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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim
36 tonight. Matthew 24, verses 32 through 36. So, we have been studying the context of what is called the Olivet Discourse, because Jesus is teaching from the Mount of Olives. He has declared many woes upon the scribes and Pharisees.
He has charged his…. He says this generation is guilty of all the blood of all the prophets, from Abel to Zechariah, son of Berechiah. All this will come upon this generation, he says, and states that Jerusalem is in big trouble.
Their house or their temple will be left to them desolate, that not one stone there in the temple grounds will be left upon another, and he reiterates that this will all happen to that generation. And it was very troubling for the disciples to hear that, and so they come to Jesus and ask for some details, so that they will know what in the world is going on.
And so Jesus begins to counsel his disciples, and the themes are as follows. He mostly wants them to avoid being deceived, don't listen to false teachers who claim crazy things. He also does not want them to be endangered.
So he tells them, when you see these certain indicators, specifically when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, he says, get out of Judea. Leave the city, don't run to the city for safety, don't run to the temple because some false teacher says Messiah is there.
You just get yourself and you leave. Don't even go back to your house and grab an extra set of clothes. He says, just get out as fast as you can and head for the hills. That's where that expression comes from.
So he says, get out of Judea because it's a great tribulation that's going to happen there. And then he describes a coming of judgment in which there are great disasters which occur and the overthrow of governments and rulers and authorities.
But all is not lost because his gospel will continue and gather in his people. Now we come to verses 32 through 36 and Jesus has essentially answered his disciples' questions, but he has more pastoring to do.
He wants them to be assured of his teaching, solid in his teaching, they will not be led astray. So beginning in verse 32, Matthew 24. Now learn this parable from the fig tree. Let's consider, first of all, how Jesus' parable helps to answer the disciples' original question.
So we go back to the beginning of Matthew 24 to remind ourselves what it was that the disciples asked Jesus that got him started on this long, multi-part answer. So he's wrapping up a big portion of his answer in our text, but what did they originally ask?
In verse 3, now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things be? That was their question. I think we probably have asked the same thing.
When will these things be? The temple destroyed? Jerusalem destroyed? When will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Now recall that when they used the expression coming, they're using it in the Old Testament biblical sense.
As we looked at last week, it talks about the Lord coming like Edom or Egypt or Babylon, even his own people. Whenever God visited or made a judgment, eightfold he says, Woe upon the Jewish religious leaders.
He says they're guilty of the blood of the prophets. He says the temple's going to be destroyed. And so they say, Well, when is this judgment going to happen? When will your coming be? And the end of the age, they ask.
It's the Greek word aeon. They don't use the word cosmos for the world, for the planet Earth. They use the word for age. When will the end of the age be? The destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem would be the end of an age.
It would be the end of particularly the Old Covenant. They're asking primarily when. When? And what will the sign be? Well, he's already told them when you see the abomination of desolation, he explains it in Luke, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, leave, get out.
And now he answers about the when, the timing of it all. 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.
I'm glad that they had stable weather patterns over there. Some of the trees around here don't know what time of year it is and who can blame them. They put out their buds and, good luck sucker, you're going to get frozen to death.
But over there they had more defined weather patterns. And when the branch goes from brittle, something you could easily break, to something more tender, you know the sap is running. You look at the end of the branches, you see the buds begin to form.
Well, anybody looking at that in Jesus' day could easily say, summer's right around the corner. Or in other words, the real growth season's about to begin. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near, at the doors.
So you go back and you look at the question again. When will these things be? What will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age? And so Jesus has given them many things to think about. And he has said, you know, when you hear specific throughout the discourse, he says, you're going to hear wars and rumors of wars.
You're going to hear about nations rising up against nations. You're going to hear about earthquakes and famines and pestilences. And then he says, but that's not what you should be paying attention to.
Okay, now it's what, still today, the saints get caught up with all of those things, but Jesus says, no. He talks about the abomination of desolation. He talks about great tribulation. He talks about false teachers.
He talks about, and then he talks about the sign. He talks about the sign, which we talked about in terms of the destruction of Jerusalem. But as far as how they know that's getting close, he says, just pay attention to what I've told you as you, now, when you look at the fig tree, notice it says when it's branches are to become tender and puts forth leaves.
