Two Journeys Sermons

In stark contrast to the behavior of all those around him, the glory of Christ ripped apart the moral darkness of human history and showed us the perfection of his nature.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT coming soon-

Gethsemane is the greatest display of the perfect humanity of Jesus in the Bible, it also offers opportunities to ponder the excellencies and perfection of his character.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

One sacred day, God spoke to Moses from the flames of the burning bush. "Take off your shoes, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground." What does this mean? Since God is everywhere, all at once, holy ground means that God was about to be uniquely revealed, revealed in an extraordinary way, and Moses's knowledge of God was going to be greatly increased by this encounter. "Draw near to listen. Draw near to fall on the ground in fear and wonder in worship and adoration." If that's true at the burning bush, then how much more true is it when we come to Gethsemane?

Gethsemane is the greatest display of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ in the Bible. It contains almost incomprehensible mysteries, but also tremendous opportunities to ponder the excellencies of Christ, His glories, the perfection of His character, His courage, His obedience, His trust in His father, His willingness to suffer for us, His love for us, His reversal of the disobedience of Adam, also His frailty and His weakness, His mortality, His emotions. All of this is on display.

We will spend eternity in heaven, I believe, pondering these themes and others that flow through this account. This morning, we're going to spend just a little while on them. My desire, my goals with this sermon is first and foremost to exalt Jesus Christ our Savior, based on the words of this account, that we may worship Him with all of our hearts for what He did for us at the cross. Secondly, that we would understand more accurately the humanity of Jesus, His emotions, His submission, His mortality and frailty, His temptations, and yet His sinlessness. Thirdly, that we would understand the power of prayer in facing temptations, in strengthening us to do the will of our Father. Fourthly, to motivate us to trust in Christ's finished work on the cross, more than ever before. Fifthly, to help us understand the proper use of our own will, that we would learn to imitate Jesus Christ every day in saying, "Not my will, but yours be done," no matter what the cost. And sixth, to feel intensely personally, if you are a Christian, to feel intensely personally Christ's love for you. For you.

In Galatians 2:20, Paul gives us permission to do this, to say, "Christ loved me and died for me. He gave Himself for me." It is right for us as Christians to say both Christ loved me and gave Himself for me, and Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, that multitude greater than anyone could count, from every tribe, language, people, and nation.[Revelation 7]. But in Galatians 2:20, “Jesus loved me and He drank my cup for me.”

Here we're going to walk through all of these themes, and I don't know what the Holy Spirit's going to do in your heart as we walk through, probably a little different than He'll do in mine. But if those things will be achieved in you, then I will have preached for the glory of God in Christ. Let's walk first through the facts of Gethsemane.

I. The Facts of Gethsemane

All His life, Jesus lived under the shadow of the cross. B.B. Warfield, the great Presbyterian theologian, said the prospect of His suffering was a perpetual Gethsemane to Him. He said, in Luke 12:50, "I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed” or straitened, like in a straitjacket, "I am until it is completed." There is clear evidence in the Gospel. This is very important for us to understand. Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him. In Mark 9:31, Jesus said, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days, He will rise." There's no doubt about this at all. He said it again and again. As Jesus comes to Gethsemane on that faithful night, the time had come for Him to face the cross straight on, and make a final decision about what He was going to do. The Lord's supper is over. They have finished the Passover meal. They have sung a hymn. They've crossed the Kidron Valley into the garden of Gethsemane. Verse 32, "They went to a place called Gethsemane." What is Gethsemane? It was a private garden on the Mount of Olives, probably walled off, owned by some rich friend of Jesus, who allowed Jesus and His disciples to frequent the place. It was outside of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley from the city, away from the maddening crowd of millions of pilgrims that had come from all over the settled world for the Passover feast.

The word Gethsemane itself means “oil press”, probably included a physical press for making olive oil from the harvest of olives on the mount, and the crushing of those olives produced a reddish, viscous, precious fluid, olive oil, to flow into containers for sale or for use. But this also could stand somewhat of a spiritual metaphor for the crushing pressure, spiritual pressure, that Jesus would experience there, so intense that by the end of the time there, His blood was flowing like sweat, like great drops of blood dropping from His face.

Why did Jesus go to Gethsemane? It was a place, a regular place of retirement and prayer, a refuge for Him and His disciples. It was commonly used by Jesus and His disciples. Therefore Judas, who had left by then to betray Him that very night, would know exactly where Jesus was going that night. It was His habit to go there. He made it His habit, because in part He wanted to make it easy for Judas to find Him that night and betray Him. This is evidence, clear evidence of His willingness to lay down His life for us. He was never a victim trapped by external circumstances He didn't foresee or couldn't control. It's not the case. John 10:18, Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down freely of my own accord." It's vital to understand that.

Jesus comes to Gethsemane for all those reasons, and He gives a command to His disciples, and He separates away from them. Look at verse 32-33, "Jesus said to His disciples, 'Sit here while I pray.' Then He took Peter, James, and John along with Him.” Luke tells us that Jesus separated from His disciples by a distance of a stone's throw, maybe 100, 150 feet, but He also took His closest disciples with Him. They were His best friends in the world, His closest friends, and He wanted to be with them at that point, Peter, James, and John. These are the same three, of course, that had viewed Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. It's amazing that these three saw Him at His most glorious, His most radiantly glorious in the days of His incarnation on Earth, and also would see Him at His most humbled and abased here in the garden of Gethsemane, eyewitnesses of both.

He went there, Jesus did, He separated Himself so that He could pray. Jesus' understanding of prayer is infinitely greater than ours, clearly greater than Peter, James, and John's that night. Jesus knew it was only by prayer that He would be able to get through the cross, so He went there to pray. We see the awesome and the overpowering emotional distress that comes upon Jesus. First of all, it's stated in the accounts. Verse 33, “He began to be deeply distressed and troubled.” In Matthew 26:37, “He began to be sorrowful and troubled.” It's not only stated in the accounts, but Jesus says it about Himself. Look at verse 34, "'My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,' He said to them."

"Jesus knew it was only by prayer that He would be able to get through the cross, so He went there to pray."

These overpowering emotions, there are two words, we're going to save one of the words for later, but He says He's “sorrowful”. The root word has to do with grief, sadness of an overwhelming nature, usually associated with death. Then “troubles”. It refers to a distracted or anxious state of mind or soul, like someone consumed with anxiety about an impending event. His statement says, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow," as though He's surrounded by it. He's walled in by grief. There's no escape from it except by His own death, right there in the garden. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death," He says. I don't think this was just a phrase or a metaphor. I think it was literally true. I think He was literally close to dying in the garden of Gethsemane.

So the Father has to dispatch an angel to strengthen Him. Luke 22:43, "An angel from Heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him." What an amazing moment that was. Aa amazing picture of His frailty, the frailty of the Son of God in His humanity. This angel that was dispatched from Heaven, was created by Jesus, and yet at that moment, Jesus is so much weaker than the angel. It says in Luke's account, Luke 22:44, "And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." This is literally true. We look at that, it's not just an analogy, but it's drops of blood. I would think then that what happened was His blood pressure spiked there in the garden of Gethsemane, the internal pressure so great that it seemed like the capillaries just under the skin burst, they couldn't handle the pressure, and the blood came out of the pores. I mean, not a little, a lot, and it's flowing down His face and dripping to the ground there in the garden of Gethsemane, great drops of blood. It seems quite likely that, had Jesus not been physically strengthened at that moment, He might've died right there in the garden.

Then Jesus prays. Look at verse 35-36, "Going a little farther, He fell to the ground, and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from Him. "Abba Father,” He said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will." His physical position, He's on His face, He's prostrate, totally weak, helpless, submissive to God, as low as He can be. As Joseph Hart put in a 1759 hymn, "Come you sinners, poor and needy. View Him groveling in the garden, low your maker prostrate lies."

And then the request is, “If it's possible, Abba Father," He said, "Everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me." For any parent of a child, this prayer must be the most heartrending you can possibly imagine. “Abba" means “daddy”. He's reduced to speaking like a little child. I can scarcely imagine what this must have done to His heavenly Father, who's the most perfect, compassionate being there could ever be, whose heart goes out to those that suffer, but especially His Son, whom He loved with a perfect love, with a love so complete that we can't even imagine how great that love would be. How much would Jesus's prayer rip the heart of a loving heavenly Father? "Daddy, you can do anything. If it's possible, take this cup from me." What loving father wouldn't do everything he could to alleviate the suffering, this kind of suffering from a child?

But Jesus is also probing the limits of the sovereignty of God within the scope of His plan, “If it's possible.” Later, that same evening in Matthew's account, when Peter draws his sword to rescue Him from the cross, He tells him to put his sword away, and says, "How then would the Scripture be fulfilled that says it must happen in this way?" No, it isn't possible. Once it is written, once it is written, and God has made His commitment and signed it in the blood of millions of sacrificial animals, over centuries of history, and specific careful promises laid out in the prophets, there was no other way.

What is this cup? How do we understand the cup? In Scripture, the cup in prophetic language frequently represents the judgments of God, the righteous judgments of God on a sinner or on sinful people or sinful nations. It's a regular pattern, the word “cup”. The most potent example of this word cup is in Revelation 14, "God's wrath and judgment poured out on the damned." Revelation 14:10-11, "He too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night." That's the cup. That's your cup and my cup set before Jesus there in Gethsemane. It's Hell. It's the wrath of God poured out on sinners. Jesus is staring into the cup of the wrath of God, and understandably in His humanity, shrinking back in horror. The wrath of God is terrifying, God is a consuming fire. The wrath of God is His omnipotence focused like a white-hot laser beam on the destruction of His enemies. Jesus is shrinking back from that, from drinking the cup of God's wrath in our place.

We could also imagine He's shrinking back from being our sin bearer. We don't understand the purity of the person of Christ. We're just so used to sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 said, "God made Him, Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." It's like having tons of raw sewage poured on a perfectly pure being, spiritual sewage. In the atonement, then Jesus, the only perfectly holy man that has ever lived, would become sin for us. He would bear the defiling sins of all of His people from every generation of history, all the filth and corruption, all the lust and murder, all the covetousness and greed, all of that poured onto Jesus as our substitute.

Then we see the submission of Jesus. Verse 36, "Yet not what I will, but what you will." This is the centerpiece of this magnificent moment. This is the center of it. "Not what I will, but what you will." This is the greatest act of submission and courage in the history of the human race. More on this in a moment.

Then we have the admonishment of the sleeping disciples, verse 37-38, "He returned to His disciples and found them sleeping. 'Simon,' He said to Peter, 'are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.'" Matthew tells us Jesus said this to all three of them, but Mark focuses specifically on Peter. By contrast with Jesus, we have the weakness and the unbelief, really, of the disciples exposed here. Jesus specifically warns them of falling into temptation, not merely being tempted, but being ensnared and overcome by it. That's what it means to fall into temptation. He tells them that the remedy is to watch and pray.

He also marvels at their weakness that they're not able to watch and pray with Him for even one hour. Peter in particular should have been getting ready for the most intense spiritual struggle of his life, but instead he's giving in to the weakness of the flesh. That famous expression, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” That was Peter. Amazing also, isn't it, the shepherd heart of Jesus, to break off His intense prayer to His father, which He knew better than any of us, how much He needed, breaks that off to go back and check on His disciples, make sure they're praying, make sure they're getting ready for what they're about to face, to reason with them, to pray, and watch and pray.

Then in verse 39, we have Jesus' second prayer, "Once more, He went away and prayed the same thing." Matthew gives a little more detail. "My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." It's an evolution of the conversation that He's having with His father on this issue of the cup. Then He goes back, and we have the disciples' second failure, verse 40, "When He came back, He again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to Him." Luke tells us in Luke 22:45, "When He rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, He found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow."

Then we have Jesus' final prayer. It's assumed in Mark and openly stated in Matthew 26:44, "So He left them and went away once more, and prayed the third time, saying the same thing." Finally the end of the account, verses 41-43, "Returning the third time, He said to them, 'Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go. Here comes my betrayer.' Just as He was speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priest, the teacher of the law, and the elders." Jesus has effectively faced His final temptation there in the garden and conquered it, and now He rises from His moment of greatest weakness, and goes forth mightily to conquer sin and death with unflinching courage.

II. The Mysteries of Gethesemane

Those are the facts of Gethsemane. Now let's talk about the mysteries of Gethsemane. A. W. Tozer said, "If you've never faced mystery in your study of God, I doubt whether you've ever heard a single word from God at all." We will not plumb the depths of Gethsemane here. The issue has to do with Jesus' incarnation, the theological mystery of the incarnation. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is perhaps the most profound mystery in the Bible. How can Jesus be both fully God and fully man? Many over the centuries have questioned this, and sought to deny one or the other. Dualistic philosophies and theologies like the Gnostics early on, and the Docetists, deny the humanity of Christ, saying He only seemed to be human. Gethsemane is a powerful antidote to this heresy. Jesus' humanity is on full display here, especially in His weakness, His frailty, His wavering, His fear, shrinking back, and to some mysterious degree, His limited knowledge. The fact that Jesus in His incarnation can learn things. We’ll get to more of that in a moment.

Jesus's emotional life is real and full and perfect. He fully displays the reality of His title, Man of Sorrows. How then can Christ be both omnipotent deity and this weak humanity? How do we understand and explain His stunning fear of death? Lots of people face death more courageously, overtly courageously than this. It's not that rare a story. Soldiers that are willing just to die, so that others may live. That actually is not all that rare. Socrates famously took the cup of hemlock, knowing it was his own death in that cup, unflinchingly drank it to the bottom and died. But Jesus seems different, just a quantum level difference. Martin Luther said, "No man ever feared death like this man."

