The End of the World and The Truth

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Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

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Word of God. So we thank you so much for partnering with us to send this out across the world. I just wanted to say something before you actually watch this, and that is that I'm not your pastor, though I'd love to be,

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That is vitally important and actually a biblical command. And so as much as, again, as we love for your participation, your partnership, and we are so thankful to God that he's using these in your lives, we want to encourage you to get plugged into a local church.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. All right. Open your

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Bibles to the gospel according to Matthew chapter 23. We are in the

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Kingdom of God series. It's an exposition of the gospel according to Matthew.

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We are in chapter 23, such a vitally important section of Scripture.

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And I hope today I can illustrate that for us all. Chapter 23, chapter 24, really you have to do these together.

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You have to understand background, context, redemptive narrative, the promises of God, what he said was going to take place in the life and kingdom of the

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Messiah. Matthew chapter 23 is not random pot shot text thrown down.

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There is a redemptive story here, a divinely inspired redemptive story.

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Gospel according to Matthew chapter 23. We're going to be in this section of Scripture for a bit, and I truly believe that you will enjoy it.

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You will find great joy in it. And my hope and what I've been asking the

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Lord for as he prepares me to present this to you, his people,

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I've been asking the Lord that he would equip you, that he would create within you awe, godly fear before God, that you would see

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Christ vindicated here as the true Messiah, that you would be prepared against the onslaught of attacks against the

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Christian faith. Current, of course, has been since the beginning, but there are so many things even connected to this particular passage that come against us today.

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I'm going to talk about that today, but my hope is that you would find in Jesus your hope, your salvation.

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You will find in him that he truly is the promised Messiah without any question whatsoever.

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You will find in him what many early Christians in history found in him through even this passage as they used it to defend the fact that he truly is the

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Messiah. So, Matthew chapter 23. I'm actually going to start today where we left off last time, 23, 23, verse 23.

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I'm going to read to the end of this chapter. Now, I want to encourage you as we're doing this sort of in pieces because we have to because of the size of this section of scripture.

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I want to encourage you as you're reading through this at home, as you're studying it, as you're meditating on it,

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I want to encourage you to actually do something. Now, just make a note of this. I'd like to encourage you to actually read

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Matthew 23 and 24 alongside Mark 13 and Luke 21.

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Those are the parallel passages of the Olivet Discourse, the Great Tribulation. So again,

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Mark 13, Luke 21, and then the section that we're in here. And read it together.

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Read it in context. Make note of things.

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Language being used by Jesus. Ask the question, is it used elsewhere? Elsewhere in the

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Gospels? Elsewhere in the New Testament? Elsewhere in the Old Testament?

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Take a lot of notes. We'll be making resources available to all of you as we go through this section of scripture.

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My hope is, again, that you would gain understanding from this passage, that it would not be cryptic, but that you would have a biblical understanding and foundation for what you read here.

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And again, that it would cause you to be in awe of Jesus. Matthew 23, 23.

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Hear now the word of the living God. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

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For you tithe men and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self -indulgence, you blind

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Pharisee. First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

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So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them and shedding the blood of the prophets.

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Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

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Fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood vipers.

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How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous

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Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

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Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often would

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I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.

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See, your house is left to you desolate, for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

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Lord. Thus far as the reading of God's holy word, let's pray together as his people. Lord, we come before you humble,

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Lord, and grateful. God, that you gave to us your inspired holy word.

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We hold in our hands what is theanoustos, what is breathed out by you.

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God, we give you praise that you preserved your word for us throughout history. Lord, you've been carrying all things along, and together,

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Lord, you carry everything along to its intended destination. In this very moment, as we hold on to your word here before you, this is from your hand.

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And I pray, God, that you would teach us today by your spirit, through your word, guard me from error.

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Speak, Lord, through your word to your people. Prepare us, Lord, to be witnesses for you in this world, and help us to understand your word here,

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Lord, as you gave it to us. Help us, Lord, to walk in truth, guard us from error.

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Stop us, Lord, from putting our own concepts and beliefs into your word.

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I pray that you'd protect us, Lord, from the kind of evil that we've even seen in the last couple of hundred years, even in the land that we are in.

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People that have used even this section of scripture to abuse other image bearers of God, to lie to them in your name.

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And we pray, Lord, that you would prepare us with a solid foundation to demonstrate to the world that,

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Lord Jesus, you are the Messiah. You've kept your promises. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

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Matthew chapter 23 is a big section of scripture. Of course, this is a moment that many modern evangelicals aren't comfortable with.

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In Matthew 23, Jesus calling people whitewashed tombs, brood of vipers, snakes.

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Jesus saying to people, woe to you. Calling down the curse of God upon people.

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Seven woes, perfect completion. That's a big deal, by the way, in scripture. The number seven is symbolic.

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Where does it first appear? First chapter of the Bible, right? We have God creating and he lays down a pattern.

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Creation itself becomes a symbol in some ways. That number now is laid down in scripture as a number of completion,

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God's completion. Six days of creation, seventh day God resting, and you have now a symbol, a number, and now you have this complete number, seven, and we have these woes of the

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Lord Jesus upon his generation, the covenant breakers of his generation. Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you.

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Jesus calling down the curse of God upon them. This isn't the meek and mild

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Jesus that we like to propagate today in Western evangelicalism, right?

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Jesus is the hippie surfer, right? That just wants to love you, bro, and just wants you to give him a chance, a 90 -day trial, let him into your heart or something, right?