So look for when it's all shaping up, when you see all of these things shaping up, then you'll know that it's near at the very doors. Now, who is he talking to? He's talking to the disciples. He's told them that they are going to see these things.
He's told them that they need to be aware of the false teachers who will try to deceive them. He's told them that they need to be praying to God that their flight out of Judea, which he says, if you want to escape the great tribulation, what you do is you pack up and you leave Judea.
He told him when you do that, and you're on top of your roof, right? Because that's how they lived back then. That was their front porch. He says, you don't go grab your tunic. He says, pray that it's not going to be during winter.
Pray that people in your family are not expecting or trying to carry infants around. Pray that it won't be on a Sabbath where nobody's going to take you in and give you hospitality as you try to flee from village to village and city to city.
All those things pertain to their timeframe, their culture, their concerns. And to back it all up, Jesus says, surely I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away to all these things take place.
And he doubles down and says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. I think Jesus answers pretty plainly, both here and at the end of chapter 23, that all those things will take place within that generation, before that generation passed away.
Now, when you read the Gospel of Matthew, for example, you read Jesus using this expression, this generation, many, many times. About 10 or 11 times. And it is instructive to read those contexts about what Jesus is saying to this generation, this generation, this generation.
He wasn't too favorable about this generation. He wasn't too impressed with this generation. And more often than not, he had some word of judgment for this generation. I'll give you an example. So if you want to turn in your Bibles a little bit back to Matthew chapter 12, and we read in verse 38 and following.
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered saying, teacher, we want to see a sign from you. Well, do you think they were wanting to believe in him, or do you think they were trying to disprove him?
But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And indeed a greater than Jonah is here. Interesting story about the men of Nineveh.
You know, who did they get as a prophet? Jonah. I mean, this was, this guy is not at the top of the great prophets by any means. He was a pretty important guy in his day, but we don't think of Jonah as somebody amazing.
Jesus is much greater than Jonah. We agree with his assessment. And what Jesus is saying is this generation right here, they've been given far better sermons, far better signs, far better preaching and opportunity to repent than those people in Nineveh did.
But the people of Nineveh repented. And the people here in this generation, by and large, they have not repented. And judgment is coming. Sign of Jonah, right? Jonah was in the belly of the fish. Three days, three nights, Jesus said, likens this to the sign of his own death, burial, and resurrection.
As you ponder on the story of Jonah, something was interesting, wasn't it? Jonah walked through the city and he had a one-point sermon. I don't know how he said it, if he said it with disdain or a sneer, but what did he say?
You remember what Jonah preached from one end of Nineveh to the other? It took him three days to cross through Nineveh open air preaching. What did he say? He didn't say repent. He didn't say God loves you just the way you are.
He said, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Just 40 days. Nineveh only had 40 days to repent by a subpar prophet. And guess what? Nineveh repented. Jesus is a much greater prophet and he's preaching from one end of the Holy Land to the other and he's been through Jerusalem more than once.
How much time is Jesus giving Jerusalem? Forty days? Forty years. Forty years. And not only has he preached, but he sends his followers to preach. He sends them to warn the folks again and again to repent of their ways and to turn to follow Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah.
And so Jesus is right when he says that this generation will be judged by the men of Nineveh. Well, he goes on to talk about the Queen of the South and how the wisdom of Solomon is not as great as his wisdom because someone greater than Solomon is here.
He also says in verse 43, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept and put in order.
Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits, more wicked than himself. And they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Notice what he says, so it shall be with this wicked generation.
Yeah, I wonder who it was who went through this generation and cleaned it up, swept and put in order Israel, casting out the demons, healing the sick, pushing back darkness wherever he went. Who did that for that generation?
Jesus did, didn't he? He even cast out legion, set everything right and put it in order. And then what happened when the people rejected him and didn't repent? Did they end up better or worse? Far, far worse.
So as we think about the ways in which Jesus uses the term this generation, he's obviously talking about the people right in front of him. And so we also, we say this generation, we also think of the term 40 years.
Why do we think of generation as 40 years? Do we have any biblical reason why? 40 years on the trip, that's right. What a fundamental story in the whole story of the scriptures. We think about the 40 years connected to the wicked generation that came up out of Egypt who was destroyed in the wilderness.
