Sunday, February 6, PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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24. Coming back to our study on the Olivet Discourse, it's been quite a while since we were able to do this, so some level of review is warranted here.

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Matthew chapter 24. Reading this passage, believing what is there, submitting ourselves to that information, and doing our best to not try to explain away the text, but to read it as biblically as we can and in humility.

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When we read Matthew 24, we read about Jesus pastoring his disciples.

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Namely, he begins by talking to them about the destruction of the temple, and that's very disturbing to them.

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So, they ask him some questions, and he begins to explain to them what they should expect, and what this is all about.

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The great challenge, I think, in reading this passage, end of chapter 23, and then later on in chapter 24.

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I'm going to read those two things, those two verses to you, because so just for all of the deaths of the prophets who have been killed, martyred for preaching

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God's Word, the blood of all, the righteous blood of all the prophets will come upon this generation, and they will be, the blood guiltiness of the deaths of the prophets come upon this generation, he says.

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So, if you look in your Bibles in chapter 23 and verse 36, things will come upon this generation.

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And in this sense, he's opening up some things now that he's going to talk about, what things he's about to tell you.

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For a parallel in the scriptures, do you remember the evil king

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Manasseh? Remember the evil king Manasseh? And it was said of Manasseh that he filled

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Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. Remember that?

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He reigned for 52 years. That's a lot of innocent blood. Now, later on, we read in the

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Bible that good king Josiah led national repentance.

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They destroyed all the high places, they broke up all the idols, they stopped idolatry wherever they could find it, they cleaned up the temple, restored the worship of God, and God made a statement at that point.

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He said, I'm not going to bring my promised judgment upon the nation during the days of king

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Josiah, because look at this repentance. I'm going to stay the judgment a while longer.

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But he said, but because of Manasseh, I will not relent of this destruction, it will come to pass.

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The blood guiltiness of all that had been done prior of Zedekiah, the blood guiltiness of you killing all the prophets for all these generations, it's all going to be settled upon this generation.

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So just like there was great destruction in the days of Zedekiah because of Manasseh, so also there was great destruction in the days of this generation because Jesus says the blood guiltiness of all that they had on them because of all the prophets.

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Now notice, as soon as he says, assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation, he begins, he's just talked about that, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

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How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

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See, your house is left to you desolate. What is the house of Jerusalem?

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It's the temple. The house of Jerusalem is the temple.

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And this, this, this in the

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Old Testament, if God departed from the temple, the temple was made desolate prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586.

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Jesus brings that same language forward and he says, your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

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Lord. So he just said your house is being left to you desolate. He just said a word against the temple.

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So what does his disciples do? As often as we read, or he does something, right?

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What do they do here? Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple.

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Remember, the temple is over several acres. There's all sorts of beautiful things there, massive stones, gold overlaying a lot of it.

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Jesus said to them, do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.

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So Jesus goes from saying your house will be left to you desolate, oh Jerusalem, to saying very specifically to his disciples.

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Now, as Jewish men being raised up in Jewish society, they were raised with the assumption that the destruction of the temple was the end of the universe.

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There's no more life after the destruction of the temple. That's impossible to fathom.

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It's impossible to conceive of life after the destruction of the Jerusalem, after the temple is destroyed.

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That just can't happen. So they come to ask him, they say, the end of the age. Some translations say the end of the world, but it's the end of the age.

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And Jesus begins to instruct them. Now we've gone from verse 36 of chapter 23.

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Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. And just for good measure, when you go to chapter 24 and verse 34,

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Jesus says the same thing. I say to you, means pass away to all by no means pass away.

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So he says this generation will not pass away. No possible way this generation is going to die out before what

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I've said will come to pass. The challenge, of course, is when we read that in the end of chapter 23 and verse 34 of chapter 24, we have these two bookends and everything we read in between.

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Jesus, are you serious? Are you serious that all these things are going to happen before this generation passes away?

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We've already studied this. We've gone back and we've looked all the way through Matthew. Every time that Jesus says this generation, we've looked at the context and it's pretty clear.

