Sunday, June 8, 2024 Eschatology Workshop Session 3 & Pre Q&A

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Matthew chapter 24, and we're going to begin back in verse 29. The goal is to move through the pertinent issues left in this chapter, and then begin to broaden out just a little bit for context, and then we'll try to get to some

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Q &A. Our Q &A mic is not working, so I'm going to try to restate the question for the video for the recording, so that later on for posterity we'll have your question put.

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So Matthew 24 beginning in verse 29, and now we're coming into the section where I think this is where there's a lot of divergence between Christians when we read the

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Bible about when does this take place, and the reason why is because of the language that is used and the things that are said to take place.

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And we want to believe the Bible, we want to take it at what it means, and say that's exactly what's going to happen, and roll with it.

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But again, let me encourage you that the plainest sense of the text is not going to be built from our experience with these words, but from how the

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Bible already is accustomed to using these terms. So the most biblical sense of the text is going to be the plainest sense of the text, that's what we're going to try to do, and that requires some homework.

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So verse 29, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

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So this is where most folks reading through will say, well sun is still there, moon is still there, just saw the stars last night, hasn't happened yet.

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And I understand that perspective a lot. But when

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Jesus uses this language, he's using language that is already well established to talk about a power outage, the bringing down of those in power, those in authority.

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So let's take an example, let's go back to Isaiah chapter 13, I'm gonna leave a bookmark in Matthew 24, but if we go back to Isaiah chapter 13, we're gonna read some language that is very interesting.

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Now if you look at verse 6, verse 6 in Isaiah 13 will be really helpful.

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Isaiah says this, he says, Whale, for the day of the Lord is at hand. Remember?

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Day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is at hand. It will come as destruction from the

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Almighty, therefore all hands will be limp. Every man's heart will melt and they will be afraid.

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Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them. They will be in pain as a woman in childbirth.

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They will be amazed at one another. Their faces flames. They will be like flames.

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Now so far we're fine with all of this. We understand metaphor, we understand expressions, we know these men are not giving birth, we're not

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Democrats. We know this is a metaphor, okay?

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And we know that their faces aren't actually flames, and we know that their hearts, the organ inside their chest did not actually turn into liquid.

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This is all metaphorical expressions getting at how awful this is going to be. Verse 9,

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Behold the day of the Lord comes cruel with both wrath and fierce anger to lay the land desolate.

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He will destroy its sinners from it. Now verse 10, For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light.

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The sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine.

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I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will halt the arrogance of the proud.

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I will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir.

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Therefore I will shake the heavens and the earth will move out of her place in the wrath of the

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Lord of hosts and in the day of his fierce anger. End of the world, right?

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Now when it was pertaining to the anguish of man, we understood it was metaphorical.

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When we get to this section, stars, sun, and moon, suddenly we're ready to say this is straight up solar catastrophe.

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We start charting constellations. What happened? We were fine with our hearts melting but not really.

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It's an expression, right? Now did you know that this already happened? Did you know that the stars already failed to give their light?

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The sun went out. The moon failed. Did you know that the heavens already got shook?

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The earth got moved out of its place. Man got as rare as fine gold already.

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God already punished the world for its evil. How do we know all this already took place a long time ago?

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Because of chapter 13, same chapter, verse 1. Who is this about?

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Babylon. The burden against Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.

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So did you know that Babylon went down? Medes and Persians took them down, took them down hard. Judgment of God.

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He said I'm going to judge Babylon for all their wickedness and all their evil and Medes and Persians were his instrument of judgment and they took them down hard.

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So hard that you had to redraw all the lines on the map. You didn't even know who was in charge anymore.

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You had to walk around on earth as if it was a new place, new signs, new postings, new landmarks.

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They renamed all the gods. Dirty rotten Persians. That star is no longer that star.

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Oh come on. The royal families, the people who were in charge are no longer in charge. Now it's somebody else.

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There's a complete reset. The world ended for Babylon because it was being displaced by another system, another authority, another structure called the

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Medes and the Persians. So when we read this language of the sun, moon, and stars, it's like the heart and the gut of a man.

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It's metaphorical. Now we would not be benefited by getting a line by line assessment from Isaiah about this many casualties, this many wounded, this many acres burned, this many cities destroyed.

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We would not feel the weight of it. We do feel the weight of it, the accuracy of the disaster when we say the sun refused to shine.

