140. The Whore, Jerusalem

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The church became the new generation, the new people of God charged with the task of taking the gospel to every corner of the globe and establishing this world as a promised land where Christ would be preached, where Christ would be obeyed, and where the law of God would be the law of the land.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 140,

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

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We are in a brand new series on the book of Revelation, which is really exciting.

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To kick off this new series and to make sure that we understand this most complicated book really well, we're gonna be looking into Matthew 24, which is another eschatological passage which says roughly the same thing as Revelation, but in a much more straightforward way.

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And we've been doing that now for three episodes, this is episode four. So we've been diving in and today is no different.

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We're gonna be diving into another very fascinating episode that we have today. But before we do that,

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I just wanna say welcome to everyone who's been watching the show and to everyone.

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If this is your first time, thank you so much. If you've been here for a while, thank you so much. Welcome to all and thank you for all of the ways that you've supported this channel.

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We've had some great milestones since last time I published an episode. I took last week off because my parents were in town from North Carolina and I just honestly needed a well -needed rest.

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We have two episodes this week. Viva La Reformacion is already out. This episode's coming out, obviously, whenever you see it.

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But since I've been gone, the podcast passed 250 ,000 views between our

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YouTube videos and our shorts and all of that. That's a quarter of a million views, which is incredible and it's all thanks to you.

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Also, at the time of this recording, we just crossed 1 ,500 subscribers, which is so cool because when we began this year, we had like almost zero subscribers.

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We weren't using our YouTube channel and I had this big, hairy, audacious goal that if I brought my audio podcast, it was on Spotify and Apple, if I brought it over to YouTube, then maybe, just maybe, by the end of the year, we would have 1 ,500 subscribers.

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It was kind of one of those goals that you make where you're like, I don't think this is gonna happen, but I'm gonna try to see anyway.

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And now, because of all of you who've tuned into this show and shared these videos and liked and subscribed and all of that, we're about to break our goal two months ahead of schedule, which is incredible.

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So thank you very much. Also, last thing, as I mentioned in last week's outro or two weeks ago's outro, we have memberships that are now available so anyone who would like to support this show can now do so in a realistic and tangible way.

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Between equipment, lights, subscriptions, licensing costs, software, this show adds up to about $1 ,000 per year for me to be able to produce it and that's okay.

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I'm not actually trying to make a lot of money off of it. I'm doing this to help

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Jesus's church grow up into maturity, up into eschatological purity that throws away the panic and disaster thinking of dispensationalism that I grew up with and instead clings to the victory of Christ as a growing and burgeoning reality and works with all of our energy and effort to see his kingdom built on earth as it is in heaven.

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That's what I'm doing this for. That's why I'm so interested in eschatology because eschatology helps us work in the kingdom that Jesus is building, not to hide in our shells like a turtle, like many of the pre -male dispensational types do.

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Now, as I'm doing that and as I'm laboring for this and working on this,

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I would be really thankful if some of the cost of making this show could be recouped and I could just kind of break even so that I could do this show with excellence and maybe even if we make a profit from the show that I can upgrade equipment, like upgrade lights or upgrade the camera or software that I'm using for it.

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There's all sorts of things we can do together to make this content more available to more people so that we can encourage more people to stop being depressed and discouraged but to abound with hope.

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So, if you'd like to support this show and you'd like to be a part of helping us make it even better, get it out there to more people, maybe even advertise so that we can reach more people with this post -millennial hope, well then you can go to our channel and you can click on the

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Join button. You can also look for the link for our memberships in the show notes below, it's gonna be there as well.

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You can go there, check out our membership tiers, find a plan that is right for you and also, finally, last thing,

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I would be remiss if I did not say this, but if you are not giving to a local church, do not give to the broadcast.

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The Lord has called pastors to love and to care for you and while I would love to be your pastor, I'm not your pastor, probably, unless you're from the

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Shepherd's Church watching this. So for that, please give to that church, that work, those men that God has entrusted over you first and if you'd like to give on top of that to make this show a success, well that is wonderful and I would say yes and amen.

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Now with that, let us jump in to today's episode. Introduction, if the glove doesn't fit.

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Now perhaps the most explosive and prolific trial of our lifetime was the O .J.

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Simpson murder trial in the early 1990s. As an 11 -year -old boy at the time,

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I still remember watching in prime time the aerial coverage of the white Bronco lazily loafing down the

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L .A. freeway with as much agility as a soppy wet sponge and after that, I recall the media frenzy as millions all over the country were tuning in with popcorn and rapt attention to this case that had all the panache and the showmanship of a

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Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. But what stands out most memorable out of all of that, at least from my memory, is when

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Juice's dream team, his head attorney Johnny Cochran said this, if the glove don't fit, then you must acquit.

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And ultimately, that's exactly what the jury did. They acquitted O .J. Simpson, a success of civil cases raged in court for the years to come.

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Now, without getting into the weeds of that trial, the point that I'm making is very simple.

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If the evidence in the case cannot be reconciled to the defendant, meaning if he can't fit his chunky fingers into the glove, then he must be acquitted of the charges.

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But if the glove used in the murder did fit the hand, well then a guilty verdict would be all the more reasonable of a conclusion.

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Now, I want you to compare this example to another homicide that has happened, which is the murder of biblical hermeneutics, where dispensationals have made wild and outlandish claims about eschatology, but they never stop to see if their twinky fingered hands actually fit into the proverbial glove.