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He means, you know, the folks in front of him, the generation in front of him. That's the plain reading of the text. Given that, we have a challenge then to understand some of the themes in between those two bookends where Jesus says all these things will happen within this generation.

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Themes such as the coming of Christ and the clouds of heaven and great tribulation and a great disaster and stars falling from heaven.

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Then, how can this be, Jesus? How can these things actually take place before this generation passes away?

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So, we have a challenge by reading these expressions that Jesus uses and seeing how are these expressions used in the

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Bible and then try to do our best to interpret it according to the way that the Bible uses these expressions.

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One challenge that we have, if you will look in, this is from the last time we had our study.

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In verse 21, just prior to this, Jesus has said, the way to escape the great tribulation is to leave

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Judea. He says that very plainly. That's what you do. You leave

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Judea. And then verse 21, he says, for then there will be great tribulation such as has not been since the beginning of the world till this time, no, nor ever shall be.

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Okay, and I promised that we were going to come back to that verse and take a look at that expression and see what does

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Jesus mean by that? What does Jesus mean by that? Okay, obviously what

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Jesus is saying is that the destruction that he is talking about, this tribulation that of which he speaks is going to be both unique and unlike anything else that had ever happened or will ever happen.

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Okay, so how are we to understand that? Now some instincts are to read that passage and then later on when we see stars falling from heaven, we think, oh yeah, goodbye planet earth.

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Right? I mean, stars are obviously much bigger than planet earth. So if a star hits the earth, well, and we'll all be barbecued long before that ever happens.

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This sounds very interesting. Let's think about what

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Jesus is meaning here when he says that this tribulation will be unlike anything since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.

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So the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was horrific.

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Jesus knew it was going to be, and he talked about it often. It was a burden upon his heart.

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You'll find Jesus talking about it in places like Luke 19. Luke 19 verses 41 through 46.

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As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it. I mean, we see from time to time the emotions of Christ.

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And here, just upon the sight of Jerusalem, he begins weeping. Why? Verse 42 saying, if you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

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Now, when the things that make for peace are hidden from somebody, that is the judgment of God. That having eyes they shall not see.

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This is now, listen to why Jesus is weeping. He knows what's going to happen of Luke 19.

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For day come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you, and close you in on every side.

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When Vespasian with his two legions and Titus with his two legions, the Roman legions, invaded

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Judea, the siege over to the control of Titus, one of the things that they did was to build a wall around Jerusalem, around Jerusalem's walls.

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By this time, Jerusalem had three levels of walls, but they built another wall around all of Jerusalem to keep people from escaping.

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Do you see what Jesus says? They will surround you and close you in on every side.

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Now, Jesus said that almost 40 years prior, and no,

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Titus didn't read the gospel of Luke and say, oh, this is how I'm supposed to attack. Jesus prophesied, and we shouldn't be surprised that it came true.

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Notice they built an embankment around you. This is a siege method. The Romans would build an embankment so they could get up the sides of the walls and get over the walls and into the city to do battle with the residents there.

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Verse 44, the Romans, the soldiers will do what? They will level you and your children within you to the ground, and they will another.

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Sounds like Matthew 24 about not one stone in the context of these armies that surround

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Jerusalem. All this because you did not know the time.

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Then notice the connection that Luke makes. Then he went into the temple and began to drive out those who had bought and sold in it, saying to them, it is written, my house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

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Now, I have a question for you. There's a little bit trivia question, and this has to do with some of those odd case laws back in the

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Old Testament, and you're reading through in your Bible reading, and you're reading through Leviticus. Now, you clean it, and the stuff comes back to the house.

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What do you do? Destroy the house, removing every stone from on top of the other.

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Jesus cleansed the temple. Did it stay clean? No. So what happens?

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The house has to be taken apart. Are you following Jesus' train of thought here?

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Okay, Luke 23, verses 26 to 31. This is during the sufferings of Christ.

