Sermon for Lord's Day February 12, 2023 Eschatology

Our Father and our God, our Savior and our Lord, our Creator and our Maker, we approach under your throne of mercy and grace this morning to find help in this time of our need as we stand to teach a word to your people.

I pray, O Lord, that you would give us clarity in our mind, give us liberty with our mouth that we might speak forth the word of God, and that the word of God would do, that you would do your perfect work in your word, Lord, that you would convict the lost of their sin and their standing outside of you, that you would redeem and you would draw them unto yourself, that you would regenerate the stony heart and give a heart of flesh to those who hear your word, that they might be saved today, that they may love you and that we may worship you in spirit and in truth, and that your word today, dear Lord, would be an encouragement to the saints of God, that we might, as was read in the call to worship, Lord, that we may rightfully and reasonably recognize the fact, God, that we are literally before you in this time of our worship and that we would be reminded as we see your word that you are the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.

You are still the God who saves. You are still the God who heals. You are still the God who delivers. You are still the God who restores. You are still the God who brings your righteous and holy wrath upon your enemies, and you are still the God who gives grace to your elect people.

Help us to see this, to know this, not just with our minds, for we truly need it with our minds, but we need to understand it with both our hearts and our heads alike, that this would be connected and that your people would be encouraged and edified from this time in your word today, for it's in Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

Again, we thank God for the good word that was proclaimed and preached to us last week, the gospel spoken in clarity, and week before last, when we left off here in Luke's gospel, we left off by reading, by seeing the conversation, this connecting passage between verse 47 of chapter 20 and verse 5, 5 and 6, where we're going to be picking up today, we see this connecting passage, right?

He looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. He saw a poor widow putting in two denarii, two cents, right? He said, truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them.

They all put in their gifts out of their abundance, but she, out of her lack, put in all that she had for living, and verse 5, where we're picking up today, and while some were talking about the temple, we see this in the synoptic accounts, in Matthew's account particularly, Matthew's account of where we're reading here today in Luke is far more expanded, but I believe that this section in Luke does, I appreciate the way that the Holy Spirit has this in the Word so succinctly for us, and so plainly sets forth the Word.

Eschatology as the Study of Last Things

As we see in the text, it's important for us to remember a few things. There's not really a title to put on this text, other than that we are going to be talking about eschatology today. Eschatology in light of sin, in light of salvation, in light of prophecy, all of these doctrines are meeting here in this chapter, in this large section that we're going to be looking at today, and as we finish chapter 21, and we're going to, of course, not go into chapter 22, but chapter 22 forward, the remainder of Luke's gospel really and truly is the heart of the gospel.

It is the death, the burial, and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, to which was prophesied by the prophets of old, and pointed to in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New Testament, and thereafter proclaimed by the apostles, for which we as the church of the living God have a firm footing and a firm foundation rooted and grounded in the gospel of Jesus.

Christ.

Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, and Amillennialism

So today, today we are going to be addressing the eschatological, I want to be careful how to say this. We laughed at April's niece last night. April's niece's mother showed us a video of Katie, some of you may know Katie.

She was trying to say schizophrenic and was saying schizobiscuit or something. She tried over and over and over and over and laughed about it. And eschatology, or saying eschatological, is one of those times where it's one of those words that are sometimes hard to say, hard to read, and hard to think about, nevertheless, it is still very important.

If you want to know how to spell eschatology, it's E-S-C-H-A-T-O-L-O-G-Y, eschatology. And what is eschatology, again, it's important for us to lay the groundwork to understand the meanings of words, the meanings of the doctrines that are set forth in the scripture.

The word eschatology itself is a combination of two words, eschatos and logos. Eschatos is referenced to last. The word logos is the word, so the meaning of the word eschatology is the study of last.

Things.

It's the study of last things. Kim Rydelbarger, in his book, wrote these words. He said, most often eschatology is understood as referring to events that are still future in relation to both the individual Christian and the course of world history.

But he said this, with regard to individual eschatology, as far as individual eschatology is concerned, typically it's with physical death, immortality, and the intermediate state, which is the state of a person between death and when all people will be resurrected at the end of the age.

So some might say, we don't need to understand eschatology, we don't need to know eschatology. I beg to differ. The scripture teaches us otherwise, because it has to do with death, immortality, the intermediate state, the state between death and the time when Jesus comes back the second time to call the saints of this world out of this world and judges both the living and the dead.

So it's very, very important. In terms of world history, eschatology deals with the return of Jesus Christ. It deals with the bodily resurrection. We believe in a literal bodily resurrection from the dead.