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This is Jesus coming now in many ways with a covenant lawsuit against the people of God, condemning them for their hypocrisy, for their pretending, for their false religion, their swearing falsely, their pretending before people to be righteous and clean, but inside they are full of dead people's bones.

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Jesus, just think about what he's doing here, he's actually talking to people who claim to know God, who have his word, who say they're the covenant people of God, and he's saying, on the outside, you're this beautiful whitewashed tomb, right?

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Not very offensive, clean on the outside, but inside you are filled with stench of death, you stink, you are foul, you are wretched and rancid on the inside, that's you, you are a brood of vipers, you are snakes, liars, hypocrites,

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God curse you, that's what Jesus is saying. Jesus is

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God in the flesh, he's the one who is coming to bring the covenant lawsuit against the people of God, these people profess to know

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God and Jesus comes to tell them the truth. This section of scripture we've been in from really

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Matthew chapter 20 on to where we're at right now, Jesus comes into Jerusalem, he's already told his people he's coming to Jerusalem, they're going to kill him, he's going to rise again, he comes into Jerusalem and of course you have the people of God saying, oh

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Hosanna, Hosanna, and they're laying down leaves, he's coming to get fruit from the people of God, they present leaves, you have all this amazing imagery, symbolism, right there embedded into the text, that if you know the word of God, you see what

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Matthew is saying to Jews in his day, he's speaking directly to their covenant unfaithfulness,

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Jesus coming for the second cleansing of the temple as was promised in the Old Testament, coming now to see if they're faithful, to find fruit, to look for sin and he finds corruption, now of course that testifies their temple is going to be taken down,

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Jesus coming to look for fruit, cursing the fig tree, finding none, saying no fruit's going to come from you again,

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Jesus telling them parables, giving them stories about the impending looming judgment upon the people of God, this is an intense moment of Scripture, Jesus now is coming in, not in a way that ought to have surprised them, now this is key,

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I want you to hold on to this very, very important thing as you approach the

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Great Tribulation passage, the Olivet Discourse, this section of Scripture that has been used by cultists and agnostics and atheists and liberal theologians to undermine the message of the

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Gospel and the testimony of Jesus for a long time, this section of Scripture was to be expected, if you know the

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Old Testament revelation of God and what God foretold was going to occur in the

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Messiah, in his redemption, in his kingdom, then what takes place here in this moment in Matthew and of course in Mark and Luke as well, is something that they should have anticipated, in other words, if you were holding the

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Old Testament text, the scrolls that foretold what Messiah was going to accomplish in his ministry, then you should have been able to follow

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Jesus along in these moments and point to the text, this is what

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God said was going to happen, this is what we were supposed to anticipate, this is what

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Messiah was going to come to do and to say, in other words, the life and ministry, the message of Jesus, listen closely, is not a novelty dropped into history, this is

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God's redemptive story played out, it is a symphony in history, all of these parts and pieces play together and I want to say, when we neglect that essential truth, that this is

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God's symphony and story of history, that is where we fall into grave eschatological error, when we fail to see that this is a story about covenant, when we fail to see that this is

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God's promise toward his covenant people, then we come to these texts and we mangle them and as we mangle these texts, we mangle other image bearers of God and their lives and we're going to talk about that right now, so we are going to unpack verse by verse all of these parts and pieces, we're going to talk about the stars falling from the heavens, we're going to talk about lightning coming across the sky, we're going to talk about the son of man on the clouds of heaven, we're going to talk about all those pictures and symbols and all that imagery, everything there in the text, but I know that it is vitally important for me as a minister of the gospel, as your pastor, as your brother, to lay down a foundation of how we have to approach

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God's word, in particular when we talk about passages like this that are so often used to abuse people, so let's do that, we're going to now build a foundation, how do we approach a section of scripture like this, the importance of this section, first cults have been born, literally born out of this section of scripture, they've been born out of it,

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Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, David Koresh, all these modern cult leaders from the last 200 years have actually used sections of the

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Olivet Discourse, the section about the great tribulation that Jesus promised that would occur in that generation, they've used this section of scripture to strike fear into people, they've used this section of scripture to actually lay down a foundation for their movement, as a matter of fact it's in the name, if you think about it for a moment now, the

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Church of Jesus Christ of what? Latter -day Saints, which means what?

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Last Days Saints, and you can see throughout the writings of the early Mormon prophets and apostles, including

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Joseph Smith, even to moments where Lyman White is prophesying in the congregation, he's quoting from sections of scripture like the great tribulation, to do what?

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To tell the Mormon people that they were living in the last generation, that before they all died, the

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Son of Man was going to return in their generation before they all died, and that he would destroy all the wicked with his coming.

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Cults have literally been born out of this section of scripture and continue to be born out of this section of scripture.

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Atheists have used this section of scripture to claim that Jesus was in error, that he was just another apocalyptic prophet in error.

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Give you an example, Douglas Wilson was debating

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Christopher Hitchens for the film Collision, that's right,

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Collision. They had a debate at Westminster Seminary, and that debate is available for everyone to see online for free, you can see it, just look up Douglas Wilson, Christopher Hitchens, Westminster, about two hours,

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I think. In that debate, Christopher Hitchens, I think you'll agree with me as you watch it,

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Christopher Hitchens really struggles with Douglas Wilson. Douglas Wilson takes his legs off constantly, constantly, just takes away his foundation, and Christopher Hitchens, I think, actually had a great respect for Douglas Wilson because of Douglas Wilson's intellect and his ability to take his legs off.

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Well, there's a moment in that debate where Christopher Hitchens, I believe, was really struggling in the debate, and so what does he do?