How can we understand this? How can the infinite creator of all things visible and invisible need help from an angel? How can He need strengthening? How can He shrink back like this from death? So, clearly the answers to all these questions is a mystery, but it shows clearly the humanity of Christ.

We get to verse 33, and here I want to show you something that, unless you have the KJV, you won't see. The King James Version is the only version that translates the Greek word in the simplest way, the most direct way. "Now, when Christ entered Gethsemane, He knew exactly what was going to happen to Him factually." Factually. He knew He would most certainly die on the cross as a ransom for sinners. But apparently, it seems, there was a dimension of knowing that was withheld from Him by His father until this moment.

Why do I say that? There's a shocking word in the KJV translation of verse 33, which accurately translates. It's not a mistranslation, it’s a good translation. "And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy." Sore amazed. The word “amazed” stops us in our tracks. The word “sore” just means extremely, like overwhelmed with amazement. So in some mysterious way, Jesus was amazed at Gethsemane. The same word is used of a crowd reaction to Jesus's ministry, or to the apostles healing of the lame beggar in Acts 3. It is frequently translated in those places, “astonished.” It implies some sense of wonder or surprise. Something is hitting Jesus here that He didn't see coming, and hence He is sore amazed.

How does that apply to Jesus at Gethsemane? I believe that when Jesus began to pray, the Father revealed to Him in an immeasurably more vivid way, to His soul, to His mind and His soul, what it would actually be like to drink the cup of His wrath on the cross as our substitute. Drinking the cup of God's wrath poured full strength on Him. The revelation occurred within Jesus's mind and soul, and knocked Him to the ground.

This kind of showing or display language was essential to Jesus' role and His daily ministry, actually. In John 5:20, Jesus said, "The Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, to your amazement, He will show Him even greater things than these." More in general in the Scripture, this is a regular pattern, that the prophets were shown spiritual visions and realities in the spiritual realm. They had visions and dimensions like Ezekiel, of wheels within wheels and all that. This is prophetic vision. This is common, actually. But Jesus says He openly got His marching orders from the Father daily. He doesn't say any word except what the Father has told Him to say. He doesn't do anything except what the Father is doing. The Father shows the Son what He's doing. What did He show Him in Gethsemane? He showed Him the cup. "Father, what are we doing next?" "Well, today I'm going to kill you. Kill you for the sins of the world. That's what we're doing next, and this is what it'll be like." It's akin to the difference between seeing an old black and white photo of the Grand Canyon and seeing like an IMAX movie or a virtual reality helicopter tour through the ravine itself. It's just a whole different level of impression made to the mind.

As Christ began to pray, God turned up the intensity in Christ's mind of what it would actually be like to drink the cup of His wrath, to absorb the lightning of His indignation, to go through Hell in our place as our substitute, and it knocked Him to the ground, it increased His blood pressure so it spiked, He starts bleeding out of His pores. Why did He do it? Why did the Father do this? I think He did it, I believe, to give Christ the ability to make a more informed choice of whether He would do it or not, whether He would go through with their plan. He refrained from doing it earlier, because look what happened to Him. I mean, the human body can only stand so much strain. It would've been too great for Him to bear. I think, in effect, some infinitely mysterious conversation went on between the Father and the Son. The Father shows the Son the cup, and then the Father says, "Son, this is what the cup of my wrath will be like for you to drink." Jesus answered, "Father, is it possible for me to save my people without drinking that terrifying cup?" The Father. "Son, no. There is no other way. Will you do it anyway?" And now comes what I've called the most heroic moment in human history. "If it is not possible to save my people any other way than drinking that cup, may your will be done." If you ever don't feel loved by God, think about that moment. Think about that. That's your cup He drank, mine too.

At that moment, Christ put His own will completely under the will of the Father. At that moment, as I said, He overturned the wretched choice made by the first Adam, that he had made in the Garden of Eden. All the wretched choices that the sons and daughters of Adam have made since by their willful sinning, that's yours and mine, all the bad choices we have made, He overturned all of that. Here, Christ showed the proper use of human will, and that is to do the will of God. So, bow your head and worship all generations of Christians. This is the most perfect act of obedience ever.

We also have the mystery of Jesus' prayer. Is His will somehow different than the Father's? Are they at cross-purposes? Some have wondered if the wrestling Jesus displayed in Gethsemane, "If it is possible, take this cup from me," was indicative that His will was somehow against the cross, as though He's battling within Himself, as though He and the Father disagreed about this. In general, we just as Christians have to treat Gethsemane like holy ground, and limit your speculation, and don't go too far. Jesus has said plainly in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." No doubt about that. He wasn't against the Father's will. He loved the Father's will. Isaiah 53:10 says, "It was the Lord's will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer. And though the Lord makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days. The will of the Lord will prosper in His hand." It's so beautiful. It's like the Father wrote a magnificent concerto, and Jesus the soloist played it to perfection. He made it beautiful. The will of the Lord prospers. No, they're not at cross-purposes, not at all. It just shows that the cost to Jesus, and indeed to the Father, was infinitely high, and the Father was willing to pay it. He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to this for us all.

III. The Glories of Gethsemane

Finally, the glories of Gethsemane. We've said, the free will of Jesus, properly on display. Jesus went to the cross of His own free will. He was not coerced, He was not forced. Therefore, for those that talk often about free will, this is free will. This is what free will looks like. He had no sin nature holding Him back, no corruption. He was free, and He used it perfectly to do the will of God. That's what it's for. That's what free will is for, to do the will of God. Because the Father has a will, too. Our will is patterned after the fact that the Father has a will. Jesus taught us that the best use of human will is to find its joy and its delight and its fruitfulness in the will of God. He taught us that.

From this moment in time on, Jesus will only be able to escape the cross by a direct application of His supernatural power, His wonder-working power, to get out of it. Physical forces will come on Him at the end of this account and seize Him, and the only way He'll be able to get out of it is by using His power. And He could do it, but He was not going to do it. This is His last moment of freedom, and He gave it up willingly.

Therefore, we need to understand the significance of this choice theologically, Romans 3:26. Some have blasphemously, I don't even want to say these words, but blasphemously called the idea of substitutionary atonement Heavenly child abuse, as the Father's crushing His son in some way. Rather, in Gethsemane we have God the Father revealing to the Son as much as He possibly could do, what it would be like to drink the cup, and asking Jesus to make a choice, and He did. Therefore, it was of His own free will that He did it. "Not my will, but yours be done." This removes any charge of injustice against the Father concerning substitutionary atonement. Romans 3:25, "God put Jesus forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." Propitiation is the one who removes the wrath of God by drinking the cup. Romans 3:26, "He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." It is a perfect display of justice, not injustice. Why? Because in part of this transaction that we've been describing here. The willingness of Jesus to do it removes any charge of injustice.

We see also the obedience of Jesus versus the disobedience of Adam. I've mentioned it, but the clear parallel is set up in Romans 5:19, "Just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." That's staggering. You know what that means? By Jesus's obedience, He makes you righteous, if you're a Christian. What that means is He makes you obedient, positionally obedient. You are seen by God in Christ at the moment of your conversion to be as obedient as Jesus. How about that? That is our imputed righteousness. It's staggering. This is the righteousness given to you as a gift. God sees you as obedient as Jesus was there in Gethsemane, as a gift.

What is that act of obedience? It's His willingness to die on the cross. Philippians 2:8, "Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross." Then Hebrews 5:8-9, "Although He was a son, He learned obedience." What a staggering phrase that is. "He learned obedience from what He suffered, and once made perfect or qualified, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him." Wow. Adam used his free will to rebel against God, and we all died in that. The second Adam, Jesus, uses His free will to make a right choice, and we all live and are seen righteous in that. That's our salvation.

"Adam used his free will to rebel against God, and we all died in that. The second Adam, Jesus, uses His free will to make a right choice, and we all live and are seen righteous in that. That's our salvation."

Finally, we see the perfect love of Jesus, first for God, and then for His people. In Gethsemane, we see Jesus loving God and us sinners more than He loved Himself. It was the revulsion of the thing that caused Him to shrink back, but it was love, first and foremost love for God, and secondly love for us, that caused Him to deny Himself, first vertically, John 14:31, "The world must learn that I love the Father, and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me to do." Think about that. "The world must know and learn that I love my Father, and they'll know that when they see me go to the cross."

Secondly, love for us. John 15:13-14, "Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends." We see that courage of Jesus, that love that drives out fear. Many people have willingly laid down their lives to save others. It occasionally happens, very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. So, the Congressional Medal of Honor is given to people that were willing to lay down their lives in the battlefield. It happens. But nothing ever in history has been like this incredible moment of courage.

IV. Applications of Gethsemane

Come to Christ. Trust in Jesus. There is a cup of wrath, of righteous, just wrath, poured out from God on sinners. Either Jesus will drink that cup in your place, or you'll drink it for all eternity. Those are the choices. There's no other option. You can be in denial that there is such a cup, but there is a cup of God's wrath against sin. Jesus is offering in the gospel to drink yours for you. Trust in Him, repent of sin, turn away from wickedness, and turn to Christ in faith, and let Him save you. If you're already a Christian, worship Christ for what He did for you. Thank Him for what He did for you. I don't know how you're made up. I cry basically at one thing, for the most part. It's always the same. It's Christ's love for me as a sinner. It just melts me. I melt every time, and this melts me. This text probably melts me more than any other text. I almost can't talk about it in everyday life without choking up. I never stop thinking about this, my savior drinking my cup.

I want to take and sharpen this and apply it on the matter of Christian contentment. When I was studying Christian contentment, I wrote one statement that people who have read the book that I wrote said is the most convicting in the whole book, and that is this: "Has Christ crucified and resurrected done enough for you to be happy today? Or does He have to be a little more?" Let's take it in the language of Gethsemane. Is it enough for Jesus to drink your cup and that's it, so you don't have to drink it and you'll spend the eternity in Heaven? Or does He have to do some more beyond that?

I'm not minimizing the things you would pray for. For the healing of somebody that you love and you want to see them heal. I'm not minimizing that. I'm just asking you to put it in perspective, Him drinking your cup for you is the greatest act of love and gift that could ever be. Keep in mind, Romans 8 said He did not spare His own son. God's not holding anything back because He's stingy. He has given the greatest thing He could ever give, His beloved, His perfect son, shattered on the cross. It should be enough, it should be enough for you to be happy.

What about obedience? What about free will? This is how you should use your free will the rest of your lives. What do you say? Just choose to say to God, no matter how difficult it is, "Not my will but yours be done."

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for this infinitely deep text. We'll never be able to finish it, to plumb the depths of it, to understand it. I pray that you would take its lessons and burn them into our hearts. Help us to be overwhelmed with thankfulness, with gratitude. Help us to be overwhelmed with love for Jesus. Help us to want to imitate Him and to use our wills the way He used His. Help us to understand that, oh Lord. And God, I pray that no-one that's here today would leave this place still under the wrath of God, but they would just simply transfer that, the sin and the wrath, onto Jesus by faith, by simple faith, and trust in Him that they would know the full and perfect forgiveness of God. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Scripture probes the people of God for the hidden recesses of the sinful heart. It also tells us the truth of the indomitable grace of God in Christ to save sinners like us.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

As I look at the life of Christ and the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I look at the statements that Jesus made, and Jesus made many stunningly audacious statements during His ministry. Depending on how you look at it, perhaps none is more audacious than His proclamation about the grand and glorious construction project that He was initiating, the church, which would be the eternal dwelling place of Almighty God. This audacious assertion was made right after Peter had declared rightly that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, in Caesarea Philippi. Jesus then said these words, "I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build My church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." Now, that's an audacious statement in every respect.

As we look at this image of a great glorious building being constructed, we begin to step back and think about what is involved in that. Every great building needs a wise architect and a skillful builder. Jesus is both when it comes to the church. Throughout history, human beings have studied the science of architecture and the art. In the decades just before Jesus was born, a Roman architect named Vitruvius wrote a guide for all Roman construction that would follow. He stated that all great buildings were defined by three characteristics, strength, functionality and beauty.

Strength because the building must stand strong, not crumble or collapse and thereby kill the people that use it. Functionality because the building must meet its purpose for which it was designed and constructed, its reason for existence. And then beauty because the building must ennoble both the builder and those who look upon it and use it day after day. These three characteristics must extend, of course, to the building materials chosen and the construction techniques that are used. The actual materials chosen by the builder must be of the proper quality. So any great architect must be a student of building materials, different kinds of stone, metal, wood. There are different attributes, how those materials behave in different conditions and how they look.

In the New Testament, this architectural image is clear and powerful. Jesus had already stated in Matthew 16:18, as I said, He will build His church. That's an architectural image. Ephesians 2 likens the church to a holy temple that is rising in which God dwells by His Spirit. Peter talks about all of us being living stones built into a spiritual house. Paul in First Corinthians 3 speaks of laying a foundation through the proclamation of Christ crucified and resurrected and now others are building on it, but they should be careful how they build. Hebrews 11 speaks of a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. And the Book of Revelation climaxes with a breathtaking tour of the new Jerusalem in openly architectural terms, speaking of both its foundations, its walls and its gates.