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While many will not do that work, that has been my goal so far, is to show the receipts, to show how everything in the book of Matthew, even the parts that are normally associated with the futurist perspective are actually those puffy, overweight fingers that won't fit into the leather glove.

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These passages don't align with the futurist schema. They don't align with the premillennial way of doing things.

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They don't pass the sniff test. They don't meet any reasonable burden of proof. And instead, you have to suspend your intelligence in order to believe them.

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Instead, what I've been proving over the last four weeks, and really since this show began, is the preterist view.

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The partial preterist view is the one that sees that all of these things in Matthew 24, at least, not everything in the

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New Testament, but all the things in Matthew 24 have already occurred in the past. And that view, that hermeneutical perspective is the one that offers the most compelling explanation for what the book of Matthew is all about.

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Now, to prove that hypothesis over the last several weeks, to make sure the glove actually does, or the hand actually does fit in the glove,

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I've presented line after line of evidence. I began by showing how the book of Malachi, the final book in the

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Old Testament canon, looks forward to this fierce episode of judgment that would be coming when the

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Christ actually came, when he pours out his wrath upon the Jews. That's Malachi 3 and Malachi 4.

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According to that final Old Testament prophet, the great and terrible day of the Lord was coming, and fire from God was coming, either to purify the elect or to scorch the rebels.

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That's what Malachi says. That's what John the Baptist also says. He was the final prophet who

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Malachi was talking about. He's the Elijah figure that Malachi predicted. John the

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Baptist was the one who was thinking about and preaching about the exact same things as he expected imminent judgment was gonna be coming on Christ, or coming by Christ in that generation.

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Remember, it was John who warned the Jewish aristocracy to flee from the wrath that was coming, and he said that so urgently, in fact, that he said that the ax was already at the root of the tree, meaning that if God swings the ax one more time, then the tree is gonna fall down and be cast into the fire, and everyone in that generation understood that they were in dire trouble when

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John was speaking. When everyone heard him, they got the point loud and clear. They did not say, well, this must be talking about a people who live in the 21st century.

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It's not what they were thinking. They were thinking that, oh, he's talking about me.

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Now, this wasn't just the focus of John, but it was also the focus of Jesus in his miracles, his teachings, his parables, and his confrontations with the

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Jewish aristocracy in Matthew 21, 22, 23, he deliberately and very clearly is calling down covenant woes and covenant curses upon that rebellious city.

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He's promising that the wrath of God, which has been stored up since Cain killed Abel, was about to be poured out on them.

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With every piece of evidence we've examined so far, it fits only and entirely and perfectly into the preterist interpretation, like a well -fitted glove, and with that, we're gonna move deeper into Matthew 24 this week to show that it continues to meet the smell test, that the evidence continues to align with the perspective that I've been arguing, and I'm gonna show, with a couple new pieces of evidence, that all of these things definitely occurred in the first century, and today, we're gonna look at how

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Jesus compares Jerusalem to a woman in labor and how he gives three pieces of evidence that the disciples could look on to be able to say, yes, this was happening.

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We'll talk about those three pieces of evidence next week, but with that, we're gonna read our passage, we're gonna look at this woman who's gonna give birth to a baby, and we're gonna see how

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Jerusalem has become the whore. So, Matthew 24, six through eight says this.

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You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for these things must take place, but that is not yet the end.

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For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places, there will be famines and earthquakes.

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But all these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs, Matthew 24, six through eight.

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Now, we're gonna begin by looking at, what does it mean that Jerusalem is this woman in labor?

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And that'll lead us to part one, the woman in labor. When Jesus wanted to explain the coming judgment, he chose the metaphor of pregnancy, which was both a vivid and a very relatable image to his first century audience.

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Now, forgive me for being punny, but this analogy that he gave was pregnant with meaning.

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So, for a few moments, I wanna pull back the layers a little bit, and I wanna look at all of the various nuances and shades of what

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Jesus was talking about, and I wanna present 10 points from Matthew 24, eight.

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10 points about how Jerusalem has become this woman, and what that means for eschatology.

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So, just for a recap, Matthew 24, eight, Jesus says, but all these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs.

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Now, let's look at the evidence. Point one, the imminence of the judgment.

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By using this metaphor, Jesus was undoubtedly describing things that were going to happen soon, in the same way that a 40 -week pregnancy doesn't last for decades.

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Thank God for our wives. The 40 -year pregnancy of Jerusalem, likewise, has not been limping along for the last 2 ,000 years.

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That would've been the wrong metaphor. If you're talking about things that are happening 2 ,000 years into the future, pregnancy might not be the right analogy.

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I'm just saying. Everything in Matthew 24, and everything that we're gonna discuss today, or next week, like the wars and the rumors of wars, the earthquakes, the famines, all concern labor pains that were gonna happen to that generation, that the disciples were gonna be able to witness, and there would be evidences to them that the end was drawing near.

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Jesus did not believe that things were gonna become, things were gonna steadily decline over thousands of years, but quickly.

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They were gonna quickly increase in intensity, like a woman who's having her labor pains, until that final moment of delivery when

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Jerusalem was destroyed. The very nature of the pregnancy metaphor ensures that Jesus was talking about things in the near term, not in the remote, unknowable future.

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That's the first thing that this metaphor teaches us, is that the prophecy was imminent. Point two, 40 weeks and 40 years.

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Now, alongside the urgency of the pregnancy metaphor, Jesus also gave his disciples a clear timeline for when the events were going to unfold.

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Think about it this way, a typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, which are 40 distinct units of time.

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Well, in a similar way, a biblical generation is 40 years, which is also 40 units of time.