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He throws out the chestnut argument, and what's the chestnut argument oftentimes for atheists? That Jesus had a false prophecy about his coming, right?

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People take this section of scripture and say that it's about the end of the physical cosmos, and so atheists say, well, if this is about the end of the physical cosmos, if it's about the end of the world and the final resurrection and judgment, well then

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Jesus promised it's going to happen in their generation, and so, of course, Christopher Hitchens whips out the chestnut argument often used by atheists.

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Jesus had a false prophecy here. He clearly predicted that all these things will come upon this generation.

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What generation? It's clear in the text, the generation that he's talking to, so if this is about the end of the world and the end of the world didn't happen, then

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Jesus is a false prophet, and so if you watch that debate, you'll see one of my favorite moments, and that's where my friend

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Doug actually, for about 60 seconds, gives a 60 -second burst demonstrating that this is covenantal, that all these things occurred exactly as Jesus said they would occur, and Christopher Hitchens' response?

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Nothing. Took his legs off again. In 60 seconds, he removes the chestnut argument of the atheists.

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How? By giving a very creative argument? No. Exegesis. Letting the text speak for itself, and when you let the text of God's word speak here, it vindicates

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Jesus as Messiah. It demonstrates that he is, in fact, the one that was promised, but atheists do use this text to try to say that Jesus is a false prophet.

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More recently, Harold Camping of Family Radio.

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Now, this is actually interesting because Harold Camping of Family Radio was somebody that Pastor James was warning people about for long before May 21st, 2011.

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The name of the book was Dangerous Airwaves. Dangerous Airwaves. Dr. White was trying to warn the church against Harold Camping and the dangers of following Harold Camping for some time, and of course, many of you guys remember.

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How many guys remember Harold Camping? How many guys remember Harold Camping?

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Remember the signs? They were all over the world. Billboards everywhere. May 21st, 2011.

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Judgment Day is coming, and what did it say on the side? It said, the Bible guarantees it.

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The Bible guarantees it. May 21st, 2011.

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Judgment Day. Harold Camping, through some very strange numerology and really just creative old man mind, came up with this weird system, and here's the crazy thing.

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If you listen to him explain it, it didn't make any sense. It was the craziest, most outlandish thing, and people bought it hook, line, and sinker.

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And Harold Camping said that the end of the world was going to be May 21st, 2011. Judgment Day.

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The Bible guaranteed it. Now, I remember that time. Sage was young, really young at the time, and I remember how excited

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Sage was every night. He's like, Dad, turn on family radio. I have to hear it.

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He was like 9, 10 years old. He wanted to listen to Harold Camping every night because he thought it was the most amazing thing that people would be following a man saying something like that.

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Of course, May 21st came, and May 21st went. Harold Camping seen, of course, as a false prophet.

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Now, we can say, you know, shame on the people who listened to him.

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They should have known better. They should have read their Bibles, but people were hurt by that. People were seriously hurt by this man.

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May 21st came and went. Harold Camping was hiding in his house. The news came to his house, and they were like, what's the deal,

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Mr. Camping, right? We're all still here, and he said, no, I need to live.

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I need to figure this out. I need time to think about this, and what did he say? He said it must have been sort of like a silent judgment, and it was really in five more months that the end of the world was coming, and of course,

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October 21st comes and goes. Everyone's still here, and people were dramatically hurt by this man.

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Bad eschatology hurts people. Bad eschatology hurts people.

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As I was praying and preparing for the series coming up through the

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Great Tribulation, Candy and I turned on TV the other night, and we're looking for something to watch, and in God's providence just came up.

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A documentary came up in my feed called Wheat and Tears, and it was a documentary about Harold Camping and May 21st,

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Judgment Day, 2011. I really encourage you to watch it.

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Wheat and Tears. It's on Amazon, and I'm going to give you actually two to watch to show you how important it is to actually get this right.

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The first documentary I watched just popped up. It was called Wheat and Tears. It's about Harold Camping, May 21st, and this particular documentary was interesting because it followed the people who were following Harold Camping going out, handing out leaflets, doing the billboards, driving the cars, all the rest.

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This particular one is interesting because it shows the impact on people's lives, how people were dramatically hurt by this false prophet, by bad eschatology.

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The impact. The impact of telling people who have faith in Jesus that the ultimate goal right now is to escape, that in any moment we're all getting taken out of here.

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May 21st, 2011, we're all gone. Nothing else matters. Nothing matters.

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We're all getting out of here anyway, so what did it do? Well, you'll see in the film that it impacted people because their mindset of escape led them to actually tap out all their financial resources.

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In some of the stories you saw, the families actually bought into what Harold Camping had said about the

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Great Tribulation and the final day of judgment, May 21st, and so they actually tapped out their financial resources to the dollar and to the day.

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So you had families who actually had quit their jobs and abandoned everything they were required to do, and they just were living down through their pennies down to that final day, and they even asked, what are you going to do if that day comes and goes?

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What are you going to do? We don't know. There were people that walked up to Harold Camping on camera and said,

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Mr. Camping, I'm really struggling because I need to know, should

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I spend all my money before May 21st? I don't want money sitting in my account and that to be testimony about my unfaithfulness to God, my distrust.

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I want to show him that I believe that the end is here, and I don't want any money left in my account.

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So there were families with children that tapped out their financial resources until May 21st because of this false prophet.

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What else did it do? Well, it took people who profess faith in Jesus out of the mindset of Christians in history.