What is stunning in all of this, I would say even audacious as I began, is Scripture's honesty about the building materials out of which the church was built. Jesus said, "I will build My church on such a foundation as Peter, Simon Peter, and out of building materials like him, and they are deeply flawed, deeply flawed." What is stunning in all of this is Scripture's honesty about us as building materials for the eternal dwelling place of God. In this account, we will begin to see, it won't be consummated or completed in today's text, but we'll begin to see just how deeply flawed even the best of Jesus' followers really are.

Look at those basic attributes that Vitruvius saw in terms of architecture. The eleven apostles fail in all three regards. Strength, not at all. They are rocks that crumble when pressure is put on them as if they were made by compressed sand. Functionality, no. Their mission will be to testify boldly to the life, death and resurrection of Christ, even at the cost of their lives, but instead, they flee to save their lives. Beauty, no. They are at their most repulsive, in no way displaying the glory of God and of Christ, but instead showing darkness, selfishness, corruption, ugliness. But the glory of this story is not in where it begins, but where it ends.

And in God's sovereign, gracious power, to take building materials like you and I are, and make us eternally strong, eternally functional, and eternally beautiful, the new Jerusalem will be built of people just like the 11 apostles. In today's text, we are, in some respects, weak and useless and ugly, and we'll be transformed and perfected into living stones eternally strong, fulfilling our function and radiantly beautiful Revelation 21:14 says, "The wall of the city, the new Jerusalem, had twelve foundations and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." A few verses later, Revelation 21:19, "The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. Strong, functional, and beautiful."

"In God's sovereign, gracious power, to take building materials like you and I are, and make us eternally strong, eternally functional, and eternally beautiful, the new Jerusalem will be built of people just like the 11 apostles."

So here we are, we come to this passage. It was one that, in some respects, I wish I could skip, but I'm very thankful for it as well. Jesus Christ predicts the universal abandonment of His closest friends and most loyal followers. In a moment, as though their love were a morning mist, they will all turn away from Christ. They'll throw away their love and faith and their commitment in a display of weakness and sin. His closest and greatest follower, Peter, is singled out as a paradigm display of the sin at the core that they all have, all of His followers, all of them, not just some of them. All of us, if we are pressed hard enough by our earthly circumstances, would abandon Jesus to save our lives in this world.

Yet in this passage, we see ultimately, not this one passage alone, but as the story unfolds, the amazing grace of Christ to predict also His regathering of His scattered flock after His resurrection and His work in them to make them eternally strong and beautiful and functional. Scripture takes all the people of God on an intensely honest and stark probing of the hidden recesses of our sinful hearts. It holds up, Scripture does, a brutally honest mirror whereby we can see the truth, that our souls are corrupt, pockmarked with the disease of selfishness and worldliness, a willingness to flee from Jesus under the pressures of this present evil age, but also of the indomitable grace of God in Christ, to take sinners like us, to use our sins even for His glory, and finally, to save us in radiant glory. As Romans 5 says, "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." Amen and hallelujah. We're going to actually spend eternity in heaven celebrating grace's triumph over our particular weaknesses. Grace's triumph over our corruptions and our selfishness and our cowardice and our laziness.

Ultimately, we’ll see grace's triumph over the most intractable foe there is in human history and that is sin, stubborn sin, relentless sin, devious sin, deceitful sin, tyrannical sin, a foe too great for any of us to defeat, but that foe will be overwhelmed at last, swallowed up in the victory of Christ. Now, of course, in this account, therefore, the central figure is not the eleven apostles and their running away from Jesus. The central figure is Jesus Christ, and in this case, His supernatural ability to predict the future as well as His amazing grace in going to the cross for people such as we are, and then His ability as a good shepherd to regather His flock after they've been scattered.

The second figure, of course, is Peter the rock on which Jesus said He would build His church. He doesn't look like much of a rock in this whole story, not at all, but God is going to make him a rock. He's going to make him a solid foundation for the subsequent generations. The case study of Peter, which we'll begin today, but we're not going to finish because it's going to be consummated when he actually does in fact deny Jesus in the later account, this case study is one of the most probing and insightful, troubling and ultimately triumphant in the Bible. Today's passage is just a key step in that journey that's actually already begun.

In this, this case study with Peter and in frankly the eleven apostles, we're really looking at the problem, as I said, of indwelling sin. The Apostle Paul lamented this issue in Romans 7:15-17, He says, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good as it is. It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. So I find this law at work, when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and make me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

So today, in this account, we're going to see the stunningly swift fall of the eleven apostles, especially Peter into denying Christ. We'll see the beginning of that through the prediction. We see the devastating power of indwelling sin. We also see the glory of Christ. We're going to look at predicting the apostles' failure, then probing Peter's sinfulness, just beginning that, completing it later in another sermon and then proclaiming Christ's glories.

I. Predicting the Apostles’ Failure

Let's start with predicting the apostles failure. Look at verse 27-28, "'You will all fall away,' Jesus told them, 'for it is written. I'll strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I've risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.’" Jesus makes predictions concerning His apostles. We've already talked about this even in recent sermons. Jesus' meticulous and careful ability to predict the future, His ability to know the hearts and the minds of His people and also the specific details of their actions even before they happen. This is the clear prediction that is rooted also in the prophecy of Scripture. Now as I've said, Scripture is brutally honest about the sins of its great leaders. That's one of the ways I know it's the word of God. John Calvin said at the beginning of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, "Nearly all the wisdom that we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves."

I think this is a very helpful way for us to look at every Scripture, "What does this scripture teach me about the majestic glory of God and what does this scripture teach me about myself?" It's a good way to come to this text as well. The Bible has given us words concerning ourselves to probe human sinfulness. Again and again, we see in the Bible a tremendous honesty about its great leaders and their sinfulness. John Calvin spoke powerfully about our need to have this work done, this humbling work because of our pride. Calvin said, "We always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy. This pride is innate in all of us. Unless by clear proofs, we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly and impurity."

That's Peter, isn't it? He thought very highly of himself and he's about to get clear proofs of his corruption, clear proofs, and it begins with this prediction. It seems that Scripture is given in part to help us see that truth, not just about Peter. We're supposed to look at this text and think we're looking in the mirror and have somewhat of an explanation of why we are not good witnesses, evangelists to lost people that surround us every day. The answer may in part be in this text. But our salvation depends on that humbling work by the Holy Spirit because it says in James 4:6, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." That humbling work is to teach you that you need a Savior.  As it says in Luke 5: 31- 32, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." We need to realize we're sick with sin. We need this Savior. We need this therapeutic, this healing work done in us by Jesus. So when we look at the great men and women of the Bible and we see them at their worst, the Bible's honest about their failings, the best response is to look inward and say, "How am I like this? I would not do any different than if I had been one of those eleven apostles. I would've done the same." Prediction should humble us and so should its fulfillment.

Now, as I look at this, I think about who the eleven apostles, obviously Judas is out at this point, but who the eleven apostles were in the kingdom of God, what their role was to be, what they were chosen for. Jesus spent all night in prayer and then chose these men. It began with His call to the kingdom. Mark 1:15 says, "The time is at hand. The kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe the good news." It's a call to enter a kingdom, to take His kingly yoke upon ourselves. In medieval times, the knights of a king would swear oaths of fealty or loyalty to the king. They would pledge their devotion. They'd put their swords before the king and say, "I'm willing to fight for your honor and for your kingdom. I'm willing to give you undying devotion. I'm willing to obey you as king and follow you."

Effectively Jesus laid out what that oath would sound like, what the oaths of fealty would be earlier in Mark's gospel in Mark 8:34-37, "'If anyone would come after me,' He said, 'he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for Me and for the gospel will save it. What good would it be for a man if he should gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul or what could a man give an exchange for his soul?’" You want to follow Jesus, there's your oath of loyalty. To follow Jesus, according to Mark 8, means to deny yourself and be willing to follow even if it meant your death, to take up your cross and follow, to not love your life in this world, so much as to shrink from death.

If you try to save your life in this world, He said you'll lose it. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to be willing to give up your life in this world. The soul for which you would then be living, if you're giving up your physical life here on earth, you're living for the next world to come, your soul is worth more than any earthly advantage you could ever have. Any power or pleasure or anything possession that you could ever have in this life, your soul's worth more than any of that. Jesus made it plain at the end of that Mark 8 in verse 38, "If anyone is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of Him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His father's glory with His holy angels?"

Jesus laid all that out. The apostles had effectively taken such oaths. They'd effectively made such promises. They'd been willing to stand with Jesus through all of His most difficult trials up to that point. As a matter of fact, that same evening, just a few minutes before this, Jesus said as much about them. In Luke 22:28-30, “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials." Think about that. "You've stood by Me in My trials and I confer upon you a kingdom just as My Father conferred one on Me, so that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." He said that to them, the eleven apostles. They had been loyal to Him.

You remember that time when Jesus fed the 5,000 in John's Gospel and then they come back the next day for another meal.  He has a serious talk with all of those so-called disciples that were there just for another meal, and it culminates in the hardest teaching He ever gave, "Eat My flesh and drink My blood. And if you do not eat My flesh and you don't drink My blood, you have no life in you and all that." Jesus is weeding out the big crowd at that point. It says in John 6:66-70, "From that time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him. 'You do not want to leave too, do you?' Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered on behalf of all of them, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.' Then Jesus replied, 'Have I not chosen you, the twelve?'"

They had stood by Him that night. Though they didn't understand what He was saying, they said, "We have nowhere else to go. You're it." "So you are those that have stood by Me." They felt that they were ready to die with Him, but they weren't. That very night, all of them, all eleven, would fall away. Verse 27, "'You'll all fall away,' Jesus told them, 'for it is written. I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.'" They would in fact be ashamed of Jesus and of His words in that adulterous and sinful generation. They would run away from Him in His moment, His greatest moment of need. The word translated “fall away” as “skandalizo,” from which we get the word to be scandalized or to stumble, to fall, to be offended, to be ashamed. That's what the word means. It is passive.

Something will come to them to scandalize them. It'll be forced on them from the outside, but they will stumble and fall. It will cause them to be knocked down and to run away to flee. Now that very night Jesus defines friendship in John 15:13, "He said, 'Greater love has no one than this, that a man laid down his life for his friends.' 'You are my friends,' Jesus said.” and He was going to go lay down His life for them. One of the great tragedies there is in this world is unrequited love. At that moment, His love for them was unrequited. They were not willing to lay down their lives for Him, even though He was willing to lay down His life for them, and they aren't just anybody now. They are essential to Jesus' worldwide plan for salvation. They're essential. They're going to be the essential link that the rest of us would have, subsequent generations would have to the facts, the truths about Jesus' life. They would be essential eyewitnesses to Jesus' life, His teachings, His death on the cross and His resurrection. They would need to stand in the day of testing and testify to Christ for the salvation of those that would listen to Him. The church would be built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone, [Ephesians 2:20]. It would be fundamental.

They would have to be willing to lay down their lives for the salvation of others. Central to that was that basic principle of being willing to die. John 12:24, "Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." They were going to have to do that. They were going to have to imitate Jesus and that willingness to fall into the ground and die. He says in John 12:25-26, "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves Me must follow Me, and where I am, My servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves Me." To love your life in this world is to lose it. You want to be with Jesus, you have to be willing to imitate this basic principle.

What's amazing is, in the end, they were. In the end, they were willing to die as martyrs. They all died as martyrs for the Gospel except John. And he would've, it was just God willed that he remained long enough in exile to write the Book of Revelation. But he, again and again, wasn't in enough hot water to have been martyred. It was not God's purpose. But all of them in the end were willing, as it says in Revelation 12:11, "They overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." That's where they end up. That's where all the true witnesses for Christ end up, but it's not how they start, at least not that night. At the core, all of Jesus' disciples have a fundamental weakness in their nature, a self-saving tendency.

And the failure is predicted in scripture. Jesus said, "For it is written, I'll strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered." He's quoting Zechariah 13:7 which says, "'Awake, O, sword against my shepherd, against the man who is close to Me,' declares the Lord Almighty. 'Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered and I'll turn my hand against the little ones.'" The striking of the shepherd would be His arrest, His trial, His condemnation, and ultimately, His death. That's what the striking of the shepherd would mean. They were not ready to see that happen. They didn't understand, and when they saw that, something loosened within them and they were not able to continue in their commitment to Christ, and Jesus mad this prediction.

Now the disciples responded with shock protestations with Peter leading the way, verse 31, "Peter insisted emphatically, 'Even if I have to die with You, I'll never disown You,' and all the others said the same." Now let's just pause and say, "What's going on here?" They believed Jesus was wrong about them. Think about that. "Jesus, you're very talented teacher. You do a lot of right things, but You got me all wrong." Imagine the audacity of saying that to Jesus. But the consistent testimony is that Jesus is able to search hearts and minds. He knows people. In John chapter 2, He doesn't need people's testimony about people, He knows what's inside people. He says, of Nathaniel, "Here's a true Israelite in whom there is no guile." He sees Him and knows Him. He knows them.

But they're saying, "You're wrong about me," but He wasn't. If you look down on the page, not there yet, but in verse 50-52, this is the completion of the prediction, "Then everyone deserted Him and fled. They all left. A young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus. When they seized Him, he fled naked leaving his garment behind." I'll leave that until the later sermon, we're not covering that today, but there's a guy that's willing to leave behind a garment and flee for his life naked. Jesus wasn't wrong about them. Now they're not Judas, Judas was never a follower of Jesus. He hated Jesus truly. He was not a believer. Jesus said that very time, "Have I not chosen, the twelve? And one of you was a devil. Not one of you will later become a devil. He's a devil now."