This is what the scriptures teach us. It refers to the bodily resurrection at the end of the age. It refers to the final judgment. These are things that are reality. These are things that we need to know and that we need to very much understand.

Eschatology, big picture, has to do with final judgment and, of course, the eternal state. So you probably heard two terms there, intermediate state and the eternal state. The intermediate state is the time in which, between the time that I lay down my life to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

We don't go into a purgatory state. The intermediate state is just that period of time between the time that we die and the time that Christ comes back and our bodies are gloriously resurrected and raised.

So that is why eschatology is very, very important. Now, I said all that to get us to here as we begin to look at this text because you've heard it said before, and I'm going to say it again for the sake of us all, we very much see a twofold description of God's judgment.

We see in this particular passage, in this particular text, in Matthew's account, it's the same thing. It's no different. It marks the same. We see a very real and a very imminent coming of destruction upon the city of Jerusalem.

And we see this set forth very plainly in the text. Now, some may say, why does it happen that so many people get this idea, this doctrine of eschatology so confused? Why are there so many varying views on this doctrine of eschatology?

Well, it's because that we don't go to the scripture itself. It's very, very easy for us as Christians to get our understanding of scripture from someone else other than the Holy Spirit. It's very easy for us to get it from our family members and from our friends or from the big-name preachers on the TV or on the interwebs when we need to be going to the source, which is the Word of God.

So there are three major views concerning eschatology. Three major views concerning eschatology. There is the premillennial view, premillennial. There is the postmillennial. And there is the amillennial view.

Now the postmillennial view and the amillennial view, in many ways, are very much similar. However, the premillennial view is very much totally disconnected from the post and the.

Amillennial view.

I say that for this reason, to give you a very super-brief definition or explanation.

Of these views.

The premillennial dispensational view of eschatology sees all of the Old Testament prophecies, not necessarily fulfilled in Christ, but they see them fulfilled in future events in history that we've not even yet fully seen.

Another and this is going to be a derogatory term, but I'm still going to use it another way that premillennial dispensational theology is referred to, it's referred to as newspaper exegesis. So, when we watch the news or you read something in the newspaper and it's about an earthquake, it's about a storm, it's about troubles and trials and tumults in the world, the premillennialist says, see, that's what Jesus said was going to happen.

They don't look at it in view of the text of Scripture itself, but they look at it as though all these things are still yet taking place or happening. Now, the postmillennial and the amillennial view see let me say this the premillennial also sees what's referred to as the millennial reign as a literal 1 ,000 years, a rigid 1 ,000-year.

Period.

The premillennial assumes that Christ will come and take the church out of the world before what is referred to as a great tribulation. Now, again, everybody probably here, this is the only view that you've ever heard, not a lot of you.

It's the only view that you've ever heard. Christ is going to come and rapture the church out of the world before the great tribulation takes place so that the people of God aren't on the earth during this great tribulation.

And then, after a period of seven years of the great tribulation, Christ will come back, set up a 1 ,000-year reign on the earth, and you'll hear this in a lot of popular teachers, John Hagee, I mean, a lot of the TVN preachers, this is what you'll hear most, what you'll hear just all around about us.

So John Hagee's one of those primary teachers of that. They say that Christ will come back, set a literal 1 ,000-year reign up on the earth, and then after that, new heavens and the new earth. So the amillennial and the postmillennial sees the millennial reign of Christ as not a literal 1 ,000-year period, but an indefinite period of time, not necessarily 1 ,000 years.

It's a figurative number. And the amillennial and the postmillennial sees that the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ were actually fulfilled in Christ, actually and literally fulfilled in Christ, because the Old Testament is types and shadows pointing us to who?

To Christ, to Christ. And so in the New Testament, we see Christ fulfilling all of these things. As a matter of fact, what did Jesus say? You think that I've come to destroy the law and the prophets, but I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.

In Christ is the fulfillment. And so we see just that brief overview. Now where do the amillennialists and the postmillennialists differ? The postmillennialist sees things as progressively getting better and better and better until the church ushers in the coming of Christ.

So here's the thing, the premillennialists see things getting worse and worse and worse. Newspaper exegesis. The fact that we assume things are getting worse and worse and worse is simply based on our connectivity to the interwebs.

We just have more knowledge than they had over throughout the years. We're living in an unprecedented time in history, never, never in history has anybody had access to knowledge of world events and things that go on like we have literally today and in this time and age.