Numbers 32 verse 13, so the Lord's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness 40 years until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the Lord was destroyed.
Psalm 95 verses 8 and 10, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massa in the wilderness when your fathers tested me, they tried me though they had seen my work. Sound familiar by the way?
A wicked and perverse generation seeks for a sign. They're testing the Lord even though they had seen his work. Does that sound familiar? The generation in front of Jesus was doing the same thing that the wicked generation was doing in the wilderness.
For 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who err in their heart and they do not know my ways. So when you read the parables of Jesus, and that's something we're going to do in the future of this study, but when you read the parables of Jesus, how often do we see this construct?
There's a son, the father comes to him and says, hey I want you to go work in the field today, do your job. The son says, nah. He's okay, I want you to go and work in my field today. He says, yes sir.
And then he didn't do it. He lazes around. First son's like, man I should have done that. He goes out and he does the work, right? What Jesus is saying, you know, it's the, you know, what I'm looking for is not the appearance of being right, but the actuality of being right.
Jesus talks about the vineyard, the vinedressers who are there and how they are wicked and they don't, they don't receive the messengers sent from the owner of the vineyard. They don't give what was due to the owner of the vineyard and they, they beat and kill and, and, and mistreat all of his servants that he sends.
And so finally the owner sends his son. And what do they do with his son? Jesus asks. Well, they say, this is the heir. Let's kill him so we can take full possession of this vineyard. And they kill the son and cast him outside the walls of the vineyard.
What do the Jews, what do the religious leaders do to Christ? They rejected all the prophets, all the servants that God had sent, and then they rejected the son and they killed him and cast him outside the walls of Jerusalem.
And Jesus asks the crowd and says, what will the owner of the vineyard do when the wicked tenants do this? And they answered him and said, he will come and destroy these vinedressers and he will give the vineyard to others who will produce the fruit of the vineyard.
And so Jesus continually in his stories talks about a wicked and evil generation that's going to be judged and moved out of the way for another kind of group. Both, and it turns out we see throughout the rest of New Testament, it's both Jew and Gentile, but it's those who are of the new covenant who have new hearts, who are born again, have a law of God written on their hearts, and it's a whole new covenant.
Well, this fits very well with what Jesus is saying here. As he is saying that the judgment's coming, the end of the age is at hand, it is near to us, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.
And the disciples have asked, when will the end of the age be? Jesus is saying, within this generation. We should not be surprised then when we read through the rest of the New Testament that the apostles, having been told this, all of them, to a writer, declare that these are the last days.
And some of them would go even farther. They say, us upon whom the end is the last hour. They're all right on the edge of something. What are they on the edge of? We take them at their word. We take them at their word.
We don't say, when they say it's the last days, it's the last hour, we don't say, oh, that's just symbolic of being ready. They believed it. They pastored accordingly. And they weren't saying it was the end of the planet Earth.
Okay? Jesus said, within this generation, the end of the age will come. And the writers of the New Testament wrote like it, and talked about it, and acted accordingly. The end of the age is nigh. So if we read it in those terms, I think we're being consistent with what Jesus has said here.
The disciples should have confidence in Jesus' words. He says, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.
And that sounds familiar. Do you remember another part in the Gospel of Matthew where he talks about heaven and earth, but something else not passing away? We think of that? Not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled.
Heaven and earth will pass away. The Word of God will not pass away. So what is Jesus saying there? He is likening his words to that of Holy Scripture. The things that have already been said, and what I'm telling you right now, as the full weight of Holy Scripture.
And this is not going to pass away. It's remarkable that Jesus comes, and of course his teaching is not like the authority of the scribes, or the ways of the scribes and the Pharisees, but he teaches with authority.
Jesus goes about, he says, verily, verily, he said that the old King James, truly, truly, surely, I say unto you. Most of the time we wait to listen to what somebody has to say, and at the end of it, we might say, amen.
Jesus starts off by saying, amen. He amens what he's about to say before he says it. It's actually the Greek word, amen. He says, amen, amen, and then he speaks. See, the old prophets in the old covenant were different.