They'd already heard Jesus predict that one of them would betray Jesus to His enemies. They're not going to do that, but maybe they felt they were better than Judas. But just because they're better than Judas is no reason to boast. Matthew Henry put it this way, "Though God keeps them from being as bad as the worst, yet we may well be ashamed to think we're not better than we are." "Well, at least I'm not as bad as Judas," but they still fled for their lives. 

II. Probing Peter’s Sinfulness

Let's look briefly at Peter's sinfulness. We're going to finish this story in a later sermon, but Peter was the leader in all respects, including this denial. Look at verse 29-31, "Peter declared, 'Even if all fall away, I will not.' 'I tell you the truth,' Jesus answered, 'Today, yes, tonight, before the rooster crows twice, you yourself will disown Me three times.' But Peter insisted emphatically, 'Even if I have to die with You, I will never disown You,' and all the others said the same."

Peter was the leader. He was the rock on which Jesus said He would build His church. Here, we have an example of Peter's arrogant self-esteem. Peter is confident that he would not do as badly as the rest of his disciples in verse 29, "Though all would fall away, his brother's standing there next to Him, yet I will not. I'm better than all of these other guys." He supposes himself not only stronger than the others, but so much stronger that he's going to be able to receive the frontal attack of the trial to bear up against it all alone, to stand with no one else with him. Matthew Henry said, "It is bread and the bone with us to think well of ourselves and to trust to our own hearts."

But Christ tells him he's actually going to do worse than any of them. They're going to desert Him and run away to their own homes, but he's going to deny Him not once, but three times that very night. Peter is a study in sin, his descent. We're going to finish it in a later sermon, but the descent actually has already begun before any of this. Back in that very passage that I cited in Mark 8, you remember how Peter made that amazing confession, [Peter],“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." [Jesus],“I tell you, Peter, this was not revealed you by man, but by My Father in heaven, but the Spirit of God revealed this to you, Peter, and you are Peter. And on this rock, I'll build My church and the gates of Hades will not prove stronger than it."

But then Mark 8:31-33, "He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, teachers of the law and that He must be killed, and after three days, rise again. He spoke plainly about this and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him." Remember that? I always thought that was amazing. "Jesus, do you have a minute?”, pulling Jesus aside. It's incredible, the arrogance in Peter. It's already begun. The seeds of his own destruction, the seeds of his pride, it's already there. “But when Jesus turned and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’" That was a vigorous rebuke to Peter, a warning to him, but he didn't take the warning.

He has his next warning in today's text, "'You will all fall away in account of me this very night,' but Peter responds pridefully, 'Even if all fall away, I will not. I'm better than any of them.'" And not only pride horizontally to all His disciples, but pride in reference to Jesus, "You're wrong about me." Such incredible arrogance to say this to the Lord of all the earth. Jesus says, "All right, let's go to the next level. Let me get more specific about what's going to happen tonight." Look at verse 30, "'I tell you the truth,' Jesus answered, 'Today, yes, tonight, before the rooster crows twice, you yourself will disown Me three times.’" This is remarkable precision.

Notice by the way, only Mark mentions that the rooster crows twice, but you don't need more than one mention to say that's what happened. The rooster crowed twice, and before the rooster crowed twice, Peter would deny Him three times. Peter is actually, as I said, going to do worse than anyone else, but the reason he would do worse than anyone else is he was so prideful as to get himself in over his head and immerse himself in the enemies of Jesus because he thought he could handle it. Peter doubles down in verse 31, He insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with You, I'll never disown You."We're going to track this out in later sermon. 

But look at Peter's faulty assumptions first about himself. He's making assumptions about his virtue, his courage, his loyalty, his faithfulness, his love. He's making faulty assumptions about his life in the world. He still has a worldly conception of the kingdom that Jesus is going to build. He can't imagine Jesus dying. He thinks Jesus is going to triumph, and if Peter stays right near Jesus, he'll be fine. That's why he pulls out the sword and starts swinging it. That's the whole thing, "If I stay close to the shepherd, I'll be fine," but if the shepherd actually passively gets arrested and let away, bound up and let away. Peter doesn't know what to do, but he's got faulty assumptions about the kingdom, about his life in the world, his power, his glory, his wealth, the things that were going to come.

He's got faulty assumptions about Jesus. He forgets that He's God in the flesh and cannot say anything false. Literally nothing that ever comes out of Jesus' mouth is false, ever, including hard things about Peter. He has faulty assumptions about Christ's kingdom, about its nature. It was not of this world. It was not established by fighting. It was not established by military power. It was not immediately glorious and radiant and powerful. It was a different kind of kingdom. His kingdom was not of this world. He didn't understand Christ's mission. He didn't understand that Jesus had to die on the cross for Peter's sin and the sins of the world. He didn't understand that atoning sacrifice and he didn't understand that the real danger, Peter's real danger, would not be from the Romans or from the temple police or from even the slave girls at the door that would be asking him questions that's about to come. He's not predicting that at all.

He didn't understand his real danger is from Almighty God, the Holy One on Judgment Day in which Peter will have no answer he can give for His own sins and he must have an atoning sacrifice to survive Judgment Day and not spend eternity in hell. He didn't understand the real threat. Sin had twisted Peter's mind, darken his understanding, entangled his affections, and as a result, compelled his will to make evil choices. 

III. Proclaiming Christ’s Glories

Now what of Christ's glories? Not overtly evident here, but there's a lot of themes that we can draw out here. We've already talked about Jesus' prophetic foresight. He has meticulous foreknowledge of the future. Only God has that kind of knowledge. Christ's prediction is extremely specific, "Before the rooster crows twice, you will disown me three times this very night."

Also, Jesus knows the scriptures perfectly. They'd not seen Zechariah 13:7 before. He knows the apostles' hearts perfectly. He knows all of the events before they happen. This prediction, though heartbreaking, proves Jesus' supernatural knowledge of all those things. 

We also see Jesus's glories in His loving warnings to them. Jesus' lovingly giving them warnings ahead of time." He told them that they would fall away ahead of time so that when they did, their faith would not be destroyed. Actually their faith would be strengthened because that's the very thing He predicted that would happen.  He says multiple times in John's Gospel, John 13:19, "I'm telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you'll believe that I am, that I am God again." John 14:29, "I've told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you'll believe." John 16:4, "I have told you this, so that when the time comes, you'll remember that I warned you." And again John 16:33, "I have told you these things, so that in Me, you may have peace. In this world, you'll have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world." Jesus' honest predictions and His honest evaluation of us only enhances our faith and our confidence in Him.

"Jesus' honest predictions and His honest evaluation of us only enhances our faith and our confidence in Him."

Thirdly, we see also Jesus' shepherd heart to restore them. "After I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. You'll all fall away on account of me, for it is written, I'll strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I've risen, I'm going to go ahead of you in Galilee and we'll meet again. I'll gather you there." There's so much hope in that. Their place as His sheep and His place is there, the good shepherd is not finished. It's not done. As a matter of fact, nothing will ever change that. "No one can snatch my sheep from Me. No one has the power to take my sheep from Me." Even though they're going to be scattered and they're going to run away through cowardice and unbelief, He's going to gather them back together again after He has risen. He'll go ahead of them into Galilee, He's going to forgive them, and He's going to restore them. Peter again will be the clear example of that. He's going to restore Peter. and He's going to use him despite his sin.

We also don't see in this text, but in another place, Jesus' priestly ministry is to pray for them. If you look at cover of your bulletin that's quoted there in Luke 22:31-32, very important text, "Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat," plural, "all of you, but I've prayed for you Simon that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." Satan is going to sift them that night. He's going to test them, but Jesus has specifically, as a great high priest, interceded for Simon Peter, "I prayed for you Simon to the end that your faith will not fail and it won't. So you're going to stumble, you're going to fall, but not so as to fall beyond recovery. You're going to be recovered and your faith will not fail. I'm going to bring you back."

The idea, the image of Jesus as our Great High Priest, interceding for us is so beautifully established here. It says in Hebrews 7:25, "Christ is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because He always lives to intercede for them." We're no better than these eleven apostles. We're the same. Isn't it beautiful to think that Jesus always lives to intercede for you and for me that our faith will not fail? And by the way, I think that's a vital thing for us to pray for each other. If you hear that somebody is going through a severe trial, medical maybe, a diagnosis, some other thing that's come in their family life or in their personal life, pray this. Pray Luke 22, "I'm praying that their faith won't fail."

Don't think that that's impossible. We believe in, "Once saved, always saved." I believe in a dynamic faith that needs to keep existing until we don't need it anymore. That faith needs to be fed by the Word of God, it needs to be prayed for by the Son of God. It needs to be sustained by the God who gave it until we don't need it anymore. Jesus does that. He knows that He must pray for us that our faith will not fail and it won’t.

 We see also the King's heart to protect them. I'm not going to say much about this, but the fact is, in John's Gospel, when his enemies came to arrest Jesus, Jesus orchestrated an escape so they could run away. He orchestrated an escape, so that they would not be arrested that night.  In John 18, "He asked them, 'Who is it you want?' They said, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' 'I told you that I am. If you're looking for Me,' he said, 'then let all these men go.' This happened so that the words He had spoken would be fulfilled, ‘I have not lost one of those you gave Me.’" He knew they were not ready to be arrested that night. He wanted them to run away. He opened the door, said, "It's time for you to go," and they all ran away. The only problem is Peter did a U-turn. That was a bad mistake. We'll talk more about that in the future sermon. But Jesus orchestrated their protection because He is their good shepherd and would not let them get in over their heads or be tempted beyond what they could bear.

The courage also we see in Jesus to venture ahead alone with no friends with Him, whatsoever, to go to the cross and die for us. The courage of Jesus is unspeakable, it's infinite. He says in John 16:32, "A time is coming and has come when you'll be scattered each to his own home. You'll all leave Me alone. Yet I am not alone for the Father's with Me." He's going to venture out into the fiery furnace of the wrath of God. He's going to go ahead, completely alone. And He will do that to save us from our sins with no friends, no earthly friends with Him, just on His own. Obviously, the greatest glory in this text is only quickly alluded — to the triumph of the resurrection, "After I've risen, I'll go ahead of you in a Galilee." I'm sure we'll have occasion very soon to celebrate that, the glories of Christ in the resurrection.

IV. Lessons

What lessons can we take from this? First, stand amazed at God's grace in building an eternal and glorious city out of building materials like these eleven apostles and people like you and me. Stand amazed that He has the ability to speak truth over us and then make it happen in us. He has the ability, it says in Romans 4, "He gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." I love that verse. He's going to look at Peter and says, "You are a rock, and on you, I'm going to build My church," and then He makes him a rock. How beautiful is that?

We say, ”O, Lord, I know what I am. I'm weak. I'm faulty. I'm failure. I'm not a good witness. I'm not a good Christian. Would you make me bold? Would you make me courageous? Would you make me faithful?" We have an opportunity around this time of year, I just alluded to the Easter, it's coming up, Resurrection Day, to talk to people that we're surrounded with every day who are without hope and without God in the world. We want to do it. The question is, why don't we? The sermon today kind of covered that, because we're weak. But all you need to do is say, "Lord, I know I'm weak. Would you please make me strong? Would you please give me the ability to speak to a co-worker or to a neighbor, even a total stranger, invite them to church or talk to them about Christ's death and resurrection? Give me that ability."

Along with that, obviously, be convicted of the weakness in your own heart. Part of it is that we're looking in the mirror here. Be honest about who you really are. Thank Jesus for His intercession for you, that He always lives to pray for you, that your faith will not fail, and join with Him in that intercession for one another. Then finally, the glories of Christ that are the basis of our salvation, His supernatural knowledge, His astonishing courage to die on the cross, to venture forth alone, His amazing resurrection, triumphing forever death. Trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the text today. It's difficult, it's a hard text. We're grateful for the honesty of the Bible to tell us the truth about ourselves, to tell us the truth about the apostles, and to see what You did in them despite their weakness and how much You use them to build an eternal dwelling in which You will live by Your spirit. Thank you for the text and for the things we've learned. In Jesus' name, Amen.

God's sovereignty and authority over all things are displayed in His precise predictions as the disciples prepared for the Passover and Judas' imminent betrayal.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

This world that we're living in is so filled with unexpected and difficult events. Some of them bringing us pain, change, things that we never anticipated. Very famously, Hamlet and his “to be or not to be” soliloquy, talked about the slings and arrows of outstanding or outrageous fortune. He also talked about a thousand natural shocks. That implies things coming at us that we never saw, and they're devastating, all their outrageous fortune. But we Christians know better, because the great consolation of our Christian faith in this uncertain and painful world, is that our Heavenly Father knows absolutely everything that will happen before it comes to pass. The Bible's very clear about that. And not only that, He knows it and He's aware of it, but He's actually decreed whatsoever will come to pass. It's part of His wise and loving plan. As one hymn writer put it, "I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow." And that brings us great comfort.

Foundational to this concept is the idea of God's exhaustive foreknowledge, God's exhaustive foreknowledge. The exhaustive foreknowledge of God and of his son Jesus Christ. We see aspects of that in today's text. In this account, we're going to see some remarkable knowledge that Jesus has of decisions made by people, free will decisions, ahead of time. I don't deny that this is an infinite mystery, but it's on display. The context here is Jesus preparing the Passover.

I. Jesus Prepares the Passover

 We began the whole preparation language last week, and we continue now in this passage as Jesus prepares the Passover. Part of all of this is the stunning foreknowledge of God. We believe that God's foreknowledge comes first and foremost from His eternality. We believe that God is outside of time. Psalm 90 in verse 2, "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth in the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God."