So the premillennialist sees things as getting worse and worse and worse. The postmillennialist sees things as getting better and better and better. And the amillennialist, the amillennialist sees things as continuing as they have since the beginning of creation.

Sin, since the inception of sin in the fall of Adam and Eve, things have, because of sin, the world has been cursed, right? And because of sin, we're all born in sin, shaped in iniquity, the wrath and the curse of God is upon us, as we learned in the catechism today, we are all justly deserving of death and of hell, right?

So the premillennial says things are getting worse and worse. The postmillennial says things are getting better and better and better. The amillennialist says things are continuing on as they have since the foundation of the.

World.

But both the post and the amillennialist hold to the idea, to the fact that these things that were prophesied of Christ were fulfilled in Christ. And very much so do the postmillennialists and the amillennialists hold to the understanding of the text of scripture that these texts that we read about are literally about the destruction to come upon Jerusalem.

And we hold to these things because the scripture points us to these things. We have, there are many time indicators that are given in the text. We see very plain language used by the gospel writers. We see very plain language used when they quote Jesus' words to the scribes, to the Pharisees, to the city of Jerusalem itself.

And so that being said, let's pick up in verse five. And while some were talking about the temple, that it had been adorned with beautiful stones and dedicated gifts, he said this. As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left here one stone upon another which will not be torn down.

So who's speaking here? Jesus, right? In verse six, Jesus is speaking. Who's he speaking to? The disciples, those asking this question. Matthew's gospel.

Thank you, dear.

Matthew's gospel actually sets this account as Jesus walking out of the temple and the disciples looking back on the temple and asking these questions about the temple. He said, the days will come in which there will not be left here one stone upon another which will not be torn down.

So they questioned him saying, teacher, when therefore will these things happen? So what is the question that's being asked? When will what take place, right? What are they asking about specifically? They are asking about when the temple will be torn down because that is what Jesus just.

Said.

So they questioned him, teacher, when will these things happen? And then they ask a second question. What will be the sign when these things are about to take place? So when will these things happen and what will be the sign or how will we know that these things are about to take place?

Very specific questions. And Jesus gives in length a very specific answer. And he said, see to it that you are not deceived for many will come in my name saying, I am he and the time is at hand. Do not go after them.

We covered that week before last. And when you hear, and then Jesus says this, and when you hear of wars and rumors of wars or when you hear of wars and disturbances, do not be terrified for these things must first take place or must take place first.

But the end, the end does not follow immediately. So Jesus, again, in very straightforward, plain talk, tells them there's going to be wars and disturbances. There's going to be a whole lot going on, but do not be terrified for these things must take place first.

And then the end still isn't going to happen immediately, immediately in the sense of time and space. A generation is 30 to 40 years. Now, if you're seven years old, like Sarah, and you think about somebody being 40 years old, do you think those people are old or young?

Huh?

Oh, so mom and dad, yeah, yeah. For a seven year old, 30 to 40 years seems like forever. But when you get to be 49 and about to be 50, you're like, holy cow, I remember when I was a teenager making fun of 30 year olds saying they were old people.

But it seems like a very long time, right? But in reality, time goes by quicker than we realize. So notice in verse 10 what Jesus says, then he continued saying to them, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

Remember, he's just said, his last breath, he said, you're going to hear wars and disturbances, do not be terrified. What are these wars and these disturbances? They are the nations rising against the nations and kingdoms against kingdoms.

There will be great earthquakes in various places, famines and plagues, and there will be terrors and there will be great signs from heaven. Great signs in the heavens. But before all these things, this delineation between verse 11 and 12, I mean, to hear this, this is a very hard thing to hear what Jesus said.

For verse 11, there'll be terrors and great signs from heaven, which is like, that's not bad enough. He says, but before all these things, before all these wars come about, before all these famines come about, before all these pestilences come about, before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons and bring you before kings and before governors for my name's sake.

Again, here Jesus makes it clear that this great wars and rumors of wars, this great commotions that's going to happen within that generation, they are certainly going to happen. And one of the things that they know, how they know that that time is getting close is that they are going to be taken by force, that they are going to be forced literally to either stand with Christ or to deny Christ, to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and die a saint's death, or they are going to deny the gospel of Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be nothing but apostates.

What a strong statement. But remember, Jesus periodically through this passage, through this text, he's constantly encouraging them, do not be terrified. Do not be afraid.

Do not fret.

Do not fear.

Do not worry.

