Sunday, December 12, 2021 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:11

All right, well, we'll open our family neighbors, et cetera, concerning our

00:39

Christmas program next week. So she'll be over here after our time together, if you want some of those invitations to hand out.

00:54

And I thought I would read a little bit from Tacitus, one of the historians who lived through Tacitus, Suetonius, with the

01:10

New Testament. I was going to read something to do with our text.

01:25

This is how I tacit around that in Rome, you know, we have

01:43

Nero is involved in a lot of stuff. So yes, no offering to the gods could make that infamous rumor disappear, right?

02:06

He's probably saying I'm not a crook or something like that. But it didn't work, didn't work. Therefore, in order to abolish that rumor,

02:14

Nero falsely accused and executed with the most exquisite punishments those people called

02:20

Christians, who were infamous for their abominations. It's funny that, you know, those being infamous for abominations.

02:30

There's all sorts of rumors going around about the Christians that were not true. The originator of the name,

02:38

Christ, was executed as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.

02:46

And though repressed, this does not only through Judea, which is the origin of this evil, but also through the city of Rome, to which all that is horrible and shameful to the

02:57

Roman people. He says that to Rome, all that is horrible to the

03:07

Roman people. This is not very, obviously, he's pretty, who admitted their faith.

03:16

And then, using the information they provided, a veteran would grab a few, interrogate them, find out the rest.

03:27

Not so much for the city, they weren't saying that the

03:32

Christians burned Rome, but for the hatred of the human race. This is

03:38

Tacitus talking about how sadistic Nero is. And perishing, they were additionally made into sports.

03:43

They were killed by dogs, by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses, or set aflame.

03:51

And when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle and performed a circus game in the habit of a charioteer, mixing with the plebs or driving about the race course.

04:10

Even though they were clearly guilty and merited being made the most recent example of the consequences of crime, people began to pity these sufferers, they began to pity the

04:20

Christians, because they were consumed not for the public good, but on account of the fierceness of one man.

04:29

Remember that the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul died under the murderous rage of Nero, as well as many other

04:40

Christians. So, that is one story about Nero.

04:48

There are many others, and several of them are humorous, such as when he fancied himself a great musician, a grand musician, and he would give concerts in the

04:59

Colosseum. Of course, he would have the gates locked, so you weren't allowed to leave his glorious concert, you know, stuff like that.

05:13

Well, Matthew 24, Jesus is pastoring his disciples, hold them that the temple will be destroyed within their generation.

05:28

This is very disturbing, and they've got questions, but Jesus, first of all, takes time to pastor them, and notice in verse four,

05:38

Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you. So, he's putting the responsibility upon them, take heed that no one deceives you, but then he gives them the truth of the matter.

05:51

For many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many.

05:56

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass.

06:04

But the end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

06:14

All these are the beginning of sorrows. And we went through that passage last time, and we had just begun to consider how it is that what

06:26

Jesus is saying prophetically is in fact true for that generation. Remember, back in chapter 23, just a few verses prior, he says, assuredly,

06:37

I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation, later on in verse 34 of Matthew 24, he says, assuredly,

06:46

I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.

06:53

So, we're checking came to pass before way, checking in to see how it was that these things came to pass.

07:13

And we're up to wars and rumors of wars.

07:21

Now, in order to understand the impact of this, we have to remember that although in world history, a war has been raging almost continuously, nonstop, during the times of the disciples, that was not the case.

07:42

They lived during a time that historians now call the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, a unique time in history where Rome fielded a standing army that subdued all the various possibilities for uprisings and so on, and there was peace in general for a great amount of time.

08:06

The great interruption of that peace occurred upon the order to Jerusalem, starting off the

08:22

Roman Jewish, which lasted for three and a half years, and concluded in, that was a huge hiccup.

08:38

And it was something he was talking to.

08:44

So he says, be careful, you're going to hear about wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet, just because you hear rumors and so on and so forth.

08:59

To get a sense of the Pax Romana, I'm going to read a little bit from those who reflected on it near that time.

09:14

Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder, who lived during the time of Christ, described the immeasurable majesty of the

09:23

Roman peace. It was unique, and they knew it was unique, and they were glad that peace had come.