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That's how bad it was. In this sense, the hyperbole of apocalyptic metaphor is dead on accurate.

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We are much better suited with the poetry to describing how horrible it is than any sort of byline, this many dead, this many missing.

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That's why it's there in the Bible. God is the best communicator. He's communicating the power, the woe, the disaster of it.

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He's giving us really clear, very accurate descriptions and using these metaphors. So what happens when the reigning authority and the way things are, all of it gets turned upside down and taken apart?

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Well, it looks like the heavens and the earth get shaken apart. It looks like sun, moon, and stars fail to shine. That's what it says.

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That's what happened when Babylon went down. Now, what was the metaphor that John used in Revelation to talk about Jerusalem?

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What did he call it? He called it Babylon. And what was the metaphor Jesus used about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem?

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Stars, sun, moon, all failing. What is Jesus talking about?

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He's talking about the same thing he was talking about just prior. When you see the armies surrounding

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Jerusalem, when you understand that the temple is going to be completely destroyed, they want to know, when's it going to happen?

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What's it going to be like? Jesus says, sun, moon, and stars. So on your handout, sun, moon, and stars, you can see there the destruction of nations.

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A lot of different examples. It's not just Babylon. I mean, it happens all over the place. When Jerusalem went down the first time, 586

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BC, same language used. So, I mean, Jerusalem gets destroyed the first time sun, moon, and stars go out.

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That's how it was described the first time Jerusalem was destroyed. Makes sense that we'd use the same description for the second time it got destroyed.

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Why sun, moon, and stars? Because God made the sun, moon, and stars to govern the times, the seasons, the years, the day, and the night.

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To govern. Sun, moon, and stars govern. That's what Genesis 1 says. He made them especially to govern.

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So this is a great metaphor to talk about what happens when the governors, those things that govern everything, when they are destroyed and they go down, the whole system goes away.

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That's why sun, moon, and stars are a great metaphor to use. I think God picked a really great metaphor. And sun, moon, and stars are sometimes used to talk about persons of power.

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So that's why that's used. So when it comes to judgment, when the day of the

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Lord is being described, whether it's the latter days when Jerusalem goes down or the last day when Jesus comes back or other days of judgment, very often this is the kind of language that is used.

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Moving on to verse 30. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. So do you remember how word order and punctuation saves lives?

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You've seen those metaphors? Yeah. So let me read to you a better word order.

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Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. That's the word order in the original.

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Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. So I've got a question for you.

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Does this mean that a sign will appear that the Son of Man is in heaven?

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Or is it that the Son of Man will appear in heaven as a sign?

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Greek doesn't give you a lot of punctuation. In fact, none. It's all squashed together in the original.

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So what is it? Is it that the Son of Man is in heaven and a sign will appear to say that?

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Or is it that the Son of Man will appear in heaven and that will be a sign? It can go either way.

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You can read it either way. It's that squashed together. So what my interpretation of it is that the

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Son of Man is in heaven. He's into the right hand of the Father and there's a sign that appears that says that is so.

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It's the same sign that Jesus, just a couple of chapters later, told the high priest. Let's go to chapter 26.

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He faces the Sanhedrin and verse 64.

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Matthew 26, verse 64. Jesus said to him, it is as you said.

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He's saying, I am the Christ, the Son of God. He says this to the high priest. It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, who's he talking to?

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Talking to the high priest. Hereafter, you will see the

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Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

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So somehow, the high priest is going to see this and understand that Jesus Christ is where?

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At the right hand of power, the right hand of the Almighty. The Ancient of Days, as Daniel 7 says,

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Son of Man, I beheld in the night visions one like a son of man coming in clouds of great glory and he ascended to the right hand of God.

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He ascended to the right hand of God. What's the proof that Jesus Christ is indeed who he said he is?

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He said, well, believe my words. Believe what I tell you. He went to the right hand of the

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Father when he ascended. He's there. How do the Christians know that? He sent the Holy Spirit.

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Pentecost, right? Peter preaches that whole sermon in Acts 2. This is how we know Jesus is the right hand of the Father. He sent the

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Holy Spirit. How do those who murdered Christ and said his blood be upon us and our own children?

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How do they know that Jesus Christ is indeed who he says he is? King of kings and Lord of lords. What sign of the

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Son of Man being in heaven will be given to them? The destruction of Jerusalem. Coming in clouds of judgment.

