137. The Doom of Jerusalem

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 137,

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The Doom of Jerusalem. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast.

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I'm so excited that you're back because we are back in a new series on the book of Revelation.

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And if you remember last week, we talked about how if you wanna understand Revelation, then you have to understand

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Matthew 24, the Olivet Discourse, because it's kind of like the cheat code for the book of Revelation.

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It's like the answer key in the back of the textbook that we need to understand if we're gonna understand the problem.

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The book of Revelation and Matthew 24 are saying the exact same things.

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Both are talking about the end of the Jewish age. Both are talking about the end of the Old Covenant world, the system of temples and priesthood and sacrifices and priests, and neither of them are talking about a cataclysmic end to human history at some point in the distant future.

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Instead, both are talking about events that have already happened, events that were completed in the first century past, namely, during the downfall of Jerusalem.

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This means that every single element in Matthew 24 and in Revelation 1 through 22 are talking about things that have already occurred.

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And I know that that may be shocking because you've heard all your life that the book of Revelation is about the end of the world or the end of human history, and I'm here to tell you that you've been mistaught.

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You've been misinformed. And in the course of this series, I'm gonna prove it to you that the book of Revelation is talking about things from a visionary perspective about things that have already happened.

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Now, in order to do that, I wanna go first to Matthew 24 because I need to prove that all of Matthew 24 has already happened.

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We've already proved last week that Matthew 24 and Revelation are saying the same things. Today, we need to prove that the timing of these things are the same so that when you look at the book of Revelation, you'll see that the timing is the same as Matthew 24.

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So we need to make that argument this week. But before I can do that, I need to show you how the entire book of Matthew is pointing to events that have already occurred in the past.

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My goal today is not just to parachute into Matthew 24. I wanna build the context around Matthew 24, which is the book of Matthew.

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So my goal today is for us to open up the gospel and for me to give you a 100 ,000 -foot flyover view showing you how all of the book is pointing to a near -term disaster that is gonna happen to the

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Jewish people within 40 years of the crucifixion if they remain in their unrepentance.

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I'm gonna point you to the fact that Jesus, John, the parables, his sermons, his prophecies, every aspect of the book of Matthew is pointing to a calamity that is getting ready to befall the

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Jewish people. So with that, we're gonna be looking at seven themes from the book of Matthew, and we're gonna begin by looking at the coming of the king.

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Part one, the king's coming. The gospel of Matthew is not just about salvation, although it does speak about these things.

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Instead, it is more fully the story of how the true king has returned and he's found his realm so infiltrated with enemies that he needed to go to war.

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So bad was the sorry state in which he found it, a purging would need to occur first where all of the rebels would need to be cast out so that he could welcome the men, women, and children that he called to be his citizens into his kingdom.

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Now, from the opening genealogy to the very final judgment, Matthew is telling us about war, a war between the old covenant rebels and the new covenant king.

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You see in Matthew, a new king has arrived on the shores of earth. This long -prophesied, long -awaited king was gonna be met with two responses from the people.

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There were gonna be those who were thrilled at his arrival and they were gonna welcome him through faith, and that king was gonna bring those people into his kingdom.

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But there was also gonna be another group, a group who rejected him and opposed him and who hated his newly wedded bride, the church, and they were gonna kill him and they were gonna persecute and martyr his bride, and to that group, he was gonna utterly decimate them.

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That is what the point of the gospel is all about, that Jesus has come to bring salvation to his people, but war and devastation to his enemies.

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And we're gonna look at that in a few different ways. Number one, the king's royal lineage. Matthew's gospel opens with a genealogy which is way more than just a bland assortment of names or a missed opportunity at a good introduction.

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I know that as modern readers, we don't love genealogies, but this genealogy and every other biblical genealogy is really, really, really important.

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It's a royal declaration of Jesus's kingship. You see, by tracing

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Jesus's lineage all the way back to Abraham and David, Matthew 1, 1 through 17, Matthew is establishing

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Jesus as the long -awaited king, the rightful heir to the throne of Israel and the fulfillment of God's promises to David, 2

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Samuel 7, 12 through 16, and to Abraham, Genesis 12, 1 through 3. You see, unlike the kings of Judah who squandered their rule and who lost their throne,

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Jesus was the eternal king. He's the one who would come to bring the entire world under his dominion, beginning with apostate

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Judah. You see, in Jesus's day, the Jewish aristocracy believed that the

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Messiah was gonna come and reinforce their authority, that he was gonna come and validate their traditions.

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They thought that the Messiah, the king, was gonna come and give them a pat on the back and tell them how good they were doing.

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They assumed that being descendants of Abraham guaranteed them a place in the kingdom of God, which they saw as an ethnocentric paradise, a place where the

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Gentiles and the Samaritans were ever unwelcome, and only the purebred

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Jews could ever get in. That was heaven to the first century Jewish elite.

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But they were blind, and they were blind to the reality of what Jesus was bringing.

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They were blind to the reality of God. They were blind to the heart of God. For centuries, their pride and their evil and idolatry and their hatred of everyone who did not look like them caused them to break covenant with God and to break the covenants that they so proudly boasted that they were keeping.

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In fact, by the time that Jesus arrived on the scene, God's mercy for this group was almost evaporated.

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For those Jews who refused to repent, Jesus's coming would not be good news. It would actually be judgment and cursing instead of blessing.

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While Jesus came as the rightful king, he did not come to give participation trophies and to put crowns on the head of those who hated

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God and hated God's people. He came to crush them under his feet.

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Thus, from the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is setting up the story of his kingdom coming, which meant the end of the apostate

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Jewish state. Now, the second aspect of Jesus's kingship that the Gospel of Matthew picks up is his arrival, and this is a fascinating detail.

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Matthew's Gospel not only opens up with a royal genealogy, but it also opens up with a royal conflict.

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As soon as the news of Jesus's birth reached the palace of King Herod, who was a false king that was presiding over a crumbling remnant of the

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Jewish people, then a clash of the kingdoms began right then and there. "'Where is he who is born king of the

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Jews?' the wise men asked, and that question sent shockwaves through Herod's palace.

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Herod was afraid, and his terror was not just a political fear. No, it was the dread of a man who knew that he was a pretender, a puppet king who was getting ready to be exposed, because Herod wasn't the true king of the

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Jews, Jesus is. Herod was an Edomite. Herod was a political appointment of Rome.

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Herod was not the Jewish king. So when the wise men came looking for the real king of the

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Jews, this puppet, false, fake pretender was getting nervous. That nervousness and that fear led him to massacre the infant boys in Bethlehem, which is an example of how a fledgling old kingdom was trying with every ounce of energy that it had to try to resist being overthrown by the true king before Jesus could grow up and evict them.

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Now, in a twisted kind of parody of Pharaoh's slaughter in the book of Exodus, Herod orders the murder of every male child.

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He believes that he can snuff out this king if he can kill all of the children of Bethlehem, Matthew 2, 16, and he was hoping to eradicate this promised

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Messiah and to ensure the longevity of his defunct dynasty. But just as baby

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Moses escaped from the clenches of Pharaoh, so Jesus escaped from the maniacal hatred of Herod, and he escaped for a time only to return like Moses later to set his people free.

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This early conflict between Herod and Christ, though, is a microcosm of the larger war that is gonna be going on.

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The old order, which is the temple, the priests, the Pharisees, and all of that, is going to be threatened by this new order that is coming in Christ, and they were gonna, like Herod, be responding to Jesus in violence, seeking to destroy what they could not control.

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But every attempt that they made to try to kill him only hastened their own demise.

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As we read in Matthew, Herod died in obscurity, his power crumbled, and Jesus lives on forever with a kingdom that will not end.

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The same fate befell the Jews, who were destroyed, their temple gone, their legacy eliminated because they refused to repent and turn to Christ.

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This conflict there at the beginning of Matthew is foreshadowing the eventual downfall of the entire

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Jewish establishment because they resisted the true king. That's the second aspect of his kingship.

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The third is that he brings a manifesto. After going through all the towns of Israel, like the true

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Joshua, conquering and for the kingdom of God, saying that the kingdom of God was at hand,

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Matthew 4, 17, Jesus performed the role of a new Moses. He gave them a new law for the kingdom of God there on Mount Sinai.

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It was almost like just in the same way that Moses climbed up on top of the mountain, he received the 10 commandments and he sat on the mountain, he taught the people of Israel.

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So Jesus went up on the mountain and he gave this most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, and he called his people to a new law, a law of the kingdom, a law of the new

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Israel. This wasn't just a call to personal morality or piety, it was a declaration that God's kingdom was breaking into the world and that it needed a new code of ethics.

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Jesus was bringing heaven down to earth and he was even calling his disciples there in that sermon to pray that God's kingdom would come and that God's will would be done on earth as it already is in heaven.

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Why would he pray that if he wasn't bringing something so entirely new that even heaven would be united again to earth?