God's outside of time, He's not bound by time the way that we are. When it comes to human history, God knows the end from the beginning, as it says, ascribed to Christ in Revelation 22:13, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." So God ordains the entire flow of human history. He declares many of His purposes even centuries beforehand. Isaiah 46:9-10, "I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please." We should not imagine that God's exhaustive foreknowledge is because He's just really good at predicting things. God really is good at seeing what's about to happen and predicting it. Not at all. God's foreknowledge is tied to the fact that He has ordained things before they come to pass.

God makes decrees and then makes certain that they happen, as it says in Ephesians 1:11, "God works everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." This Passover time that we're walking through, in this account of the final week of Jesus's life, is part of God's divine foreknowledge and His preparation for the cross. We discussed this last time, so there's no need to go into great detail, but just by way of reminder. Almighty God, when planning the exodus of the Jewish nation from Egypt, included the ten plagues as part of it that He might display His power to all the earth. Most terrifying of all, of course, was the tenth plague, the plague on the firstborn. Exodus 11, "This is what the Lord says, ‘About midnight, I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl who is at her hand mill.’"

Ezekiel 20 makes it plain that the Jewish nation was every bit as idolatrous and wicked as the Egyptians who enslaved them, and that their firstborn deserve to die as well. God's very clear about that. If you don't sacrifice the Passover lamb and paint the blood on your doorpost, your firstborn will die too. We see the grace of God extending to Israel. God graciously made a provision to save the sons of Israel by the shedding of the blood of the Passover lamb, and the application of that blood to their houses. Exodus 12, "On that same night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn, both men and animals, and I'll bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt."

God established this Passover, not just that first time, that dreadful night, but as an annual ceremony, a continual reminder of these great acts of God for the Jews in every generation, in that same chapter, Exodus 12: 14, "This is a day you are to commemorate. For the generations to come, you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, a lasting ordinance." I could use the language we're going to get to later in this sermon. Effectively, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was saying, "Do this in remembrance of me," the Passover, and so they did, generational. This is part of God's wonderful foreknowledge and His sovereignty, establishing this ordinance as a picture of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, the shedding of His blood, which would then be applied, spiritually, by the work of the Holy Spirit, so that we would not die. Every generation of Jews for fifteen centuries had commemorated the Passover with the slaughter of the lamb.

In this last week of Jesus's life, the time now for the fulfillment of this prophetic image has come. Mark, in his Gospel account, directly links Jesus's disciples’ question with the slaughter of the Passover lamb. Look at verse 12. "On the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus's disciples asked him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to do the Passover?’”  He's uploading that in the minds of the readers, and it was uploaded in their minds as well. The Passover itself was preparation for the death of Jesus, that we would understand its meaning. 

But along with this comes some remarkable and stunning, meticulous foreknowledge on the part of Jesus. Look at verses 13-16, "So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, ‘Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, the teacher asks, where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?  He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations there.’ The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them so they prepared the Passover." Here the providence of God extends beyond merely comprehensive foreknowledge, but it does include that. God in His eternality knows all of the details, even the tiniest details that will happen before any of them come to pass. As he says in Matthew 10:29-30, "Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father, and even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." A sparrow dying and falling off a branch to the ground is not considered a significant moment in history. It would never be recorded in history. It's just a happening. But Jesus said, "Not one sparrow on earth falls to the ground apart from the will of God.” And then, “even your very hairs of your head are all numbered.” The number of hairs in your head changes daily, but God's up on the count. You're like, "Doesn't He have better things to do?" God's omniscience can cover that detail. Even the very hairs of your head are continually numbered. 

Now in this case, what's amazing is the detail of a man carrying a jar of water walking into a big city, and the timing of all that. Picture this. There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims that have assembled from all over that part of the world for the Feast of Unleavened bread. Hundreds of thousands. Now, what are the odds that two disciples that Jesus sends at a certain moment, when they've finished this conversation, sent into the big city, are going to line up with a guy carrying a jar of water? That particular guy, but it happened. It wasn't an accident, everything had been orchestrated.

When I was in college in the Boston area, I had a friend, a mentor, Tim Schuman, who discipled me. He was a great brother, a man of God. He's also a distance runner. He ran the Boston Marathon. I grew up in eastern Massachusetts.  The Boston Marathon was a big part of our culture. I knew about it very well, and he asked if I would drive him out to Hopkinson where the race began. I did drive him there, and he gave me all of his stuff. We agreed to meet at the finish line. Anybody who knows anything about the city of Boston and knows anything about the Boston Marathon, knows how stupid we were at that moment. Yeah. So let's meet at the finish line. Why don't you meet your friend in Los Angeles? All right. See how that goes? Where? I don't know, just Los Angeles. You're going to meet up somewhere. It's just incredible.

But somehow... Now this is in the days before the cell phone and “Find my Friend”, as I mentioned last week. I found him with one of these aluminum foil blankets sitting at a Brigham's waiting for me to find him. Somehow we found each other. That was close to a miracle, but it's still an hour after he had finished the race. We should have done better. I should have known better, but that's a picture of just how preposterous this whole thing is. "Go in to the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him." There were eleven gates into the city of Jerusalem. Let's just start there. Which gate? Not specified. You just see the improbability of the detail of something like this. Everything had been choreographed by the plan of God. So the man carrying the jar of water did meet them at the right gate, at just the right time.  He led them to a house that Jesus had arranged ahead of time for He and His disciples to eat the Passover. The owner of that house met them at the door of his house and led them up to what would become the most famous room in the history of the human race.

This is a very significant room. This is the place where the last Supper would occur. This is the place where the resurrected Jesus would appear, though the doors were locked, and give physical evidence of His resurrection to the apostles. This is the very place where they're waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit to come, in which on the day of Pentecost, did come. And which after the Holy Spirit was poured out, they flooded out from that room and began to change the world. It's a very significant room in history. Jesus somehow had already made arrangements with this man. We don't know how. It's not miraculous. It was just practical administrative foresight on the part of Jesus. What's amazing is the man with the water jar and the timing of all that. But the preparation had been made.

Now think, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, there had been no room at the inn. The problem of finding a place would have been even more extreme in those days. Just a limited number of places where they could meet. But Jesus had, God had, the foresight to get all of this arranged ahead of time. The room was provided, furniture was sufficient. It was a large room, an upper room. It was furnished and ready. Everything's in place. The two disciples then could go begin their preparation for the actual feast, the unleavened bread, the lamb, the wine, the table settings, the cups, plates, napkins, cushions. Everything they would need, they would go and do that.

Now, far more significant than those details, however, of course is the big picture. The meticulous preparation, for centuries, even before the foundation of the world leading step by step to the cross of Jesus Christ. None of this was thrown together at the last minute, but everything was ordained and planned carefully by God before the foundation of the world. 

"The meticulous preparation, for centuries, even before the foundation of the world leading step by step to the cross of Jesus Christ. None of this was thrown together at the last minute, but everything was ordained and planned carefully by God before the foundation of the world."

II. Jesus Predicts Judas’s Betrayal

Next, we see this same aspect of God's astonishing foreknowledge as Jesus predicts Judas's betrayal. The betrayal of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, ranks as one of the most repulsive acts in human history. We already know that Judas was never truly a disciple of Jesus, but was called a devil by Jesus in John 6, after the “eat my flesh and drink my blood” teaching. We know also that Judas was just in it for the money, because he used to steal money from the money bag that had been entrusted to him by Jesus, violating that trust.

We saw last time that Judas went to Jesus's enemies and agreed to betray Him for the price of 30 pieces of silver. In this passage, Jesus predicts it. So Judas has gone on quietly, slunk off by himself, to make this arrangement. But now Jesus is going to predict it in front of them all. Look at verses 17-21, "When evening came, Jesus arrived with the twelve. While they were reclining at the table, eating, He said, ‘I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.' They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, ‘Surely not I.’ ‘ It is one of the twelve,’ he replied, ‘one who dips bread into the bowl with me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man. It would be better for him if he had not been born.’"

What makes Judas's betrayal so heinous was the loving and tender heart that Jesus had for each of the twelve, His affection for them. That's what makes this so horrible. It's a betrayal of a love relationship. Luke 22:15, "Jesus said to them, ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’" Think about that. "I want to have this meal with you." It's a very significant statement. It displays the ultimate heart of Jesus for all of us. The delight of close loving fellowship. I'm going to return to that theme at the end of the sermon, but that's Jesus's heart. He wanted to be with them. It also displays the unspeakable pain that Judas's betrayal must have caused the loving heart of Jesus. 

It's also remarkable because the other disciples had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. That was precisely why Jesus washed their feet, as recorded in John 13. So here's Jesus, this loving heart toward them, and they're bickering about which of them is the greatest, so He washes their feet to give them a display of the loving service that they should have toward one another. As He says in John 13:14- 15, "Now that I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I've set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." That's the setting. and now Jesus predicts Judas's betrayal. The timing is, it says, while there are reclining at the table. Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait of the last Supper shows all of them sitting upright as if they're sitting on chairs at a long table. I also find it odd, they're all sitting on one side of the table. I've never seen a feast like that. Hard to look at each other, left to right, but they're good for Leonardo as he's painting the picture. So they're all facing outward that way. The near East pattern wouldn't have been that. It would have been a very low table. They're reclining on cushions. So their head right at the table, maybe they're reclining on their elbows with their feet away from the table. That's the usual pattern.

If this Passover had followed the traditional pattern, it would have begun with a prayer of thanksgiving for God's deliverance and for His protection and loving care for the Jewish nation. Then there would have been four successive cups of diluted red wine. Then a ceremonial hand washing, symbolizing the need for purification from sin. Then they would have eaten bitter herbs, symbolizing the bitterness of their centuries of in Egypt.  At the same time, then, they would partake of loaves of flat unleavened bread, which is where the feast gets its name, Feast of Unleavened Bread. They would have been passed out, and they would have eaten those loaves of unleavened bread. They would have then dipped them into a thick paste of mashed fruit and ground nuts. Then they would have sung two Psalms of praise from Psalm 113 to 118. At that point, the head of the household, which would have been Jesus, in this case, usually explain the story of the Passover and its symbolism to everyone in the house. Then the roasted lamb and the unleavened bread would have been served. After the main course had been consumed, the third cup of red wine would have been passed out. The rest of the Psalms of praise from Psalm 113 to 118 would have been read, and they would have finished with the fourth and last cup of red wine.

Now, somewhere in all of this, Jesus announced the coming betrayal. John 13:21 tells us Jesus' emotions concerning this. It tells us that He began to be deeply distressed and troubled and said, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me." The exhaustive foreknowledge doesn't take away the pain and the sorrow of it. He knows it, but it hurts, hurts. In our account, in verse 18, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me." The disciples, at that moment, are shocked, trying to figure out who it is. Verse 19, "They were saddened. One by one said to him, ‘Surely not I.’" True disciples are aware of the corruption of their own hearts. Genuinely born again, they understand, like the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, that they're sinners and they're corrupt.  I think they wonder, "It really might be me. Could be me." It's evidence of their humility and of the Holy Spirit's convicting work in their lives. 

But also the shocking nature of the news. They're just completely back on their heels. They didn't see this coming. Then Jesus identifies his betrayer, verse 20, “‘It is one of the twelve,’ he replied. ‘One who dips bread into the bowl with me.’" The fact of saying one of the twelve shows that intimacy, that closeness, and the privilege of being one of the apostles. Jesus had prayed all night before identifying this one of the twelve. But then there's this issue of the dipping of the bread into the bowl. John's Gospel unfolds this moment, a very significant moment here. John 13:22 through 27, "His disciples stared at one another at a loss to know which of them he meant.  One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, it's John, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and asked, ‘Ask Him which one He means.’ Leaning back against Jesus, he asked Him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it into the dish.’ Then dipping the piece of bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him." This is stunning. It's almost like Judas accepting the bread with that language having been attached to it, was making a willing choice for that role. "I'm willing to play that role." His soul is open at that moment and Satan, it says, entered into him which also shows Satan's direct activity in leading toward Jesus's death on the cross. 

Satan had already been tempting and prompting Judas. It says in John 13:2, "The evening meal was being served and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son Simon, to betray him.” But now this is a whole different matter. He's not demon possessed, Judas, he’s Satan possessed. Now we get to the infinitely deep theology of this betrayal. This is the most complex, and I think significant, case of divine sovereignty and human responsibility you'll find in the Bible. Look at what Jesus says in verse 21, "The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him, but woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man. It would be better for him if he had not been born." The beginning of Jesus's statement, “the Son of Man will go just as it is written about him,” means He's going to die, having been betrayed by one of his close friends and rejected by the Jewish nation. It's going to happen exactly as the prophets have said. It was specifically part of God's plan, including Judas Iscariot's role.

It's predicted in Scripture, it's ordained by God. Nothing would change. It would most certainly happen as the church prayed in Acts 4:28, speaking of the plots of Jesus enemies leading to his death. "They did," speaking of God, "They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen." But then the next part, "But woe to the man who betrays the Son of Man." The word “woe" is the common word of prophetic judgment. When a prophet speaks a word of judgment like Isaiah 5, “Woe, woe, woe, woe,” or Jesus's sevenfold woe in Matthew 23. This is a common word of prophetic judgment, divine judgment. It shows that Judas is still responsible for his actions. He's accountable for what he did. He's judged for his motives and his reasons, his purposes, as well as what he actually does to betray Jesus. Then Jesus says, "It would have been better for him if he had not been born." I don't think we'll ever be able to probe the depth of that statement.  Judas is identified in the end as a son of perdition, a son of lostness, son of means characterized by hell, understanding the statements made about him and what he did. He's the only person we know, by name, in hell. Yet this very man, we are instructed, was knit together step by step in his mother's womb by the direct activity of Almighty God. No human being gets a body apart from that. Every moment that God was knitting Judas's body together, He knew very well what Judas would do. Very well. So why then did He make him? 