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Now, as they led him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon the Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus.

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And a great multitude of the people followed him, and women also mourned and lamented him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

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For indeed, the days are coming in which they will say, blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed.

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Then they will begin to say that the mountains fall on us, and that the hills cover us. For if they do these things in the greenwood, what will be done in the dry?

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Jesus says, weep for who? He says, weep for you and your children. In other words, weep for this generation.

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He has a burden on his heart about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, doesn't he? The destruction that occurred in Jerusalem was horrific.

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We can read about it in more than one source. Josephus is an excellent source to read, if you have a strong stomach, about the things that happened there.

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He was a first -hand witness about kind of a summary about the war between Rome and Jews.

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Whereas the war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but in a manner of those that ever were heard of, the misfortunes of all men from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to those of the

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Jews, are not considerable as they were. Neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries from the beginning of the world.

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This is Josephus just ruminating on what he saw, trying to give some expression to it.

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But it was Jesus who said that the destruction and the suffering and the tribulation that would come would be unique in all the history of the world.

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Now I want to clarify that at this point, that what do you versus the flood?

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Way more people died in the flood, right? So how can this be more suffering than that over there?

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Well again, when Jesus is using this expression, he's using a turn, a form of language called hyperbole, but it is accurate.

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There is a kind of suffering here that is happening that is greater and more significant and unique than anything else.

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For instance, those who died in the flood were not murdered, right?

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The generation in Jerusalem did. That's what they did say. They murdered.

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They said, we have no king but Caesar, and they said, his blood be upon us and our children. So there is a uniqueness to it that needs to be weighed in that regard.

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All right, so moving past that question that I promised that we would look at, we do have our handout.

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But before we get to the cool pictures, let's read this passage,

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Matthew 24 verses 23 through 28. Then if anyone says to you, behold, there is the

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Christ, or there he is, do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.

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Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, behold, he is in the wilderness, do not go out, or behold, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe them.

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For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.

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Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. A little bit different in the

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New King James where it says, be gathered together.

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Okay, so what's going on? First question, who is Jesus instructing? Who is he talking to?

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Who is he warning and helping? His disciples.

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He's talking to his disciples who have come to ask him about, what do you mean that the temple is destroyed? What's going on here? So he's instructing his followers.

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And he's already told them, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, don't run into the city. Don't stay in the city for protection.

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Don't stay in Judea. Run for the hills. Get out as fast as you can. You don't have time to wait around.

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And you're going to face false teaching.

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Lead the elect if possible. What does he mean by that? He said, he means by that, he's given instructions to his apostles.

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And the apostles are going to give instructions to the church that says what? When you see

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Jerusalem surrounded by armies, don't stay in Judea. And don't run back into the city.

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Go to the hills. Notice the misleading going on. They say, oh, yeah,

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Romans. Can you imagine how high the nationalism would be running and all the talk of the age of Messiah and everything else going on?

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Jesus knows it's going to happen. So he warns his disciples says, this is not the time to go out into the wilderness and start your own militia camp.

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This is not the time to run into Jerusalem and make a big hoo -ha at the temple.

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Don't follow these false teachers claiming false Christs. He's already given the instructions. He said, leave.

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He said, leave so fast that if you forgot your cloak in your house and you were on top of your house, don't even go grab it.

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That's how fast you need to get out. And that was his instructions to his disciples. And he does not want them to be misled.

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An example of an unfortunate example of one of these things,

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Josephus records, a false prophet was the occasion of people's destruction who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day that God commanded them to get up on the temple and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.

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Now there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, and tyrants he means the folks inside the city, who denounced this to them.

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They should wait for deliverance from God. And this was in order to keep them from deserting that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes.

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What were they told? They were told, go to the temple, go to the temple. False teachers. So Jesus is warning them about this threat.

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He warns them ahead of time. You're going to get these false teachers. You're going to get these false Christ. Don't listen to them. Don't be misled.

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He's already given the instructions. Why? Two things. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be.