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He was signaling that the old order of Israel with all of its hypocritical leaders and its corrupted fruitless temple was going to be replaced.

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Judgment was coming for everybody who clung to the old system, a judgment that would culminate in the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, making way for Christ and his kingdom to be established on earth as it is in heaven.

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That's the third. Number four, the king's authority. Matthew lays this out. After a new law was codified on that mountain

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Vista, King Jesus revealed the authority of his kingdom through a series of mighty miracles.

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He's not just a king, he's the God King. In Matthew 8 -12, he healed the sick, he cast out demons, he raised the dead and showed that his kingdom even had the power over life and death.

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With every miracle, Jesus was making a royal decree. He was saying that the kingdom of God was breaking into the world and overtaking the power of darkness.

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His kingdom was coming on earth as it was in heaven and the Jewish leaders perceived correctly that Jesus' kingdom was a threat to their own little empire.

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Rather than acknowledging him as the true king, they responded to him with open hostility.

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They accused him of even working by the power of Beelzebub, a demon,

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Matthew 12 -24. And in doing so, the Jews aligned themselves with the kingdom of darkness and they committed the ultimate act of treason against their

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God. Matthew's account of Jesus' miracles cements the fact that this new kingdom has power and it was going to lead to the upheaval of all things, including the

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Jewish state. That's the fourth thing. The fifth thing is that the kingship is spoken about in the terms of judgment.

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So for instance, the conflict between these two systems, Jesus' new kingdom and the old covenant system, came to a head in Matthew 21 -23.

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As Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey as its triumphant king and as the crowds cried out

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Hosanna in the highest, the Jewish leaders thought rightly that their authority was being challenged.

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And they responded, not by praising along with the crowd, they responded by convening as a council in order to trap him publicly, to humiliate him and to find a way to arrest and kill him.

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They questioned his authority in Matthew 21 -23. They hoped to discredit him, but Jesus turned the tables on them, exposing their hypocrisy.

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And he did so with incredible answers with precision, but also with parables by posing questions to them that they couldn't answer and left them speechless,

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Matthew 21 -24 -27. He told them the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked tenants and the parable of the wedding feast,

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Matthew 21 and 22, all of which vividly depict Israel's rejection of God, their impending judgment that was soon to take place and culminating in the fact that their city was going to be set on fire and destroyed,

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Matthew 22 -7. The leaders grew increasingly desperate. They were angry.

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They were filled with a kind of fury, sending the Pharisees and the Sadducees who normally hated each other to even be friends for a moment and to unite together to try to trick

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Jesus with questions about taxes and the resurrection and the greatest commandment. But every time, Jesus brilliantly embarrassed them,

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Matthew 22 -15 -46. Their attempt to trap him revealed their blindness and their hard heartedness.

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And by the end of this public humiliation, no one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare ask him another question,

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Matthew 22 -46. The tension reached a boiling point as Jesus then transitioned from humiliating them to a scathing condemnation in the form of seven covenantal woes that were leveled against the scribes and the

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Pharisees in Matthew 23. He exposed their hypocrisy. He declared that a bloodshed, a guilt, a wrath from God that had been stored up since the death of Abel was getting ready to be let loose.

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The dam of God's fury was getting ready to break and the flood and the torrent of his wrath was gonna fall on that generation,

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Matthew 23 -35 -36. Jesus says that all of God's wrath had been stored up since creation basically, was gonna be poured out on them, that generation.

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And then after saying this, Jesus laments over Jerusalem's hard heartedness. He weeps and he predicts that the temple is gonna be utterly destroyed.

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And he predicts that their house is gonna be left to them desolate. And he signals that the old covenant order was gonna come to an end.

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All of this, from the confrontation and the conflict, every parable, every question, every condemnation was building to this crescendo that we see in Matthew 24, the

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Olivet Discourse, where Jesus is giving his final prophecy about the future of Jerusalem.

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He's not breaking from 23 chapters of context to say, now let's talk about something completely different.

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Let's talk about the 21st century. That doesn't make any sense. Everything up to this point has been setting the stage for what

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Jesus is gonna reveal in that very climactic prophecy. Matthew's meticulously recorded,

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Jesus's condemnations against the leaders, his declarations of judgment, his miracle, all of it. He's repeated all of this.

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And now by giving this prophecy in Matthew 24, he's saying that God's grace is nearly expired.

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The hourglass is going to be empty soon. And in Matthew 24, he says that that hourglass is gonna run out in 40 years.

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All of it is going to come crashing down on their heads in a single generation,

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Matthew 24, 34. Now, for this reason, we know that Matthew 24 is not a departure from the themes of its previous chapters.

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It's the fulfillment of them. It's the grand finale of Jesus's case against Israel and the

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Jews. It's the final judgment against the nation that rejected its true king, that killed its prophets, that killed its apostles.

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And it's the decisive end of the old covenant era. With the temple soon to be destroyed, the sacrifices ended and Jerusalem going to be left desolate, the old order was gonna be brought to a sudden and horrifying end.

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And the new era, the era of Jesus and his kingdom was going to be inaugurated. All who oppose him are gonna be judged.

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And his kingdom, which began as a mustard seed, was going to now advance to fill the whole earth.

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That's why Matthew 24 must be understood as the conclusion of Matthew chapter one through 23 and not a diversion away from the context that Jesus, John the

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Baptist, and Matthew have been building. It's not a prophecy about the end of the world. That wouldn't make any sense of the context.

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It is a prophecy about the end of Jerusalem. That was our first theme, the theme of kingship in the book.

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And what we've seen is that all of it, all of it points to the fact that this king is gonna go to war with Jerusalem and they're gonna be destroyed.

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Our second theme now is we're gonna take up John the Baptist and we're gonna look at his warning for their repentance.

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Part two, John the Baptist and the day of the Lord. John the

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Baptist's ministry was not merely the heralding of a new era, but it was the final trumpet blast before the storm of judgment came crashing down on old covenant

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Israel. You see, Malachi had prophesied long before about a great and terrible day of the

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Lord that would arrive when Elijah would come to prepare the way of the Messiah, Malachi 4 .5.

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This day of the Lord was not a vague future event at the end of world history, but it was a specific day, a day of reckoning for a rebellious nation, a nation that had fallen into apathy as early as Malachi's day, but would then transition into a kind of hatred of God by the time of Christ.

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The day of the Lord then was a day that would unfold in terrifying detail against the city of Jerusalem.

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The prophets, not just Malachi, had repeatedly warned them that this day would be a day of devastation and doom.

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That it would mark the end of the old covenant world and the dawn of a new covenant kingdom. See, for the

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Jews, they had been long rejecting the prophets that God had given them.

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And because of that, this day would be nothing less than the moment of their final judgment. Malachi himself vividly describes this day as it's gonna come like a burning furnace and all of the arrogant and all of the evildoers are gonna be like chaff.

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And the day that is coming will set them ablaze. Malachi 4, 1.

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The prophet Joel warned that it would be a day of great darkness and gloom. A day of clouds and thick darkness,

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Joel 2, chapter two, verse one through two. Zephaniah echoes the same theme, declaring that it would be a day of wrath, a day of trouble, a day of distress, a day of destruction and desolation.

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Zephaniah 1, 14 through 15. So this day, this day of the Lord was not about the end of the physical universe.

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It was not about the final moment of human history, but it was about a fiery judgment of God against a covenant -breaking nation.

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And the only nation that was in covenant with God was Israel. This pointed forward to a climactic event where they were going to be destroyed.

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And that destruction event happened in AD 70 when the Romans came in. God's fury fell upon those who rejected his son and persecuted his people and destroyed their city and destroyed their nation and upended their entire religion so that it doesn't even exist anymore.

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There's no such thing as Judaism, according to the Bible. There's no temple, there's no priest, there's no sacrificial system, there's no festivals in the same way that they were done back in Jewish times.

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All that's gone. The Judaism that you have today is not biblical Judaism. That is a kind of rabbinic

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Judaism. It's a new invented religion that didn't even exist before the destruction of the temple.

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In this sense, John, who's the final prophet, he's the coming Elijah that Malachi talked about.

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He is the one who came to declare to the people, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

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He is coming as a last call of repentance before the fateful and frightful day of the

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Lord comes. And his coming signaled that that is exactly what

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God intended for him to do. For instance, Zechariah, John's father, prophesied at his birth that John was gonna go before the

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Lord to prepare his ways, Luke 1 76. And he was signaling that his coming, the prophet

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John was gonna announce the salvation of God to God's people, but the judgment of God to God's enemies.

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And that is exactly the kind of fiery message that John grew up to deliver. His message in the wilderness wasn't soft for a people who needed to be coddled.

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No, it was a call for change, for national repentance, a summon for the people of Israel to turn back to God before it was too late.

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John even says that the ax was already laid at the root of the tree, Matthew 3 10.

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What does that mean? That means that God through his prophets had been chopping and chopping and chopping until one more swing was going to send

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Israel collapsing. The ax was at the root of the tree because John was the final swing of God to call his people to repentance.