"Judas is still responsible for his actions. He's accountable for what he did. He's judged for his motives and his reasons, his purposes, as well as what he actually does to betray Jesus."

Why did He create him if it would have been better for Judas if he had not been born? Well, the answer is no, it wasn't better for Judas, but it was better for the glory of God and the plan of God, and it was better for us. Better for us, not better for Judas. And so he was born, and not only was he born, but he was sustained every day of his life. For in God we live and move and have our being. God fed him every meal that He ever gave him. He gave him lavish gifts of love. Jesus gave him above and beyond, the privilege of being one of the Apostles. So it is not true, in a simplistic sort of way, that God loves everyone and has a wonderful plan for everyone's life. It's not true. It wasn't a wonderful plan for Judas. It would have been better for Judas not to have existed at all. 

We also need to understand the complexity of Satan's motives here. What is Satan doing? Does Satan really want Judas to betray Jesus to his death? Does he not know where all that's going to lead? Earlier, he had been influencing Peter to tempt Jesus not to go to the cross. Remember? "Get behind me, Satan." Remember? So now Satan is in Judas orchestrating Jesus's arrest for the end of his death. And in so doing, he will destroy his own dark kingdom.

Praise God for what I call satanic confusion. "I don't know what to do with the incarnate Son of God. Do I let him live or do I kill him?" In the end, he did what his nature is. He's a murderer. There's nothing more that he could do except just kill him. And in so doing, by Jesus's death, it says in Hebrews 2, he destroyed Him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Thanks be to God. Amen. There's Judas and Satan conspiring to destroy Satan's dark kingdom.

III. Jesus Symbolizes the New Covenant

Now we get to the Lord's Supper. Jesus symbolizes the new Covenant. Look at verses 22-24. "While they're eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take it, this is my body.’ Then He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,’ He said to them."

Jesus uses the ceremony of the Old Covenant, the Passover, to declare the reality of the New Covenant. He gives the bread a new symbolism. The unleavened bread had been a symbol of the Exodus, and of their haste, as you remember, in eating it because they didn't have time for the bread to rise. Remember always you had to eat it in haste because you are fleeing out of bondage in Egypt. It's remembering that. But now He said, "This is my body." It symbolizes His body, by which they would be delivered from their true slavery. The true slavery is slavery to sin, and to the death sin deserves. By his body He would set them free. The bread is also a symbol of life. Jesus came that we might live. We need food to live. There's nourishment that comes from it. So Jesus said in John 6:51, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

In doing this, Jesus established a new pattern of worship in the New Covenant with the Lord's Supper. Then He takes the cup. After supper, He took the cup, He gave it to all of them to drink. He identified the symbolism of the cup with these significant words. "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Luke adds the word "new." Luke 22:20, "In the same way, after supper, he took the cup saying, this cup is the New Covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." Very significant words here. The Old Covenant had been established and founded on animal sacrifice. It was the centerpiece of the Old Covenant, the blood of bulls and goats and lambs.  In this, in Leviticus, God made it clear that it was by the shedding of blood that forgiveness was worked, which is essential to our salvation. Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of a creature is in the blood and I've given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar." It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. But the author to Hebrews tells us that the endless annual repetition of these animal sacrifices shows that they are ineffective. They didn't really do anything. They're just symbols. Just symbolic. Hebrews 10:3-4, “But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because listen, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.” That's a once for all statement. It never did anything. It never actually removed any sin. Instead, the New Covenant is established, also based on blood, but this is the blood of the only-begotten Son of God.

The Word became flesh, and that blood shed once for all for the sins of all of his people throughout all time. Hebrews 9:12, "Jesus did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption." This is the blood of the New Covenant and it shed once for all time, never to be repeated again. Again, by faith in the blood of Christ, are our sins forgiven forever. Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace." 

I just want to say something about the mass that the church has made of this whole thing since that time. This is a meal that should have united Christians, but instead it's been one of the most divisive theological topics there's ever been in church history and part of it centers on the conception of real presence. The idea that in some way the bread and wine, we now use juice, become the literal body and blood of Jesus or spiritual body and blood, in that sense, an actual body and blood. That's the doctrine of “real presence”. For Roman Catholics, they say this happens by the mystery of transubstantiation, leaning on some Aristotelian philosophy. That's a little hard to follow, hard to explain, which I won't go into here, but that's how they argued in the Middle Ages is how it happens. 

It all started with the statement, "This is my body and this is my blood." Martin Luther came along, rejected the link with Greek philosophy, but still believed in real presence. Believed it ardently, so much so, that he got into a very nasty argument with Ulrich Zwingli, the leader of the Swiss Reformation on this very issue.  Ulrich Zwingli didn't see any of this in the New Testament. He was just a simple Bible reading guy, and to him, the Lord's Supper was what we call a mere memorial. It's just something that we just do whenever we want to. He tended to very much downplay it. Zwingli did, so they had it about once a year. He went too far, very much so. But Luther was so ardent about real presence. He wrote in Latin, "Hoc est corpus meum," ”This is my body” in chalk on a table and then pounded the table, as only Luther could do, saying this is the text that will break you. It was not a nice interaction between two great men of God. They're getting along great now. I'm confident, absolutely confident. But it was a terrible dispute. 

John Calvin came along with what I call the spiritual presence view, which is what I hold to, which is that the ordinance is valuable in proportion to your faith in the word of God. That as the Holy Spirit's active and takes these words and presses them to your home, you take them seriously by faith, then this will be a meaningful participation, spiritually, in the death of Jesus Christ. I am troubled by the fact that with transubstantiation, the Roman Catholics believe that the priest is forever offering Jesus again and again and again and again and again. I find that incredibly problematic. Because the author to Hebrews tells us that Jesus died once for all time never to be repeated. So that's a part of the problem I have with their view of the offering being given up. Also, it's problematic in that when Jesus actually literally spoke what we know as the “words of institution”, “this is my body,” his body was there. There it was. There were his hands, and there's the bread. So you're looking at, if you had been there, his actual body, and the bread wasn't it. Jesus was very accustomed to doing metaphorical statements, like “I am the door for the sheep,” this kind of thing. Jesus isn't a door, but his ministry is similar to a door in that sense. Jesus then said in John 6:63, "The spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to are spirit and they are life." 

IV. Jesus Symbolizes the Future Heavenly Feast

Beyond that, Jesus also symbolizes the future heavenly feast that we're all going to enjoy. Look what He says in verse 25, "I tell you the truth, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God." He makes two predictions here. First, this is the last supper, this is it. I'm not going to eat or drink with you again. This is the last time.

Secondly, Jesus is also predicting that in the kingdom of God, He will drink of the fruit of the vine anew in the kingdom of God, a prediction of heavenly feasting.  I love the word “new.” "I'm going to drink it anew with you." That's such a powerful word, isn't it? Revelation 21:5, "He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’" The very thing we get with the new covenant, in Luke 22:20, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." Hebrews 8:13, "By calling this covenant new, He has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear." All the new things are yet to come. The new thing, the new covenant is here, but there's a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem coming.

That's where we're heading. "I saw a new heaven, new earth for the first time in the first earth that passed away. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband." In that new world and in that new Jerusalem, we're going to have new feasting. We're going to feast with Jesus. It's the fulfillment of the very thing I said earlier about Jesus's eagerness to eat with us. "I've eagerly desired to sit at table with you and feast with you." So many times in the Gospels we have this future heavenly banquet predicted.  Matthew 8:11, "I tell you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." How cool will that be to sit next to Abraham and the kingdom? What would you talk to father Abraham about or something like that? Or all these other great men and women from history. Or again, Matthew 22, "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to prepare a wedding banquet for his son. And he sends out messengers and says, look, the oxen are fattened, cattle have been butchered. Everything's ready. Come to the banquet." It's a heavenly banquet, a heavenly feast. Or again, Luke 22:29-30, "I confer on you a kingdom just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom." Think about that. You may eat and drink with Me at my table in my kingdom.

Therefore, I love thinking about Revelation 3:20. I know it's for now, but I also think it's a foretaste of that heavenly banquet we're going to have. Revelation 3:20. "Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and He with Me." There is that yearning for table fellowship that He has with the people of God. How sweet is that?

VI. Lessons and Applications

First, the Lord's Supper. Look back and look ahead. Passover was a yearly reminder to the Jewish nation of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. So also the Lord's Supper is a continual reminder for us, as Christians, of the blood of Christ shed on the cross for our sins. First Corinthians 11:26, "For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death.”  Whenever we do this, we're proclaiming Jesus died for us. Remembering that. It's vital for us to be forever mindful of what Jesus did for us, once for all time. Luke 22:19, "He took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." We need that, don't we? We need these reminders. The Lord's Supper, which we're about to partake in, is a reminder to us of the price that was paid for our sins. We need to think continually of the blood of Jesus shed for our sins, so we can be humbled. 

"Passover was a yearly reminder to the Jewish nation of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. So also the Lord's Supper is a continual reminder for us, as Christians, of the blood of Christ shed on the cross for our sins."

We can also be thankful for our salvation. But we're also supposed to look ahead. I Corinthians 11:26, "For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” This causes us to look ahead with faith through the second coming of Christ when He will destroy all His enemies, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Then we will feast with Christ sitting at table with Him. So at the Lord's Supper, which we're about to partake in, and indeed every day, be mindful of your sins forgiven at such a high cost, the body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Be mindful and be thankful for that indescribable gift of grace. Be humble in reference to it. Be willing to forgive others because you've been given so much, and be expectant of the feast that we're going to enjoy when we finally get to heaven.

Beyond that, think about the deep themes that we've walked through today. God's exhaustive foreknowledge of all things.  There's no lucky events that happen in life. There's no chance encounters. The guy carrying the jar of water, God does that stuff every day. Sparrows don't fall to the ground and hairs don't fall off our heads without God planning it and orchestrating it. That gives us confidence about our lives in this world. 

We're going to close the time of preaching now with prayer, and then we'll go over to the Lord's Supper. Father, thank you for the Word of God. We thank you for the things that we've learned from it. Father, we thank you for feeding us by it. We're grateful for it. And we ask now that as we transition to the Lord's Supper, that you would strengthen us with its lessons as well. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus’ death on the cross was the result of the meticulous plan and purpose of God, orchestrated in space and time.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

It is the manner of God, before He bestows any signal mercy on the people, first to prepare them for it, so said Jonathan Edwards talking about the Great Awakening as God moved a lot of pieces together to produce that revival. And it is absolutely true. If you look at the scripture, God is a God of meticulous preparations, laying out the raw materials for a providential work before He does that work, of throwing the unformed clay onto the center of the potter's wheel before He shapes it into the vessel He has predetermined to make, or of arranging the wood and the sacrifice on the altar before the fire comes down and ignites it.

God is a God of meticulous preparation, we see it in Genesis 1 with the entire earth, with the worlds that He made. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty. Interesting statement. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Formless, empty, the earth, that was planet earth. Then God got busy shaping a planet just right for human life, working day by day, creating light, separating light from darkness, separating the waters in the atmosphere from the waters down below on the surface of the earth, separating the sea from the dry land, step by step, preparing things, getting things ready for human life, for man created in the image of God. God is a God of meticulous preparations.

But if that's true of physical creation, it's even more true of the complexities of redemptive history. God has meticulously arranged the pieces for our salvation on the chessboard of human history, moving this piece here and that piece there, putting it all together as century unfolded after century until, as Galatians tells us, "In the fullness of time, in the fullness of time God sent his son into the world." In the fullness of time means, effectively, when all of God's preparations for the coming of his son into the world were complete. God had raised up the Jewish nation. He had established the kingly line of David. He had spoken clearly through the prophets. He had borne patiently for centuries with the sins of the Jewish nation. He brought judgments on that nation through two exiles, first to Assyria and then to Babylon. Then reestablished a small remnant of Jews in the Promised Land under Gentile dominion. Then at just the right time, brought Jesus, his only-begotten son into the world.

Then God meticulously prepared Jesus for 30 years for his role as Savior of the world. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man, step by step being gotten ready, for 30 years, getting ready until the time came for Him to be revealed to Israel, and that He could begin his work of amazing miracles and perfect teachings that identified Him as the only-begotten son of God, the Savior, the only Savior from sin.  Then at just the right time, God prepared the climax of Jesus' mission to the world, the journey to the cross and then to the empty tomb. The final three chapters of Mark's gospel depict that journey, and we're beginning that today. Mark 14, 15 and 16, Jesus' journey to the cross. And in this account, today, we're going to see overwhelming evidence for this God's meticulous preparation, preparation for the cross.

We see the concept of preparation, of getting things ready in a number of verses in the text you just heard read.  Look down at verse 8, speaking of Mary's anointing, "She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.” One of the translation says, prepare for my burial. Then, a few verses later, verse 12, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?" We'll deal with that text next week, God willing, and also, in verse 15 and 16, next week, "He will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there. So the disciples left and went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover." We're going to look at all that next week, but that's where we're heading, it's preparations, it's getting things ready.