He's not giving them a false sense of assurance. He's not saying everything's going to be okay. You're not going to have any troubles. You're going to float on a cloud three feet above the ground. For the remainder of this generation and everything's going to be tulips and daisies.

No, Jesus said you're going to be brought before kings. You're going to be brought before governors. They're going to lay their hands on you. They're going to persecute you. But in verse 13, Jesus said, what will it do?

It will result in an opportunity for your testimony. It will result in an opportunity for you to proclaim the gospel message of Jesus Christ. And he goes on. So in light of what I just said, so set it in your heart, settle it in your hearts, not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves, for I will give you a mouth and I will give you wisdom, which none of your opponents will be able to resist or to refute.

Again, the encouragement, the encouraging words of our Lord to his disciples here, you're going to be brought before kings. But he said, I'll tell you what, don't fret because I'm going to give you the words that you need to speak when you're brought before kings, when you're brought before governors, when you're brought before princes, when you're brought before captives, when you're brought before your captors, you are going.

I, Jesus said, I'm going to give you the very words in which you are to speak. And some people may say, well, how does that look? How is that carried out? If you go to Acts very quickly here, Acts, go to Acts chapter eight, we have, or Acts chapter seven, I'm sorry, Acts chapter seven.

We have the account, Luke's accounting of Deacon Stephen, his defense as he's brought before men to stand to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ. Actually, in chapter six, beginning in verse eight of chapter six, to get a little bit of context, Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people, both some men from what was called the synagogue of the freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, some from Cilicia and Asia, they arose up and were arguing with Stephen, but they were, verse 10, unable to oppose the wisdom and the spirit by whom he was speaking.

This is exactly what Jesus had told them, right? They're not going to be able to stand before my words. Listen, you can argue with somebody all you want. You can have all the wisdom in the world. You may be able to turn a phrase back on somebody, but my friend, you will never turn a phrase back on the Lord.

You will never be able to refute the Lord. Then they secretly induced the men, and here's where they gathered up a gang. We've heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God, and the scripture says they stirred up the people, the elders, the scribes, and they came up to him, and they dragged him away, and they brought him to the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin, remember, was the court of the 70, or some history will tell us the court of the 72, made up of scribes, Pharisees, and elders. It was like the religious supreme court, basically, is what it was.

So they dragged him to the Sanhedrin. They put before false witnesses. They had folks telling lies, and they said this, this man never ceases speaking words against this holy place and the law. They were speaking of the temple and the law.

For we have heard him say that this Jesus, the Nazarene, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses had handed down to us. They heard him say exactly what Jesus had told the disciples beforehand, that Jesus was going to destroy the temple, that the judgment of God, we can look at it as a little judgment, and I do not mean that disrespectfully.

A little judgment was coming upon Jerusalem and upon the temple there, where it was going to be destroyed and tore down to the ground. And so they fixed their gaze on him, and all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin saw his face like the face of an angel.

And so Stephen lights into preaching.

He lights in.

He goes, I mean, he starts back in David. He starts and preaches the Old Testament law to them that points to Jesus Christ. And if you jump over to verse 44, he said, our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen.

And having received it in their turn, our fathers brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations whom God drove out before our fathers until the time of David. And then Stephen says David found favor in the sight of God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.

But Solomon built a house for him. However, the most high does not dwell in houses made by human hands. For as the prophet said, heaven is my throne. The earth is my footstool of my feet. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord?

Or what place is there for my rest? Was it not my hand which made all these things, says the Lord. And then another quote, Stephen says, you men stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are always resisting the Holy Spirit as your fathers did.

So do you. This is an example of the Lord giving Stephen a mouth, words of wisdom to stand and proclaim. And he goes on, and which one of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become.

He puts the onus on them. You who received the law as ordained by angels and yet you did not observe it. Now, when they heard this, they became furious in their hearts and they began gnashing their teeth at him.

But Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed intently up into heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God. This is post-resurrection this is taking place.

This is the fulfillment of what Jesus said was going to happen and what was going to take place. And he said, Stephen said, behold, I see the heavens opened up and I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

But crying out with a loud voice, they covered their ears and they rushed at him with one accord. And when they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him and the witnesses laid aside their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Then went on stoning Stephen as he was calling out and saying these words, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this against.

Them.

And having said this, he fell asleep or he died. It's not glamorous. It's not glorious. And it's not necessarily something we want to rush headlong into, but it is the truth.

Right?

So we see this. So Jesus said, I'll give you a mouth by which no one will be able to resist. Verse six, back to Luke 21, 16, but you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends.