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Their time was running out. John's baptism in the Jordan River symbolized not just ritual cleansing, but it was a call for the nation to be washed and to renew.

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That's why the people of Israel had to go out of Israel and into the nation of Jordan in order to cross the

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Jordan River. What are they doing? Well, they're reenacting what their ancestors did when their ancestors crossed the

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Jordan River and God parted the waters in two as they entered into the promised land, Joshua 3.

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But this time, however, it was not about entering into a land of milk and honey, it was about escaping the coming wrath that was going to decimate their land and shatter their covenant identity.

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The land of milk and honey that John was calling them to enter was the kingdom of Messiah, not

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Canaan, the national geographical boundary.

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John's warnings were not just directed at ordinary people, but at the religious leaders, at the aristocracy, the

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Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes who came to observe his ministry and watch the things that he was saying.

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And John didn't mince any words. He looked at those Pharisees and Sadducees and he gave them biting and scathing words like, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come,

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Matthew 3 .7. Why do you think John the Baptist would tell him to flee from the wrath to come if there wasn't a wrath that was coming?

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He called them a brood of vipers, not just as an insult, but he was telling them that they are actually the children in the spawn of Satan who is depicted as a serpent in Genesis 3.

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Though they prided themselves on being the offspring of Abraham, John is exposing them as the spiritual bastard kids of the devil, destined for the judgment of God if they didn't repent the disaster he said was coming.

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And this wasn't just hyperbole. By rejecting John's call to repentance, they were sealing their own fate and they were setting the stage for their ultimate rejection that was gonna come when they rejected

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Messiah himself. Jesus confirmed John and he confirmed

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John's role when he declared that John was indeed the Elijah who was to come, Matthew 11 .14. That he was the forerunner that was coming before the great and terrible day of the

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Lord, Malachi 4 .5. And yet despite his clear signs, his clear warnings, the leaders hardened their hearts, they refused

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John's baptism, they refused John's message, they refused God's merciful last call to repentance,

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Matthew 21 .25, and that rejection, that dismissal of that fiery preacher in the wilderness, it was their final opportunity for mercy before the covenantal hammer of God's judgment fell.

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He was the final voice crying out in the wilderness, not just announcing the Messiah's arrival, but declaring that the end of the nation was at hand and his urgent call was ignored.

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The day of the Lord, John warned of, was the same day prophesied by Isaiah, Joel, Malachi, and Zephaniah, day of fire, darkness, and destruction.

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And that is the day that came against the city of Jerusalem. All the language of the judgment, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give us light, the stars will fall from the sky that Jesus uses in Matthew 24, come out of Isaiah 13 .10,

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Joel 2 .31, and others. This language is being employed by Jesus in Matthew 24 to describe the fall of Jerusalem.

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For instance, in Isaiah 13 .10, this kind of language, the sun being dark and the moon not giving its light, is about the fall of Babylon.

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Now, Jerusalem has become like spiritual Babylon, and Jesus is prophesying her destruction because she refused

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John. All of these cosmic disturbances, sun, moon, and stars, all of that represent the end of the

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Jewish age, the total upheaval of the entire redemptive order.

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The destruction of the temple, the annihilation of Jerusalem's leaders were God's final response to a people who had repeatedly broken covenant, repeatedly rejected his prophets, and now ultimately crucified his son.

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When Jesus said, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, he was referring to the people who were standing before him and the judgment that had been warned about since Matthew chapter one all the way to Matthew 24.

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The Roman siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus, is the judgment that was coming.

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And the city itself fell into famine, infighting, slaughter, cannibalism, culminating in the burning of the temple and the collapse of the

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Jewish state. That was the day of the Lord that the prophets were warning about. That is the day of the

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Lord that John the Baptist prophesied about. And that is the day of the Lord that Jesus himself gave his greatest prophecy, which was in Matthew 24.

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And it wasn't just Jesus, and it wasn't just John, and it wasn't just Malachi, and it wasn't just Isaiah and Joel and Zephaniah.

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I mean, we're not piling evidence on top of evidence here. But the apostles themselves took up John the

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Baptist's message. Peter, quoting Joel 2, announced that the events of Pentecost were ushering in this great and glorious day of the

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Lord, Acts 2 16 through 21, which means that Peter believed that the giving of the spirit of God was, yes, it was a sign of salvation to God's people, but it was a sign of judgment to the city of Jerusalem, that this is one of the signs that's going to happen before the great and terrible day of the

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Lord, and it happened. It's not talking about a day of the Lord that's gonna happen at some point in the distant future.

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The sign of Pentecost, which happened in AD 30, was a sign that this great and terrible day of the

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Lord was soon to take place. James, the brother of Jesus, warned that the judge is standing right at the door.

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He's been in his chambers, he's deliberated, he's figured out what the verdict is. Now he's coming, he's gonna enter the courtroom and pronounce judgment.

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When James was writing, the judge was already standing up. His hand was on the door handle, ready to come in and deliver the proclamation of judgment,

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James 5 9. The author of Hebrews declared that the old covenant system was ready to disappear.

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Hebrews 8 13. The old covenant system is not continued for 2 ,000 years. Judgment was coming and it was ready to pass away.

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All of this is pointing to the same event, the imminent judgment upon Jerusalem. In AD 70, that judgment came.

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That was the day of the Lord where the temple was destroyed, the city was set on fire, and over a million

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Jews were slaughtered, which by the way, was the greatest event of slaughter that had ever happened to the

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Jewish people, including the Holocaust. Because no matter what number you take with how many

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Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust, and it was horrific and awful, I'm not saying that it wasn't, if you look at the percentages of the population, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was worse.

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It was far worse. The old covenant era was brought to a violent end.

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The new covenant of Christ had come. The day of the Lord prophesied by Malachi, Joel, Zephaniah, and others came upon that covenant -breaking nation, and it was the end of the old covenant kingdom.

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Again, all of this proves that John, what he was saying was true, and what all of the other passages that we looked at are supporting, the day of the

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Lord had come. That's part two. Part three. Jesus and the new

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Israel. From the very beginning, Matthew's gospel shows us that Jesus is not merely a prophet and a priest and a king, although he is.

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He's also true and faithful Israel. He's the one through whom a new

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Israel was going to emerge. Now, I want you to consider some parallels here just so I can show you how

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Jesus is deliberately showcasing that he is true Israel. He was persecuted by an evil king,

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Matthew 2, 13 through 16, just like Israel was persecuted by Pharaoh in Egypt.

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He was called God's firstborn son, Matthew 3, 17, just like Israel was called God's firstborn son.

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He was brought up out of the land of Egypt to fulfill Hosea's prophecy. Out of Egypt, I called my son, just like Israel was called up out of Egypt.

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And he passed through the waters of the Jordan, just like the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, Matthew 3, 13 through 17.

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When God spoke over Jesus at his baptism, this is my beloved son in whom I am well -pleased,

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Matthew 3, 17, it echoed the kind of declaration that God spoke over Israel as they were passing through the waters.

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And the Holy Spirit descends upon them as wind, as breath, just like the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in his baptism.

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After that, where Israel was grumbling, Jesus was joyful.

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Where Israel was led into the wilderness for 40 years, Jesus also was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days.

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And yet unlike them, he emerged victorious over Satan and through perfect obedience and unwavering trust in God, he triumphed over the temptation where they failed the test, says they failed the test 10 times in the book of Deuteronomy.

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Matthew 4, 1 through 11, tells us how Jesus triumphed in the wilderness unlike his counterpart, the people of Israel.

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He then after the wilderness ascended a mountain, just like Moses, after they get out of the wilderness, he goes up on top of Mount Sinai, Jesus ascended a mountain and he delivered his authoritative teaching, not the 10 commandments, but a new command,

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I give you to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is giving the new law on top of the new

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Mount Sinai, Matthew 5, 1 through 2. Each of these parallels are demonstrating that Jesus not only is repeating

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Israel's history, but he's redeeming it. He's succeeding where Israel failed. He's embodying the true covenant calling of what

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Israel was supposed to be. Another example, after he leaves the mountain, he goes then from town to town to town declaring the kingdom of God, what's that?

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Well, after Israel leaves Mount Sinai, they're supposed to march to Jerusalem and they're supposed to send out those spies to go and see if Israel is a place worth conquering.

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If they can do it, they come back with a bad report and then they fail and they wander in the wilderness for 40 years, not so with Jesus.

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Jesus sends out his 12 spies, his 12 apostles who don't come back with a bad report, they come back with a good report.

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They come back with the report that even the demons obey us. So unlike Israel, who the 12 spies looked at the demonic people of Canaan and said, they're so big, we're like grasshoppers.

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Jesus' apostles went out and even those who were indwelled with the spirit of those

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Nephilim, those demons, well, the disciples even were saying, we have power over them. So they came back with a good report.