And as we'll see today, these are just some of the preparations that God was orchestrating to bring Jesus' son to his bloody substitutionary death on the cross. This morning, we're going to see that God's preparations for that, for the cross, went back before the foundation of the world, extended through all of Jewish history, included Jesus' most hateful enemies, included Jesus' most devoted followers, extended even to the bitter betrayal by one of his closest followers, one of Jesus' apostles, step by step, meticulous preparation, bringing us to the cross. 

I. Preparation for the Cross

Now the cross, we believe as Christians, is the centerpiece of the Bible and of all of human history. It is the center of Christian theology. By the cross alone are our sins atoned for. By the cross alone are we reconciled to a holy God. By the cross alone are we delivered from God's righteous sentence of death and hell. By the cross alone are we cleansed of all of our defilement and made pure. By the cross alone are we clothed in perfect righteousness. By the cross alone are we brought into an eternity in heaven.  We understand the centrality of the cross, for this reason, Paul said in 1st Corinthians 2:2, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Or again, later in that same epistle, 1st Corinthians 15:3 and 4, "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance," top priority, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures." That's the centerpiece.

Then, finally, Paul's own personal statement, he makes many of them, but I love this one, Galatians 6:14, "May I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world." Paul's saying, "The cross changed everything for me, the entire way I look at myself and the world and everything, and I'm only going to boast in the cross of Christ." The infinite value of the cross can only be seen by faith.

It's easy to misunderstand Jesus' death on the cross as though it were some kind of tragic mistake, some kind of horrific blunder, a hideous miscalculation on the part of Jesus. He had made enemies of very powerful men. He was sucked into their vortex of pride and power, got sucked in over his head, suffered the ultimate penalty for his naiveté.  But this is a grave error, no, it's not that way at all. Jesus' death on the cross was the result of the meticulous plan and purpose of God orchestrated in space and time to the specific actions of people who are doing God's will, whether they knew it or not. Jesus said it plainly, John 10:18, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down freely of myself. I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it back up again, this command I receive from my Father." It says it all.

So we see this when it comes to the cross, the centerpiece of all human history, all biblical theology, all roads lead to Calvary, all roads lead to the bloody cross of Jesus Christ. Here we see God's sovereign, meticulous preparation that brought us there. So in today's outline, we're going to see the preparation by predestination and then, by prophecy, by prediction, by plotting, by the perfume poured out on him, and by betrayal. So let's walk through these.

II. Preparation for the Cross by Predestination

The Bible reveals that the cross was predestined by God before the foundation of the world. Now we're at Passover time. I'm going to talk about the Passover in a moment, but before any of that happened, God knew about the cross God had planned the cross. The cross was founded in the mind of God before time began. Revelation 13:8 says that Jesus was, "the lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.”  1st Peter 1:19, 20 says, "You," us, we Christians, "were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake." So before the creation of the world, the substitutionary atonement of Christ had been predestined in the mind of God. Jesus was the lamb of God slain in the mind of God from the creation of the world. Since this was the plan of God, every step toward the cross, even taken by Jesus' sworn enemies, was part of that plan.

As Peter preached in the streets of Jerusalem 40 days after Jesus' death, Acts 2:23, "Jesus was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." God's set purpose and foreknowledge involving the people of Jerusalem and wicked men led to Jesus being nailed to the cross.  Then later, two chapters later, in Acts 4, as persecution starts to ramp up, the church prayed to God. In Acts 4:27, 28, "Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant, Jesus. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen." That says it plainly, doesn't it? Even the plots of wicked men were part of God's eternal plan. The preparation for the cross was ultimately in the mind of God before time began.

III. Preparation for the Cross by Prophecy

Next, we see the preparation of the cross by prophecy. God had already formed this plan before He said, "Let there be light," but then He paid out information gradually over redemptive history through prophecies that said what He was going to do step by step. God communicated the details of the cross through many prophecies. God sent many prophets and spoke many words of prophecy predicting the cross of Christ. Every animal sacrifice itself was an acting  out prophecy of the cross.

Now, clearest in this text was the Passover itself, it was a lived-out, acted-out prophecy from centuries before pointing toward the cross of Christ. This account begins with the approach of the Passover. Verse 1, "Now, the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away”. The preparation of the Passover is a big part of this account and next week's account, God willing. The disciples wanted to know where they should go and prepare the Passover feast. Everything's getting ready. All the people have come from miles away to prepare for the Passover. The Passover itself was God's sovereign preparation for the cross, getting everybody ready to understand it, fifteen centuries before Christ. You remember the story of the Exodus and how God brought the enslaved nation of Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand and outstretched arm, and with ten plagues, terrible plagues.

The tenth plague was the worst of them all, the plague on the firstborn. The angel of death would visit every home in Egypt that terrible night and kill the firstborn in that home. From the highest to the lowest, from the throne of Pharaoh to the lowest slave, no one would be exempt.  And the Jews were no better, Ezekiel 20, "They are as idolatrous as the Egyptians were,” and they deserve their firstborn to be slaughtered as much as the Egyptians did. So God made a provision to make a distinction between Israel and Egypt by means of this sacrifice. The clear implication, when you have to paint the blood on your doorpost and your lintel or your firstborn would die, your firstborn deserves to die as much as anybody else's. It's only by the shed blood of the substitute that that death doesn't come to you.  God commanded each family to select a lamb without blemish or defect, slaughter it, paint the blood of that lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the house. The promise was that the angel of the Lord would see the blood of the lamb and pass over that home not killing the firstborn. Thus, the Passover is the picture of what God had already predestined before the foundation of the world to do, the cross of Christ. He's the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Now it's acted out that very night, the night of the tenth plague, the shedding the blood, a substitute delivering sinners from death. Then, it was reenacted year by year for fifteen centuries as part of their heritage, part of their religious year. God established this as a preparation, getting their minds ready for the fulfillment.

In Jesus' time, it's estimated that over two million Jewish pilgrims would come to the city of Jerusalem for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover. That feast, that particular Passover that year, Jesus would fulfill that image for all time. Christ is the end of the law so that there might be righteousness for all who believe. And so, it would be fulfilled. It wasn't an accident that Jesus died right at the Passover time, right when the Lamb would be slain, it was exactly to fulfill that imagery.

So the application of the blood of Jesus, the substitute, to our souls is what enables us to survive Judgment Day. As Romans 3:25 says, "God presented him as a propitiation through faith in his blood." Propitiation means one who turns aside the wrath of God by the payment of a sacrifice. That's what propitiation means. Jesus is that. So, Romans 5:9 says, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?"

"The application of the blood of Jesus, the substitute, to our souls is what enables us to survive Judgment Day. As Romans 3:25 says, 'God presented him as a propitiation through faith in his blood.' Propitiation means one who turns aside the wrath of God by the payment of a sacrifice."

Of course I haven't given the whole raft of prophecies from the Old Testament pointing toward Christ, which there are many, but I'm focusing on the prophecy, the acted out prophecy that was the Passover.

IV. Preparation for the Cross by Prediction

Next, we see the preparation for the cross by prediction. In this, I mean, specifically, Jesus' stated predictions of what was going to happen leading up to the cross, effectively saying, "I am the fulfillment of all those prophecies. It's happening now." He got them ready by predicting what would happen to him.

We're told in Matthew 16:21, "From that time on," that was in Caesarea Philippi when Peter made his great confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," "Blessed are you Simon Jonah. This was not revealed to you by man, but my Father in heaven." All that, Caesarea Philippi. "From that time on," Matthew 16:21 tells us, "Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, that he must be killed. And on the third day, raise to life." He did this again and again and again, predicted, predicted, predicted. Especially at this time again in Matthew 26:2, it says, "The Passover is two days away and the son of man will be handed over to be crucified." That's a clear statement Jesus made in Matthew's account. Mark doesn't pick up on it, but he did say it, "As you know, this is all happening. I'm about to die to fulfill the Passover." His prediction linked his own life to the Passover imagery.  Now He did this to prepare his disciples ahead of time so that they wouldn't lose their faith. John 13:19, "I'm telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you'll believe that I am, that I am God, and that I am the Messiah." The predictions got them ready, but they didn't really listen. Did you notice? They had no idea. One person listened though, the woman in our account. We will get to her in a moment. She listened. She paid attention, but the others, they were fighting it. They couldn't conceive of it.

V. Preparation for the Cross by Plotting

Next, we see preparation of the cross by plotting.  Jesus' enemies were directly plotting his death. Look at verse 1 and 2, "Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him, but not during the feast, they said, or the people may riot."  “Not during the feast," they said. Isn't it beautiful that He was killed during the feast? We'll get to all that. So much for the plans of the enemies, but they're plotting concerning this.

Why did they hate Him so much? It's instructive for us to probe that. Why did they hate the only perfect man that's ever lived, filled with love, perfect in love toward God and toward others? Why did they hate Him? First, Jesus himself said the reason they hate Him is He testifies that what they do is evil and their pride won't let them listen to Him. He says they are evildoers. They hated Him because He exposed their righteousness as a sham. He called them, "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but inside, full of dead men's bones and everything unclean."

They hated Him because He cleansed the temple twice, at the beginning of His public ministry and then at the end, thus He was touching the nerve of what they cared about the most, money. So they hated Him for that. They were jealous. They hated Him because they were jealous of his popularity with the people who loved Him, and these enemies were jealous. And they hated Him because they were afraid of what the Romans would do in reference to Him, that the Romans would come away, come and take away their place in their nation because they were threatened by Him, so they hated Him.

Throughout His ministry they opposed Him. And at a certain point, from a certain point on, they're looking to kill Him. They're openly wanting to kill Him. At some points, even picking up stones right there and then to kill Him like in John 8. They want to kill Him, many times already, but they're not able to do so, we're told, especially in John's Gospel because His time had not yet come. Timing is everything, fullness of time. So they were not able to do it.

Now, however, the time has come, Jesus prays that in John 17, "Father, the time has come, glorify your son." The time's there, but God has His timetable, the enemies have theirs as He just hinted at a moment ago. God wanted Jesus to die at exactly the right time to fulfill the imagery of the Passover. God loves symbolism, and He wanted to fulfill that and make it easy for them to see the connection.

But we see the irony, for Jesus' enemies, this is exactly the wrong time to kill Jesus. This is absolutely not what they want to do, not because they didn't want Jesus to fulfill prophecy, they weren't thinking about that at all, it's because of the threat to their nation and to their own position of this huge crowd and Jesus' stunning popularity with the crowd. Remember the triumphal entry? It terrified them. They were clearly afraid of Jesus' popularity with the crowds. So if they arrest Jesus in public, the crowds are going to riot, they're going to kill those that are there to arrest Jesus and defend Jesus.

But they're also afraid, as I mentioned, of what the Romans would do if the crowds took Jesus and made Him king even by force, as John 6 said they wanted to do. In that case, Jesus' enemies would be left out, right? Either the Romans would come in and that moment would fail through Roman power and Jesus would be slaughtered and His followers slaughtered, and then the Romans would just come and take over and they would lose their place of power and position in the nation, or Jesus would succeed and be the king of the world, whereupon they're out because they're His enemies. Either way, this is not the time they think to arrest.

They want to arrest Jesus, "in some sly way," that's one translation, the Greek says, "by subterfuge, by treachery or trickery." Ideally, they would like to arrest Jesus maybe at night or sometime when there's not many people around, and they needed information on His coming and going. They didn't have “Find My Friends” back then yet, so they needed to know where He's going to be and when, they need an insider. But how could that be? Jesus' twelve followers are fanatically committed to Him, so they thought. They had a problem, but in any case, they know, not during the feast.

But yet, isn't it beautiful? God's plan cannot be stopped. It was during the feast because that's what God wanted. "Many are the plans of a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails." And so, the passages tell us, Acts 2, "Jesus was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." Their actions are part of the plan. Or again, "Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen." God willed that Jesus should die at the Passover and that these wicked men would be essential to making that happen by their plots, and so would Judas' betrayal, so would Judas' betrayal. We'll get to that.

VI. Preparation for the Cross by Poured Perfume

Next, we see preparation for the cross by the poured perfume. In the middle of all this swirling evil, there is this act of pure beauty, pure beauty, sacrificial worship poured directly on the head and feet of Jesus. And I would argue to some degree, I think even simply straight out, this is the point of everything, it really is, the point of the cross.

Why did God make the universe to begin with? For His own glory, for a radiant display of His glory. But God already knew how glorious He was, He didn't need to make anything to prove it to himself. So then, God made sentient beings, angels and humans to be able to see and appreciate His glory and praise Him for it. He made the universe because He's generous and He wanted to share Himself.

I's all about worship, but sin entered the world blocking that worship that God created us to do. Jesus came to remove that sin problem, that sin blockage by His death and His resurrection, by the outpoured Spirit, by His salvation plan to heal us of sin so that we could get back to the original purpose, which is worship, worship. Jesus came into the world for that purpose to affect worship as He said to the Samaritan woman in John 4, "A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit and those who worship and must worship in spirit and truth."

"Jesus came to remove that sin problem, that sin blockage by His death and His resurrection, by the outpoured Spirit, by His salvation plan to heal us of sin so that we could get back to the original purpose, which is worship."

So in the midst of all of this wickedness, this confusion, swirling plots by these powerful, wicked men, in the midst of the apostles at their worst, we're told in another place, some of them bickering about which of them was the greatest, some of them boasting that they love Jesus more than any of the others, and one of them showing his true nature as the devil, betraying Jesus, that's going to happen that night, in the middle of all of that, we get one beautiful act of worship by this woman. So beautiful.