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And when you understand that 40 in the Bible usually refers to a moment of travail and suffering and judgment, such as when it rained for 40 days and 40 nights in the flood, or when the people wandered in the wilderness for 40 years in rebellion, then you can see that this 40 year window of time is talking about a painful, increasing in intensity kind of judgment and destruction that was coming upon Jerusalem.

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When Jesus declared in Matthew 23, that judgment was going to fall on this generation, he was marking the next 40 years as one of intense calamity, intense judgment, which is the second thing we learn, that he lays out a timeline, that timeline is 40 years.

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And we know that because he says this generation. Now, that leads us to point three, what defines a generation?

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Now, perhaps you're saying that makes sense if a biblical generation actually is 40 years, but how do we actually know that?

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Only thing you said was that it is just so the case that Jesus said judgment's gonna come on this generation and therefore it must be 40 years.

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But generations in the modern world are 20 years. So how can we know for sure that a biblical generation really is 40 years?

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That's a great question, let me answer it. We know how long that a generation was in the mind of a first century

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Jew because of how vividly the meaning was imprinted upon them in the wilderness.

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If you remember, it was God who called them a wicked and adulterous generation, Deuteronomy 135.

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And it was God who proclaimed that that entire generation would pass away in the wilderness because of their rebellion,

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Numbers 14, 33 through 34. That means that all the people who came out of Egypt, who walked around in the wilderness for 40 years were the generation that was going to die in the wilderness.

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And that became sort of the deeply ingrained understanding that was imprinted upon the

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Jewish psyche of what a generation is. A generation is a period of people who exist in a 40 -year lifespan that live and die together just like the people in the wilderness generation.

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That is why we know that a generation is 40 years. So when

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Jesus prophesied that this generation, genea, which same word is used in the

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Greek Old Testament, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place,

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Matthew 24, 34, and that all of God's wrath was gonna fall on that generation,

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Matthew 23, he was letting his Jewish disciples know that a 40 -year countdown had begun just like it had for the rebellious people of old.

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That countdown would begin at his resurrection in AD 30. It would continue into the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 when the sands of Jerusalem's hourglass would finally be expired, and the new generation called the church would follow

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Jesus into the promised land. That is the third thing that we learn that when Jesus says generation, he actually is referring to a period of 40 years that is going to end in the destruction of everyone who was alive at the time of his crucifixion where they rejected

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God, and after those 40 tumultuous years, there's gonna be a new generation that rises up.

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That's point three. Point four, grammar hammers and this generation. Now, an additional aspect to all of this was how the grammar also proves the interpretation that we're arguing for.

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Consider Jesus's choice of words when he says this generation. He did not say a generation at some point in the unknowable future.

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He didn't say some generation at some point at some time, or he didn't even say concerning that generation way over there.

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He said this generation. He pointed directly to the people who were standing right in front of him, and he said that judgment was coming on this generation, which is really important.

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Why is that important? Well, anyone familiar with the grammar will notice that the word this is not an accidental phrase here.

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Like English, Greek grammar designates that the word this and these, which is the plural form of this, is a near demonstrative pronoun.

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Now, don't freak out because we're going back to high school English. Follow me here. A near demonstrative pronoun refers to things that are close to the speaker, as opposed to words like that and those, which are talking about things that are further away.

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For instance, if you want to talk about things that are near to you, you would say, look at this. But if you were to talk about things that are far away from you, you might say, look at that.

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Both words are helpful because they tell you how near or how far something is in relation to you.

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So when Jesus was looking at the generation that was standing right in front of him, and he uses the phrase this generation, we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's referring to none other than his generation.

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Had he wanted to prophesy about us in our generation, he would have used the far demonstrative pronoun, that.

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And he would have said something along the lines of that all these things are going to come upon that generation.

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But that's not what he said. And there's no ambiguity in what he said. He limited his understanding and his fulfillment to their generation, which is a 40 year period of time like a pregnancy.

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And when he does that, we should do that. We should never come to an interpretation that's different than Jesus.

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Because if we do, that's probably a bad thing. That's point number four. Point five, the pattern.

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400, rejection, 40, and conquest. Now even further than this, the use of the number 40 can shed much light on what

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God is doing in Matthew and in the downfall of Jerusalem. For instance, in the Old Testament, we have another example of a 40 year period of time where judgment is poured out on an entire generation and that whole generation dies.

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But there's so much more to the story than that. And so much more to the biblical pattern and story that God is telling.

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So hang tight with me for a moment because I need to explain this briefly just so you can get it. And if you are friends with me on Facebook, I just published a chart tonight, or last night, maybe if you're watching this later, but I just published a chart on my feed that you can follow along with what

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I'm saying. So if you want, send me a friend request, send me whatever, but go check out that chart, it's great.

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Now, picture this. Before the Israelites became their own nation, they were down in Egypt and they spent 400 long years under the oppressive rule of Pharaoh.

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That's 400 years of back -breaking labor under a pagan king and even more significant than that, it was 400 years of total silence from God.

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He didn't speak to them at all from the time that they got down to Egypt until the time that Moses showed up.

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And it seemed like God had abandoned them. But just in the moment that it seemed like that God broke his silence after 400 years.

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And just to get that into perspective, 400 years is longer than America has been a country.

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We fought the Revolutionary War like 200 and something years ago, this was 400 years of God not speaking.

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This was generation after generation after generation, 10 in fact, that rose and died without hearing a single thing from the

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Lord, but he didn't abandon them. He actually broke the silence, not by talking to the mighty men of Israel or to the new class of patriarchs, but he broke his silence by talking to women.