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Give you just a quick burst of examples. As Christians have gone into nations in history to preach the gospel, they've gone into nations to win those nations to Christ, to bring the message of his kingdom and his salvation and his lordship into every nook and cranny of that culture and society.

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The Puritans, when they would come into a place to bring the gospel, their mindset was to bring the message of Christ's gospel and his lordship into every area of life, to bring the lordship of Jesus Christ into every area of life, individually, the family, the church, the state, everywhere.

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They wanted to take dominion with the gospel, with the message of Jesus in every area of life.

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But Harold Camping's followers had a different mindset. Their mindset was a mindset of escape, of nothing else matters.

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We're all getting out of here anyways. All of this is burning up anyways. And so what did they do?

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They didn't establish a stake with the gospel to build the kingdom of God with the message of Christ and his kingdom into all of the world.

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What did they do? They went into a mindset of retreat. They went into a mindset of escape.

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Nothing else matters. May 21st is coming. The end of the world. All this is getting burned up.

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It's meaningless. It's all sound and fury, signifying nothing, essentially.

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And their mindset was escape, not to win the world to Christ and to establish and grow his kingdom.

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Another film that popped up after I saw Wheaton Terrors was called

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Apocalypse Later. Now this one is vital. I'm so glad that I ran into this.

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Apocalypse Later follows mostly liberal theologians in our day.

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And it was amazing. It was like a who's who's list of people that Dr. White has debated in this film.

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It really was. But one of the main players in the film was Bart Ehrman.

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And in the film, this is what you need to hear. Very, very important guys to grab hold of this. In the film,

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Bart Ehrman and the other liberal theologians from Yale and Harvard and all the rest argue that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher like Harold Camping.

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And he got the timing of the end of the world wrong, too. So these liberal theologians and higher critical scholars of the

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Bible approach Jesus and they say, well, listen, Harold Camping isn't the first.

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You see, really, Harold Camping is just the modern version of Jesus. Because, you see,

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Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher in his day and he predicted the end of the world in the

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Olivet Discourse and the Great Tribulation passage as well. He was just a first century version of Harold Camping.

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Harold Camping is the 21st century version. Jesus is the first century version. Both are just apocalyptic preachers who falsely predict the end of the world in their day.

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And they said, the interesting thing about Jesus is his movement didn't die when he falsely predicted the end of the world.

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Now, what's interesting here is you have someone like Bart Ehrman who prides himself on being a scholar and a proper exegete of scripture who can't properly handle

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Matthew 24 to see its covenantal context and that it's not about the end of the space -time continuum, but the end of the old covenant age and the judgment upon the temple.

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But when Christians take this section of scripture and apply it to the end of the world and out of the

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Jewish covenantal context that it is actually in, we give actual resources to the unbelievers to use as weapons against the

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Christian faith and the message of Jesus. So let's talk about foundations again as we approach this text of scripture.

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There are essentially two schools of thoughts, two schools of thoughts. If you're taking notes,

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I'm going to read to you a little section here from my friend Dr. Ken Gentry, his book called

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The Great Tribulation, Past or Future. It's actually a debate book between Tommy Ice and Ken Gentry on this section of scripture.

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I highly recommend this resource to you. And in his book he says this in terms of foundations of looking at this debate in this passage.

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He says, our debate is ultimately over the relative merits of two schools of prophetic thoughts, preterism and futurism.

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The word preterist is based on a Latin term which means gone by or past.

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Preterism holds that the tribulation prophecies occur in the first century, thus in our past.

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Futurism, on the other hand, holds that the tribulation prophecies loom in our future.

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Though presently enjoying strong growth, preterism is a decidedly minority viewpoint among modern evangelicals.

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Nevertheless, the view of a first century great tribulation is not a newcomer to the prophetic debate.

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In fact, it has enjoyed a powerful influence in the last few centuries, as we may discover from the writings of such influential

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Christian scholars as John Calvin, John Lightfoot, John Owen, Matthew Henry, John Gill, Thomas Scott, Adam Clark, Moses Stewart, J.

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A. Alexander, Albert Barnes, Philip Schaff, David Brown, F.

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W. Farrar, Milton Terry, Benjamin Warfield, J. Marcellus Kick, and Lorraine Bettner to name but a few historic preterists, people who took a preteristic interpretation of these passages.

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Nor does the preterist principle arise in these relatively recent centuries. In fact, a preterist understanding of the great tribulation appears among early church writers.

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For instance, Origen, A .D. 185 -254, and Eusebius, A .D.

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260 -340, clearly hold to this position. When speaking about the great tribulation passage in Matthew 24,

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Eusebius points to, quote, the infallible forecast of our Savior in which

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He prophetically expounded these very things, after citing many paragraphs from, quote, the history written by Josephus to document the

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A .D. 70 fulfillment of this discourse. So, here's the question.

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Make it simple. Is the great tribulation passage, the Olivet Discourse, is what's discussed in Matthew 24,

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Mark 13, and Luke 21, something that is going to occur in our possibly near future?

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Or are the events foretold in these sections of Scripture, events that occurred in that generation, before they all died, as the text,

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I believe, clearly says? So, the question is, is it future to us, or is it past in fulfillment?

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Is it a preterist view, past in fulfillment, or is it future to us?

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That's the question. Those are the schools of thought. And the question, watch, is not, which system do

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I want to adopt? What tickles my fancy? What do

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I like? What sounds better? What seems to work for me? We should never approach any section of Scripture based upon what we would like to be true, what we hope to be true.

