Wednesday June 29, 2022 PM

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the time you've given to us this evening.

We thank you for the opportunity to read your word and think carefully about what it means. I pray that as we receive the instruction of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we would rejoice in his care for us and his provision for us, that we would honor his authority, and that we would amen his meaning and follow in the way that he indicates for us to go.

Lord, we pray that you would bless our time of prayer as we intercede for one another.

And Lord, I pray that you would hear our prayers favorably by the power of your Spirit and in the name of your

Son. We pray all of these things for the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. Alright, so we are in Luke chapter 21, and we'll begin reading in verse 5.

Luke 21, we'll begin reading in verse 5. Then as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, he said,

These things which you see, the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

So they asked him, saying, Teacher, but when will these things be? And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?

And he said, Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in my name, saying,

I am he. And the time has drawn near. Therefore do not go after them.

But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified.

For these things must come to pass first. But the end will not come immediately.

Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

And there will be great earthquakes in various places and famines and pestilences.

And there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons.

You'll be brought before kings and rulers for my namesake. But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.

Therefore, settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer.

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.

You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends. And they will put some of you to death.

And you will be hated by all for my namesake. But not a hair of your head shall be lost.

By your patience possess your souls. But when you see

Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are in the midst of her depart and let not those who are in the country enter her.

For these are the days of vengeance that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

All right, we'll stop reading there. Obviously, this is...

Luke 21 is paralleled by Matthew 24 and Mark chapter 13.

And it's called the Olivet Discourse because Jesus is on the Mount of Olives and teaching this.

And we've been through this section of Scripture fairly thoroughly on Sunday nights.

But here we are again going through the Gospel of Luke coming back to these themes. And it's helpful to remember the context that this discourse, this teaching occurs.

Jesus has come preaching the kingdom of God, the gospel of the kingdom.

He has come challenging the Pharisees and scribes and Sadducees and priests about how they have been handling religion amongst the

Jews. He has been declaring that there is no redeeming value in their hypocrisy and warning people away from their system and from their broken corruption.

And so this tension has been growing. The conflict has been increasing.

We have come to the point where Jesus is telling parables about how all of the

Jewish religious leaders are going to end up dead and judged in hell and they're plotting to kill him.

So that's how it's progressed so far. They went from a little bit of irritation and agitation to there's no peace going to be had between these two groups.

And Jesus has just declared how people should beware of the scribes and they devour widows' houses and he has already cleansed the temple.

And so now in verse 5, some of his disciples, those around him, are trying to get him to appreciate the beauty, the grandeur, the glory of the temple.

And he assures them that not one stone will be left upon another. It's all going to be torn down. And they've got some questions about that.

They've got some questions about that. So they asked him saying, verse 7,

Teacher, when will these things be and what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?

So there's two questions here and there's an implied third.

It's actually they asked the when question twice. When will these things be? What sign will there be when these things are about to take place?

They want to know when the temple is going to be destroyed. Again, we have to understand how important the temple is to every single

Jew living at this time. The temple at the highest point of Jerusalem is their high place.

They believe that they are secure. The general understanding of the Jewish populace is that as long as the temple is in Jerusalem, Jerusalem will never fall.

God would never turn his back on the place where he has placed his name. They are invincible as long as they have this temple.

And to hear that the temple is going to be destroyed is unthinkable to them.

It would be akin to telling them that the whole earth was going to be destroyed.

It's that impossible for them to imagine. So they ask him, when is that going to happen and how do we know it's about to happen?

Is there some sort of sign? Is there some kind of indicator that the temple is about to be destroyed?

So they want to know more about this. And that's understandable. Now, Jesus is talking here about something that he's talked about a lot in his pastoral ministry and his teaching and his instruction of the people.

Now, John the Baptist came and said, there's a new thing coming. There's a

Messiah coming. Things are going to be different. I'm out here preparing the way and baptizing you with water here in the

Jordan River, but he's going to come and baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And you need to get ready.

You need to turn to the Messiah. You need to convert to the Messiah. And that's what he was doing with his baptismal ministry.

The Jews understood baptism as a sign that you have converted from one religion to another. And that's how you entered into Judaism, not only by circumcision, but also by baptism if you weren't a

Jew prior. So John's out there. He's baptizing. He's calling even Jews to convert to get ready for the coming of Messiah.