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Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. Now the first thing you do when you read about lightning, okay, what do you think of when you think of lightning flashing across the sky from east to west?

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Have you ever seen that? You ever gone out lightning watching? I know we've got a lot of hailgaters here in Oklahoma.

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What do you think of when he says lightning? What image comes to your mind? There's rain, there's a storm, it's very bright.

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Think of the loud thunderclap that follows it, right? Maybe you see it branching out and kind of going all over the place.

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One night there was a storm that was out east of us in the parking lot here, and we just watched the most amazing lightning show that we've ever seen.

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It was a storm watcher's paradise, and no danger to us whatsoever, and we're able to see this massive storm just building and growing and changing and so on and so forth.

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So Jesus has this image for them. Now remember that we have talked about the language of coming.

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In the Hebrew the word is pachad, and how many times did God come to Israel?

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Oh, many, many times. He also came to Egypt. He also came to the Tower of Babel. He came to many different nations, and every time he visits, is the translation of the

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Hebrew word, judgment occurs. Judgment occurs. In fact, Jesus spoke to the churches of Asia Minor.

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Laodicea, Thessalonica, so on and so forth, Sardis, so on, and more than once he told one of those churches, if you don't repent,

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I'm going to come to you. Now hang on a second. I thought that was a good thing.

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Why is he saying it like a threat? Because the expression of coming is often in the terms of judgment.

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There's a heap of Old Testament passages with the background of that, and in this case, he's talking about a judgment coming.

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And we know this from the way that lightning is used in the Bible, not the way that lightning is used perhaps in popular fiction and so on.

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So you see these examples on your handout of where lightning is used in the

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Bible. We see that this is where we find lightning in the

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Bible. Lightning is expressed with severe holiness and power of God at Sinai.

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God comes with lightning to effect his covenant in Deuteronomy. When David talks about how

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God gave him victory over Saul, he talks about God coming down in a cherub with lightning.

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Now you remember that Saul got killed by the Philistines while David was recovering his family and possessions from the

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Ziklag raid. When you read 2

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Samuel 22 and Psalm 18, you don't see God riding a cherub with lightning and melting mountains and so on.

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But David uses that poetic metaphor to talk about the power of God and the victory of God.

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And God came in judgment against the enemies of David and delivered David, didn't he? God humbles

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Job by saying he controls lightning, and thus God is more powerful than man. In Psalms and Zechariah, God uses lightning to judge sinners.

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In Psalm 144, God makes war on man with lightning. Lightning is used to describe weapons of war.

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Lightning is sometimes used to describe those who are holy. And we find judgment and power in a relation often depicted with lightning.

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So the point of this is, we all know lightning is quick, don't we?

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Is that the primary aspect of lightning that the Bible highlights? No. We all know lightning is quick.

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Boom! Oh, scary! But how does the Bible depict lightning?

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As a metaphor of the judgment of God. Robustly, Jesus said, like a flash.

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But the biblical waters say that lightning is about the judgment of God.

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About the coming of the judgment of God. Now, in support of this, notice the very next statement that Jesus makes.

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And this is connected in his mind as he's describing it to his followers.

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For as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so this comprehensive kind of judgment, so also will the coming of the

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Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.

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Now you see that word for? He's explaining the lightning bit. You see that?

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For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the

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Son of Man be. For, substantiating the previous thought, explaining it, going a little deeper now, wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.

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Now, I don't immediately think of the quick flash of lightning with eagles eating a carcass.

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But, if I were to read lightning in terms of God's judgment, in which is expressed in various Old Testament contexts of God coming in judgment with lightning and destroying the wicked, well then it makes sense.

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Because in those same contexts we read about the kinds of judgments that God brings where the dead are laying all over the ground and nobody's left alive to bury them.

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We studied that in Jeremiah together. So, what about these eagles?

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Well, there's a quite a variety of different words in the

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Greek that you could use for birds or fowl. A lot of variety.

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This is a very specific word for eagle. Very specific word for eagle.