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So Jesus is now showing that he's the true Joshua, he's the true Israel, he's the true embodiment of everything that Israel was called to be.

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Because Jesus is faithful Israel, belonging to God's people is no longer defined by your ancestry.

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It's no longer defined by your geographical proximity to the nation or to the land of Canaan. It's no longer defined by your observance of the

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Jewish feast or by going to temple or by biological bloodline or any of that.

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Now, being a part of the people of Israel is defined by being in union with Jesus Christ by faith.

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Those who rejected him, even natural born Jews, were forfeiting their place in the kingdom of God and forfeiting their citizenship as people, the people of Israel.

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Whether Jew or Gentile, if you wanna be a part of Israel, you need to be grafted in through Christ.

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This is not about replacement of Israel, but about fulfillment and renewal.

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Jesus, Jesus' coming brought condemnation upon the rebellious Jews, and then he reinvigorated what

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Jewishness was supposed to be, bringing about a true Israel, uniting the old covenant faithful people with the new covenant people who are in union with him, uniting them into a one unified people,

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Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free, bringing them all together into a nation called true

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Israel. True Israel, if you're in the Old Testament or if you're in the

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New Testament, all come in through Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus came to do.

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He was the true covenant keeper. While the majority within Israel repeatedly broke covenant and incurred

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God's judgment and wrath, Jesus perfectly upheld every single term of the covenant through his life, through his death, and through his resurrection.

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He is the one, the only one, who deserved the blessings of Deuteronomy 28, the blessings of Leviticus 26, whereas Israel, through their disobedience, deserved the curses of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.

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Jesus' obedience secured eternal blessings for his people and for the whole earth.

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As the true and faithful head of God's covenant community, Jesus creates a people that are no longer marked by ethnic boundaries, but by spiritual allegiance to him, which is called faith.

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This is why Paul calls him the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15, 45, because he's the head of a brand new humanity.

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He's the head of a new humanity who's gonna restore what the first Adam and national

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Israel lost. The church, therefore, is not a secondary people of God that is secondary to the old covenant people of Israel.

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They are the Israel of God. Old Testament and New Testament together in Christ, Galatians 6, 16.

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To be God's people is not about genetics, but it's about spiritual union with the only faithful one, who is

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Jesus. That shift, that clarity that came in, was a radical redefinition of what it meant to belong to the people of God.

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And the church is not an afterthought in that way. It is the fulfillment of God's plan to bless all the nations on earth through the seed of Abraham, Galatians 3, 29.

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And as true heirs of the covenant promises, because we're connected to Christ, we're called to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into light, and we are to shine as lights in a broken world, 1

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Peter 2, 9. The church, therefore, is not just a temporary entity, but a permanent eschatological people of God.

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The new covenant community, marked not by geography, ancestry, or temple sacrifices, is the vehicle by which

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God is going to win the world. And this has great relevance for the modern church.

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When you understand this shift away from old covenant Israel to new covenant church, then you understand that our identity and our mission now are defined by Christ.

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The blessings that are promised to Israel are now ours in Jesus. And the responsibilities that were given to Israel to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests now belong to us, 1

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Peter 2, 9. As the central focus of God's redemptive work, now we are called to reflect his glory in the world, to guard against compromise, and to heed the warnings of scripture, lest we repeat

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Israel's patterns of unbelief and fall into ruin. We are the covenant people of God.

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We are marked, not by outward signs, but by inward faith, where Jesus himself marked the doorpost of our heart with his own blood, which is the blood of the lamb.

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And we will continue successfully extending his kingdom to the ends of the earth, unlike the

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Old Testament Jews who devolved into racism and ethnocentrism.

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That's part three. Part four, the parables of doom.

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The next theme in Matthew's gospel is the parables that Jesus gives, which serve as a series of escalating judgment oracles against Israel.

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And it proves that one of the central premises of the book of Matthew is the downfall and the destruction of Judah.

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Again, far from pointing into the long and distant future, the vast majority of the book is pointing to things that are soon to take place within a biblical generation against the most ferocious enemies of God, not a

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Carpathian Antichrist, but the first century Jews. This is certainly true in the parables that Jesus taught, which make it abundantly clear what our

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Lord was getting at. For instance, we're gonna talk about four parables. There's the parable of the wheat and the tares. And then in chapters 21 and 22, we see three parables sequentially, back to back to back, which prove

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Judah's rebellion against God is so bad that God is going to bring a near -term judgment against her.

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Let me give you those four examples. Number one, the parable of the wheat and the tares. Now, the parable of the wheat and the tares is often applied to all of church history, that all of church history is gonna look like a field and there's gonna be some in the field that are tares and there's gonna be some in the field that are wheat.

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And basically, when the harvest happens, which we assume is the end of human history, the harvest is gonna be that half the world is

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Christian, half the world is pagan, and that's just how it is. There's no way that the world is gonna be entirely

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Christian, right? Well, that's what we assume. But the parable is not talking about the end of the world.

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The parable's talking about the end of the Jewish epoch or the end of the Jewish age. Jesus vividly illustrates that there's gonna be a near -term future separation between true

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Israel, which is the church, and false Israel, which is the tares. And that's gonna happen, what he says, is at the end of the age.

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Now, I'm gonna dive into what the meaning of the end of the age is in just a moment. But for now, it is crucial to clarify that, now, in this context, that doesn't refer to the end of the physical world or the conclusion of human history.

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Instead, it specifically refers to the end of the Jewish age, a period that was gonna culminate in the destruction of the temple, the abrogation of the priesthood, the ending of all the old covenant types and shadows and forms, and the collapse of the entire system.

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Now, what do I mean? I mean that the parable of the wheat and the tares is about a 40 -year period of time between the resurrection of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem, a unique 40 -year period of time, a transitional period of time, when the new covenant was coexisting alongside of the old covenant of the

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Jews. That's why you have them, they look so similar. One is wheat, one is tares.

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The servants don't even know which one is which because both of these systems were used by God to bring people to himself.

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A true Jew is one who recognizes that Christ is the fulfillment of all of those old covenant forms, and a false

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Jew is one who clung to the temple when the true temple had come, who clung to the priesthood when the true priest had come, who clung to the sacrificial system when the true sacrifice had come.

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Do you see how similar biblical Christianity is with biblical Judaism? It's because they're the same thing.

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Judaism always anticipated the coming of the Messiah, and yet these false

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Jews in this 40 -year period of time were claiming that Jesus was not the

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Messiah, they were tares, that his kingdom had not yet come. And what does

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God do? God says, let them grow together. Let them grow together so that the good wheat is not destroyed, and then at the harvest we'll separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the tare.

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Now, you think about it. When a farmer farms, he's not expecting it to be a very long process, it happens within a single season.

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You don't farm a crop of wheat and expect it to last for 20, 30, 40 years.

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Well, in the same way, the expectation that Jesus has on this parable is not that this is gonna be a long period of time, including the entirety of the church age, this is gonna be a very short period of time, a unique period of time, where false

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Jews and true Jews are gonna be growing up together at the same time, and at the end of those four decades that Christianity and Judaism coexisted and stood beside of each other, and Christians continued to live and worship and interact in a society that was still largely governed by the old covenant forms, and where the temple stood and the priesthood still functioned and all of the festivals were still being observed, at the end of that overlapping time between the old and the new covenant, the old covenant was gonna be ripped out, the new covenant was gonna be established, the final separation was gonna come.

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One was gonna be thrown into the barns of God and one was gonna be thrown into the fire in AD 70, in the destruction of Jerusalem.

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The wheat symbolized true Jews who embraced Jesus Christ as their promised

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Messiah. The tares represented the Jews, the false

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Jews, who hated Christ, who killed God's son, who persecuted

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God's people. And at the harvest at the end of the Jewish age, they would be the ones, the tares, who would be cast into the fires that God commissioned

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Rome to start. Therefore, the end of the age was not the end of the world, but the definitive end of the old covenant era.

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It was the termination of the Jewish nation's unique covenant status and the complete removal of the old covenant forms like the temple, the priesthood, the sacrificial system and all of that, and it was an ushering in of an unrivaled and unchallenged reality of Jesus's new covenant kingdom where it would reign forever.

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It would be the only path to God, the way, the truth, the life. While both the temple and the church were standing side by side, there was confusion in the world on where do we go to know the one and only

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God. So God put away all those old covenant forms so no one would ever be confused.

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You must come to God through Christ and you do that by going to his church who will share with you the gospel and who will feed you with the nourishment that Christ provided and that you will understand the gospel so that you can now be a part of his covenant kingdom.

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That's what the parable of the wheat and the tares is all about. The coexisting of the wheat and the tares for 40 years, for a single harvest season until the climactic judgment occurs when the faithful farmer gathered up his people, the church, put them into his barns and separated out the unrepentant and threw them into the fire.

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That's the first parable. The second parable is even more clear and that's the parable of the two sons in Matthew 21, 28 through 32.

