need to know how the last days will end. So my goal is to talk about what the

Jews believe, the beginning of the end times, the middle of the end times, and the end of the end times.

And we'll do that from 100 ,000 feet or so. So let us begin with the Jewish misconceptions about the end times.

Mary again says, I know that he will rise again on the last day. So she has eschatological theology. She believes something about what the last day is.

That word eschatos, where we get eschatology, she's right there in her words. Now, we know that she didn't believe like the

Sadducees did. The Sadducees at the time had no view of resurrection. They believed that when you die, you're dead, you're worm food, that's it.

Your only eternity that you would have is that you would live on in the memory of your children and your children's children and your children's children's children, much like many liberal atheists believe today.

They were the minority view. She actually held the majority point of view, which was the Pharisees' view.

The Pharisees' theology was not based on the first five books of the Bible alone, like the Sadducees. Their theology was based on the entire

New Testament. They had passages like Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Zechariah, and others that taught them to expect something was coming in the future for them, and it was going to happen in Israel.

So they had a view of eschatology. I want to begin with Isaiah 2 to sort of give a very brief overview of what the

Jews thought about eschatology. Again, there's more verses than this. We can only cover a couple, but I want to demonstrate to you what the

Jews were looking forward to and what they believed. Isaiah 2, 2 -3 says,

Many people will come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us in His ways, so that we may walk in His paths.

The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Now, as Christians, we know this passage is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The mountain of the Lord really was elevated when Jesus died on the mountain of the Lord, elevated on the cross as God's true servant

Israel. We know that He was exalted above all people, and we know that the nations no longer stream to Jerusalem to know

God. They no longer stream to a Jerusalem temple to know God. They go to Christ. Christ, the true temple,

Christ, the true sacrifice, Christ, the true and great high priest. We go to Jesus to know

God. Now, we don't go to Jerusalem. We're not like Islam, where you have to make a journey to Mecca once in your lifetime in order to have some spiritual, mystical experience.

We go to Jesus Christ. And that can happen anywhere, any square inch of the planet.

You can cry out to Jesus, and He will send His Holy Spirit, and His Holy Spirit will come in you and make you a temple of the living

God. The reason that the new covenant is better than the old covenant is because it's bigger, grander, and more excellent.

One temple in the Old Testament where you can know God. All of us in this room who know Jesus have been made temples of the living

God. Right now on earth, if the numbers are true, there's 2 billion walking, talking, temple, tabernacles who are indwelled by the

Spirit of God, walking, talking, holy of holies, who live on this earth for the glory of Christ.

That's what this verse means in Jesus. The Jews had a very small view of what this verse means.

They thought it was all about them. They believed that they were going to have a physical empire, a national temple where all the nations came to their temple to worship their

God. They thought that they were going to be the nation of nations. They thought that they were going to be the single country on earth who held the knowledge of God, and that as a kingdom of priests, that they were going to be overseers over the nations.

They believed that at the end of human history, the Messiah would return and make them the most powerful nation on earth, that they would overthrow the chains of Roman slavery.

They would have a physical temple, a physical empire with physical nations streaming to Jerusalem to worship the

God of the Jews. It was all about them. It was all about them.

They thought that God was going to exalt them. As Christians, we see that God actually had a plan to exalt himself in these passages, that he is the true

Israel who will be exalted among the nations, not a stretch of land in Palestine.

Second example of their flawed eschatological view comes from the covenant with David in 2

Samuel 7, 11 through 16. This is what it says. The Lord declares to you that the

Lord himself, this is Nathan speaking to David, will establish a house for you when your days are over and you rest with your ancestors.

That's a euphemism for death. And I will raise up your offspring, plural. That word is plural.

To succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his singular kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name. And I will establish the throne of his singular kingdom forever.

And I will be his singular father. And he will be my son. When he does wrong,

I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him as I took it away from Saul, whom

I removed before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me, and your throne, singular, will be established forever.

The Jews thought that there was a coming king who would be greater than David, but he would be a man, that he'd be a physical man.

They believed that David was going to have a lineage of sons, and those sons weren't going to get everything right, and those sons were going to need to be flogged, and beaten, and conquered, and exiled, which all happened.

But one day, a true Israelite king in the line of David would come and would set up a physical messianic kingdom on earth, and they would throw off all their enemies, and Israel would be the greatest nation on earth.

They missed the fact that this is not about the physical nation of Israel. This is about Jesus Christ, the true son of David.

Why do you think the New Testament begins with a lineage? We read it, and we're like, genealogies.

And yet, it starts out with Jesus Christ, the son of David. Why? Because he's the one who inherits these promises.

He's the one who will reign on the throne forever. You know, when Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, he sat down on a throne, and he's been there, and he'll be there forever.