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Now, this is where we have, again, the same handout. How often, down at the bottom, you're going to see the language of judgment in the scriptures that when

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God comes in judgment and Jesus is fully God, when he comes in judgment, he comes on the clouds.

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A great example would be to read Psalm 18. Also, you can read it in 2

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Samuel. David is regaling everybody, praises to God about how

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God delivered him from all of his enemies, including Saul. Then, you read all the stories of how he got his victories and they're pretty nifty.

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But, when David retells it in the Psalms, God's splitting the heavens and melting things and there's lightning going on and trumpets being blown.

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I don't read any of that. David was sneaking around and cutting stuff off of Saul's suture. I didn't see any of that in the text, but he's telling a story using this language of how

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God brought judgment against Saul. Amos, God comes judging. He comes down riding on the clouds and he melts mountains as he comes.

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Mountains are still there. You can go visit them today. But, yeah, they got melted because he came in judgment.

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That's the language of the Bible to describe big, huge judgments. It's just given examples over and over again.

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So, when Jesus says in Matthew 24, verse 30, the sign of the

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Son of Man will appear in heaven and then all the tribes of the earth. The Greek word is the word used half the time for the land, all the known world.

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I find the term for a tribe. So, again, in our comic book renditions, it's a visual sighting

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UFO. He's coming in. Boy, is it impressive. He's on the clouds.

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We can see it. The biblical judgment coming.

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When the Son of Man comes on clouds of glory, as soon as he is seated, the very next passage talks about how the fourth beast is judged.

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And it's by fire that proceeds from the before the throne of God. The light from the four winds and from one end of heaven to another.

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So, this verse 31 is answering an implicit question. We're hearing about the judgment of those who reject him.

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The implicit question is, well, what about those who love him? Well, he says that he's going to send his anglos, angloi in the plural, which means messengers.

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Is it messengers or is it heavenly beings who don't have a body like men?

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Which one is it? Well, when we read Romans, we read Colossians, we read the book of Acts, how far did the gospel get before AD 70?

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Paul says it was preached to every creature under heaven, Colossians chapter 1. Paul says in Romans that the gospel was preached all over the place, every creature.

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So, how far, according to the Bible, did the gospel get? I'd say as far as Jesus said it would, just like he said.

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They're going to gather together the light from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.

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So, where are they going to be gathered, by the way? Where does the church gather? Where do the

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Christians end up together? If they're in Pella or in Asia Minor or in Achaia or maybe in Libya?

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They're all being gathered still, aren't they? They're being gathered into Christ, right? Paul said in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, over and over and over again.

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Hebrews 12, being brought up to Mount Zion, gathered in Christ. Okay, so verse 32.

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Now, Jesus has been prepping them, he's using a lot of language that is connected to Old Testament established categories.

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But verse 32, Now, learn this parable from the fig tree. When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.

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Also, also, you, you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near at the doors.

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Who's he talking to? Not talking to us. This is the word of God. It is

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God -breathed. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

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The man of God would be adequately equipped for every good work. But Jesus is not pointing his finger through the text 2 ,000 years ago at you and I.

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He's not saying you and me. The disciples asked him a question. He's answering them. He says, when you see all these things, know that it is near at the doors.

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And we read it already in verse 39, but apparently Jesus felt the need to repeat this.

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

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So what's the time frame that Jesus gives? That, that generation, that all this stuff's going to happen within this generation, he says to the disciples.

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And notice what he says in verse 35, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.

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What does he mean by that? Same thing he said in Matthew chapter five. Heaven and earth, it's in fact the old heaven and the old earth that Isaiah talks about in Isaiah chapter 51, verse six, rolled up like a garment, fades away.

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Old heaven and earth passed away. The old intersection, the old covenant passed away, but there's a new, there's a new.

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So he says, heaven and earth passes away, but my words do not pass away. So he says all this happens within this generation.

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So he goes on to say, you have the, he has the, like the days of Noah, where we have, so as in the days of Noah, so also in the coming of the son of man, everyone's going about their business like normal.

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Everything's just the normal, run of the mill, everything. But what are the days of Noah known for?

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Noah was a preacher of righteousness. How many converts did he have? How many?

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Build the boat. I mean, not a lot of converts. He's preaching, preaching, preaching, and nobody's listening.

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And then what will happen? They did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So it will be at the coming of the son of man.

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It will be sudden. It'll be overwhelming. So many people will die that shouldn't had to, they just paid attention.