Something new is about to show up. And of course, Christ comes. And as he comes, he begins to preach about this newness.

He begins to talk about things in terms of the temple being himself. He's the temple.

And he begins talking about the fact that those who are with him and resting and abiding with him can't possibly break the

Sabbath because something greater than the Sabbath is here. He's the Lord of the Sabbath. Something greater than Solomon is here.

Someone greater than the son of David, Solomon, is here. Someone greater than Jonah is here.

And so on and so forth. And he keeps on saying there's something new. Not only is it new, but it's better.

Not only is it new, but it's better. And this is going to be a very hard thing for the

Jews to grab hold of. This is going to be a huge stumbling block to the

Jews to leave their traditions, the shadows, to grab hold of the truth, to grab hold of the substance.

So Jesus tells pithy little sayings to help us understand why the temple has to be destroyed.

Do you remember the little saying that Jesus had? That you don't pour new wine into old wineskins.

Why not? What happens? The old wineskins are brittle and they're hard.

And you put the new wine into the old wineskins and tie that off. Well, the new wine's in there and fermenting and expanding.

And it breaks that old, fragile, hard wineskin. And the whole thing's a ruined loss.

Jesus had another little pithy saying. He said, you don't sew on a new piece of cloth onto an old garment, trying to patch it up.

Why not? What happens? Yeah, it tears up.

That new piece of cloth starts to shrink, starts to shrink. And it pulls away from the old cloth and it makes it even worse tear.

And it ruins the whole thing. So Jesus is trying to get everybody ready.

Look, it's going to be something new. We're not going to go back to the old. And the old is going to be done away with so that all things will become new.

Well, as important as the temple is, when

Christ comes, that little candle is entirely eclipsed by the sun.

And it's going to go away. As important as the sacrificial system was, that little bitty candle is going to be eclipsed by the sun.

It's all going to go away. The old has to be done away with in the arrival of the new.

Even as John the Baptist recognized, here's John the Baptist, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets,

Jesus says. The absolute greatest of all the Old Covenant prophets. And what did John the Baptist say about Jesus?

He must increase. I must decrease. And he had the right heart on the matter about the transition between the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So all the old had to be done away with and to decrease, diminish, and in its obsolescence be done away with so that the new become into its full bloom.

This is why the temple is going to be destroyed and done away with. In an act of God's judgment, a judgment that was well deserved, as Jesus said, that the

Jewish leaders there had broken covenant. They were guilty of all the blood of the prophets. And they would be willingly guilty of the blood of Jesus himself, his blood be upon us and our children.

So the temple is going to be destroyed as an act of judgment. The disciples are very concerned about this and they want to know when it's going to happen.

Now Jesus knows that this is a shock. He knows this is a scary thing for them to think about.

In some sense, if we could think about how it fits with us, you know, it would be like someone saying, well, there's going to be a massive tornado that's going to come through and all of Oklahoma City will be gone.

Just gone. It's going to have like, it's going to be ten EFIs that are going to rip through one right after the other in two days and there's going to be nothing left of Oklahoma City.

It's going to be completely gone. Now that's frightening.

That's scary. That's going to be utterly disorienting. There's all sorts of things that it's hard to wrap your head around.

And it's a prophecy. Total destruction. Okay, well, Jesus, you're going to have to tell us to look out for a sign to know that this doom is near so that we can protect ourselves, so that we can leave.

The temple can't be destroyed, you see, in the way that Jesus says, every stone taken off another.

The temple is in the heart of the most fortified area of Jerusalem. The only way for the temple to be destroyed is if the whole city is destroyed.

And Jesus has already been saying in his parables that the city is going to be destroyed. So they're scared, they're frightened, and Jesus pastors those listening to him.

And look at verse 8, and I want us to think about how necessary this is for us as well.

And he said, Take heed that you not be deceived. Take heed that you not be deceived.

For many will come in my name saying, I am he, and the time is drawn near.

Therefore, do not go after them. I just want us to think about verse 8 for a little bit.

Consider how Jesus is protecting his flock, how he's helping them and serving them with this word.

He's not telling them about the sign yet. He's not telling them about the timing yet.

He says, before we get there, I know those are the questions you want answered, but before we get there, there's something else you need to know first.

He says, you are responsible for what you believe. Right? That's what he says.