09:34

Epictetus, who was alive during the time of the apostles, writes,

09:39

Caesar has obtained for us a profound peace. There are no wars or battles.

09:48

And again, in the Roman Empire proper, the period of peace remained comparatively undisturbed until the time of Nero.

09:58

So, rumors, rumors of wars, rumors that could be destabilizing.

10:03

Oh, did you hear? In AD 40, the emperor

10:10

Caligula, Caligula was, made a,

10:20

Caligula also, in his insanity, tried to set up a statue of himself in the sacred precincts of the temple.

10:35

How's that going to go over with the Jews? Really bad idea, okay?

10:41

And violent protest broke out in Jerusalem. And so, there was a moment where there was rumors that the

10:53

Romans were going to bring in soldiers and force the statue to be put where he had said for it to be put.

11:04

If I remember the story correctly, the guy in charge of, the poor sap in charge of doing this, wrote a letter back eventually to Caligula saying, yeah,

11:18

I'm not going to do this. I'm going to have to kill like everybody to do this. I'm not going to do this. And he knew that that would mean that, you know, he'd get in trouble.

11:27

So, he got back to Caligula and he's like, you know, obviously you need to execute yourself.

11:36

And he writes that and sends it back. Before the, but this would be a rumor of war, right?

11:50

If you're living in around Jerusalem on AD 40, and this is very early on, like early in the book of Acts, okay, you're going to be like, what?

12:00

What's going on? Also, have many different areas of, on the outskirts of the

12:14

Roman empire that began to attempt to leave the empire. And there was rumors that war, common this was going on in this time period.

12:26

But Jesus said, this isn't the end. This isn't the end. Now, Bible's perspective.

12:35

When Jesus, verse two of chapter 24, do you not see all these things?

12:43

Surely I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. It's important, temple was eternal.

12:53

And if the temple got destroyed, that was the end of the space -time continuum, basically.

13:00

Okay. The only way that the temple goes away is if, we're done.

13:10

Okay. That was their assumption. And that wasn't the truth. Read in Kings.

13:16

God said to Israel, if you break covenant, if you are not faithful to me, then

13:22

I will come and I will destroy this temple. I will destroy the temple as an act of judgment. And he didn't say, that's the end of the world.

13:32

It would be the end of the old covenant if there was no more sacrifice, no more temple, no more shadows, and so on.

13:43

And so, they think it's the end of everything.

13:49

And end, he uses a different word to talk about the end.

13:56

And it's not as a final kind of end as they were afraid of. So Jesus says, this is not the end.

14:04

Just because you hear of wars and rumor of wars, just because China is looming over Taiwan and Russia is looming over Ukraine.

14:14

Okay. It wasn't the end 10 years ago.

14:21

When war and rumor and war. It wasn't the end 20 years ago when there was wars and rumors.

14:28

50 years ago and so on. Although, many people have published many books and made a lot of money saying so.

14:36

Okay. You have to understand, this has been going on for centuries. People hear about wars and rumors of wars.

14:44

And they write books and make predictions. And there have been many, many movements that have flared up and gone away.

14:51

And you can read about them. They're all written down and cataloged and recorded. And Jesus is saying to his disciples, very particularly, take heed that no one deceives you.

15:06

Not to be led astray by them. So the wars and the rumors of wars,

15:12

Jesus says, don't. And then he says that this is the beginning of sorrows or the beginning birth pangs and so on.

15:26

Now, when a woman has birth pangs, what's the eventual outcome?

15:40

Has a baby. Right? So, Jesus is saying, these are the actual end.

15:52

So he said, don't get too worked up. And there's going to be a very clear moment.

16:00

Imagine this, after 40 or so years of gospel preaching throughout

16:07

Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem. And you can see here on the map, various places listed in the scripture where churches had been planted by AD 70.

16:18

And it went wider than this, but these are the places listed. You may imagine that after about almost four decades of gospel preaching and gospel missions and so on, of declaring that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that he's the lamb of God, that if you want to be right with God, then you need to come to Jesus because he said he was the temple.

16:47

He's the way you must come to get right with God. You don't need the temple in Jerusalem anymore. You don't need the blood sacrifices in the temple anymore.