They said, thus saith the Lord. The new covenant, Jesus came, he says, thus saith me. Thus saith me. He came with the authority of God the Son himself. He is the Word, become flesh. So they should have, and we should have, confidence in what Jesus says and how he says it.
And then we hit a speed bump, or maybe a big pothole, since this is Oklahoma, we'll say pothole. It's kind of strange when you're reading along, and you go from this confidence Jesus wants us to have in his word, and then he says, but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
What? A pothole? I mean, that'll bend your axle. To go from thus saith me to I don't know what day or hour my coming will occur, only the Father, that's a bit hard for us to wrap our heads around. Well, two things need to be kept in mind about this saying.
First of all, in Christ's humanity, Jesus did not know everything. Remember, Christ praying in the garden. He says, if it be your will, may this cup pass from me, but not as I will, but as you will, he prays.
Well, we could say, well, shouldn't he already know if it is his will or not his will? Why is he even praying about it? The humanity of Christ was a full humanity, not sinful, but a full humanity. And the divinity of Christ was a full divinity.
When we read that Jesus says, I don't know, not even the Son knows, we may find it difficult to see that, even though he's fully anointed by the Holy Spirit. But we need to remember that he is of two natures in one person.
He's of two natures in one person. And although his humanity did not lessen his divinity, here's the second thing to remember. He did humble himself, Philippians 2 says, he humbled himself by taking upon the form of a bondservant.
He emptied himself, Philippians 2 says, by adding humanity in its fullness to himself. And what he laid aside, in Philippians 2, what he laid aside was his divinely deserved prerogatives to know everything as the faithful Son.
Remember that Hebrews says he learned obedience through what he suffered. I think it's significant for us that in Christ's humility, he admitted that there was something that he did not know. And at the same time, this did not negate the mountain of certainty that he had about all the things he did know that were related to the question.
And also, notice, the Father knew, so why did he have to know? Now, how's that a model for us? How's that a model for us? As we're learning obedience, as we're following the Lamb wherever he goes and singing the song of the redeemed, that's a model for us.
The Father knows, why do we have to? There's some things we don't know, but we can trust in God. See, Jesus is our Savior and our Sovereign, he's our mediator, and he is our model. So he walks obediently in faith and shows us how to.
And I think that's important for the disciples because there's probably other questions they're going to want to ask him. I mean, the questions I don't think would, you know, just stop right here. Like, yeah, but yeah, but what about this?
They're gonna want to know more. And Jesus is letting them know, you know, we are to walk by faith and not by sight. This is the way of the Christian life, we walk by faith and not by sight. But also, there's a lot coming, there's a lot coming down the pipe, and Jesus wants them to pay attention to what he has given them.
There's a passage in Hebrews chapter 10, I thought it'd be good to read, to give some context. The book of Hebrews is very interesting, obviously addressing those who were very fluent in the sacrifices and in all the shadows of the Old Covenant, writing to the Jews.
And essentially, the writer of Hebrews is calling those who are in the church, who have turned from the shadows to the substance of Christ, to not go back. Don't go back to the shadows. Jesus is the Christ and he is superior, a superior mediator of a better covenant.
He's told them in chapter 8 that the Old Covenant is obsolete and ready to pass away, so don't go back. And isn't this interesting, in verse 29, verse 29, and we'll back up a verse, verse 28, Hebrews 10, anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
He's like, remember how it works in the Old Covenant. Remember how it works in the Old Covenant. Anybody who rejects Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Remember the, you know, you have heard it said, but I say to you, that was then, but how much greater now, the same relationship is here, verse 29, of how much worse punishment, of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
That's a question. That's a question. If you die on the testimony of two or three witnesses when you break Moses' law, how much greater punishment awaits those who reject Christ after he has come and shed his blood for the new covenant and trampled him underfoot?
How much a greater thing to reject Christ than to break the law of Moses, is what the author is saying. Verse 34, we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And again, the Lord will judge his people.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That scenario is exactly what lay ahead for still trying to cling to the shadows of an Alps. They were still breaking God underfoot, and what lay ahead for them was vengeance.
We see the importance of the instructions that Jesus is giving to his disciples, given what was about to occur. Next time, as the Lord wills, we'll get to talk about Noah. And we'll talk about how the rest of Matthew 24 shapes up, and then we're not going to leave it there.