Damariscotta Baptist Church

 

 

Matthew 24:15-35

We have been reading through the Gospel According to Matthew and today’s Scripture is a continuation of last week’s story of Jesus answering some questions His disciples had after Jesus told them that the temple of Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. 

Quick review…. Jesus and His disciples have spent about three years roaming the countryside of Jerusalem. During that time Jesus taught those who would listen about the Kingdom of Heaven. He also performed some amazing miracles, from healing the sick, the blind, the lame and even raising His friend Lazarus from the dead. Throughout those three years Jesus revealed to His closest disciples that He was the Messiah, the awaited redeemer of the Jewish nation, promised by the prophets. 

However, He kept it rather quiet up until His entrance into Jerusalem a few days prior to where we are now in our reading of Matthew. In today’s Scripture Jesus and His disciples are in the middle of the Passover week and Jesus has spent the first few days aggravating the religious leaders by tipping over their bargaining tables and stumping them by answering their challenging questions  in ways where they have no answers. 

At this point, the religious leaders have stopped trying to beat Jesus with rhetoric and they are working together to find a way to have Him killed. The day is coming to a close so Jesus and His disciples have left the city to retire for the evening and the disciples have asked Jesus two questions.

1) When was the destruction of the temple going to happen?

2) What sort of signs would appear to let them know Jesus was going to take over and lead them to the end of the age? 

Last week we began with Jesus’ answer to the first question, When was the destruction of the temple going to happen? This week we will finish Jesus’ answer to that question. Notice it takes Jesus thirty verses to give a definitive answer to their question. Before He gives them the time frame, Jesus warns them of what is going to happen and how they should respond. First Jesus tells them not to be deceived by those who will come and say they are the “real” Messiah. He also tells them not to be alarmed when they hear about wars, famines and earthquakes. All of these tragedies will happen but they are merely birth pains, in preparation for a new world. Jesus then tells them what to do in the meantime. 

They are to “stand firm and share the good news of Jesus” to all the nations.  

Jesus then goes on with more apocalyptic literature, verse 15, 

“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—

Okay, what does this sentence mean? Were we first century Jewish disciples, we would recognize that the words in quotations “the abomination that causes desolation” comes directly from the book of Daniel which most of them would have had in their memory. Today, we would need to go read the book of Daniel where it is written. Then what Jesus has to say will make sense. In order to understand what Jesus was saying one has to be immersed in the prophets. 

Let’s remember, what question was Jesus answering? 

#1 When was the destruction of the temple going to happen?

At this point Jesus is describing the destruction of the city of Jerusalem as the “abomination that causes desolation,” as foretold in Daniel. According to Britannica.com the Roman military formed a blockade around the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It happened at the time of Passover, when the Roman military allowed pilgrims to enter the city but blockaded them so they couldn’t get out. Which explains why Jesus told His disciples in the next sentence, verse 16,

“Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak.”

Jesus did a very good job at describing what happened during the destruction of Jerusalem. Then He goes on to say that this would be the greatest distress in the world. 

Here is where apocalyptic literature steps in and there are a variety of interpretations. 

One group of believers believe Jesus without any cues or indications was talking about two different time periods, the time of the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in 70AD and the “end times” when there would be the “greatest distress in the world.” Again, this belief started with John Nelson Darby who began what is known as Dispensationalism, which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages or “dispensations” in which God acts with humanity in different ways. 

Another group of believers take this passage to be Jesus using the literary means of exaggeration to describe the same event, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. They read the statement, 

unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

As a phrase that occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures about twelve times. And when you read this sentence in the contexts where it has been used, it does not mean what it seems to mean. 

It’s like, hey the other day I went fishing and I caught the biggest fish anyone has ever caught in the Damariscotta River. Okay, you would give me grace because you realize that actually what I am doing is exaggerating. 

However, often when we read what the Biblical authors have written we don’t give them the ability to exaggerate to make a point. Yet, back in chapter 5 of Matthew Jesus did say to tear out your eye, and in Luke 14 He said we should hate our mother and father. Now I use those as examples of where Jesus used heightened exaggeration to make a point. Think about it. Up to this point the center of the Jewish nation is God’s house, the temple in the center of Jerusalem. The very thought that God would allow a foreign army to conquer His own temple, the place where He resides on earth, for the Jews was the center of the world. It would have been the greatest catastrophe in world history. 

When we look at God’s purposes of the world, the destruction of Jerusalem is an event in history that reveals God’s plan to confront evil here on earth. 

As we read on in verse 23 & 24, 

“At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

Jesus warns them, don’t believe it! He is telling us, 

“I’ve told you ahead of time.” 

Jesus knows that people get afraid, we get afraid, when the world falls apart. Because of that, we give in to fear and we give in to speculation. Jesus is telling us, 

“Don’t give in.”

“Stand firm.”

“Bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ.”

The world will change and say and do whatever it can to deceive, but Christ is the same always, yesterday, today and always. 