16:54

You don't have to wash your hands in that funny way all the time anymore. That you don't need the shadows anymore because the substance has come.

17:02

That after almost four decades of that kind of preaching, when Jerusalem is destroyed and the temple is destroyed and all that is taken out of the way, how much more clarifying is that now?

17:16

There's not two competing anymore. The old is, as Hebrew says, the old covenant is obsolete and ready to pass away.

17:26

As Hebrews 12 puts it, that the old was shaken and removed out of the way.

17:33

But what cannot be shaken remains. How clarifying is that? And the beginning of these birth pangs is this moving through this transition.

17:47

At the end of this transition, when the old covenant is passed away, what do you have?

17:53

You have a very clear gospel proclamation. It's not that you go to the temple here, you need to come to Christ.

18:08

After this time, and we've, what about these famines where you see the mention of famines in the

18:21

Bible? During the time of Claudius, there were several famines in the 50s and the 60s that were recorded by ancient writers.

18:39

We also remember there was a famine in Judea. Remember? Remember how Paul was working together with the

18:45

Macedonian churches to bring a collection together because there was a famine in Judea? Well, Jesus prophesied and said there would be famines within that generation, and so there were.

18:54

Of course, there was also famine during the siege around Jerusalem. As promised in the

19:02

Old Testament, curses upon covenant breakers, Jerusalem was reduced to cannibalism. We also, so Jesus says there's gonna be earthquakes too.

19:11

He says, look guys, there's gonna be earthquakes. This is gonna happen. And there were many, many earthquakes in that time.

19:21

We even hear about earthquakes in Acts 16. But there was two earthquakes out of the ones that were recorded by ancient historians.

19:31

There were two earthquakes that concern our study. There was one earthquake in particular which shook

19:36

Jerusalem that we read about in the Bible. Do you remember which one that was? When Jesus died on the cross.

19:47

There was an earthquake that shook Jerusalem. Remember that? There was another earthquake that occurred in Jerusalem around 67

19:55

A .D. The historian Josephus, who was on the scene, records there broke out a prodigious storm in the night with the utmost violence and very strong winds with the largest showers of rain and continual lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions and bellowings of the earth.

20:11

And there was also an earthquake. Now, a bad storm is bad and an earthquake is bad.

20:16

Imagine having an earthquake and a storm at the same time. But yeah, there were earthquakes.

20:22

And then plagues. Jesus said that there was gonna be pestilences. He said there's gonna be pestilences and all these things are gonna happen within this generation.

20:29

Well, again, the Roman historian Tacitus, and of course, he's writing from his pagan perspective.

20:39

He has no idea he's giving witness to the truth of Jesus's words. You know, has no idea.

20:46

But he writes that the gods also marched by storms and diseases a year, which is A .D. 65, made shameful by so many crimes.

20:55

Campania was devastated by a hurricane, the fury of which extended to the vicinity of Rome in which a violent pestilence was carrying away every class of human beings, houses filled with dead bodies, the streets with funerals.

21:11

So there were plagues and pestilences. And also we read in Luke that there were terrors and great signs from heaven,

21:19

Jesus said that would occur. He said within this generation. There was a couple of comets that came through in the 60s.

21:27

One of them came through around A .D. 60, around the time of Nero. And the way that these ancients looked at comets was very unhelpful.

21:37

And so all the public began getting up in arms saying, oh, the comet came through, that must mean that Nero's reign is at an end.

21:45

He'll soon be replaced by his successor. Which of course, you know, when that gets worked around in Nero's horrible brain, he decided on the following course of action.

21:59

He banished all of his children from Rome and then had them starved and poisoned. And then he murdered his own mother and two wives and most of his family.

22:07

And then somewhere in that same time, he set Rome on fire too. So that's typical

22:14

Nero. And then Josephus also records that for a whole year over Jerusalem, there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city.

22:27

You know, modern people today say, well, that could never have happened. Okay, that's a lot of people saw it.

22:34

So these are all just different things. And of course, none of that is inspired holy word of God.

22:43

But that is simply, we should be unsurprised to discover that in the record of history, that the things that Jesus prophesied would happen, happen.

22:53

We should be unsurprised. And he said it would happen and okay, it did.