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We need to approach the Word of God with awe and humility, and we need to approach the

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Word of God unpacking what it is teaching, not what we want it to teach.

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Amen? We should have an approach to the great tribulation and the Olivet Discourse that matches our approach to the

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Bible when we're handling texts of Scripture that are dealing with the Trinity, the deity of Christ, justification by faith, or any other essential doctrine.

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We need to approach the Scriptures and let the Bible speak. It's a question of two schools of thought, futurist or preterist, past in fulfillment, or is it future to us?

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It's a question actually of two other things, exegesis versus eisegesis, the words you hear a lot at Apologia Church, right?

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Exegesis means to draw out of the text. What does the text say?

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Draw out of, exegete the passage, not eisegete, read into the passage foreign thoughts that aren't actually in the passage itself.

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Exegesis versus eisegesis. There are rules we need to follow as Christians when we approach passage of Scripture.

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Give an example. Questions we have to ask like this, who wrote this?

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Do we know? It's helpful at times to know who wrote, say, a book or a letter in the

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Bible, because if we know who wrote the book, maybe we can compare it to other books or letters that that author wrote to say, what is their train of thought?

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Have they used this language before? Have they talked about this before elsewhere?

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Is it anywhere else? We need to know maybe who wrote it. Maybe we know, maybe we don't. Do we know when it was written?

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It's helpful at times to know when something was written. What's the language being used?

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What's the immediate context of this section of Scripture? What's the immediate context?

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Is this talked about elsewhere in this current book? Is it talked about elsewhere in the whole of Scripture?

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How does this hang together with the rest of God's redemptive story? These are questions we should ask as we approach really any section of Scripture.

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Here's a rule. Let the Bible speak. Let the Bible define.

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Let the Bible interpret. I'll say that again. Let the Bible speak.

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Let the Bible define. Let the Bible be the interpreter. Resist putting our 21st century concepts into the text of God's word.

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Resist placing our concepts into the text itself. Give an example.

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Let the Bible be the definer. Let it lay down the standard. Let it lay down the rules.

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Let it lay down the definitions. So give an example. When I say the word, let's test it out now.

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Ready? To show you that we're already here. We already know this. It's already in our minds.

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Like for example, I'll use a modern example. If I say to you, 9 -11, what happened in your minds?

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Some of you guys remember exactly where you were. Some of you guys remember that horrible day.

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I remember so much of that day. I remember the phone ringing. I remember my sister yelling into the answer machine.

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Kids, there were these things. I could hear her saying, get out of bed.

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Get out of bed right now. Turn the TV on. I remember every moment of that first hour.

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I remember the day. I remember that night. I remember going to Mill Avenue that night for the candlelight vigils.

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Jerry, were you with me? Were we there together? I seem to remember we were maybe hanging out that time. I remember so many details, but that day has become, that 9 -11 day has become a symbol.

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9 -11. And you have a context that immediately falls as soon as that's said.

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9 -11. Or how about this? Let's use it in a biblical context now. Because of biblical history, because of real history, something

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God really did in history, He lays it down. It becomes a symbol now that all of a sudden now your mind connects to, and you start having emotions, feelings, definitions, understandings because of a symbol.

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I'll give you the word. Arc. Let it happen for a minute.

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Ready? Arc. What happens in your mind? Just don't shout out.

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Just think about it for a second. What'd you get? Any images going to your mind? What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about?

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You're thinking about something very large. You're thinking about water, a lot of water. You're thinking about judgment.

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You're thinking about God's grace, hopefully. Right? Not just judgment, but God's grace upon undeserving people that He puts into an arc.

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You're thinking about people who actually remained on the earth. Question.

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Ready? Who was swept away from the earth? The righteous or the wicked? The wicked.

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Who remains? The righteous. So you think about arc,

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Noah, his family, judgment, the wicked swept away, the righteous remain.

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It becomes a symbol. It's historic narrative. It really happens. It's not a fable.

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It's not a tale. It's real people, recipients of God's grace in history, but now the arcs become a symbol, and did you know it's actually used in scripture in the

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New Testament as a symbol? That it was really a real event that was pointing to Jesus.

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He's the arc of our salvation. We come into Him. We're preserved in Him.

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Do you see that? That real event becomes a symbol that we can all carry now to have understanding.

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I'll give you another one. Manna. Manna from heaven.

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Real historic event. People of God. God feeding His people. Manna from heaven.

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They had their lives sustained supernaturally, divinely by God through manna from heaven.

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It's a real event. It really happens. Fell from the sky, and they ate and had life.

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But now it becomes a symbol for the people of God to understand, and Jesus uses it that way and says in John 6,

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I am the bread of life. Come from heaven.

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Whoever believes in me will never die. Jesus now takes an historic event, manna from heaven.

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God really did that, and He says that was really about me. I am the true bread from heaven.

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Eat my flesh. Drink my blood, or you have no life in you.

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Jesus is teaching us now through this historic event, now becomes a symbol. It's supposed to connect to our minds, and we understanding in its whole context.

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I'll give you another one. Ready? Temple. What are you thinking of?

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What God lays down in His word from the Old Testament. That was a real event, a real place, a real structure, a real thing.

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God commanded them. Here's your temple. Here's how to build it. Here's how to design this thing.

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You know about a holy of holies. You know about a veil. You know about a priest. You know about a day of atonement.

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All that stuff. But the temple now is not just this historic place.

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It's not just this historic event. It becomes a symbol for something even greater.

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And in the New Testament, the concept of the temple, the real thing becomes something greater for the people of God.