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Verse 40, then two men will be left, will be in the field. One will be taken the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill.

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One will be taken the other left. Watch therefore, if you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

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Now, I think a very important question to ask, and this is what many Christians ask about this passage is, where did they go?

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There's two people there. They're grinding at the mill. There's two people there. They're doing their business in the field. And all of a sudden, one's gone and one's there.

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And then the question is, well, where did they go? Where did they go? That question is not left for us to guess.

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It's in Luke 17. So go over to Luke chapter 17, and we can read it for ourselves where they went.

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So, and this way, we're going to start in verse 31. And I think in verse 31, you're going to hear some connections to Matthew 24, some of the same stuff.

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Verse 31, in that day, he who is on the housetop and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away.

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And likewise, the one in the field, let him not turn back. That's very familiar from early Matthew 24.

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Now, verse 32, something very compelling. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it.

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Whoever loses his life will preserve it. Remember Lot's wife, Sodom and Gomorrah? Get out.

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The angels were dragging them out. Why? Because the cities were just about to be destroyed, right?

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Lot's wife didn't look back and become a pillar of salt because the judgment was thousands of years away.

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It was happening right behind her. She had to get out. Now, verse 34, I tell you in that night, there will be two men in one bed.

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The one will be taken, the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together. The one will be taken and the other left.

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Two men will be in the field. One will be taken, the other left. You know what? The disciples asked the question we want to ask.

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Verse 37, they answered and said to him, where? Where, Lord? So he said to them, wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered.

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Oh, the eagles are back. In other words, this is not a passage about the rapture.

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This is a passage about the destruction coming when people are dying all over the place and it came upon them so fast, you know, blitzkrieg to lack a better term.

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All of a sudden, they're overwhelmed. People are dying all over the place and it looks like 50 % casualties because it's where do they go?

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Wherever the carcass, piled in carcasses, look for the eagles. All right. So this is

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Jesus's warning to his disciples about what is to come, how they ought not to be enthralled with the old covenant, the shadows of the old covenant.

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Someone greater is here. Jesus is greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than the temple, greater than the

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Sabbath, greater than Moses, greater, greater, greater, greater. And so Jesus keeps on telling his disciples, don't be enthralled by those shadows.

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They're all going to pass away. All going to pass away. There's no need for them anymore. They're going to be destroyed.

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In fact, it's going to be judgment because of the unfaithfulness of these covenant stewards who think they deserve the vineyard.

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So they kill the son and cast him out. Remember that parable? Like those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they said, well, we got other better things to do.

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And so the Lord sends his, the King sends his armies to destroy their city, singular, and then says, now we're going to have the invitation to the highways and the byways and anybody can come in.

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Remember Jesus' parables? Okay. So that's, um, when we talk about the latter days, we're talking to me about the latter days of the old covenant.

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This is where, uh, throughout the old Testament and new Testament, generally, as you're reading through there in the latter days, last days, there's going to be a contrast.

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This is the way things were under Moses. But now here's the way things are under Christ. And then the latter days are filled.

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The last days are filled with judgment. So, um, as promised, we're going to go ahead and just stop there.

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Quick run through there of the Olivet discourse. There's a lot more to it. Uh, but what we can do now is open it up for any kind of clarifying questions.

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Uh, Joe is first up. Uh, I think you've got a different version.

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Which one you got? Probably got

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King James. Usually King James has vultures. Yeah.

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Okay. Um, there is more, there is a broad word for, in the Greek, broad word in the

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Greek for birds of carrion, birds of flesh, they eat flesh. Um, and that is translated variously by vultures or ravens or crows, depending on your translation.

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There's a broader word that covers all of it. This particular word, for some reason, translators will use vultures, but it is very particular in, in Koine Greek to be speaking about eagles.

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Primarily it is used in the common vernacular, whether it's, uh, uh, Josephus or somebody else using the regular old

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Greek and writing Aeton, A -E -T -O -N is the English letters that transliterate from the

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Greek, um, is used very much of eagles, primarily of eagles. So why translations do it differently, but hey, eagles also eat the dead.

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So eagles are like a, a specific version of vultures, broader semantic vulture, more specific eagle.

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So they're going to eat the dead either way. Why do we have a carrion bird for our national? Ben Franklin was right.

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We should have gone with the turkey. Yeah. Turkey was a better option. Ben Franklin was right. We eat way more turkey than we do eagle.

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All right. Any other questions? Yes. Okay.