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In Jeremiah 7 .33 we read this, the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth and no one will fight them away.

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It's an expression of judgment. Jeremiah 19 .7, I will make void the council of Judah and Jerusalem in this place and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life and I will give over their carcasses as food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.

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So, when Jesus says wherever the corpse is there the eagles are going to gather, this is speaking about the devastating destruction that is going to come upon this generation.

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Why is Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem? Why is he weeping and sorrowful about what's about to happen?

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Because he knows that this is the kind of thing that's going to happen, where there's going to be such destruction.

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Josephus often mentions the rage of the Roman troops, and it was a very bloody and disgusting type of event, a series of events.

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But why does the Lord portray the judgment with eagles? He could have said fowl, he could have said raven, he could have used other words for wild birds, he doesn't even use his favorite word for birds.

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He uses a very specific word, eagle. An eagle is, as you see here, something that is very associated with Rome.

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Very associated with Rome. The legions would carry standards poles with images of eagles at the top.

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These eagles, they treated like gods, like protective gods of their legion.

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And they would worship these eagles and offer sacrifices to them. And so Jesus is saying, he uses not the term ravens or the term vultures, he uses the term for eagle.

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And so what's going on here? This is what Josephus says about the legions.

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The incense came, meaning this, encompassing the eagle, which is at the head of every

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Roman legion, the king and the strongest of all birds, which seems to them a signal of dominion and an omen that they shall conquer all whom against the account of the war, where they're destroying

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Jerusalem. The soldiers, every advance they made in taking sections of Jerusalem, and they would stop and they would plant their eagle amongst the dead of the

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Jews, and they would offer sacrifices and do homage to their victorious eagle. The Roman soldiers were there for loot and plunder and they would fall upon the dead carcasses and they would strip them of anything they could find that was in their possession.

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But most interestingly to me is that the word eagle, word eagle appears in the exact covenant curse that relates to this in Deuteronomy chapter 28.

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Remember that God had made a covenant with Israel and he told them that if they did not follow his ways, if they did follow his ways, they'd be blessed, but if they didn't follow his ways, he would bring this series of judgment.

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And if they didn't repent, he'd bring a series of worse things. And if they didn't repent, he'd bring a series of even more worse things.

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And we read in Deuteronomy 28 and verse 49, the

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Lord will bring a nation against you from afar from the end of the earth as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand.

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You have a very clear expression of eagles and actual literal fulfillment of these eagles, these ensigns gathering upon the corpses, just like Jesus said.

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And there was a lot of gold in Jerusalem. And we've been talking about inflation lately.

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Well, so much plunder was taken out of Jerusalem, so much that Josephus says that throughout

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Syria, the standard of gold was depreciated to half its former value. So much gold flooded onto the market that it was harmful to the economy.

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If there is an arch to this day in the city of Rome, an ancient arch that was erected to commemorate

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Titus's victory in the destruction of Jerusalem. Titus, upon entering Roman triumph, brought with him 700

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Jewish captives and carried with them was the golden table.

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There was the seven -branch candlestick, and all of that was sculpted into the arch at Rome.

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It stands through the centuries as a silent witness that the words of Jesus were fulfilled concerning the great tribulation and the destruction that came upon Jerusalem, Judea, and the temple.

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And he said that it was going to be a devastating destruction. Next time, we're going to look at the passage in Matthew 24 at all kinds of things happening in the sky.

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And what does that mean? And we're also going to look at other passages of scripture and see how they cohere together.

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Any questions or thoughts before we close? He was indeed ordered not to destroy the temple.

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It was a wonder of the Roman Empire. Many Romans had contributed to beautify the temple.

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They were so proud of this monument to the glory of Rome, they saw it as. But it was set on fire by the

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Jewish zealots, so what are you going to do? Bad time to be in Jerusalem.

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There were three different factions in Jerusalem all fighting each other at the same time that the Romans had surrounded them on the outside.

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Yes? Yeah, I have my grandfather's copy.

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It's also online. All right, let's close by singing the doxology together.