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He said to the Hebrew midwives to spare the Hebrew children signaling the fact that he had not forgotten his promise to his people.

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And then right after he speaks to the midwives, God raises up this baby, this deliverer,

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Moses, who was gonna lead the people out of Israel. Now, you remember, under the backdrop of this, we had this tyrant

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Pharaoh who was meeting his end, and God was bringing his people safely up out of Egypt, through the

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Red Sea, into the wilderness, and there was this one chance that they had over this wilderness period to follow

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God. But instead of following him and obeying him and submitting to his law, which is, by the way, what they covenanted to do at Mount Sinai, instead of that, they rebelled.

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First, they made a golden calf, and that didn't work out so well for them. Then they complained and they resisted

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God at every turn. God even says that in the wilderness, they denied him and rejected him 10 different times, whether it be through water or quail or through just everything.

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Now, when they had reached the edge of the promised land, you would think that their rejection was over, but no, they flat out reject

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God then. And they say that we are not gonna go in, we're not gonna conquer these people, we're like grasshoppers to them, and God, how could you dare ask us to go and do this great and heavy thing?

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And because of that, God poured out a heavy and devastating punishment on them, essentially divorcing that generation.

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He said, you will not be allowed to enter into my promised land, you will not be allowed to enter into my rest, you will wander around the wilderness aimlessly in the desert for 40 years until every single one of that generation was dead.

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40 years wandering aimlessly in the desert, and the whole rebellious generation died, and they missed entering into the promised land.

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While their children, however, the next generation, did in fact go in, they did go in and they conquered

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Canaan and they finally received the land, well, sorta. That whole journey that I'm talking about that unfolds from Exodus all the way until the end of Joshua is really a story of 400 years of waiting, the rebellion that the

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Israelites give to God at the mountain, their rejection of God at the edge of the promised land, and then 40 years of punishment before a new generation rises up and enters into the land of God's rest.

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That is an important pattern that shows up again in the New Testament.

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And maybe you're asking how? Well, we see this pattern in the New Testament, we see it repeating, we see it giving us a framework on how to understand who the people of God are, what does

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God do when God pulls the people out of slavery and sin and chooses them to be his own people.

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And when we see this pattern in the New Testament, I think it will help us understand what the book of Revelation and what chapters like Matthew 24 are really talking about.

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So how? Well, remember the pattern, 400, and then rebellion, and then 40 years of judgment, and then a new generation.

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Well, let's look at the New Testament. In the book of Malachi, God stops speaking, and it would be another 400 years of silence before God speaks again.

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Just like before, when the Israelites were pining away in Egypt, there was no word from God when we get to the end of Malachi all the way to the beginning of Matthew, and it just so happens that that period is 400 years.

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And just like the people of old, they were under the rule of the pagan kings, just like they were under the rule of Egypt.

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But this time they were under the powerful empires of Babylon and Persia and Greece and Rome.

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And at the end of God's silence, Rome had installed a petty puppet tyrant king named

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Herod, who in many ways acted just like the Pharaoh of Egypt, even ordering that all the

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Jewish baby boys would be murdered. So he's just like Pharaoh. Now, God not only breaks the silence, again, not by speaking to mighty men, but by speaking to two

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Hebrew women, Mary and Elizabeth, just like he did with the two Hebrew midwives who were named in the book of Exodus.

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So he doesn't break his silence to men, he breaks the silence to women, just like he did it of the old. Just like he raised up a new deliverer by birth named

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Moses, well, he raises up a new savior named Jesus who would free his people, not from Egypt, but from their slavery to sin.

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Then soon after Herod dies, Jesus returns, and then after Jesus returns, he leads his people through many years of ministry.

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But again, at the end of his life, the people rejected God. So the

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New Testament begins just like the Old Testament story did with 400 years of waiting. Then a new deliverer is born named

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Jesus. He has a clear call from God. Then he leads the people to follow

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God and they end up rejecting God. So this pattern repeats itself in the

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New Testament. This pattern of silence, deliverance, rebellion, and a new generation repeats itself throughout both the

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Testaments, and it gives us a understanding of God's overarching story. But there's more to the story than this.

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There's even deeper layers. So for instance, just like Israel was punished with 40 years of wandering for rejecting

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God's rule at the mountain, Jesus announced another 40 -year period of punishment for those who rejected him at Calvary.

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That's what Matthew 24 is all about. Matthew 24 is the symmetrical event in the

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New Testament to God cursing the former generation in the wilderness. When God said that you will not enter into my land, that you will wander around for 40 years until you die in the desert, that's what

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Jesus is doing in Matthew 23 and Matthew 24 with the first century Jews. He's saying you're not gonna enter into God's rest.

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You're not gonna be God's people. You're gonna wander around this city aimlessly for 40 years and you're going to die in the sands of the desert.

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It wasn't just a punishment. It wasn't just a ban. It was a wilderness where the people were gonna enter into increasing judgment for those who clung to their old ways and rejected

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Christ, just like the people of the Old Testament wilderness before. This new 40 -year wilderness began the moment

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Jesus prophesied it in Matthew 24, and it came to an end in AD 70 when

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Jerusalem fell. Judgment came upon those who refused to listen, who refused to turn to Christ, and God himself turned

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Jerusalem into a wilderness of rubble and ash where all signs of life were utterly uprooted and destroyed, but that's even not the end.

