What is Significant about AD70?

The Triumphal Entry and Jesus Weeping Over Jerusalem

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. How would you like the opportunity to win a brand new MacArthur Study Bible? Well if you're interested at the end of the episode I'm going to tell you how you can win by watching our videos this week on Coffee with a Calvinist.

Alright let's get on with the episode. Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today we're going to be looking at Luke chapter 19 and as we turn in our Bibles I'd like to focus our attention first at verse 28 but then we're going to bring our attention to verses 41 to 44 for the focus the main focus of our study.

I want to point to verse 28 first though because I want to reference the fact that in verse 28 what we see is we see the the triumphal entry what's normally known as the triumphal entry this is Jesus coming into Jerusalem in fulfillment of prophecy on the back of a donkey and this event is actually cataloged in all four of the Gospels.

It's one of the few events that comes into all four of the Gospels and we see it here in Luke's Gospel. But the part of the part that is not in all four Gospels is the part that we read in verses 41 to 44.

This is something that Luke the historian tells us about this particular event and I want to read that to you and I want to make a few comments today. And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it saying would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace but now they are hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and him you in on every side and tear you down to the ground you and your children within you and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation.

Jesus Weeping Over Jerusalem as Prophetic Judgment

This is one of only two times that we see the Lord Jesus Christ weeping. We know that he wept outside of the grave of Lazarus his friend John. Chapter 11 tells us that Jesus wept the shortest verse in the Bible.

But this time we see Jesus not weeping over a friend but rather we see Jesus weeping over his nation weeping over the people of Jerusalem. And the statement that's made here is very important for us to consider when it comes to history because I believe what we have here is actually a prophetic statement from Jesus Christ about something that would take place many years later.

As Christians most of us are familiar with the importance of the first century and the things that happened in the first century particularly the birth of Jesus Christ the death burial and resurrection of Christ and the introduction of this new community which was called the Christian community they were first called Christians and Antioch the Bible tells us.

And so we have this new community of faith that is growing it is it's it's really the the outgrowth of the the new covenant community because the the new covenant has come in it has superseded the old covenant and made the old covenant obsolete.

And now this new community that's made up not of Jews only but now of Jews and Gentiles is beginning to spread throughout the world through the missionary work of men like the Apostle Paul and Barnabas and others.

And we see this happening all throughout the first several decades of the first century. You know the first three decades of course the life of Jesus and the next few decades is the the beginning of the birth of the early church.

And then we have the beginnings of the writings of the Gospels and and those things you know around the 40s and the 50s we begin to start seeing writings from the Apostles and from their associates men like Luke and Mark are writing and then of course the Apostle Paul is writing the majority of the books of the New Testament as he travels in his missionary journeys and as he addresses various churches and various issues that they're dealing with.

AD 70 and the Destruction of the Temple

But an event that is often overlooked in regard to its significance in the history of Christianity is actually an event that happened in AD 70. In AD 70 the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and that created a major shift in world history because up until that time the the Jewish people were continuing to function essentially as they had for many years before and what we have in AD 70 is the destruction of the temple and because the temple is destroyed now there is no longer sacrifices being made now.

There is no longer the annual events that are to take place in the temple and all of that is destroyed now. If we're familiar with Jerusalem today we know that there is one wall that is called the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall which Jews go to even to today and they pray and they take little strips of paper and they write down prayers and they put them into the cracks in that wall.

And if you go over to Jerusalem or you see pictures online you'll see that they're there at the wall daily praying because that represents what once was their temple. And my point in wanting to bring this out to you today is I believe that what happened in AD 70 is at least in part a fulfillment of what Jesus is saying here he's weeping over the city because they are going to within a generation within 40 years of this event they're going to experience a massive and cataclysmic destruction and as far as we can tell it will not be rebuilt now.

There are some depending on your eschatology there are some who believe that there will be a temple rebuilt in Jerusalem. Some believe that that will happen before Jesus returns. Some people believe that before that happens there will be the rapture of the church and that again depends on whether you are a dispensationalist or whether you are not and whether or not you are an amillennialist or a premillennialist.

And again those are not really the subject of today's video but that would that would determine how you understand. But one thing that we all recognize is there's no temple now and there hasn't been a temple since AD 70.

Christ the Fulfillment of the Old Covenant Sacrifices

And what is the significance of that for the Christian. Well I think it's very significant because if we consider the fact that Jesus came in part to fulfill all of the Old Covenant ceremonies the destruction of the temple was a way of God saying that that Old Covenant dispensation that Old Covenant expression of faith is now done away with no longer will you be bringing animals into the temple because the sacrifices that those animals of the Old Covenant represented is now fulfilled in the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ.

And so this is an important reality for Christians to understand. And I do think that that is a major point in history that the Jews no longer are able to fulfill the law that they were given by God in regard to sacrifices.

Why. Because those sacrifices will fulfilled in the person and the work of Jesus Christ on the cross he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament sacrifices going all the way back to Adam and Eve when they had skins made for their covering their nakedness that was a picture of the the the covering of the Lord Jesus Christ that would later come in and that we are now covered in his blood covered by his sacrifice and on and on and on every sacrifice down through the ages has pointed to one event and that is the the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so 8070 is very significant and again knowing what happened with the siege of the city and the the the work that was done by the Romans to to literally come in and destroy and and to starve out the people of Jerusalem and to be and to make it a time of tremendous tribulation.

And then you go back in your read and Jesus says the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you surround you and him you in on every side and tear you down to the ground you and your children within you and when they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation you see the Jews by and large had rejected Jesus Christ.

They had been visited by their Messiah and they had rejected him. And so this this act of destruction though it was by the Romans was an act of God to bring about the end of the old covenant sacrificial system that we might now live in light of the new covenant.

That does not require that we bring animals to sacrifice every year but rather that we look back at the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an important passage and one that requires of us a lot of thought and a lot of consideration but it should also bring to us a sense of joy and knowing that the old covenant has been put away and we now live in light of the new covenant no longer having to make sacrifices for our sin because the once-for-all sacrifice has been made.

This has been coffee with a Calvinist. I hope this has been encouraging and helpful to you today and again thank you for watching our daily broadcast. Remember that we have these every morning at 630 a .m.

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