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How about when you hear the word priest? What are you thinking of? How about this?

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When you hear the word lamb? When you hear the word harlot or whore?

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Now, this is where it gets important. Watch this. This is where it gets key in terms of letting the Bible give you the definitions.

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The Bible give you the interpretation. We do not have the right as 21st century

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Christians to look at things and say the book of Revelation and come up with fanciful interpretations and grab things from our day and start cramming them into the text.

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We need to let the word of God give us the definitions and the understanding. For example, when you tell a

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Jewish Christian in the first century, there's a whore. Babylon.

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Immediately, a Jewish Christian who knows their Bible starts thinking not in creative ways, but in biblical ways.

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Where else did God use the terminology whore, harlot? Oh, he spoke that way about his unfaithful bride,

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Israel. And he says in Ezekiel, he says, you're different. You're much different.

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See other harlots get paid for what they do. He says, but you sit by the side of the road and you offer yourself to everybody and you get paid nothing for what you do.

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He says, you are my bride. I made you beautiful. I give you all this beautiful jewelry, all these beautiful clothes.

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I picked you up. I made you beautiful and mine. And you went off and played the harlot with all the surrounding nations.

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That's how Israel heard the word harlot and whore.

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God used it about the unfaithful bride, his wife, who went off and played the harlot with all the surrounding nations.

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So again, the Bible gives you the foundation, the symbol, the definition.

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So when you go to passages, say like in the book of Revelation, the most symbolic book of all of scripture,

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I'll give you this example here in Revelation chapter 17, quick thing here.

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The book of Revelation is over 400 verses. And over half of those verses are direct quotations from the old

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Testament or allusions to old Testament passages. So it is the most biblical book in all of the

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Bible. By modern standards, the apostle John could be accused of plagiarism for copying much of the old

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Testament to pull into his revelation. Now give you an example. If you use the

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Bible as the definer, if you use the Bible as the foundation, if you let the

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Bible give you the definitions, then how will you approach Revelation 17?

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Consider the biblical imagery. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls came and said to me, come,

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I'll show you the judgment of the great prostitutes who seated on many waters with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality.

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And with the wine of whose sexual morality the dwellers on earth have become drunk. And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness question.

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Follow me here. Think with the Bible's symbolism. Think with the

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Bible's definitions. When you hear the word wilderness, think with the word of God.

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Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Bad. What happened in the wilderness?

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A lot of wandering. Why? Unfaithfulness. Not trusting in God and his word.

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Right? So they wander in the wilderness. So the wilderness now, real historic event, people of God really in the wilderness.

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They were actually there. God was with his people there. Of course that actually occurs.

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But now wilderness becomes a symbol. And so now you have John saying, hey, let me tell you about this prostitute who's in the wilderness, who committed sexual immorality with the kings of the earth.

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Are you starting to get it now? The biblical imagery and symbolism. We don't have the right to cram into this text, whatever we wish the harlot to be.

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We ask the question, who else does God call a prostitute? Who else does God accuse of committing sexual immorality with?

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What's this wilderness? And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names and it had seven heads and ten horns.

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The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet. So here's a harlot in the wilderness wearing the priestly colors.

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And it says this, and she's adorned with golden jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.

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And on her forehead is written a name, mystery, Babylon the

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Great. Quick thing, in terms of letting the Bible give you definitions, let the Bible tell you what the symbol's about.

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Quick question, Babylon, good or bad? Bad. For who?

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Israel. Where'd they go? Into captivity. Where? Babylon.

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So Babylon becomes now not only an historic event, but now a symbol of something for the people of God.

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Why did Israel go into captivity to Babylon? For faithfulness or unfaithfulness?

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For the very things God was charging Israel with, he says, you're a harlot, committing fornication, going off and offering yourself to all these other nations, doing what they do.

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You're the unfaithful bride. And now John, in the first century, says, I'll tell you the story of a harlot who's got

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Babylon written on her forehead. Now, quick thing, for the people of God, what's supposed to be on our forehead?

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What's Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four say? Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

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Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. What does Deuteronomy chapter six say to the people of God?

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He says, you shall bind this as a sign on your head and on your what?

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Hands. God says in Deuteronomy chapter six to his people, I'm your

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God, the only God that you get. I'm the one God.

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He says, you shall talk about it as you rise up, as you're on the way. You shall put it as a sign on your head and your hands.

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Now, here's a whore, a harlot, a prostitute committing sexual immorality with the temple and priest colors adorned with jewels.

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Babylon is written on her head and she's in the wilderness. Who is this harlot?

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If you know the word of God, John is shouting it at you.

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But look what it says. It says that this woman who's riding this seven headed ten horned beast, first century

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Jews, Jewish Christians that know the coins in their hands, know that it says that Rome is a

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Septimontian, the city of seven hills. And Rome had 10 imperial provinces.

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And weird, this harlot who's in the wilderness, who has Babylon written in her forehead, who's got the priest colors, who's committing sexual immorality to the kings of earth, she's riding the seven headed ten horned beast.

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It sounds a bit like what Israel was saying at the trial of Jesus.

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When he says, shall I crucify your king? And they say, what? We have no king but Caesar.

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Is there any example of a prostitute riding a seven headed ten horned beast who's drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus?

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What did Jesus say in Matthew 23 and 24 about that generation?

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He was going to send to them what? Wise men, scribes. And what were they going to do to his people?

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Some of them you'll kill and crucify and flog. What is this harlot in the wilderness with Babylon on her head, wearing the temple stuff, riding the seven headed ten horned beast, drinking the blood of the martyrs and saints of Jesus, what's she doing?