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This parable begins a trilogy of judgment parables and Jesus tells us in this parable of a father who asks his two sons to work in his vineyard.

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The first son initially refuses but he later repents and he obeys the father.

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The second son agrees and even says, yes, father, I'll do what you say but he never ends up going.

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Now this story is a direct indictment of the religious leaders and the

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Jews who claimed that they were obeying God but they were the ones who rejected John the Baptist, they rejected

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Torah and by extension, they rejected Christ himself. The first son said,

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I'm not gonna go but then he repents and he obeyed. That symbolized the tax collectors and the sinners who though they lived an entire life of profligate sin, they repented at the preaching of John the

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Baptist and they came and actually ended up obeying the son.

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The second son who professed obedience but did nothing, well, that represented the Jewish leaders who outwardly appeared faithful but inwardly their hearts were full of dead men's bones.

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Jesus ended that parable with a striking reversal. He says that it's not you who's gonna enter the kingdom of God, it's the sinners, the tax collectors and the prostitutes who are gonna enter the kingdom of God before you which exposed the hardness of heart and the depravity of the

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Jewish people showcasing that they were going to be cut out of God's covenant blessings.

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That's the second parable. The third parable is the parable of the wicked tenants. This is the second of a triad of parables and it's in Matthew 21, 33 through 46 and here

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Jesus is ratcheting up the intensity. He tells us of a landowner who is God who rents out a vineyard which is

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Israel to a group of tenants, the Jews and when the landowner sends his servants, the prophets to collect the harvest, the tenants beat stone and kill them which is precisely what the

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Jews have been doing all along. God would send them prophets to tell them to bring about the harvest.

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God planted Israel as a vineyard. Why? You don't plant a vineyard unless you wanna harvest.

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So God was sending the prophets to the Jewish leaders. The ones who were responsible to help the

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Jewish people cultivate them and bear fruit and yet when God sent them the prophets, they killed them.

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They stole them, they murdered them. So finally, the landowner, again, who is God, he sends them his own son reasoning that they're gonna respect my son, right?

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But instead, the tenants, the Jewish leaders, the Jewish aristocracy, they seize the son of God.

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They kill him and they attempt to take the inheritance for themselves.

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The parable is about a group of men who did not steward a vineyard correctly and instead of it bearing fruit, you had nothing but withered and dead, and withered and dead vines.

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You had nothing but withered and dead vines. And when the landowner sent his own son to go and check in on the progress to see what was going on, they killed him.

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Why did they kill him? Because they knew that they were supposed to be cultivating fruit and they knew that they hadn't and so they killed him thinking that they would steal the inheritance for themselves and if they could just continue enacting their failed policies, their failed religious reforms, their failed leadership, then eventually maybe they could make this vineyard bear fruit.

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That is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. The Pharisees killed Christ because they knew

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Christ was taking the leadership of the kingdom away from them and Christ himself was gonna be the leader of now the kingdom of God and that he was gonna be the one to make it bear fruit and he was gonna punish them for their wicked leadership that had caused the kingdom of God to wither and they killed him for it.

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And those who were listening to this parable that day actually unwittingly and ironically pronounced their own judgment.

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Jesus asked them, what do you think the landowner should do with those wicked servants and the

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Pharisees responded, well he should bring those wretches to a wretched end and he should rent out his vineyard to other tenants who will bear its fruit,

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Matthew 21, 41. They just put the noose around their own neck and kicked the block out from under their feet and now they're done.

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Jesus confirmed that they spoke truth when he said the kingdom of God is gonna be taken away from you and it's gonna be given to a people who produce its fruit,

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Matthew 21, 43. The meaning of this is unmistakable. The Jewish leaders are the wicked tenants and their rejection of Christ is the rejection of the landowner's son and they, because they have done this, are gonna lose their privileged status as the covenant people of God, the recipients of the vineyard's blessings and they are going to be annihilated.

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Those wretches are gonna be brought to a wretched end. That's the third parable. The fourth parable, the parable of the wedding feast is the most clear out of all of them and it helps set the stage for the

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Olivet discourse that follows immediately after. From the telling of the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22 and to Jesus teaching his disciples in Matthew 24, the

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Olivet discourse, is probably only 30 minutes difference in real life time.

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Jesus was in Jerusalem giving that parable, then Matthew 23, he gives seven covenantal woes, then he walks out of the city with his disciples and he tells them the exact same thing, that this king is gonna destroy the city.

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Now, let's look at the parable for a second. Matthew 22, one through 14 is a story about a king who represents

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God and he invites a group of guests to a wedding feast to celebrate the wedding of his own son.

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But the invited guests, they show contempt for his invitation and no one goes to the wedding.

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Some go to their farms and others go to their businesses, others mistreat and kill the king's messengers who were the prophets and the apostles and all of this, the king was throwing the greatest party of his entire life, the party for his son and the people that he invited refused to come.

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This is exactly what happened. God had brought his son to earth and he had invited his people, the

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Jews, to come and they refused and some even killed his own servants, some even killed his own apostles and we know that from the last parable that they decided to even to kill his own son and this enraged the king in this parable, the wedding feast and it says that the king will send his armies to destroy those murderers and to burn their city to the ground,

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Matthew 22, seven. This parable has been overlooked by so many people.

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We've read it as a general call to repentance or else the king is going to be enraged and he's gonna spiritually, metaphorically burn down our city.

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This is a parable Jesus gave to the Pharisees 40 years before their city was burned to the ground because they refused the invitation that God gave them for his son's wedding.

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The king then, after he destroys those murderers, he gives the invitation to others representing the

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Gentiles and the sinners and the tax collectors and everyone on earth who would be invited to this banquet to come in and celebrate the son.

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That's what the parable is about. The downfall and destruction of those who thought they were God's people and the invitation of the world who would now become the people of God.

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This parable is not merely a story of rejection, it's a prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction.

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The king burning the city is clear. This is the Roman armies that God would raise up to raise the city of Jerusalem until there was nothing left.

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The Jewish leader's rejection of Christ and the persecution of his messengers is gonna bring about the ruin of their city and the end of their covenantal privileges.

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Each of these four parables are building upon the last and they're creating a crescendo of judgment that the nation is under the doom of Almighty God.

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And these parables serve as a prophetic warning that Israel's rejection of Jesus was gonna lead to their catastrophic destruction.

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The parables aren't just moral lessons, they're divine pronouncement of doom. And they're spelling out the downfall that was soon gonna take place on the

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Jewish nation and how it was going to bring about the establishment of a new covenant people. That's part four.

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Part five, the woes and the curses. As Jesus neared his own death, the situation in Jerusalem was getting worse.

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It was escalating and it's because Jesus was entering into fierce discussions and enunciations with the

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Pharisees that remind us of the ancient covenantal curses that are written about in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

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If you haven't read those, I would even pause this video right now and go read Deuteronomy 28,

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Leviticus 26. It is unbelievable how clear these passages are and how clearly it is that Jesus is referencing them.

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See, under the Mosaic covenant, Israel was warned that their persistent rebellion and ongoing idolatry and the rejection of God's messengers were gonna have devastating consequences.

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Their land would be ravaged, their people would be slaughtered and their cities were gonna be left a smoldering, desolate pile of burning rubble.

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Now, as Israel's true and final prophet, John the

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Baptist comes and warns them, they don't listen. As the true prophet of prophets comes,

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Jesus, they don't listen. And now, when we get to Matthew 23,

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Jesus is invoking the promised curses from the Old Testament.

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He's turning the on switch, saying that now is the time that these covenant curses are going to come.

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All of the stored up wrath is finally gonna be let loose. Jesus is telling us in Matthew 23 that the time for repentance has run out.

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Each curse and each woe that he pronounced, all seven of them are building upon the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness, the destruction that's gonna come on that people for their crimes against their

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God and the end of the Jewish nation as the covenant entity, the covenant recipients, the covenant inheritors, the end of that was imminent.

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Their rejection of Jesus over centuries, their rejection of God, their infidelity was going to bring the entire weight of God's wrath upon them.

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And we see this in a couple different ways, not just in Matthew 23. Let's look at an example outside of Matthew 23, the cursing of the fig tree.

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On his way to Jerusalem in Matthew 21, Jesus enacts a dramatic sign of judgment.

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He sees a fig tree covered in leaves, but bearing no fruit, and he curses it saying, may no fruit ever come from you again.

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And immediately the tree withered, Matthew 21, 19. Now, this symbolic act is not just a display of his anger because he was hangry.

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No, it was a lived out parable that was drawn from Israel's prophetic past.

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See in the Old Testament, the fig tree symbolized the nation of Israel and its health was represented by fruitfulness and God's blessing.

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But it's barrenness always signified its spiritual decay and its impending judgment,

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Jeremiah 8, 13, Hosea 9, 10, Micah 7, 1. Now, I want you to imagine the scene.

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Jesus rides into Jerusalem in Matthew 21, and what do they offer him? They don't offer him fruit. They offer him leaves.