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So the question is, good question. So idea is, okay, so you did not grow up reading the left behind series.

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Um, how much of the American church really kind of rolls with that idea and, and, uh, did that idea become popularized through that series?

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What was prior? Good question. Um, when we go back in church history, um, we don't have some terms that we use now all the time.

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And we, if we bring those terms back into like the one hundreds, two hundreds, three hundreds, and so on, we're doing what's called an anachronism.

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We're using modern terms with modern controversies, and we're going to push it over there.

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And they were talking about other things, you know, uh, but in general, in church history, there were two basic ideas.

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Um, one was, uh, that, uh, Jesus was going to come back and then he was going to reign on earth in Jerusalem for a thousand years and clean things up.

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The other side of it said, well, I think he's already reigning now. And a thousand years is just that perfect amount of time that has a, has a nice, uh, a resolution at the end and he's reigning now.

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And those are the two basic ideas. Um, today we use all kinds of terms to describe those. Um, but, uh, that those ideas were maintained and were built throughout, uh, church history.

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You're going to find a lot of people got really excited about a lot of stuff. You think the year 2000 was crazy.

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The year 1000 was off the chain. Uh, I mean, people were like selling their, their, uh, uh, family businesses and moving to mountains.

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I mean, they were ready. Um, lots of stuff happened throughout history where there was excitement and stuff like that.

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Um, but in, um, around 1830 in the prophecy conference at Irving's court, uh, in, uh, in, uh,

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England, there was, uh, uh, prophecy conference there where the, for the very first time new Testament scholars who were in attendance, um, heard the idea of left behind, heard the idea that the church would be secretly, suddenly raptured out of the world prior to the events

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Jesus talked about in Matthew 24. First time ever recorded 1830. Um, the reason for that, uh, really comes from an idea that folks like John Nelson Darby and others had was that, um, you need to have a good separation of ideas in the

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Bible. Uh, he saw it as good separation. So everything needs to be separated, separated, separated, divided, uh, in the scriptures.

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So promises given to Israel cannot possibly in any fashion have anything to do with the church because those are separate, right?

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So in order for, so this, um, so this was his, his, um, he came out of the

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Plymouth Brethren and he began to develop his ideas and get some traction and, uh, others begin to take all, take on his ideas and modify them from his original complexities because boy, you know, beautiful mind complexity stuff all over the windows.

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I mean, this guy, um, so C .I. Schofield took it up after him, popularized it through Moody, uh,

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Bible publishing. Dwight L. Moody even took it even farther and made it more simple for people to understand because he was a good communicator.

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Um, and, uh, you can imagine what's going to be happening when they're talking about the end of the world and wars and rumors of wars right at the time, right around the civil war.

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It is the end of the world. And boy, so this, this takes off. Um, you have, uh, the, the

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C .I., the Schofield study Bible that popularizes all of the notes, uh, moving forward to the point at which you don't have to be a

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Christian. If you're just an American, this is just the way you see the end of the world. Uh, the raptures just talked about all the time.

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Uh, Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses have their own versions of these things. Um, and this got spread all over the place.

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Seventh day Adventists especially, um, uh, had their, uh, predictions and so on.

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So, uh, over time, this becomes codified and it has very little to do with the original dispensationalism.

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Somebody who's closer to the mark on dispensationalism would be John MacArthur, um, who rightly stated that there is no, uh, there is no sign that you can pay attention to and know that the rapture is near.

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Because in, in classic dispensationalism, the rapture is an unsigned event. You'll, you, you have no idea when it's going to happen.

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Some dispensationalists got so upset by the, uh, the, uh, reinstatement of Israel as a modern nation that they said that whole place has got to be completely emptied and undone before we could have a rapture because there can't be any sign.

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So it's kind of a signed, unsigned sign. Anyway, um, so, but, but the idea is that there cannot be a church on earth if the promises of God to Israel are going to be fulfilled.

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That's the basic idea. So imagine you're driving along a highway, all of a sudden your highway goes all the way around and then keeps going and you see this massive construction site and you just got detoured around.

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Okay, you're on the path of God's promises to Israel and a big parenthesis and then you get to the fulfillment of your destination.

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That's dispensationalism. The big construction site that you went around had nothing to do with, that's the church. So the church shows up on Pentecost and is taken out at the rapture, has nothing to do with Israel whatsoever.