Notice the wording here. It says that I will be his father, and he will be my son.

How prophetic is that? Notice that it says, when he does wrong, that's the line of David, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men with floggings.

What a prophecy. All of the sons of David deserve to be flogged. They deserve to be beaten.

And yet, this innocent son of David, Jesus, was flogged for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. The singular, perfect son of God is the inheritor of the promises of David, not the nation of Israel.

That's where the Israelites got it wrong. They were looking for a physical, national, ethnic kingdom instead of a spiritual, international, global, spiritual kingdom in Christ.

The same wrong -headed hope is found in Hosea 3 .5. After where the

Israelites will return, that's after exile, and they will seek the Lord their God and David their king. David's been dead for a long time when this is written, interestingly enough.

They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. Eschatology.

So the Jews were thinking in the last days a revived David was gonna come up and he was gonna lead the people and he was gonna bring spiritual blessings to the people.

So when Jesus, in John 6, brings spiritual blessings by feeding the 5 ,000 people, by multiplying the bread and the loaves, they thought he was the physical king who was gonna dwell in the physical city, who was gonna be the physical

Messiah, who would bring a physical kingdom with physical promises and physical dominion. And Jesus refused them and ran away from their offer because his kingdom was better than what they were hoping for.

Daniel 12, 1 -2, they thought that it was gonna be physical resurrections for the Jewish people.

It says, but at that time, meaning the time when the Messianic king comes and sets up his kingdom, your people, everyone whose name is found written in the book, will be delivered.

Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life and others to shame and everlasting contempt.

They thought that this passage was all about them. They thought they were the ones who were gonna be raised only and that the rest of the nations who opposed them would be raised up to everlasting contempt.

They misread it. They misread the promises. The promises were not about them, it was about him.

When Jesus says in John 6, 39 -40, this is the will of him who sent me that I shall lose none of those whom he has given me but I will raise them up at the last day.

Eschatology, again. For the father's will is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

What they thought was that Jesus was gonna help them overthrow Rome. What they thought was

Jesus was gonna lead a rebellion. We know that because the history of the Jews has been documented and they had four or five failed

Messianic figures in the first century who led the people of Israel against Rome and Rome eventually crushed them.

80 -70, don't tune out. That was referenced earlier. They thought that the

Messiah was gonna create a nationalistic faith with them at the center of it instead of God.

The point of Jesus' passage here, I am the resurrection and the life, is to recenter eschatology back on him.

It's to get them out of their them -centric thinking and onto him -centric thinking where he is the hope of the end.

When he says, if anyone who believes in me, he's talking about a spiritual kingdom, not a physical kingdom, will live even if he dies and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

He's talking about an eventual physical kingdom. See, the Jews, I'm gonna just recap it really quickly.

The Jews messed up their theology by thinking that it was all physical and there was nothing spiritual about it.

The New Testament describes a two -fold coming kingdom at the end times. A coming of the kingdom spiritually first with the preaching of the gospel, with the resurrection of people to life in Jesus, with salvations, justification, sanctification.

All of that is spiritual work that is going to come before the physical kingdom. The Jews lopped all that off and they said, no, it's gonna be a physical kingdom only.

They missed it. And they applied all the promises to themselves instead of to God. I think the reason, primarily and chiefly, that God sent

Rome against Jerusalem in the year AD 68 through AD 70 is because they had made an idol of their physicality.

They worshiped their temple, they worshiped their nation, they worshiped their sacrificial systems and they had spiritual pride over all the rest of the people.

We know that because they excluded the Gentiles. They wouldn't even let them come into the court of the

Gentiles because they thought they were pagan, dirty, and ugly. They had a sign listed, if we find you in inappropriate areas, the temple will kill you.

It was a sign to the Gentiles. They hated everyone but themselves. So because they loved their physical symbols, things that were always supposed to point to Christ, things that were never supposed to be the true temple, the true sacrifice, the true priest, because they loved those things so much, he took them from them.

Rome came in and tore the temple apart brick by brick. The people, one million of them, died in that siege.

By population, it was the worst attack on Israel that has ever been, even worse than the

Holocaust. And we're talking by population of how many people were on earth then versus how many people today. It says in Luke that their bodies would attract the vultures, and Josephus, the great historian of the

Jews, records that about a million bodies lay baking in the sun as the crows and as the vultures came and pecked them until there was nothing left.

They worshipped their temple instead of God. They worshipped their status instead of God.

They worshipped their sacrifices instead of God. They'd broken the first command habitually.

Shall know their gods before me. So God removed that to showcase to all of us in this room that his kingdom is not about the building that we meet in.

His kingdom is not about the good works that we do. His kingdom is not about what church we belong to, what songs we sing.

Those things are good. Our kingdom is about the Lord Jesus Christ alone. It is a kingdom about Him, not the trappings.