Take heed. That's a commandment for you to pay attention. Right?

He says it to his flock. You pay attention so that you not be deceived. Now that is a fitting word for us too.

Take heed. Pay attention. And take heed means to pay attention in such a way that you can make distinctions and tell whether or not something is true, which means you're going to be applying a standard, some kind of standard, to see whether this thing is so or not.

If we just use the basic correspondence theory of truth, that truth is that which corresponds to reality, just using that most basic idea, then we would be able to tell that most of everything that comes rolling at us from the media is full of baloney.

Just pay attention. People are lying all the time. So take heed that you not be deceived.

For many will come in my name saying, I am he. Now, there were several false claims to messiahship between the ascension of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem.

There were messianic movements. There were men who came forward and said, I am Messiah. And they knew the tradition of what

Jesus taught. And they talked about Jerusalem in similar fashion that Jesus did.

And they tried to get all manner of people to follow them and take them off into compounds and places in the wilderness and try to get a big following.

Jesus doesn't want them following after false messiahs. Now, in our last, let's say, 50 to 80 years, the last couple of generations, how many false messiahs and false claims at the end is nigh have we lived through?

I'm only 40 and I've lived through a bunch of it. Okay. Now, somebody who's twice my age has lived through probably twice as much.

There's been a lot of people claiming to be Jesus and a lot of the people who follow them end up dead.

Ever notice that? There's been a whole lot of people claiming to have secret knowledge about how the end is nigh and the people who believe that end up giving the false claimants all their money.

Ever notice that? So Jesus is saying, take heed. Now, you're responsible.

Don't get tricked. Many will come in my name saying that I am he and the time is drawn near. But here's

Jesus' instructions. Do not go after them.

Don't go after them. You may hear it. Don't pursue it. Somebody wants to talk about themselves being the messiah or I know when the messiah is coming back and oh, you know, doomsday.

We only have three months left. You're going to hear it. Don't go after them,

Jesus says. So the most Christian thing to do, the most obedient thing to do in following Jesus is when you hear these people claim these things, you say, nope.

That would be living by faith. That would be a very Christian thing to do in following Jesus.

Say, I'm not going to go after them. Okay, now let's follow that up with verse 9. Because Jesus is still getting his followers ready for what's about to take place and by extension and application we need to make this to ourselves as well.

Verse 9. But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified.

Heard of any wars and commotions lately? Yes. Now I have noticed that when wars and commotions, now listen, because we live in the internet age, we know about almost all, well not almost all, we know about a lot of wars and commotions.

There are wars and commotions that some folks don't want us to know about. You know, genocides and things going on in the world today currently that are not so well publicized.

But there are wars and commotions going on all the time. And there were before the internet came about.

We just know about a lot more of them now. Okay, it's just a different type of era in which we're living.

But when we hear about wars and commotions, which are what the money makers are for the news cycle, always going to lead out with some sort of war or some sort of commotion.

When you hear about that, what does Jesus tell you? Do not be terrified. Now terrified has the idea that you are captivated by fear.

When you hear of wars and commotions, there are two things to be afraid of. One is the fear of man, what man may do.

What these evil people may do. And the second fear is the fear of death.

This is somehow going to impact me or my own family or the people that I know.

So being terrified, Jesus is saying do not be terrified. He means do not be ensnared by the fear of man.

Do not be enslaved by the fear of death when you hear about wars and commotions.

So Jesus is saying it is a necessary thing and an act of judgment that the temple, indeed the old covenant, must be done away with.

But that's to the glory of Christ. This is a necessary thing and rather than live in fear and be terrified, when you hear of all these different things, he wants them to act in faith.

So, he says in verse 9, Do not be terrified, for these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately.

Now Jesus will give a time indicator to his disciples. And he says this in Luke 21.

And he says that it's going to be within that generation. Within a generation. He also gives them a sign.

He says when Jerusalem gets surrounded by armies, you all need to get out of Jerusalem and get out of Judea.

So he tells them the sign. He tells them the time frame. But he tells them here that they are not to be terrified when they hear about wars and commotions.

Now I find this to be very practical for the early church. Now can you imagine how little work would have gotten done?

How little preaching would have been done? How few missionary trips would have been undertaken by the early church if every time they heard about some rumor about a war or some commotion going down somewhere in the

Roman Empire, that they looked around at each other and said, well, we better wait until it calms down a bit, don't you think?