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They spread the leaves out on the road. And he came to a city that gave him just leaves.

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But no fruit. Then he goes to the temple and the place where the fruit of God is supposed to be manifest.

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And he sees that the people were so hateful in their idolatry that they were not allowing

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Gentiles to even have a place to pray because they had set up their court where they were selling animals and they were exchanging money.

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And the Gentiles had no place to worship God. And what does Jesus do? He comes to a fruitless temple that offered him nothing but leaves.

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And he overturned the tables and he overturned it. He chased them out with bull whips.

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And then the very next morning, he comes to a tree that was bearing no fruit, but only leaves.

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Do you see the point? He goes to the fruitless city. He goes to the fruitless temple, and now he's cursing a fruitless tree.

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The point could not be more obvious. The leaves of this fig tree promised fruit just as the religious leaders were projecting this outward semblance of piety.

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But upon closer inspection in the city and in the temple and upon this tree, there was nothing left but emptiness.

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Jesus' curse is not a random malediction. It's covenant language about desolation and barrenness that's found in Leviticus 26.

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There, God warns Israel that if they persist in their disobedience, that I will make your land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled.

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Leviticus 26 .32. The fig tree, with its outward appearance of life, but its inward disease of barrenness represents the spiritual and moral decay of Jerusalem and its temple, which had become a den of thieves and a place where the

01:04:45

Gentiles no longer could come to pray. Jesus' curse signals that just like the fig tree was withering under his word, so too the temple and the entire

01:04:58

Jewish nation was gonna be cut off from God's blessings. And we know that this is what Jesus is saying because he says right after that, when the disciples are confused by that, they're like, how did this happen?

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He says, I tell you the truth. If you say to this mountain, be ripped up and thrown into the sea, then it will happen.

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Jesus is not telling people to say, well, if you just have big enough faith, I can go to Mount Washington, which is not too far from my house, and I can say to it, be gone, and it'll be gone.

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Or you, let's say you live in Washington State. You could go to Mount Rainier, and you could say, whoop, be gone.

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That's not what Jesus is saying. He's not saying if you just have big faith, you can move big things. That's not what he's doing.

01:05:38

He curses a fig tree that symbolically represents Jerusalem, and then he says,

01:05:43

I tell you the truth. If you say to this mountain, which mountain? The one that he's looking at.

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You remember, he woke up that morning in Bethany, which is about five miles outside of Jerusalem.

01:05:55

They're walking towards Jerusalem when they curse this fig tree, and as they're walking towards Jerusalem, Jesus looks up at Jerusalem, the city that sat on top of a mountain, and he curses the fig tree, and he says to his disciples, look, even if I say to that mountain, the one that Jerusalem is sitting on, be ripped up and thrown into the sea, it will happen, and it did.

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The Romans came upon the mountain of Jerusalem, and they ripped it up, and they tore away its treasures, and what did they do?

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They put them on their boats, and they sailed back to Rome. The mountain of Jerusalem was cast into the sea.

01:06:38

That's what the parable is all about. Now, that's the first sign of woe that we see in the book of Matthew is this cursing of the fig tree.

01:06:43

The second is the woes that he gives against the scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23, where he delivers a blistering series of seven woes against them, and this chapter reads like a judicial indictment, like the judge has come to deliver the verdict, and that's exactly what it is.

01:07:00

Jesus is coming like a covenant lawyer to bring the case against them, the case of Deuteronomy 28, the case of Leviticus 26.

01:07:10

That's why I said you should pause this video and read those chapters because Jesus is bringing that language of blessing and curses that are laid out for obedience and disobedience.

01:07:21

He's bringing that language of woe to the blind gods, to the serpents, to the brood of vipers, to the people who have broke the covenant with God.

01:07:32

This language is more than just invective. It's warnings that Moses originally gave to the people of Israel to help keep them away from idolatry and apostasy.

01:07:41

For instance, Deuteronomy 28 warned that if Israel rejected God, then the

01:07:47

Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and rebuke, and all you undertake to do until you are destroyed and you perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds,

01:07:58

Deuteronomy 28 20. Jesus pronounces these very curses upon the scribes and the

01:08:04

Pharisees who were the embodiment of Israel's national rebellion. He accuses them of blocking the way to the kingdom of heaven from the poor and from the weak and from those who are seeking it,

01:08:16

Matthew 23 13. He says that they were the ones who obsessed over the trivial matters of the law while neglecting the weightier matters like justice and mercy and faithfulness,

01:08:26

Matthew 23 23. This neglect is exactly what Moses was talking about in Deuteronomy 28, where Israel's disregard for God's law was gonna bring about divine retribution.

01:08:38

And that's where Jesus finally, at the end of Matthew 23, says that all of these things, all of what things?

01:08:45

His seven woes, which represent the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, all of these things, all these curses are gonna come on this generation,

01:08:59

Matthew 23 36. He's drawing a direct line to the covenant curses for apostasy that are given in the

01:09:06

Old Testament. For instance, Deuteronomy 28 49 through 52 says that a siege, that there was gonna be a siege that was enacted upon Israel when foreign nations are gonna surround the city and they're gonna tear down their high walls.

01:09:17

Your high and your fortified walls in which you trusted are gonna come down throughout your land, Deuteronomy 28 52.

01:09:23

That's exactly what happened. Jesus is saying that you trusted in your fortified walls,

01:09:29

Jerusalem, and yet I'm gonna send one who's gonna tear them down. Jesus is warning them that these curses that have been held back for centuries by the sheer mercy of God are about to fall in full measure upon the generation that rejected the

01:09:45

Christ. The woes against the scribes and the Pharisees are a pronouncement of doom, signaling that Israel's time of grace is over and that the time of their curses has come.

01:09:58

That's the second thing. Now, I need to bring up one more point on Matthew 23 because it is striking.

01:10:04

Jesus's indictment reaches a crescendo, an apex, if you will, when he declares that all of the blood or all of the guilt from all of the blood from righteous

01:10:14

Abel to Zechariah, son of Barakai, who was murdered between the pillars of the temple, that's gonna be charged against that generation,

01:10:23

Matthew 23 35. That means that all of God's fury against the

01:10:28

Jews for all of their crimes from the very beginning, all the way back to Cain murdering Abel that's been stored up in a vat of wrath and all of God's wrath is about to be poured out on them.

01:10:42

Leviticus 26 39 warns us that if Israel persists in their sin, those who are left will rot away because of their iniquity in the land of their enemies.

01:10:55

And because of the iniquity of their forefathers, they will rot away with them.

01:11:02

This principle of cumulative guilt means that every subsequent generation is passing along their guilt because God has not visited it.

01:11:12

God has not punished it. God has not done what Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 says. Every generation's guilt was being handed to the next generation in the same way that every generation's gross spending has been handed down to us.

01:11:27

However big the national debt is, I think it raises by trillions every year, it's been handed to us and our children in the same way.

01:11:36

The guilt of every generation of Jews that defied covenant with God has been passed along and passed along and passed along until now the music has stopped and they're the ones left with the hot potato.

01:11:50

By rejecting Jesus, the Jewish leaders have become the ultimate heirs of this generational cumulative guilt of blood.

01:12:00

They're not just repeating the sins of their ancestors. No, they're surpassing them. They're inheriting their punishment so that the fullest revelation of the father's wrath that has ever been poured out would be poured out on them.

01:12:17

The blood of the prophets will be poured out on them. The consequences of covenant infidelity poured out on them.

01:12:23

The sieges, the destruction, the burnings, the cannibalism, all of the pronouncement of blood guilt was being poured out on them because they are the unique generation that not only rejected

01:12:42

God when he came in the flesh, which is why they inherited all the guilt of all the people.

01:12:49

They not only rejected God in the flesh, but they killed him and nailed him to a cross.

01:12:57

And then when he rose from the dead, they lied about it to try to persuade people not to believe in it.

01:13:03

And then when the people who were called by his name, who were going and proclaiming the good news of his resurrection, instead of believing it, they killed them, they martyred them.

01:13:13

They chased them down in every city that they could with an irrational kind of hatred for all these crimes.

01:13:24

The covenant curses were inevitable. And because of that, after delivering these woes,

01:13:32

Jesus's tone shifts from fury, from scathing rebuke to sorrow.

01:13:42

Jesus laments over the city of Jerusalem, weeping as he says these words, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones all those who are sent to her.

01:13:54

How often have I wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathers her chicks, but you were unwilling,

01:14:05

Matthew 23, 37. Jesus's lament is not just for the city.

01:14:12

He's not just sad that it's architecture is gonna be destroyed. Jesus is heartbroken that after all the prophets,

01:14:23

John the Baptist, and after even the ministry of Christ, they persisted in their rebellion. And because of that, their temple, their priesthood, and their law would be ripped out of their hands and they would be destroyed.

01:14:38

Jesus said, behold, your house is being left to you desolate Matthew 23, 38.