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Exactly what Jesus said was going to occur. If you let the Bible define these symbols and explain them and not try to get fanciful and interesting and creative, but let the

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Bible do the defining. And isn't it interesting that here in this text, in Revelation chapter 17, in all this imagery and symbolism, it says that this harlot is riding the seven headed ten horned beast.

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And it says that soon that beast is going to turn on the harlot, make her desolate and burn her with fire.

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What occurred in 70 AD? Rome did what?

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Sacked the city, burned the temple, and there wasn't left one stone standing upon another.

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So there's just an example in terms of foundations. Quick thing, and I know we're running on time here, but I want to show you this so you have something to work with this week as you study this passage.

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If you go to another text, Matthew 24, and just give you an example of foundations, letting the

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Bible give you the definitions, letting the Bible interpret the

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Bible. In Matthew chapter 24, this is a popular one. It is used very, very often.

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In Matthew chapter 24, verse 29, tell me if it's familiar to you.

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Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

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Now, 21st century, modern evangelicals come to a text like this and say what?

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Hasn't happened yet, right? I mean, Pastor Jeff, that can't be past because,

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I mean, look, the stars haven't fallen from the heavens, right?

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We have the description of the sun being darkened, the moon will not give its light. I mean, how can that possibly have already happened?

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Well, brothers and sisters, a couple of things first and foremost. The sun is a star, right?

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If it came a little closer to us, we'd be toast. The stars falling from the heavens.

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What is this language? Here's the question we should ask. Has this language been used before?

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Answer? Yes. Jesus here in Matthew 24 is quoting from Isaiah chapter 13.

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Use the Bible to interpret the Bible. So let's all do this together in terms of foundations.

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How do we approach these texts? Everyone keep one finger in Matthew 24 and just move over to Isaiah 13.

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Isaiah chapter 13, this,

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Isaiah 13, some of your Bibles will even say about the chapter is the judgment of Babylon, the judgment of Babylon.

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And here's what God says in Isaiah 13. He says in Isaiah 13, verse six, wail for the day of the

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Lord is near. The day of the Lord is near as destruction from the almighty will come.

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Therefore, all hands will be feeble and every human heart will melt. Question.

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Is that literal? Is that literal? Human hearts literally melting.

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This is dramatic, prophetic hyperbole that's used throughout the old

01:00:25

Testament. As you'll see through this study, they'll be dismayed, pangs and agony and agony will seize them.

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They'll be in anguish like a woman in labor. They'll look aghast at one another. Their faces will be a flame on fire.

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Behold, the day of the Lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.

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Here it is for the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light.

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The sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity.

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I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogance. Here is Yahweh speaking in Isaiah 13 about the judgment upon Babylon and what kind of language is he using?

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He's saying things like this. I'm going to turn your lights out. I'm going to turn your world upside down.

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Here God uses cosmic language to talk about destroying their world.

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And what did he use it against? Or who did he use it against? This is the judgment concerning Babylon.

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Question, when God used this language against Babylon, was it literal?

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Did the stars literally fall from the heavens? Were the heavens literally undone?

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No. Question, did God mean this judgment against Babylon?

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Yes. Did it occur? Yes. Did God... You guys met any Babylonians lately?

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Any Babylonians lately? You know, Nebuchadnezzar was kind of a big dude, right?

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Kind of an important guy. And do you know God took his kingdom out? And when you have

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God using this dramatic prophetic hyperbole, he uses it throughout scripture, not as meaningless language, but saying that things that we understand today.

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I'm going to knock your lights out. I'm going to take your legs off.

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I'm going to destroy your world. That's the kind of language God used and he meant it.

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Give you another example. You have one finger in Isaiah 13. Move over to Isaiah 19. In terms of the language being used, you're going to see in Matthew 24,

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God's used it before. Isaiah 19 .1, an oracle concerning Egypt.

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Here it is. Watch this. An oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, Yahweh is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence and the hearts of the

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Egyptians will melt within them. Brothers and sisters, does

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God judge Egypt? Yes. Question. Was Yahweh literally surfing on a cloud when he came to judge

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Egypt? Could they look up and see Yahweh, God, riding on a cloud?

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Or better, the hearts of the Egyptians. Did their hearts literally melt into their bellies, all of them?

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This is dramatic prophetic hyperbole. It's judgment language used throughout the

01:04:07

Old Testament. The judgment literally fell upon them, but God used graphic, dramatic, prophetic theater to communicate the message of their lights going out.

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And amazing, in Matthew 24, Jesus has just finished condemning the covenant breakers.

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He just condemned them for their swearing falsely. He just came and promised judgment upon their generation.

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He departs from the Jewish temple the same direction Yahweh left the temple in the

01:04:41

Old Testament, and he rests on the Mount of Olives exactly like Yahweh did in the

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Old Testament. And the disciples come to Jesus. They start pointing at the temple and the buildings, and he says, do you see all these things?

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There shall not be left one stone standing upon another. And he tells them it's all going to take place before that generation all passes away.

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And now, watch this. Amazingly, Jesus uses the language that Yahweh used about pagan nations in the

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Old Testament, about turning their lights out, and now he uses it about them.

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This is covenantal. This isn't about the end of the world.

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It's about the end of the age. Which age? The Jewish age.

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The old covenant age. Think again about letting the Bible provide the foundation and the definitions.

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In the Old Testament, what did God promise in Messiah? A new covenant. What did he promise in Messiah that he was going to come and bring purification?