See, Jesus told them in Matthew chapter 10 that they were to go preach the gospel of the kingdom to all the cities of Israel and they wouldn't finish going through the cities of Israel before he came in judgment.

So they didn't have time to sit around. So they should not be terrified and thus arrested to their seats and saying, well, things are bad out there.

Best not do nothing. So he wants them to live by faith and not by the fear of man or the fear of death.

And then he tells them how it's going to be. Verse 10 and 11.

Now he said to them, nation will rise against nation. Now they live in an empire, which means that there's going to be inter -tribal war.

There's going to be some civil war that's going to be going on in the

Roman Empire. And I'll leave it to Jacob to talk about some of that. If you come to his class, right?

And there will be a kingdom against kingdom and there will be great earthquakes in various places.

There were quite a few earthquakes and famines and pestilences. We read about a famine in the

New Testament and they try to care for the famine in Judea. And so that those famines came to pass.

Diseases always follow with famines. And there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.

And those are documented as well, whether they be comets or other phenomenon in the heavens.

But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons.

Now, who was in charge of the synagogues? The Jews were.

The Jews were in charge of the synagogues. Now, where were the synagogues located? The synagogues were for the

Jews to gather in far off places. A synagogue in Rome.

A synagogue in Philippi. A synagogue in Thessalonica. There was a synagogue in various places throughout the

Roman Empire. And Jesus is indicating here that his followers are going to be out and about, going far afield from Jerusalem and Judea.

They're going to be out and about in the Empire. And they're going to encounter resistance from the

Jews, the very same kind of Jews that Jesus himself has been encountering resistance from.

He says, you're going to be delivered up to synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and rulers for my namesakes.

And not only the Jews, but also the Gentiles, kings and rulers. But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.

In other words, when you get in trouble with this onerous religion, the

Jews, they're just not really jiving with what you're saying.

You have failed to reach them. For some reason, you weren't winsome enough to reach them and for them to like you.

So now you're in trouble in their synagogue. And somehow you have failed to win over the pagan culture.

And you have not wooed them appropriately because now you're on trial. That's how people today would look at it.

But Jesus says, this is all part of the program. Look, if you get beat up and hauled in front of a bunch of Jews in a synagogue, or you get arrested and thrown before a king in a courtroom, guess what?

They're giving you a wonderful opportunity to preach the gospel to people who evidently really need to hear it.

Right? This is going to work out very well. So he says in verse 14,

Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer.

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.

Now we'll leave our reading off right there. But can you think of an example in the book of Acts where we see this come to fruition?

Where they're arrested and they're before a hostile audience, but it becomes an occasion for testimony.

A testimony that Christ accords them by his spirit so that nobody can refute them.

Paul. We see that with Paul. Peter and John before the

Sanhedrin. They could not refute Peter and John.

They couldn't say anything. Here's this man who was healed in the name of Jesus and everybody was turning to the

Lord by their preaching. And what can they do? They can't stop them from preaching. They were unable to refute them.

So what we see in chapter 21 so far is that Jesus assures them there's going to be a destruction of the temple.

It's necessary. It's very frightening for his hearers.

And he says, and they want to know when it's going to happen. They want to know a sign to warn them about the impending destruction of the temple.

And Jesus does not answer their questions immediately. What he does is begin to disciple them about all the other things they need to be concerned about as well.

So he knows that long before the temple is destroyed, there are plenty of opportunities for them to be ensnared by other fears.

So he tells them what's going to happen so they will not be afraid. And he tells them that it's going to work out and they need to trust him prior, beforehand.

So this is, I think, the best way to approach the great task that we have in front of us.

We've been talking about this on Sunday mornings about the Great Commission. Jesus says, you know, we're going to have trouble in the world, but we have peace in him.

And that our victory is our faith in Christ. And through him we overcome the world.

We are assured that there's going to be opposition and contradiction and difficulty. But we're also assured that God takes these opportunities, takes these events and makes them opportunities for good.

So it's a matter of trusting the Lord and fearing the Lord rather than fearing man and fearing death.

Okay, any questions or comments about our study tonight? Yes, Jenny. Well, in order for something to be a cult, what a cult does is that it apes the original.

Okay, so it's a foil of the original. So the same terms will be employed, but the definitions will be significantly different.