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Yeah, that's the idea of dispensationalism. Um, uh, so the whole idea behind that was there's a lot of pushback against liberal scholars on the continent, uh, in Europe, uh, and in Britain and so on that were trying to mess with the

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Bible, call it myth, and say this isn't really going to come to pass and so on. And the dispensationalists held the line, very much so, and others too, said, you know, hey, no, everything in the

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Bible is true, you know, and so, uh, you liberals take a hike, um, this is how it's going to come to pass.

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And so they really fought hard against critics of the Bible, um, and so that's one reason why it became so popular, because they, because folks saw a lot of zeal for the

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Bible in dispensationalism. Hey, let's read our Bibles, let's be in our Bibles, and that's, hey, who can argue with that?

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Um, so that got popularized, uh, throughout early, uh, 1900s in America.

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So by the time you get to the Left Behind series, there's a lot of ideas about dispensationalism that are far afield from where it began, far afield.

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And honestly, there's a bunch of oral tradition, um, that is built up, and some of it sticks, and some of it goes away.

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Uh, like, for instance, um, for a long time, um, the, the prince in Ezekiel, Hebrew word rosh, meaning head, chief, everyone says that's rosha, right?

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Well, you know, prior to that, it was, it was the Visigoths, so, I mean, now it's

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Russia. So the idea is, like, who, who is that? So sometimes the oral tradition maintains, sometimes it goes away, um, but there's a lot of buildup of anticipation.

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So when, uh, when you think about dispensationalism, that's different than others who still see a future millennium of Jesus ruling from Jerusalem, but they don't have the dispensationalism side of it, where there's, like, a really, really hard separation between Israel and the

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Church. Um, so it was there prior, um, it probably left behind, came at a time where it was the last spasms of popularity.

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It's becoming less and less of the main, main idea now. I hope that helps.

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So, yeah. Yeah, so, uh, pan -millennialism is the most popular position.

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It's all going to pan out in the end, um, and I totally get that. I was so pan -millennialist, uh, that then

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I had to teach and preach and have to, have to figure something out, because I can't just say, well, you know, I've got to, you know, it's my job to, so.

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Okay, any other questions? Yes. Joe, again. Yes.

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Yes. Well, um, to be, so the word that, uh,

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Joe just used, preterist, means that you see a lot of, um, the prophecies in the

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Bible fulfilled, though not all of them, because again, there is a resurrection, there is a last day. Um, so all we can do is just go with what

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Jesus said. So Jesus points at them. He's saying, woe to you for their, uh, practices that they're doing that are wrong.

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They are particular practices to that generation. These Pharisees, these scribes, these

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Sadducees are doing these particular things, and he's condemning them for those things. He's speaking to a particular audience, and he's saying to them, upon you, all the righteous blood from Abel to Zechariah comes upon you, and it will happen upon this generation.

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He's talking to them, so. Yeah, we don't know who, and we don't know who

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Zechariah, son of Barakai was, because that wasn't the Zechariah of the Old Testament. That Zechariah had a different father.

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This Zechariah, son of Barakai, is a different dude altogether, and this is like the only place we find out. Yes, but so again, how did the

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Old Covenant work, right? And God, and so what Jesus is saying is, you are, you are of Cain, right?

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What did, what did, what did the Apostle John say in 1st John? In 1st John, the great question is, who are the true people of God?

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Okay, so let's take a look at that real quick. So in 1st John, this will help clarify a little bit of what

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Jesus was saying about, uh, the righteous Abel, because John picks up on this very thing. So in, in 1st

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John, chapter, uh, we'll go ahead and start with chapter three, but then we're going to back up to see the context.

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So chapter three, now, um, he, notice verse one, it just says, behold what manner of love the

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Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him.

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What a, what a wonderful thing to be called the child of God, right? How are we the children of God?

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Because we're in Christ, right? Who were the children of God in the old covenant?

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Well, what did God say about it? He called Israel his children. Now, there was a remnant in Israel who were truly born again, truly went to heaven because they trusted in the shadow of Christ, and by the faith in the shadow of Christ, they were united to his substance, uh, you know,

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Romans 3, 25 and 26, for sure. But God called all of Israel, those who were in the old covenant, his children.

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He called them rebellious, but he called them his children. Um, he called them Jeshurun because they were stubborn. He called them

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Jedidiah because he loved them. He called them his children, okay? So now the question is, not in the old covenant, it was who was in Israel.