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Malachi chapter 3 and 4, and judgment upon the covenant breakers.

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They knew that when Messiah came, he would bring salvation and judgment. And now enter

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Jesus coming to bring the salvation, confronting the covenant people, promising them that their lights were about to be turned out.

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They were about to be judged, their temple taken apart, not one stone left standing upon another, all before that generation passed away.

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And brothers and sisters, what occurred? By 70 AD in the first century, what happens?

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Rome turns on Israel, sacks the city, sets the city on fire, takes the temple apart, literally stone off of stone within a generation of Jesus' promise.

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They were going to be judged. It was going to fall upon them. That's what occurred. Now here's what

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I want to end on just quickly, because I think all this stuff is powerful and amazing, and it vindicates

01:07:12

Jesus as Messiah, and it's just going to get more and more interesting. But I wanted to lay some foundations for you.

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I wanted to do one point of so what today. So what here, I think, is what can become theologically dangerous for us.

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Oftentimes, particularly, I think, in Reformed communities, we, I think rightly, and it's good, want to be theologically right and precise.

01:07:45

So we allow texts like this to be about theological precision, but it becomes something that's up here, conceptual, right?

01:07:55

I know the concept, it's up here, but it never finds its way here into the so what, right?

01:08:02

How does this affect me? How do I consider this passage in relation to me and my walk with Jesus?

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Here's the thing. We just talked about harlots and prostitutes and sexual morality and Babylon and wilderness and unfaithfulness.

01:08:16

We talk about Jesus given a covenant lawsuit against Israel, confronting them, swearing falsely, hypocrisy, whitewashed tombs, dead men's bones, snakes, woe to you, woe to you.

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And it's easy for us now to look in hindsight and say, well, Jesus kept his word.

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He judged that generation. It all occurred exactly as promised. Those wicked covenant breakers, those unfaithful

01:08:43

Jews, those hoopakrites, those pretenders, it's easy for us to look down our noses at them and say, well, they were unfaithful, they were fakes.

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Jesus judged them like he promised he would. But I have a question for myself.

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Am I the fake? Am I the hypocrite? Am I just a 21st century

01:09:13

Pharisee? Right? Oh, I know about justification by faith. I know about the triune

01:09:20

God. I know the scriptures. I respect God's word. I couldn't be a Pharisee. I couldn't be like the scribes and the hypocrites.

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Jesus would have no woes to declare on apology at church, right? Why? Because we're

01:09:32

Calvinists. Really?

01:09:39

Do we look down our noses at first century Jews who were unfaithful and were rightly judged by Jesus and just look down our noses and say that it's not me, couldn't be me?

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Why? Because I believe in the five points and the solas, right?

01:09:56

Because I believe in justification by faith. My question is this. Watch. Jesus condemns them for their swearing falsely.

01:10:06

Jesus condemns them and it was promised judgment upon them for their robbing

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God and the tithes and the offerings. By the way,

01:10:19

I want you to, we're going to touch this. You're going to see this promise passage in Joel and in Malachi about the judgment upon the covenant breakers.

01:10:29

One of the promises of judgment was because they robbed God. Isn't it interesting that in this very section of the great tribulation in the

01:10:37

Olivet discourse, Mark and Luke both include before the promise of the judgment on the temple, they both include the section about the widow and the mite.

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It's all right there. So my question is this. Am I the hypocrite?

01:10:57

Am I the pretender? Am I the whitewashed tomb? Am I the one who robs

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God? Am I the one who swears falsely? See, it's easy for us to say it's important to be theologically accurate, but it's not as easy for us to ask the question, are we theologically honest and deep with the

01:11:26

Lord? Our God is a consuming fire. When I read Matthew 24,

01:11:31

Mark 13, Luke 21, and I see that Jesus promised judgment upon those people and it occurred exactly as he said on time and as planned, it creates within me fear and awe before God.

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That Jesus is the truth and when he speaks, he speaks the truth.

01:11:54

And when he looks into his people, he expects honesty, integrity, true worship.

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Are we the people that pray so people see us praying? Are we the people who give so people see us giving?

01:12:12

Are we the people who fast so people see us fasting? Are we just a 21st century expression of all of that false religion with a veneer of Calvinism and reformed theology?

01:12:27

Or are we the kind of people who will walk with the Lord Jesus in truth and worship

01:12:35

God in spirit and in truth? Are we husbands and fathers who look on Facebook and Twitter and at church like we're faithful fathers and husbands and at home we're abusive and unloving to our wives and our children?

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Are we wives who have blogs and posts that look like we respect our husbands but at home we bite them, we attack them, we insult them, we disrespect them?

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Are we children who pretend to honor our fathers and our mothers but the moment our parents ask us to do something we bite them, we attack them, we snippet them, we disobey them?

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Are we Christians who stand outside of abortion mills and proclaim the truth of the gospel into that abortion mill but as soon as we turn our backs we never speak it to our own hearts?

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Are we the kind of people that are willing to go and confront our culture about its sins and sexual morality and when we get home behind our closed doors we're online at places we know we ought to not be?

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What kind of people are we? My prayer is that God would allow this moment and this text to change us, our hearts and our minds.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would allow these texts to transform us, to make us new.

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I pray that you would bless us as we unpack the section on the

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Great Tribulation, the Olivet Discourse. Bless us, Lord, help us to be faithful, guard us from error, and provide for us a foundation that allows us to see you,

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Lord, as the faithful and true God, but also a foundation to proclaim