The claim will be that there's consistency, but in fact there is not.

A cult will inevitably get something wrong about the person and work of Christ, something about who

God is, something about the nature of the Scripture. But the other part of the cult has to be that there is a a cordoning off of the adherence from others in a very particular way so that the gravitational pull is always in, always in, always in.

And then there's kind of a stranglehold on the people who are there. There's very little opportunity in at least either mentally, emotionally or physically to get away.

So Judaism today, I think, would be best described as a false religion. And it's three major forms, whatever those may be.

They rely on the very things that Jesus rebuked. On the scholasticism, the rabbinical scholasticism of rabbis said this, and rabbis said of rabbis said of rabbis said of rabbis said of rabbis, you know, those kinds of things.

And so they teach the traditions of men rather than the Word of God. And even on their own standards, without a high priest and without an

Ark of the Covenant, without an altar and without sacrifices and without all of that, it is a twisted husk of what

God had commanded. I'll go ahead and tell my topological joke now.

Actually, it's Paul's joke in Galatians 4. Something to remember is that when we think of the

Judaism today, what is it that they want most? Let's take an

Orthodox Jew. What would they really like to see? Number one thing. What?

No, Orthodox Jew. Yeah, they want Jerusalem back. They want the

Temple Mount back. They want the Islamic mosque gone. They want a temple back. That's what they want.

They want the sacrificial systems restored. They want priests again. They want all of the shadows that have been fulfilled by Christ to be restored because they don't want

Christ. They want the shadows. They don't want the substance. Okay.

In Galatians 4, remember in Galatians Paul is dealing with this, okay, and he's telling the

Jews, Jewish Christians, and Christians who are being afflicted by the Judaizers, don't go back to the shadows.

Don't go back to the old way. Christ has come. In fact, Paul says, if you go back to the old ways, you're going back to being a slave.

Why not stay a son? In freedom, you're as a son. Now he has an analogy that he gives in Galatians 4.

And he says, verse 21, Tell me you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons.

Who are they? Two sons. Ishmael and Isaac.

Yeah. The one by a bond woman, the other by a free woman. Remember that Hagar was a slave, right, and that Sarah was the free woman.

And he says that Ishmael was born of the bond woman according to the flesh, by the effort of the flesh.

And that's a good analogy for going back to the old ways of Judaism, just trying to work your way along, okay.

But then the true son, the true heir was born of a promise. God promised, and he was born of Sarah.

And then he says in verse 24, Which things are symbolic? Meaning, I'm going to use these as a symbol. For these are the two covenants.

Alright, there's just two covenants. There's the old and the new. The one for Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is

Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is and is bondage with her children.

In other words, the old covenant is wrapped up in Jerusalem as it now stands physically there with a temple on top of it during Paul's day.

He says, and that's slavery. Okay, we got that. But what about the other Jerusalem? He says, but the

Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. Okay, so do you see what he's doing?

He says, okay, so there's a Jerusalem above the spiritual Mount Zion, Hebrews 12. You come to Christ, you come to the true

Jerusalem, you come to the true Zion. Don't go back to the shadows in the old ways because that's slavery.

Don't go back to the old Jerusalem. So Paul says that in Galatians 4. In fact, what he says is for you to go back to Jerusalem, the physical

Jerusalem, and that temple mount that the Jews today want to go back and build a temple on.

He says to go back to that is to go back to what? Slavery. Namely, who was the son of the slave woman?

Ishmael. Now ain't that funny? Do you realize that an Islamic mosque has stood on the temple mount for twice as long as any

Jewish temple ever has? And that if you want to go back to the shadows of the old covenant, if you want to go back to physical

Jerusalem, and if you want to go back and build a temple on the physical Jerusalem mount, guess what

Paul says you're going to have to do? You're going to have to go to Ishmael. And ain't

Ishmael there? Ishmael is there right now. If you want to go back to the shadows, you're going to have to go to Ishmael, and that's slavery.

Right? So why go to Ishmael to try to restore old covenant shadows when we have

Christ? Christ has come. So that's where the Jews unfortunately are falling for that, and they're trying to go back.

They want to go to Ishmael. They're there at the wailing wall. Right?

They're there. They're right there with Ishmael, wanting the shadows to be restored, but they're in bondage.

They're in slavery. All right, well, that was my topological eschatological humor.