And this is the manifold testimony of the New Testament. That's what the Jews believed. Physical kingdom, physical promises, all about them.

The New Testament offers a different vision, which is it's all about Jesus. And this may be shocking to you, the

New Testament offers a vision that the end times have already begun. We're not waiting on the end times to begin.

They began 2 ,000 years ago when Christ ascended and rose from the dead. Let me prove it to you. Hebrews 1, verse 1 -2.

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, that's the

Old Testament. In these last days, eschatology has spoken to us in His Son, whom

He appointed heir over all things. Do you know that because Christ has been appointed heir over all things, because He's sitting on the throne in heaven, because His Holy Spirit has authored a completed

Bible, that we are in these last days. The last days began with the resurrection of Christ.

We're not waiting on things to get so bad that we get raptured out of here and then the end times begin.

The end times, we're living in them. We're living in the last period of human history called the last days.

It says in v. 3 -4 in that same chapter, when He had made a purification of sin,

He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He's ruling. That's what that means.

Having become as much better than the angels, a name above all names, and He has inherited a more excellent name than they.

In the Old Testament period, in the ancient period, your name meant something about who you are.

There's a great story of Alexander the Great. There was a young man who was a coward in Alexander's army, and he was running away from the battle.

And two of the people who were engaged in the battle saw it and they chased him down, tackled him, and brought him back to Alexander. And they brought him into Alexander's tent.

And Alexander said, young man, what is your name? And in trembling, quaking voice, he said, my name is also

Alexander. And then Alexander, this is what is reported, he said, you either change your name or you act like me, because no one with my name will act like a coward.

Change your name or act like me. Repent. That's essentially what he was saying.

A name means something. Christ has the name above every name. He has rule and authority embedded and baked into His title.

He's the Lord who everyone will bow at His name. The last days began when

He made an atonement for our sin and sat down on the throne of God, reigning. He's in control.

He's reigning right now. Verses 8 -9 of Hebrews 1 says, But the

Son, He said, your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His.

That's Jesus' kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your

God, has anointed you. Kings were anointed with oil of gladness above your companions.

God has exalted Christ to reign over the kingdom. When you think about eschatology, people argue, does the millennial kingdom, that's what they're talking about, begin in the future?

Is it something that began in the past? It began when Christ sat down on the throne to reign.

We're not waiting for a future kingdom for Christ to reign. He is reigning. That's what it says.

He's been lifted up above every name, above every companion. He is the king who's reigning right now.

All of these things prove that we're in the last days. Hebrews 1 .13, quoting Psalm 110, goes even further and says,

To which of the angels did God ever say, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?

Christ, who's sitting at the right hand of God, now is making His enemies a footstool for His feet. Did you know that?

Christ is reigning. The Dr. Fauci's, the houseplant Bidens, none of them, none of them are reigning like Christ is reigning.

All of them will die. All of them will go down into the dust. All of them will be forgotten in history, but not the name of Jesus Christ who reigns from now until the day that He returns.

Daniel 2 .44 confirms this. It says in the days of those kings, and in the context of that prophecy is the

Roman Empire, so in the days of the Roman Empire, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed.

And that kingdom will not be left for another people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

That is the kingdom that you and I belong to. The kingdom that will never end. The kingdom that cannot be crushed.

The kingdom that no one can thwart. When Jesus was getting ready to die on the cross before the high priest

Caiaphas, He quoted a passage in Daniel 7, which also shows that He's the reigning king.

That He's the king of the end time era. Daniel 7, this is what Jesus quoted to Caiaphas. I kept looking in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven one like the

Son of Man was coming and He came up. Ascension to the

Ancient of Days. And He was presented before Him and to Him was given what? Dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve

Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away. And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

When Jesus told Caiaphas that this is Me, He's saying, My kingdom will win over every nation.

My kingdom will have dominion. My kingdom won't be stopped. Stop having a defeated eschatology.

Because all of His enemies will be put under His feet. The Jews were waiting for an end time physical kingdom in the dust of Jerusalem.

Jesus is bringing in an end time spiritual kingdom that will have international global dominion. They were waiting for the dead to be raised in their country.

We see the spiritual raising of life of people in every generation ever since the beginning when

He rose from the dead. Their vision was about them. Christ's vision was about Him.

Do you see how different it all looks? Let me give you one more example. They were gonna skip the spiritual resurrection to get to the physical resurrection.

Do you know what that's a picture of? That's a picture of hell. A people who've been given an imperishable body with a corrupted heart to live forever in their corruptions.

That's hell. Christ redeems us and He saves us and He crafts us into the image of Jesus and He gives us new character, new affections, new desires.