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In fact, just like the Old Testament where one generation passed away and died in the wilderness, but a new generation rose up who was gonna go in and take possession of the land, and those two generations actually lived simultaneously, which means at the same time, the old generation that was dying, the new generation that was rising lived simultaneously.

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This exact same thing happens in the New Testament. After judgment falls on the people of Jerusalem, a new people have been raised up simultaneously, side by side with that old generation, but instead of dying like the old generation, they would rise up and take possession of the land, but it was even more remarkable than in the

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Old Testament because this time it wasn't just one nation that they were gonna take possession of. God was promising,

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Matthew 28, 18 through 20, that they were now gonna take possession of the entire world.

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The church became the new generation, the new people of God, charged with the task of taking the gospel to every corner of the globe and establishing this world as a promised land where Christ would be preached, where Christ would be obeyed, and where the law of God would be the law of the land.

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So that's what we're seeing here is a pattern that's working itself out from the Old Testament to the

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New Testament. We see a cycle of silence, deliverance, rejection, judgment, and renewal that's working itself out from Canaan all the way to the

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New Jerusalem. The church's mission now spans to the ends of the earth, a new conquest of the kingdom of God, not by sword, not by bow, not by chariot, but by the word, the spirit, and truth.

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And only when we see this pattern between the Old and the New Testament do we understand why post -millennialism and partial preterism is the only eschatological systems that fit so naturally with what the

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Bible is saying. If you believe that the church loses, then you believe that we're just like the wilderness generation that died in the desert.

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But that's not what our job is. Our job is to go in and take possession of the nations, being led by the true and the better Joshua.

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Did you know that Jesus' name in Aramaic is Yeshua, which is

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Joshua? We call him Jesus because that is a Greek, that's a

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Latin translation of the Greek into English. Jesus' name actually in his language was

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Joshua. So think about this, a new generation rises up being led by Joshua to go and conquer the nations.

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That is what the story of the New Testament is all about. It is showing us how

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God's promises and his judgment and his faithfulness to build his kingdom has come through Christ.

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And through his faithfulness, we are now called to build and to work and to labor and to inherit the world.

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That is point five. Now, point six, Jerusalem's pregnancy and her passing away.

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Now, this is where the analogy of pregnancy becomes so powerful and it comes back into focus because it represents the same 40 -year period of punishment that the

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Old Testament Jews endured. That means that Jerusalem is the woman who became unexpectedly pregnant with the wrath of God and now only would her travails increase, but they would lead also to certain covenantal death.

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Think about it like this. Long before a woman tragically loses her life in a complicated pregnancy, and that does happen especially in the ancient world, there are early signs that she may be pregnant and that she may not even fully discern.

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So think about it this, for instance, in the early days of pregnancy, the signs are very subtle. Before the baby bump and maybe even before the morning sickness or the bloating, there are a few weeks where nothing really noticeable has happened.

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It's in this season when many women are still unsure about whether or not they're actually pregnant.

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This is why pregnancy tests exist so that they can verify whether they're pregnant or not. Imagine what it would have been like back in the old days when those things didn't exist.

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Well, this early period of time where you're not really sure if you're pregnant or not, this is especially true if you're prone to having irregular periods or complications and things like that.

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I'm not a doctor, but those are things that happen. But what I do know is that just because you're having complications or an inability to discern whether or not you're pregnant doesn't actually make you not pregnant, even if the signs are very subtle.

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Now, with that sort of explanation in view, think about Jerusalem, who was like the woman in her early stages of pregnancy.

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She could not discern the pain that was soon going to overtake her.

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Like many women, she didn't comprehend the smaller signs with very much clarity at all.

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When false messiahs were coming, she didn't see that as like the morning sickness before the big labor that was coming.

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She didn't understand the whispers of unrest in society or the scattered rumors of upheaval and civil war that were happening in the far remote stretches of the

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Roman world. The Jews were not connecting the dots and they were limping along, ignorant of what was coming.

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But as any mother knows, those early symptoms eventually fade into the undeniable evidence when the belly ends up growing, when the pants don't fit anymore, and when the pains of labor eventually come.

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As the months passed, then Braxton Hicks contractions begin, and then real contractions begin.

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And then your water breaks and the contractions become sharper and more relentless to the point that no one in their right mind can deny what is happening.

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Well, in much the same way for Jerusalem, the signs were going to get worse. They were going to intensify like wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines and all of that.

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But unlike any sane woman who ever showed up at a hospital ready to give birth to her baby,

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Jerusalem persisted in her ignorance. She denied what was happening to her while she slipped into a kind of madness.

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I mean, think about this. Imagine a clinically insane woman going into an ER with a nine -month belly, full -on contractions that are verifiable by sonogram, and then she tries to pass it off as the common cold.

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I'm not pregnant, I just have the flu. This is kind of what Jerusalem was doing.

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They were denying the very obvious point that Jesus was making, that they were the woman in labor, that the pains were increasing, that the judgment was coming, and yet they were denying that any of that was true.

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And what is more, just as it was for a woman in Jesus's time, many women in Jesus's time actually tragically passed away and died after they were giving birth.

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In the same way, Jerusalem's role was to be the womb through which the

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New Testament church would safely enter into the world before Jerusalem passed away.

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Her purpose was to bring forth this newborn people of God into the world.

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Through the birth of Jesus Christ and through his union with his people, she was to birth the

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Messiah who would bring about this new people. She was to birth the new people. And then after that work was finished, she would pass away into obscurity with her mission being complete.