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New covenant is who's in Christ, right? Right. So, so children.

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So the question is, who is the children? That's the big question of first John. So we go down to verse 10, verse 10, in this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. Who was the number one persecutor of Christians in the early decades after Jesus' resurrection, ascension?

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Who drank the blood of the saints? It was the Jews. Three and a half years of persecution from Rome was pretty intense, but all four decades, who was hunting down the

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Christians and killing them? It was the temple leaders and their, and their cronies.

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Remember Saul of Tarsus? Okay, that stuff still continue. We read to the book of Acts, who is pursuing

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Paul to kill him in the book of Acts? The Jews are, right? Those are the persecutors.

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So they're not the children of God. They don't love their brother. For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain.

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Cain was of the wicked one. Who's the wicked one? The serpent, the devil. What did Jesus say to the

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Jews in John chapter 8? You are of your father, the devil. Why? Because you seek to murder me.

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You're a murderer, just like Cain. You're of the wicked one, right? So John is just being real consistent with Jesus.

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And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous. So again, the contrast in John is like, who's the real children of God?

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Is it the Jews or is it the Jewish and Gentile Christians, right? His blood is propitiation not for the

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Jews only, but also for all the world. So Gentiles too. So we have this contrast.

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Verse 13, do not marvel my brethren if the world hates you. Now Jesus is the first person who lumped in the temple, the templeites, the temple leaders with the world and called them the world.

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Because he said to his disciples, the world hated me before it hated you. Well, Pontius Pilate didn't know

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Jesus before he got to the trial and Pontius Pilate didn't really hate Jesus. Who hated Jesus? It was the temple leaders.

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He says, the world hated me before it hated you. And here it's not exclusively Jews, but the unbelieving templeite

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Jews are included in here. The world hates you. Verse 14, we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren.

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He does not love his brother, abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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So you see the contrast? So this is the question, who are the real children of God?

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Well, here in John, 1 John chapter 3, John is lumping in those who hate, meaning in those who hate

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Jesus or hate Christians and so on as being of Cain, of being of the wicked one.

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Jesus is the same thing to the guys in Matthew 23, to the

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Pharisees and scribes, saying the blood of righteous Abel is on you. What was he saying by that?

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He was saying, you're of your, because you said you were of your fathers who murdered the prophets. He's saying more than that, you're of your father

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Cain. Right? If your father's who murdered the prophets, you're guilty of all that blood of the prophets.

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So also you're of your father Cain, you're of the evil one. It's another way of him saying you're of your father, the devil.

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So when he is saying there in Matthew 23, you, the blood of the blood of righteous

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Abel through Zechariah, son of Berekiah, whom you murdered. He's not saying that they personally murdered Abel.

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He's saying you personally murdered Zechariah, son of Berekiah. But he is saying that the blood of all of those righteous are coming upon them.

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In this generation, the guilt of all of that is being heaped up into one place, right on top of Jerusalem.

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Not to mention the fact that they said after murder, in the process of murdering Jesus Christ, his blood be upon us and our own children.

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Right? Don't let anybody say the Jews killed Jesus. No, it wasn't a race that killed

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Jesus. It was, it was the temple zealots who were in charge of the temple, the stewards of the old covenant, who murdered

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Jesus. And they were punished. Right? No Jew alive today should ever be accused of killing

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Jesus. Just like no white person should be accused of enslaving people who lived it. Like what?

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Welcome to the new covenant, where the sins of the fathers are not passed down to the children.

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Well, that's the way it began, right? Right? So there was, there was

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Cain and Abel, then Cain and Seth. And then there was the lines, the son of Seth, sons of God versus the children of Cain.

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That began in Genesis 3 .15. God says, I will put enmity between her seed and your seed. Right?

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God picked the fight. He put, there was always two lines. Yeah. All right.

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We're gonna take a little break. And I know that some people are going to be setting up for lunch. When we start lunch,

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I'll pray for us in a moment so we can bless the food appropriately. But when we start lunch, we're going to have, we'll announce that, but we'll have two directions you can go.

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You can start from this side near the coffee, or you can start on that side near the piano. You're going to find the same stuff going both ways.

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Okay? Just don't run into each other in the middle. Okay? All right.

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Let's bless the food. Father, we thank you for the day you've given to us. I pray that it has been helpful.

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Lord, I pray that you bless our fellowship meal and our Q &A time proceeding. We pray these things in Jesus' name.