23:00

And now, why did he say that to his disciples? Because he did not want anyone to deceive them.

23:06

He did not want anyone going around and listing all those things that we just talked about and pointing at them as they're happening and everybody's really worked up about it.

23:14

And then the deceivers say something that would lead them astray and start believing false information.

23:21

They will begin to go in directions they shouldn't go and invest their money with people they shouldn't do so and become disobedient to the clear commands of Christ.

23:31

He didn't want to see his flock led astray. He didn't want to see his flock being devoured by ravenous wolves.

23:43

So, Jesus starts there, right? He's told them, he's pronounced judgment upon the apostate religious leaders in Jerusalem.

23:57

He has declared woe upon them. He has declared the house will be left to them desolate. He's declared the temple will be destroyed.

24:03

And this causes the disciples to say, oh, okay, when is this all gonna happen? And Jesus said, first of all, before I answer the question,

24:13

I don't want anyone to deceive you and I don't want anyone to lead you astray. And so he walks through all of that.

24:20

Now, notice in verses nine through 14, and you can see the companion texts in Mark 13 and Luke 21.

24:28

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

24:35

And then many will be offended, will betray one another and will hate one another.

24:41

Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold, but he who endures to the end shall be saved.

24:51

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations and then the end will come.

25:01

So Jesus, you know, this is ultimately good news, but it doesn't sound like it at first.

25:10

After he talks about pestilences and earthquakes and famines and wars and rumors of wars, and then he says, now we're done with the general problems.

25:21

Now we're gonna talk about the particular problems. You're gonna get arrested. You're gonna get offended. People are gonna hate you all because of my namesake.

25:31

People are gonna get offended, offended at you Christians. They're gonna get offended by you.

25:38

And it's gonna happen within families. It's gonna happen within close associations. But even though all these general problems are out there that you're gonna hear about and perhaps face yourself and all this direct opposition is gonna come against you, he's talking to his disciples.

25:58

At the very end, he says, ah, but you're gonna succeed. It's gonna be success.

26:04

You're not gonna fail. And that is encouraging to read for as certain as the other promises of Christ in this prophecy are true, so also is that.

26:17

Jesus said he's gonna build his church and the gates of Hades won't prevail against it.

26:24

Now think about just a few things that we know instinctively and from our own reading of the

26:32

New Testament. Do we remember anything about the disciples and the people of the church, servants of the church, messengers of the church and so on?

26:47

Can we remember anything in the New Testament about any of them being killed or hated or persecuted? A lot of examples, right?

26:58

Stephen was stoned to death for the faith. James, the brother of John, was put to death by the sword, by Herod, right?

27:09

Peter was imprisoned more than once. Paul was imprisoned more than once.

27:16

We read about great persecutions against the church. Jesus said that to happen.

27:24

It is a bit difficult to find a letter in the New Testament that doesn't take some time in that letter to go talk about some false prophets and deal with some false teaching, right?

27:39

There were false prophets all over the place teaching all sorts of wrong things. Jesus said that was going to happen and we see that the love of many would grow cold.

27:51

Can we think of anybody, any examples of that? Anybody's love that grew cold and turned away?

28:01

We think of Demas, having loved this present world has forsaken me, Paul says, right?

28:10

In any other examples? John Mark turned away for a while, yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:21

Only Luke is with me, he says at one point, right? Yeah. In 1

28:26

John chapter two, John says that children, we know that it is the last hour or it is the last hour and you have heard that antichrist is coming even now many antichrists have come by this.

28:43

We know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. But they went out that it might be manifest or if they were of us, they would have continued with us but they went out that it may be manifest that none of them were of us.

28:56

They turned away. Much like what the preacher to the

29:03

Hebrews was trying to warn against. Don't turn away, don't go back. Don't go back to the shadows.

29:11

And so Jesus said this was going to happen and we read all sorts of things in the New Testament that verify that in fact, these are the persecutions and the troubles and the trials.

29:24

That the church faced even as he said they would. So we'll look more at that passage next week and consider some of these expressions that Jesus uses about enduring to the end and the gospel of the kingdom and being preached to the world and that the end will come.

29:50

Any questions, observations or thoughts before we close by singing the doxology together? All right, well, let's sing together the doxology.