And they will put some of you to death and you will be hated by all because of my name. Yet, verse 18, yet not a hair of your head will perish. Some may say, well, ain't that saying that they wouldn't have to endure pain or sorrow?

No.

What he's saying is this, that what we see physically is temporary and what is unseen.

Is eternal.

And we are called repeatedly through the gospels, through the word of God itself to take our eyes off of this world and to fix our eyes on that which is eternal, that which is fixed in the heavens. By your perseverance, verse 19, he said, you will gain your lives.

Then those who are in Judea, Jesus gives specific instruction here. Then, then when these things take place, or I'm sorry, verse 20, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand.

The premillennialist says, oh, see, we read that in the newspapers today. There's all kinds of trouble over in Israel. But Jesus was not talking about 2000 years after when he spoke these words. He was talking about 30 to 40 years, the space within 30 to 40 years after he spoke these words, these things were going to happen.

And what do we know? Because of history, we know that Jerusalem was surrounded by an army like it had never been surrounded by before and that destruction came upon Jerusalem like never in history has been known.

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand. Then those, when this takes place, what Jesus says, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains and those who are in the midst of the city must leave.

And those who are in the countryside must not enter the city. Now, what happened historically, just as a quick side note, what happened historically, it was the time of the peace, peace to the Passover, when, when really over this, it was a, it was a period of time that this, this war came upon Jerusalem, but it was at the peace to the Passover when the crux of this hit.

So everybody was trying to come to Jerusalem to make their temple sacrifices, to give their temple offerings. But what Jesus says to these people is this, look, if you're trying to get in, don't. If you're here and you're a child of God, make your way out.

Matter of fact, there was a, there was a little town called Pella that the folks fled to. Then he said in verse 21, because these are the days of vengeance so that all things which are written will be fulfilled.

Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath against this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations.

And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Verse 25, and there will be key statements here. There will be signs in sun and moon and stars and on the earth, anguish among the nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and from the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world for the powers of the heavens will be shaken and they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great.

Glory.

But when these things begin to take place, what Jesus says here is this, lift up your.

Heads.

The King James, I believe says, lift up your heads. The ESV, the LSV says this, straighten up, straighten up and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near. Now, this judgment that was coming may not have seen very much like a redemption, but what God was doing was demonstrating that he is ever faithful to his word.

We can go on and we see these points that I've touched on this morning, touched on historically. Matthew Henry said this, I'm sorry, it wasn't Matthew Henry here, but this is from a book called Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture.

To read scripture, so when we look at text like we're reading here, when we look at these passages, these eschatological passages, we want to read them literally, which means this, that we read them in light of the context surrounding them and we read them in light of the grammar that's used, we read them in light of the terminology that is used.

The terminology that is used in verse 25, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the anguish among the nations, this is judgment language that's used throughout the Old Testament, that's used metaphorically, right, to paint pictures of things that are coming and things that will happen, because God is finite and we are infinite, we can't understand God's language so he has to speak to us in ours.

That's why we have the word of God as we have it today. So, to read scripture in accordance with its apparent communicative intentions as a collective for text from the past, whether in respect to smaller or larger sections of the text, it means that we do so taking full account of the nature of the language in which these intentions are embedded and revealed as components of scripture's unfolding covenantal story, doing justice to such realities as literary convention, idioms, metaphors, typology, and figuration.

To read literally, in other words, is to try to understand what the scripture is saying to us in just the way in which we seek to understand what other people are saying to us, that we're taking into account as we do so age, culture, customs, and language, as well as the verbal context within which individual words and sentences are located.

So, what is it to be read literally in pursuit of the communicative intent of God in search of what we believe, how to live, and what to hope for? When we look at these texts, we ought to very much, yes, we take it literally, but we ought to understand it in its literal text, in its literal phraseology, how it's literally written.

To be literal doesn't mean that we take it in a strict wooden form. For example, we've used the example before. Jesus said, if your hand offends you, do what to it? Does anybody remember? Cut it off. Do you think Jesus literally meant for us to cut our hands off?

No.

Metaphorical language is used there. So, studying eschatology like this, studying eschatology offers us as believers proof that God is absolutely in control, and we can have hope in what's to come while living in this.

Sinful world.

Biblical passage about the end times demonstrate God's sovereignty, and they demonstrate God's control over sin. If your hope, eschatologically, if your hope as a believer is tied to a political or cultural renewal as the evidence of Christ's work in the world, then you will eventually and always find yourself in despair.