01:14:46

The house that he's referring to is the temple. It's the visible sign of God's presence with his people on earth and declared for Jesus to declare that it would be left desolate is to pronounce that God's glory has departed and that God would no longer dwell in that temple made with hands, that now he would dwell in his people.

01:15:11

This desolation is the final curse of Leviticus 26. This is the final point where I will not waste your cities and I will make your sanctuary desolate.

01:15:22

Leviticus 26, 31. Do you see the parallel? Jesus isn't pronouncing novel ideas.

01:15:30

He's saying what Leviticus and Deuteronomy have already said that your sanctuary will be left desolate because of you, because of your crimes against God.

01:15:41

Jesus's words are the final warning that Jerusalem's fate is sealed. Its destruction is inevitable.

01:15:48

Its covenant privileges have been revoked and its desolation is gonna happen within a single generation.

01:15:53

That is what Matthew 23 is about.

01:16:00

And that means that that's exactly what Matthew 24 must be about. Jesus does not leave the city of Jerusalem pronouncing its desolation and then he decides to opine about eschatology in the modern era.

01:16:18

Instead, he leaves Jerusalem pronouncing its desolation. The disciples are confused about it and then he gives them 34 verses on how this is going to take place.

01:16:31

What's gonna be the sign that it's gonna happen? What are gonna be the evidences that it's gonna happen? And he goes through the different things like the false prophets, the famines, the earthquakes, the people of Israel growing more cold in their love for God and growing in their hatred of God.

01:16:49

He talks about the abomination of desolation. He talks about various different signs that what he just said about Jerusalem in Matthew 23 is really gonna happen.

01:17:00

And at the end of those signs, like a woman in labor, and he's going to throw away the afterbirth of Jerusalem and he's gonna bring home the covenant people of God and he's gonna establish them as the only way that the world may know him.

01:17:18

Now, before we end our time today, I wanna talk about two more proofs. These are gonna be a little bit quicker, but they're two phrases, two words that are gonna guarantee that we're reading all of these things correctly.

01:17:29

The first is gonna be the phrase the end of the age and the second is gonna be the word generation.

01:17:35

So let's look at those things really quickly. Part six, the end of the

01:17:40

Jewish age. Now, we've talked about a lot of proofs so far and Matthew has certainly stacked his gospel in this direction so that we know that it's not just a collection of parables or moral teachings and it's not just a book about salvation that comes to the people of God, which it is, we know that, but it's also a theological narrative that's building and crescendoing towards the judgment that's gonna be coming on Jerusalem.

01:18:04

This isn't speculation, I've just proved it with five very intentional and deliberate proofs.

01:18:10

Now, I wanna look at the term the end of the age, and this will be our sixth proof. The term age in Greek, aion, appears repeatedly throughout the book of Matthew and it always has an eschatological flavor to it.

01:18:24

It's not referring to the end of the physical world, but to the termination of the old covenant order.

01:18:30

When Jesus says the end of the age, he's not talking about the end of human history. He's not talking about a time period when the world gets ended, he's talking about the end of an age.

01:18:42

What kind of age? The Jewish age. The period that was defined by worshiping in a temple, that's the

01:18:48

Jewish age. The period that was defined by the Mosaic law and the national identity rooted in Jerusalem or the fact that you had to travel on a pilgrimage to the city, to the temple in order to make a sacrifice, that's the

01:19:04

Jewish age. Well, in 80, 70, when the temple was destroyed,

01:19:11

Jesus was gonna bring an end to the Jewish age. He was gonna bring an end to the old era and the old way of doing things and he was going to bring about a new age, the age of the church.

01:19:25

So the word age is often used in that way. It has an eschatological use.

01:19:32

For instance, Matthew uses the word aion 17 times pointing to a decisive covenantal shift away from the old into the new.

01:19:42

Rather than indicating the end of world history, the term aion signifies the termination of the

01:19:49

Jewish epoch. For instance, in Matthew 12, 32, Jesus contrasts this age, the age of the

01:19:56

Jews, which is when Jesus was living, with the age to come, which is not heaven.

01:20:02

It's this age that we're currently living in right now, the age of the church. This age refers to the

01:20:08

Jewish age under the old covenant, while the age to come refers to the messianic era under the rule of Christ, where now we are living and working by the power of the

01:20:18

Holy Spirit. We are a new people defined not by our ethnicity, but by our faith in Jesus. That is the new age that Jesus is talking about.

01:20:26

The destruction of the temple, therefore, and the collapse of the old covenant system are the end of the

01:20:32

Jewish age and the dawn of the Christian age.

01:20:38

And this end of the age shows up in the parables as well. For instance, several parables in Matthew build towards this eschatological age.

01:20:46

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, as we've already discussed, Jesus speaks about the separation of the wheat and the tares.

01:20:53

When does it occur? It occurs in the end of the age, aion. Again, that word doesn't mean the end of the world.

01:20:59

It means the end of an era. What era? The Jewish era, the old covenant era, the

01:21:05

Old Testament era, the temple era, all of that. Again, it's not about the end of the world.

01:21:12

It's about the end of the old covenant. And the separation that Jesus is talking about is gonna occur at the end of that, the end of the temple.

01:21:20

When the faithful remnant of true Jews are gonna be preserved and the unrepentant

01:21:25

Jewish nation are gonna face the fiery judgment of AD 70. Similarly, in the parable of the dragnet,

01:21:32

Matthew 13, 47 through 50, Jesus describes the final sorting of the fish, not at the end of human history, but at the end of the

01:21:41

Jewish age. The righteous Jews, the ones who believe in Jesus are gonna be separated away from the wicked

01:21:46

Jews who do not believe in Christ at the end of the Jewish age. After Jesus gives seven covenantal woes in the city of Jerusalem, the disciples ask the question,

01:21:59

Jesus, when are these things gonna happen? And what is the sign of the end of the age? They're not talking about the end of the world.

01:22:07

That's why you need to understand what this word means, because the disciples were not associating the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem with the end of the world.

01:22:16

That wouldn't have made any sense to them. Jesus, tell us when this temple is gonna be destroyed. And while you're at it, please, just give us a quick lesson on when the end of the world is gonna happen.

01:22:25

That's not what they're talking about. They understood that the end of the age corresponded to the end of the old covenant system.

01:22:35

And Jesus' response demonstrates that he understood that as well. He says that the end of the Jewish era was gonna end with a period of false messiahs, wars, famines, persecutions, the abomination of desolation, and it was all gonna culminate in the temple's destruction.

01:22:49

Why? Because that's the end of the Jewish age. The temple is the grand finale of the end of the

01:22:56

Jewish age. Because without a temple, you don't have a Jewish age. He says this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

01:23:05

That means that the end of the Jewish age happened before the end of that generation.

01:23:12

What we're saying is that all of Matthew's parables, all of Jesus' prophecies,

01:23:17

John the Baptist's warning, all of it is a climactic pointing to the destruction of Jerusalem.

01:23:24

The separation of the wheat and tares, the parable of the wedding feast, the warnings of the unfaithful tenants, they all point to the end, not of the world, but of the

01:23:33

Jewish era. The destruction of the temple wasn't just a random political event that us

01:23:40

Christians today have all but forgotten about, because I almost hear no one talking about how important this is.

01:23:49

But it's right there in the text. The end of the Jewish age, the end of the sacrifices, the end of the priesthood, the end of the temple, all of that's gonna be rendered obsolete.

01:23:57

Why? Because Jesus is bringing about a new age of new creation.

01:24:04

He would not allow that temple to stand and rival the gospel that he delivered.

01:24:10

Because that temple now is a relic of the past. That temple doesn't mean anything. Because now

01:24:15

Jesus is our true temple, and now the Holy Spirit doesn't dwell in the Holy of Holies. The Holy Spirit dwells in us.

01:24:23

So he had to put that old thing away. He had to put it on the shelf of a museum somewhere, because he was bringing his messianic kingdom.

01:24:34

By understanding what the end of the age means, the word aion means, we can see that he's not talking about the end of the world.

01:24:42

He's talking about a local near -term judgment on the old redemptive system, because he's bringing a new and a better kingdom.

01:24:51

Now, that's the first phrase that we need to look at if we're gonna continue to confirm that this is what we're talking about.

01:24:57

And so far, I think the evidence is undeniable. The final thing that I want us to look at is the word generation.

01:25:03

And that will be part seven, the doom on this generation. Now, as we trace

01:25:10

Jesus's use of the word generation throughout the gospel, we see a very consistent and sobering pattern that emerges.

01:25:18

It's as if Matthew is steadily tightening the cord around the people of Israel, pulling tighter and tighter with every use of the word generation until it finally snaps in a pivotal moment of judgment.

01:25:30

Every reference to the word generation in this book serves as another knot in the cord, emphasizing that something unprecedented is looming upon the horizon.

01:25:42

From the earliest chapters of Matthew, Jesus singles out that generation.