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By the time the final book of the Bible was written in the late 60s, and I will argue this later, I don't know how many weeks ahead from now, but I'm gonna argue this when

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I do an episode on the dating of Revelation, that it was written in the mid 60s, late 60s, somewhere around in there.

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When that final book of the Bible was written, the church had received everything that it needed in order to survive without the umbilical cord of Judaism.

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The church was now viable. Jerusalem had fulfilled her role. And because of that, the city, the temple, the priesthood, the feast, and all of it that used to feed the early church before its birth was now, there was no need for it anymore.

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The church remained because she was now in the care of the Holy Spirit. She was now connected to Christ who would feed her like being connected to a vine.

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She didn't need Old Testament Judaism anymore. She would grow up from her infancy in the first century, and over 20 centuries so far, she's been growing up into a young girl, eventually into a woman who would become the radiant bride of Christ.

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That's the sixth thing that we learn here is that Jerusalem was the woman who gave birth to the future queen.

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She was the woman who gave birth to the royal bride of Christ. And because of her sin and her iniquity, she gave birth and then she died.

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Point seven, from infant to full grown bride. Now this isn't the first time that God has used the metaphor of pregnancy and birthing in order to talk about his selection of a people for himself.

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It's here that we see that the church takes the very same pathway into covenant marriage with God as the

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Old Testament Israel did with God at Mount Sinai. She's the bride of Christ as her mother

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Israel was in marriage to Yahweh, except with the church, there would be no more infidelity and no more whoring like there was with Israel and Judah.

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For instance, we see the same pattern of infant to woman relationship described for us in Ezekiel 16, four through eight, where God chooses an infant and grows her up into a woman who will then be with him in relationship, who will enter into covenant with him like a woman who's grown up and ready for love.

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In the passage of Ezekiel 16, four through eight, God finds Israel like a helpless newborn baby whose mother's no longer in the picture, who abandoned her and left her vulnerable to die, and he will raise her up.

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This is what he says in Ezekiel 16. As for your birth, Israel, on the day that you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing.

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You were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No, I looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you.

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Rather, you were thrown out in the open field for you were abhorred on the day that you were born.

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But when I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you, while you were in your blood, live.

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Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, live. And I made you numerous like plants of the field.

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And then you grew up and you became tall and you reached the age for fine ornaments.

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Your breasts were formed and your pubic hair had grown, yet you were naked and bare. Then I passed by you and I saw you and behold, you were at the time for love.

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So I spread my skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became mine, declares the

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Lord God. Ezekiel 16, four through eight. God uses this analogy in Ezekiel 16 to describe how he nurtured

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Israel from infancy in Egypt. He cleaned her, he washed her, and he watched her grow up from a baby into a beautiful young adult woman who was ready for marriage.

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Just as a young girl matures into a woman reaching the age of sexual maturity so that she can enter into the covenant of marriage, so God presided over the infant

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Israel nurturing her into maturity so that she could enter into the intimate covenant union with God.

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When that time, and there's so many evidences of this in the Old Testament where sexual maturity and spiritual maturity or sexual intimacy and spiritual intimacy are used as a metaphor for one another.

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So this is not uncommon in the Old Testament even if we find it a little odd for us to talk about today.

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When the time was right, God established the marriage covenant at Mount Sinai, which is what all the

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Jewish scholars agree that Mount Sinai was. It was a marriage covenant where he came into marriage with this newly matured woman named

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Israel and he became her true husband, Jeremiah 31, 32, and he made

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Israel his beloved bride, Isaiah 54, five. Yet tragically,

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Israel became unfaithful to her covenant. She turned to idols and it says that she played the harlot with all the nations.

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And the prophets didn't shy away from depicting Israel's betrayal in the rawest and frankest terms in Ezekiel 16, 15 through 17, the imagery is explicit.

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It says, but you trusted in your beauty and you played the harlot because of your fame and you poured out your harlotries on every passerby who might be willing.

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You took your beautiful jewels, the ones that I gave you, made of my gold and of my silver, which

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I had given you and made for yourself male images that you might play the harlot with them.

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The prophets are painting a picture of Israel as one who took the blessings that were given by God and then turned them into a phallic image and then prostituted herself with the image.

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Prostituting herself with this idol, with this foreign god. It is lewd and it is disgusting.

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The betrayal even deepens when we consider Jeremiah three, one through three, which declares, but you are a harlot with many lovers.

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Yet you turn to me, declares the Lord, lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see where have you not been violated.

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God is not talking about a lapse or a momentary failure. He's not talking about a whoopsie like the politicians talk about.

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God is talking about his people who've been persistent and unashamed in pursuing raunchy, ridiculous, and repetitive infidelities.

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God's chosen people once betrothed to him at Mount Sinai in faithfulness is now shamelessly seeking out every high place and every grove to engage in spiritual adultery.

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Hosea's account underscores the severity of this betrayal in even starker terms. Hosea says in chapter two, verses two through five, for their mother has played the harlot.

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She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

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Israel's unfaithfulness wasn't passive, it was active. It was a willful pursuit of foreign gods that made her a spiritual whore and led her into utter ruin.

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The harlotry of Israel is laid bare in Ezekiel 23, two through four, where Samaria and Jerusalem are depicted as sisters who are prostituting themselves in Egypt.

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This is what it says. They played the harlot in their youth. There their breasts were pressed and their virgin bosom was handled.

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God is giving us a portrayal of these things about the long history and the infidelity that has stained

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Israel from her beginning, continuing through the generations despite repeated calls to repentance.

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And if you look into basically all of the minor prophets, there is this underlying theme of Israel's disgusting, lewd rebellion that is akin to spiritual adultery.