He gives us gifts of the Spirit, gifts of fruits of the Spirit. He's cultivating us into something so that when we finally inherit the physical imperishable body we can actually live in it without ripping ourselves apart for an eternity in our sin.

That's the difference in their vision. So with that I want us to sort of bring the plane to a close or onto the runway and talk about what does the last days actually look like for us.

If we're living in the last days right now we need to know what it looks like. Is it blood moons? Is it falling stars?

Well, let's talk about that later. But what will it actually look like? It begins with spiritual resurrections.

Look at Acts 2. We could give a litany of verses here, but I just can only give a few. This is when the end times begin.

Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem after Jesus ascended to heaven. Devout men from every nation under heaven.

That's important. Remember Jesus is going to be given a kingdom of every nation. Just so happens there's people from every nation in Jerusalem.

And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together and were bewildered because each one of them were hearing them speak in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished saying, why are not all of these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? The Jews had been scattered at this time.

And during the Passover and different feasts they would come back and they all had native languages. Whether it was from Parthaginians or whether it was from Carthage or whether it was from modern day

Turkey or whether it was Jewish or Egyptian. They all had languages as they were coming together. They were hearing everybody in their native tongue.

Why is that important? It says, but Peter taking his stand with the eleven raised his voice and declared to them, men of Judea and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let it be known to you and give heed to my words.

For these men are not drunk as you suppose. For it is only the third hour of the day. He's like, have mercy.

It's only like noon. But this is what was spoken through the prophet

Joel. And it shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour out my spirit upon all mankind and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even on my bond slaves.

But men and women, I will in those days pour forth my spirit and they shall prophesy.

A sign that we're living in the end times is that the Holy Spirit's been poured out on us. It says it right here that we're living in the last days.

And as people who've been given the Holy Spirit, we have to live in the power of the

Spirit. We have to do the kinds of things that the Spirit would call us to do. Evidences of the

Spirit is that we've been justified, sanctified, we've been elected into Christ's body, we've been given spiritual gifts to serve

Jesus's body, we've been given spiritual fruit in order to offer them back to Jesus in true worship, we've been given courage by the

Spirit to share the gospel to the nations, we've been given a commission to take this gospel to the ends of the earth making disciples.

All of this is a part of the end times era. It's not a befuddled collection of different end times hallucinations that you read in various different end times books.

The end times is about the kingdom of Christ winning the nations. That's what the end times is about.

So when we see Jesus in John 11 saying, I am the resurrection and the life that he who believes in me will live even if he dies.

We're seeing Jesus saying that I am equipping you, that I am giving you life that will send you forth to do the things that I've called you to do and you will never die.

Have courage and have faith and have conviction in the calling that I've given you. Now we know that in the end, 1

Corinthians 15 talks about this, that in the end we'll be given new bodies. We'll be raised. Those who are alive when

Jesus returns will be caught up with him in the clouds, 1 Thessalonians 4. Those who are dead will be raised and they will be given new bodies so that we will walk into an eternity and live with Jesus forever in a physical kingdom.

But do not forget that the majority, 99 .99999 % of our experience at the end times is now in the spiritual kingdom of Christ obeying our

King and doing what our King has said. And when we do that, I believe we'll see the nations come to Christ.

I believe we'll have the peace of Christ that surpasses understanding because we've done the things that Christ has told us to do.

And I believe that we won't live defeated anymore. We'll live with courage. We'll live with conviction.

The way that we approach our jobs, the way that we approach our relationships, the way that we plant trees in our yard will all look different because we know that his kingdom will never end.

That's the kind of courage and conviction I want you to have. I don't want you to be afraid.

I want you to see that Christ wins. He has victory and you've been called into it. So serve him faithfully, church.

Serve him with conviction. Keep your eyes on Jesus. And if you do that, you won't be distressed like Martha in this passage.

You'll be like Timothy and Paul who sang hymns in prison. You'll be like James and John when they were beaten, they say, praise

God, we were counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ. You'll be bulletproof. Let's pray.

Lord, there's no doctrine I know of that is more important to our experience of courage than the doctrine of the end times.

Knowing that you win, that you triumph, makes everything worth it.

It makes those verses like, in this world we'll have many troubles, but fear not, you have overcome the world.

It makes them real. It makes our present struggles not worth comparing.

It makes us able to count it all joy that we suffer various trials because we know who you are. And we know that you are reigning and we know that you have not abandoned your church.

Lord, I pray that we would remember not to look at the minute -by -minute highlight reel of what's going on in the world, especially in America.

In America, it feels like we're losing. In America, it feels like that the church is waning. But Lord, in China, 10 ,000 people a day are coming to Christ.

Over the last 500 years, the gospel has went from just a European reformational phenomenon to where it's in every continent on earth.

Lord, I pray that we would find our place in the mission of God with a eschatology of victory and hope.