Don’t let people play on your place of fear. If you are acting on your fears then you are demonstrating that you don’t think history is in Jesus’ hands. Now mind you, more than I would like to admit the world looks like it is out of control and out of God’s hands. But Jesus is telling His disciples, which includes us, that He knows what is happening. He predicted it. But we are called to trust in Him. And the way to show we trust in Jesus is to 

Stand firm, bear witness to the good news of Jesus, because it is truth and it provides hope in hopeless situations. God knows what He is doing, always. 

“I’m telling you this ahead of time,” Jesus said.

On to verse 29-31,

“Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Okay, here’s where it gets dicey again. What on earth is Jesus talking about? Has He jumped to talking about the end of the earth and His final return? Or is He still answering the first question the disciples gave Him. Now mind you, in two more verses He will be telling them that the temple would be destroyed within their generation. 

Could Jesus be hopping back and forth from answering the first question and providing answers for the end of the age? 

It’s possible, however, when we look at the two quotes that Jesus used in these three verses come from the books of Isaiah and Daniel, again, they don’t mean what we may think they mean. They weren’t written in modern English for 21st Century Americans. So let’s go back to where these quotes come from. Jesus is quoting directly from the book of Isaiah chapter 13 when He talks about the sun and the moon and the heavenly bodies. 

Let me read a few verses from Isaiah 13, 

The stars of heaven and their constellations

    will not show their light.

The rising sun will be darkened

    and the moon will not give its light.

I will punish the world for its evil,

    the wicked for their sins.

See, I will stir up against them the Medes,

    who do not care for silver

    and have no delight in gold.

Their bows will strike down the young men;

    they will have no mercy on infants,

    nor will they look with compassion on children.

Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms,

    the pride and glory of the Babylonians,

will be overthrown by God

In these verses, Isaiah was talking about the destruction of Babylon, the most brutal empire of its time. Isaiah the prophet was using a poem to explain how God was going to level the city of Babylon down to the ground. 

In the process of describing Babylon’s destruction Isaiah wrote about the stars going dark, and the sun and the moon not shining. Did that actually happen? No. Isaiah was using poetry to describe what the fall of Babylon would “feel” like. The world as they knew it, would come to an end. The largest empire at that time came crashing down in the course of about two weeks. Unheard of! And the only language Isaiah could use to describe it was that the cosmos itself was going to cease working. 

This is the very line that Jesus quotes to describe the fall of Jerusalem. Jesus was comparing Jerusalem to the city of Babylon. A place where one’s whole world evolves. Not only that, Jerusalem had become as evil and destructive as the Babylons of the world. So Jesus predicts its fall exactly as Isaiah did. 

Then He goes on to talk about the Son of Man. Jesus was quoting from a vision that Daniel had in chapter 7. In this chapter Daniel describes one of his dreams. Who knows what he had for dinner because this dream is about crazy beasts coming out of the sea and he describes them. After telling about the four beasts Daniel said a young man came to tell him what the dream actually meant. He tells him the beasts were symbols of kingdoms. And there will be one large beast of evil kingdom that will trample on the vision of the Son of Man, Daniel had in his dream. And the Son of Man vision was the symbol for God’s people and their king. And then Daniel sees that God comes, in fire and light and He sets up His throne and judges the beastly kingdom and sentences it to destruction for its violence and arrogance. 

Then Daniel writes, 

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him.

When we read this verse in context, we realize that Jesus was not speaking about His coming to earth on a cloud. His is talking in the language of Daniel’s vision, of His being exalted from persecution and death, up to the right hand of God to become the king of the world. When we read this text from where it was quoted we realize that Jesus wasn’t talking about His return to earth after His crucifixion. He was talking about what was about to happen in just a few days. 

Okay, check in time. 

The idea of the “end times” hasn’t come up in any of the previous books we have read together. Although there are many scholars who are far wiser than me who believe the world is going through a variety of dispensations, or different ages and that Jesus was prophesying how the “end times” would happen, I do not. 

I take a covenant view of Scripture where God works with His creation using a covenant that was ultimately stamped and confirmed with the blood of Christ on the cross. 

Whichever belief one takes, it’s okay, as long as we both love Jesus, we both stand firm and we both want to follow Him. Regardless of how the world ends, God still wants His followers to trust that history is in the Father’s hands.

In a world that is constantly in crisis mode, constantly feels like it’s falling apart, where it seems like things are out of control and for those of us here that are prone to fear or prone to speculation, we need to remember that Jesus’ death and resurrection means that the most powerful forces of evil won’t get the last word in God’s world. 

Things have always been bad, and we have every reason to believe they will continue to behave as horribly as it has in the last 2000 years. 

However, when we read God’s Word,

We have hope….

One day, 

Jesus will return, 

confront evil, and 

bring His kingdom.   

Jesus closes today’s Scripture with these words, verse 35,

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

As followers of Jesus, we are people of Hope, no matter how bad it gets.