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Because of this, God's patience was wearing thinner and thinner as time went on and he eventually issues

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Israel, that's the northern 10 tribes of Israel, he issues them a certificate of divorce.

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And he cites the issue, the reason why he does this is because of their relentless whoring after foreign gods,

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Jeremiah 3, eight. So when you think about this and you think about the fact that Judah, throughout the prophets, is said to be worse than Israel, but God, through his grace, allows her to continue until Jesus is born and then after Jesus is born, she's still whoring, she's still prostituting, she's still doing her harlotries, the

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Lord's righteous anger was about to bring her into the same fate as Israel.

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By the time we get to the New Testament, Isaiah prophesies this, how the faithful city has become a harlot, she who was full of justice, righteousness, once lodged in her, but now only murders.

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You see what Isaiah is saying? He's prophesying that this city, Jerusalem, who was known for upholding

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God's law has become synonymous with corruption and betrayal. This level of covenant breaking necessitated

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God's decisive action, where he issues a decree of divorce, not only to Israel, but he does also to Judah, which as we will discover in the book of Revelation is what the book is really about, the divorce of Judah.

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And as a result of divorcing her, both sisters now are divorced, Jesus chooses for himself a new bride.

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And as we will see, that new bride is the church, and she's the one who's going to be perfected in her beauty.

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She's the one who's gonna be made ready for her husband. She's the one who's gonna do her preparations until her husband returns.

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And here in the book of Matthew 24, we will see how the final act of faithfulness from the harlot

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Judah before she dies is her job was to give birth to the church, which we talked about just a moment before.

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After the labor pains that Jesus prophesied, Judah gave birth to the church and passed away.

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Point eight, the whore of Babylon and the pregnant woman. In Matthew 24, when

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Jesus speaks to the woman in labor, it's not the image of a noble mother awaiting her child with hope and expectation.

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It's not the eager woman who's clinging to her husband's hand and squeezing in between contractions.

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It's something far more grim and gross. This woman in Jesus's prophetic mind is not the image of purity and expectation, but a betrayal and unfaithfulness.

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She's a whore who had conceived through her infidelity, and now she is like the Levitical wall required on the cusp of facing her deathly consequences.

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The connection between this prophetic woman and the whore of Babylon, which we referred to briefly a moment ago, is undeniable.

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The woman that Jesus is talking about here is the whore of Babylon in Revelation. That's undeniable once you see how the pieces fit together.

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For instance, John takes up this same imagery, but he turns it into this image of a whore, the whore of Babylon, who is seated in scarlet and drenched with jewels, and she's described as a woman whose labor has reached her climax.

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She's dressed in purple and gold, which is the exact same clothing in Exodus 28 of the high priest, who's dressed in blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold and with jewels on the breastplate and on the filigree settings and the turban.

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All of this woman is dressed like an Old Testament high priest. But even though she's got on those sacred garments, she is now apostate.

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She is now immoral. She is a whore who is wearing the high priest royal garments.

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She's not bearing the fruit of righteousness, but in Revelation, she's depicted as one who is drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, Revelation 17 .6,

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which means that she is a woman who's a whore, who acts like spiritual

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Babylon, who's dressed like a high priest, who is drunk off the blood of the saints. This can be nothing more than the

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Jewish people, who were the people of the high priesthood, who were the people of the sacrificial system, but yet they'd become a whore and they become like Babylon spiritually.

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And as we read in the book of Acts and as we read in history, they were the most prolific persecutor of the early church.

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They were that whore of Babylon that Jesus talks about in Matthew 24 as the woman who is pregnant and whose labor pains would increase until she perished.

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Jerusalem, the harlot, dressed as a queen, dressed as a priest, is about to face her downfall.

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With the blood of the martyrs still on her lips, she had reached peak insanity.

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Her iniquity was overflowing. She was the Babylon reborn, a city that was ripe for judgment, set to be divorced by God.

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And just as Jesus said, all these things are gonna come on this generation, Matthew 23, 36, that generation, the

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Jews, the whore, witnessed the culmination of this prophecy in AD 70.

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It was in that moment that the whore was cast out of her master's house forever, which leads us to point nine, the marriage of the queen.

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Though Jerusalem had been the harlot pregnant with a child that was not her own, God in his mercy, however, transformed her labor into the birth of something good.

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In God's grace, he did not destroy the baby for the crimes of the mother.

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He did destroy Jerusalem, but he did not destroy his or her infant daughter, the church, who was growing up to be viable, who was able to live on her own by the end of the first century.

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Then, after the moment of the church's viability, Jerusalem's trials intensified, the wars, the famines, the false messiahs, all of that were pressing down on her until the church was fully delivered into the world and the whore was dead.

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But unlike Ezekiel 16, the church would not grow up to become a whore.

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She would grow up. She would do many dumb things as a toddler. She would say many ridiculous things like a young girl, but she would continue to grow up into a faithful bride who would be ready for her bridegroom's eternal love forever.

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That is what church history is the story of. The infant girl, the church, who's growing up into a faithful bride.

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And then when her breasts are mature, metaphorically speaking, when she's ready for love, like Ezekiel said of Israel, then

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Jesus will return and he will make her his bride forever. Never for covenant whoring or adultery again, but for fidelity and faithfulness and intimacy and joy for eternity.

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By evoking this metaphor of pregnancy, Jesus was conveying a message of imminent judgment for the adulteress, but also new life for the little baby church who for 2000 years was gonna be growing up into the woman that Jesus wanted so that when he returned, he would enter into eternal union with her when all her preparations were finished.