01:25:48

He uses the word generation to talk about not a distant people, but a people who are standing right in front of him, a people who are repeatedly breaking the covenant with God.

01:26:01

And he leaves no ambiguity about the fact that he actually means this. He's not making a vague reference to modern day

01:26:09

America. He's not making a vague reference to some future people in some future land.

01:26:16

He is looking right at the people he's talking to, looking them in the eye and calling them out that they are the generation that is about to perish.

01:26:27

And then on and on and on, he builds this tension throughout the book, using the term again and again and again, without ever using it in the way that dispensationals and pre -millennials say that he does.

01:26:39

He is not talking about a distant people. He's talking about that people, that generation, the generation of the

01:26:45

Jews. For instance, in Matthew chapter 11, Jesus compares this generation, the people who are standing right in front of him to spoiled children who refuse to play any game that doesn't fit their fancy.

01:26:58

John the Baptist had come preaching repentance with a stern demeanor, and they accused him of being possessed by a demon.

01:27:05

And then Jesus arrives proclaiming grace and joy, and they label him as a glutton and a drunkard. But the problem,

01:27:10

Jesus explains, is not with the messengers, it's with that generation. Like petulant children, they've become impossible to please, unwilling to hear the law or the gospel.

01:27:21

That's the first usage in Matthew 11. Look at Matthew 12. The rejection intensifies.

01:27:26

Some of the Pharisees and the scribes were unmoved by Jesus's miracles, and yet they were demanding that he give them another sign.

01:27:34

So what does Jesus respond? He says an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah, Matthew 12, 39.

01:27:44

He compares that generation to Nineveh, a pagan city that repented after the not so great preaching of Jonah.

01:27:55

Yet it was this generation, the one that was standing right in front of him, who saw something far greater than Jonah, and yet they remained unrepentant.

01:28:03

He goes on even further to say that the men of Nineveh and the queen of Sheba, who traveled far and wide to hear

01:28:10

Solomon's wisdom, was gonna rise up and condemn this generation,

01:28:16

Matthew 12, 41 through 42. Do you see how he's using the word? He's not using it to talk about distant people.

01:28:21

He's using it to talk about that people. He paints a picture of a courtroom scene where the Gentile nations are gonna stand up and point their finger at Israel and say, you are guilty, you are the man.

01:28:35

But he doesn't stop there. He tells a parable of a demon -possessed man, and when the demon is cast out of the man, he's swept clean for a little while, only for seven demons to come back later, more wicked than itself, and leave the man in a far worse condition than he was before,

01:28:51

Matthew 12, 43 through 45. What's he saying? He's saying, this is a direct quote from Jesus, this is the way it's gonna be with this evil generation.

01:29:00

Jesus is not telling us that make sure that when you're casting out demons that you don't allow seven more to come in.

01:29:08

In a general sense, he's saying that this generation is the one that Jesus came and swept it clean, and because of their wickedness, they're gonna be in a worse state than they were before because seven demons are gonna come and overtake them and crush them.

01:29:25

His warning's unmistakable. Israel had experienced a brief revival under the ministry of John and Jesus, and they were swept clean, but now because they rejected

01:29:34

Christ, their empty hearts are gonna be filled with something seven times worse and even darker.

01:29:41

This continues on to Matthew 16, when the Pharisees and the Sadducees again ask Jesus for a sign, and he reiterates his earlier rebuke, an evil and adulterous generation seek after a sign, and the only sign that's gonna be given to it is the sign of Jonah, Matthew 16, four.

01:30:02

His words are carrying the weight of judgment. He's suggesting that the window of opportunity for repentance is closing, and yet they remain blind.

01:30:13

They remain blind to the times they were living in, and they were unable to discern the ominous signs of the coming storm.

01:30:21

Even his own disciples get this kind of rebuke in Matthew 17 when they struggle to cast out a demon.

01:30:26

Jesus laments, and he says, you unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I put up with you?

01:30:33

Matthew 17, 17, which means that this entire generation had a cloud cast over it, that they were the generation that was facing the destruction, and unless they repent and turn to Christ, the entire nation, his disciples included, would be implicated in the indictment.

01:30:50

Thank God the disciples repented. Thank God many people repented, but the entire generation was under the cloud of God's coming storm of wrath, and all of this builds towards a devastating climax in Matthew 23 where, as we've already said,

01:31:07

Jesus pronounces seven woes against the scribes and the Pharisees, and it reads, like we said before, like a legal indictment where he condemns those hypocrites and those blind guides, and he says that I say to you truly that all of these things are gonna come on this generation, but Matthew does something unique here.

01:31:27

He also uses a powerful literary technique called an inclusio, which links Matthew 23 and Matthew 24 together, which forms a complete unit.

01:31:35

What do I mean? An inclusio is when you use one word and very quickly after that, or very soon after that, use the same word, which shows that you're forming a unit of thought.

01:31:44

He begins by quoting Matthew 23, 36, that all of these things are gonna come upon this generation, and then in Matthew 24, he bookends that by saying, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

01:31:57

All these things are gonna come on this generation, and this generation will not perish until everything that God is bringing against them comes.

01:32:05

This means that Jesus is bracketing Matthew 23 and Matthew 24, which means that he's saying the same thing in both.

01:32:13

To my dispensational brothers, to my premillennial brothers, Jesus is not cursing Jerusalem in Matthew 23, and then talking about what's happening in the

01:32:22

World Economic Forum in Matthew 24. That's foolishness. He is saying that Matthew 23 and Matthew 24 go together, and within a single generation, the judgment of Jerusalem is coming.

01:32:37

When premillennials and dispensationals tell you that the word generation in this passage means a far off people in a distant future, which is actually what they say.

01:32:48

They say that that word generation here doesn't mean that generation. It means some other people. When they tell you that, you can smile at them, and you can point them to what

01:32:57

I just said about inclusios, and you could say to them something to the effect of, no way, Jose. It's as if Matthew is shouting to the reader, don't miss this.

01:33:10

Everything Jesus is saying in Matthew 24 must be understood in what he said in Matthew 23. The woes, the laments, the declaration of desolation is all setting the stage for the

01:33:22

Olivet Discourse to say the exact same thing. The destruction of Jerusalem is coming, and the signs of the end are about the destruction of Jerusalem, not the end of the world.

01:33:34

All of these things are gonna happen to that generation, and that generation will not pass away until all of those things happen.

01:33:41

Now, let's get to our conclusion. Conclusion. Today, we have traced the narrative of Matthew's Gospel to show how every chapter, every parable, every confrontation, every prophecy, every character is pointing to a singular climactic event which will end with the ending of Jerusalem.

01:34:08

We've seen how Matthew's themes of Christ's kingship and John the Baptist's preaching and Israel's rebellion and all of that are culminating in a coming judgment, a destruction that took place actually in history in the year 70

01:34:23

AD. This is not just a historical event, but it's a decisive end to the entire

01:34:30

Old Covenant order, and it was the beginning of the unrivaled reign of Christ on earth in his new covenant kingdom.

01:34:39

Now, with that foundation laid, I think we've proved it. Tell me in the comments section if you think that I've proved it or not, but I think that I've proved that the book of Matthew is about the doom of Jerusalem.

01:34:49

So with that context laid, now we have a clear context for understanding what Matthew 24 is all about, and in the weeks ahead, we're going to go into Matthew 24 and we're gonna look at point by point what he's saying.

01:35:04

Now, we're not gonna spend a ton of time on Matthew 24, but we are gonna cover the material and we are gonna make sure that we understand definitively that Matthew 24 is about the end of Jerusalem and that Matthew 24 is basically saying the exact same thing as Revelation because once we have this solid in our minds,

01:35:24

Revelation is going to be easy. It's gonna go from being the hardest book in the Bible to something that you can understand and you're gonna be joyful about it and you're gonna say, man, this makes so much sense, but we have to do the hard work of digging it all out before we begin.

01:35:39

So that's the end of our episode today. Again, join me in the comment section and tell me what you thought.

01:35:45

Tell me if you understand the points, if you have questions, I'd love to help answer those in there.

01:35:50

And thank you so much for watching another episode of the podcast. I'm gonna leave you with a question that I want you to wrestle with before next week.

01:35:58

If Matthew 24 and Revelation are talking about the same thing, which we're proving that it is, and if everything

01:36:04

Jesus said was going to happen actually did happen in the first century, then does your view of Revelation need to change?

01:36:12

Could it be that most of what we've been taught about this book being about the end of the world or about the end of human history or just in general about the end times is actually wrong?

01:36:25

With that, come back next week as we're gonna talk about it and we're gonna talk about things that might just change the way that you read

01:36:32

Revelation forever. So until then, thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for subscribing.

01:36:38

Thank you to my prod squad members. I really appreciate that. If you'd like to join the prod squad and become a member of this channel, you can go to the channel and you can click on the membership tab.

01:36:49

I've also got a link to that in our description today. Again, thank you so much. God bless you and I'll see you again next time on the podcast.