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Now let's go to the conclusion. Conclusion. Today, brothers and sisters, we've pulled back the veil on one aspect of one verse of Matthew 24, which is this woman who is in labor.

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And we looked at many different examples of what this actually means.

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This isn't just a tale of ancient judgment or symbolic language meant to intrigue us. It's a story for us.

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It's a story about who we are, the church, the people who were born in the fires and the trials and we were forged out of the ashes of rebellious

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Jerusalem. And we were called to be this new bride, this new daughter, this little girl that was gonna grow up to maturity in love with her everlasting king.

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When Jesus spoke of the labor pains in Matthew 24, he wasn't picturing a noble birth.

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He wasn't picturing a noble mother who was bracing for the joy, but a city who had turned away from her covenant

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God and a little daughter who would be abandoned and left wiggling in her blood like Ezekiel 16 said.

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The city that was dressed in all of her outward glory that looked like a high priest and all of those measures had blood on her lips from feasting on the martyrs of the saints.

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She was adorned in purple and gold, but inside she was full of dead men's bones. She was an opulent, well -to -do whore.

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Revelation paints this woman in stark detail, drunk on the blood of the prophets, drunk on the blood of the martyrs, drunk on the blood of Christians, shameless, decked in jewels that mock the sacred vestments that she wore, she was

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Babylon. The age -old symbol of defiance and degeneracy, the city which represented the very presence of God's covenantal love had become so far gone that she mirrored the spirit of Babylon.

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But in the midst of all of that anguish, God was orchestrating something beautiful.

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Like a woman giving birth, Jerusalem's agony signaled the end of one era and the miraculous beginning of another.

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Out of the labor pains of the whore of Jerusalem came the infant church, the baby daughter of the fallen city, born not to perpetrate her mother's infidelities and whorings, but to grow up into a bride that was worthy of a king.

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The destruction of Jerusalem in 8070 was not just an end of an old era, it was the severing of the entire old covenant, a divorce certificate that was given to the harlot of all harlots.

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And yet, in that moment of deepest and darkest devastation, the church, cradled by the hands of the

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Holy Spirit, started to grow, and started to grow and continued to grow until one day she will become the radiant bride of Christ that he will return to.

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Where does that leave us today? Well, we are that infant church, now grown up a little bit into a global body.

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Now we're, I don't know, maybe we're eight, maybe we're nine, we're still young, we're still kind of immature, we don't have a lot of unity, we have ups and downs, we're not the radiant queen yet, we got some time to go.

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But in the midst of this, we're not called to just exist, we're called to thrive.

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We're the little girl who's in the palace of the king, who's been called to prepare herself, to make herself ready, to shine brighter every day, to grow stronger every year, until the day when our bridegroom calls us home.

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This is a call to holiness, not to remain in our churches and to just pine away while we watch the world fall apart at the seams.

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We've done too much of that already. This is a call to transform the world, the hearts, the families, the communities, the nations, like we talked about in the section on the 400 and the conquest, we are now the bride of Christ who's under the leadership of the true

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Joshua to spread the truth of Christ to every arena of life, until the whole world resounds with the knowledge of the glory of God as the water covers the seas, that's our goal.

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That's the preparations that we're called to make as the one who's preparing to become the bride of Christ.

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So I charge you today, let hope ignite your soul, let courage course through your veins, let every effort and every anthem be on your lips as you strive to build the kingdom of Christ here and now.

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You and I are a part of a grand story that's been playing out ever since the beginning of time.

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Our bridegroom is coming, a true marriage is going to happen.

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Adam and Eve didn't fulfill that, Abraham and his wife didn't fulfill that, Israel and God at Mount Sinai did not fulfill that, but Christ and his church will be the story of the true

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Adam who meets with his true Eve, who comes into a garden paradise to live in eternal matrimonial bliss forever.

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That's the story that we're now in and Christ is the one who's leading it.

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We're in the final chapter, we're in the chapter that succeeds. After all the failure of Adam and Eve and Noah and his wife and Abraham and his wife and Israel and Judah and after all the failure, we're now in the story of victory.

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We are the bride who is to be adorned with faith and hope and love and truth and we are to labor until all the nations have come in to this global bride so that when our bridegroom returns, he will return to an entire earth that has been subdued for his glory.

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Jesus is not returning to a bruised and beaten bride, he's coming back to receive a true and a faithful bride.

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Now with that, the mission is ours and it's our responsibility to build.

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It's our responsibility to take up our hammer, take up our cross, take up everything and follow Christ in our homes, in our work, in everything.

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We are the bride of Christ and it's our job to make ourself ready for our bridegroom's return and how do we do that?

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We make our families Christ -like, we make our lives Christ -like to the glory of God and by the power of the spirit, not by our effort but his effort alone and we subdue the nations so that the entire world will be called unto him.

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That is our purpose and that is where we're gonna end this week and next week, we're gonna talk about the signs of the labor pains.

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We're gonna go back and talk about the whore who is having these labor pains and those labor pains are gonna be fierce. It's gonna be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes and those signs are not signs to us in our time but it's their signs to them in their time about what was going to happen to them but just remember, the overarching narrative, the metaphor, remember.

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Every week as we enter back into the past, remember who you are. You are the little baby bride of Christ.

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You are the one who's growing up into maturity. You, your family, the church, the world.

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So do that faithfully and do that with joy and until next time, God richly bless you. We'll see you next time on The Broadcast.