Let's look at the act, the act described. Look at verse 3, "While he was in Bethany reclining at the table at the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head." Now, all four Gospels have an account of a woman anointing Jesus. Luke speaks of a sinful, but forgiven woman who anoints Jesus' feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. But Matthew, Mark and John all speak of this one incident that we're looking at now, and I think it's clearly a different time, a different woman too, I believe.

John identifies this woman as Mary, the sister of Lazarus, the man that Jesus raised from the dead in John 11 and with whom Jesus had a close love relationship. Martha, Mary and Lazarus were close friends with Jesus. Martha and Mary are also well known. They were dear friends of Jesus. We're told the anointing takes place in Bethany very close to Jerusalem. We're told it happened in the home of a man known as Simon, the leper. We know nothing else about this man. He's not mentioned in any other account, so there's nothing to say about him, just where his home was.

John tells us, this anointing took place eight days before the Passover. John positions it chronologically. So Mark has rearranged it and kind of inserted it here, but with John, we get the full picture of the chronology. It was a sacrificial gift. Mary took an alabaster jar of pure spikenard. One of the translations gives spikenard. John says it was pistik nard coming from the head or spike of a fragrant East Indian plant belong to the genus Valeriana, which yields juice of a delicious odor. The plant grows in the distant Himalayan mountains and was extremely costly, you can well imagine.  It's traveled a long distance to get there.  John tells us, and Mark tells us here that it was valued at 300 denari. A denarius was a day's wage for a laborer, so that's a year's worth of money. It's a lot of money. Furthermore, it was in a costly alabaster jar. You picture like a flask with a slender neck sealed at the top. For her to get at it quickly, she chose to break the neck of the alabaster jar and pour the whole bottle over Jesus' head, and also, John tells us, over his feet, Mark just says head, but head and feet.

Then, we get the disciples' reaction, verse 4 and 5, "Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor.’ And they rebuked her harshly." John tells us that Judas was the ringleader of all this, he led out in this. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, probes Judas' heart, John 12:6, "Judas did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into." It's absolutely disgusting. Because we are told in Luke 8 that some women, some wealthy women were supporting Jesus out of their means and Judas is plundering that on the side.  Jesus had given the money bag to him to take care of.  It's not like he didn't know who Judas was. However, it seems all of the disciples shared, to some degree, Judas' abhorrence of this action. They're all on board with what he's saying. They don't get it, it doesn't make sense. I mean, Jesus has just got done in Matthew's Gospel with the whole sheep and the goats thing, remember? The sheep and the goats, "I was hungry, you fed me. I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink." All of that. That's a whole bunch of benevolent ministry, a whole bunch of mercy ministry, and if you do it, you're in heaven. If you don't do it, you're in hell. And all this. Then, just a short time later, there's a woman pouring a year's worth of wages all over Him, and He's fine with it. It's confusing.

Years ago, remember those, "What would Jesus do?" bracelets? I don't always know what Jesus would do. Does He seem unpredictable to you? I think I would've understood their objections, but He defended her. Look at it in verse 6 through 9, “'Leave her alone,’" said Jesus, “'Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing for me. The poor you'll always have with you and you can help them anytime you want, but you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.’" I can't imagine a stronger defense.

He describes her lavish gift as a beautiful thing. The Greek word implies that it's a virtuous act. He addresses their concern for the poor by citing Deuteronomy 15:11, "There will always be poor in the land." He then challenges them about the poor, you can help them anytime you want. It's a bottomless pit. It never ends. You always have poor people with you. And anytime any of us wants to help the poor, we can do it. And I do believe, as in the sheep and the goats, God's going to talk to us about it on Judgment day, how much that was.  But Jesus said, "You'll not always have me," not like this. This is an amazing statement. He's returning to the topic of His imminent death. He's soon to be physically taken away from them. He specifically says she anointed His body to prepare for His death. Verse 8, "She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial." Then Jesus makes this amazing, prophetic statement about how she would be remembered forever, "I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her."

Jesus knew at that moment that these stories would be told to the end of time. How did He know that? Because He's God. And He knew that there would be a careful gospel record under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that this account would be included in that and that this gospel will be preached through the whole world. He already said that in Matthew 24:14 it's going to happen, and this story is going to ride along with that gospel proclamation, it's going to come with it and people are going to hear about her to the end of time, and I say beyond, beyond.

I believe his statement's being fulfilled right now as I preach. Here we are in Durham, North Carolina, which is a long way from Jerusalem, and we're centuries later, and we're talking about her. Jesus is a prophet. But I think it goes beyond, it goes beyond this moment, it goes on into heaven. It goes into heaven. Why is that? Because we already learned from Mark 13:31, "Until heaven and earth pass away, my words will never pass away." Heaven and earth will pass away, my words will never pass away. What? Including this one? Yes. For all eternity, we'll be talking about this woman's anointing. That's pretty awesome.

But then I thought about it as I was meditating about heaven, writing my book on heaven, I thought, we're not just going to talk about her active, sacrificial giving, we're going to talk about all of them, all of them. Which ones? Well, the ones you all did too, and the ones that I did. Why just this woman? If we're going to remember her good works, we're going to remember everybody's, and so, I believe we will. We're going to remember, "And my Father will honor," Jesus said, "the one who serves me." That's a beautiful thing.

I love what it says in verse 8, "She did what she could." Isn't that powerful? What else can we ever do? Reminds me of Moses and the burning bush and that interaction. At some point, God says to Moses, "What do you have in your hand, Moses?" "A staff." "Throw it on the ground." Remember? It's like, "What do you have with you? I can use that. I can use that staff. Throw it on the ground." What about you? Are you doing what you could? That's the question. We'll get back to this. I want to circle back, but this is a beautiful moment.

VII. Preparation for the Cross by Betrayal

We go from that to... We go from the height of beauty to the depth of darkness. It's disgusting what happens next, but it's the truth, isn't it? Look at verses 10 and 11, preparation for the cross by betrayal. "Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over." So now we get to betrayal.

Keep in mind, Jesus is in no way surprised or caught unaware by Judas. He knew this was coming. After the whole “eat my flesh, drink my blood "teaching in John 6, He says to the twelve, "You don't want to go away too, do you?" Peter says, "To whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life." Then Jesus says, "Have I not chosen you the twelve? And one of you is a devil." Not one of you will later will become a devil, you're a devil right now. He already knew. But still, just because Jesus knew didn't mean it wasn't painful for Him. Jesus knew about the cross, it was painful.

This is betrayal. Betrayal shows a violation of trust, a love relationship. You can't betray someone you don't know or have no connection with, it always has to do with a close friend, has to do with a spouse, it has to do with a son or daughter or father or mother, a close relation. It has to do with a national affinity, you can betray your country. But you can't betray someone you have no connection with, a total stranger and there's no connection. So this is hurtful, painful betrayal.

Why did Judas betray Him? He was never a believer. It's not like he lost his faith, he never had any. Jesus gave him charge of the money bag because that's all he cared about, it's the only way He could keep him to stick around. He was in it for the money. He was embezzling. In all of the gospel accounts, it's immediately after this anointing by Mary that he goes out to say, "What can I get for Jesus?" It's directly, you get a sense of cause and effect, it's like, "All right, if we're going to be doing that, we're going to pour a year's worth of wages on the ground, the game's up. It's time to trade Jesus in for what I can get from them.”  Look at the valuation, you can't see it, but listen to the valuation question in Matthew's account, Matthew 26:14, 15, "Then one of the twelve, the one called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priest and asked," listen to this, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" "What's it worth to you?" It makes you want to vomit. "What's he worth to you?" "Thirty pieces of silver." Little knowing, both sides, that they were directly fulfilling a prophecy in Zechariah, but 30 pieces of silver. They measured out thirty silver coins, cold-blooded idolatry on the part of Judas. He was in it for the money. He loved money. He was covetous. Then, selling his soul for 30 pieces of silver.  Yet, his initiative is instrumental, it's a catalyst for the timetable of Jesus' death. It was instrumental because now, they have what they were looking for, an insider who can give knowledge, specific knowledge of Jesus' comings and goings, and that's going to lead to Gethsemane where Jesus would be arrested.

VIII. The Point of the Cross:  Worship

The point of all of this, as I've said, is worship, so let's bring this to application and bring it to a close. God created you and me to worship Him. The only reason we don't is sin, that's why we don't worship Him as we should. Mary's act of sacrificial giving was both a unique moment in time that could never be repeated, but also a timeless pattern or paradigm of worship. It's both. It was unique because Jesus said, "You will not always have me." We cannot anoint Jesus' head and feet physically, He's up in heaven, we do not have that ability to do it. Furthermore, we can't prepare for His burial because death no longer has mastery over Him. He will not die again. He doesn't need to be prepared for burial. That moment has passed. So it's not possible for us to love Jesus specifically the way Mary did.

And yet, as unique as that moment was, it clearly also is, to some degree, a paradigm for lavish worship. It's based on faith. What was she doing? Preparing Him for what? Burial. So I told you, there was one disciple there who took Jesus' word seriously, He's going to die. She maybe didn't fully understand, of course, she didn't fully understand, but she believed that what Jesus said was true and she took Him at face value. Mary was this kind of a woman, she was a contemplative listener, ponderer, she sat at Jesus' feet and listened to His teaching. She took it seriously, that's who she was. Luke 10:42, Jesus said, "Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken from her." That's who she was. So as faith, it was based on Jesus' word.

Secondly, it was loving. She cherished Jesus and sought to honor Him. She poured out this costly perfume out of a heart of love for Him. The beauty of the action was the love that was in her heart. It was lavishly sacrificial, it was costly, costly. Love can always be measured by cost, by sacrifice. No sacrifice, no love. Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends." The greatest gift God has ever given us, God the Father, is the gift of His son. That's the measure of God's love for the earth. God did not spare His own son, but gave Him up for us. That word “spare”, she didn't spare, she didn't hold back, she didn't pour a few drops on Jesus, she poured it out, poured it out.

It recognizes, therefore, the supremacy of Christ above all. Yes, it is right to serve and love the poor, to share the gospel, to do many horizontal acts of kindness to other people, but we are created, first and foremost, for God and for Jesus. If we love anything more than we love God, including poor people, we're not worthy of Him. Jesus demands and deserves our best. That's a picture of worship.

The challenge for us in terms of worship is are you doing what you can? She did what she could, what about you? What's in your hand? What's in your life? Are you living a life of self-denying sacrificial love for Jesus? That's the challenge. That's the challenge.

As I finish my comments, now I want to go back to the beginning. The whole thing's about preparation. The best thing I can hope about all of you who are listening to me today is you are what Romans 9:23 calls, "vessels of mercy prepared in advance for glory." How beautiful is that? God is the potter, we are the clay. Is He preparing you, shaping you for glory? Have you trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins? That's the first direct preparation on a soul to get you ready for heaven. Have you trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins? And if so, then do you see the shaping hands of God in your life preparing you for an eternity in glory? That's a beautiful picture, isn't it?

Close with me in prayer. 

Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study this beautiful text. Father, I pray that you would work in us such a heart of sacrificial love for you, Lord Jesus, that we would hold back nothing, that we would spare nothing, that we would give and give. We are so stingy, Lord. I feel ashamed as I read this account. I feel how stingy I am toward you, how much I hold back from genuinely serving you and loving you. I pray, oh Lord, that there would be no one here listening to this sermon now that's outside of Christ, but that everyone would repent and believe and trust, simply trust in His blood shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, but then, that you would do that beautiful preparatory work in us so that we would be able to give and give and give worship for all eternity. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Jesus urges us to be watchful and prepared for the end of the world when he will return in power and glory. He also tells us to be wise and faithful to what he’s told us to do.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

One of the many ways that we Christians are radically different than non-Christians has to do with the topic of these recent sermons, the second coming of Christ. For us as Christians, we look forward to that day eagerly and energetically yearning for that day. We believe that that day is the remedy to everything that makes this present world so difficult to live in. We believe that someday right in the midst of human history, while people are still marrying and giving in marriage, Christ will return. He will come with the clouds, with the trumpet call of God and the voice of the archangel, and He will break in with great power and the fulfillment of the most common eschatological prayer ever prayed, "May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," will come true at last, and we're yearning for that day.

For non-Christians, if they even think about it at all, it's often a thing of mockery. We think about an individual that would walk around like a crazy person with a sign over his neck saying, "The end is near," this thing in New York City or San Francisco, something like that, often a source of mockery and ridicule. That message, the message that the end is near, that the end is coming soon, is met with derision by unbelievers in this world, but that's how it's always been.

Peter writes about this in 2 Peter 3. First of all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this coming He promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”   Peter goes on and cites a star witness, the experience of Noah in building the ark. The connection that Peter makes there seems to be mockery by people doomed to be swept away. Jesus Himself talked about the heart response of Noah's neighbors during the days when the ark was being built. Matthew 24, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man for in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came. It took them all away. That is how it'll be at the coming of the Son of Man.”  Peter colors in for us the mocking unbelief that Noah had to endure at that time. Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness in an era when Genesis tells us that the hearts of people are only evil all the time. When Jesus returns, it's going to be the same way. Wickedness will have greatly increased, people will be murderously hateful toward each other, generally, but especially toward preachers of righteousness who urge people that the end is near and that they should flee the wrath to come.  

"When Jesus returns, it's going to be the same way. Wickedness will have greatly increased, people will be murderously hateful toward each other, generally, but especially toward preachers of righteousness who urge people that the end is near and that they should flee the wrath to come."

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This morning, we conclude Mark's account of Jesus's words about how we should prepare for the end of the world, how we should be ready for the second coming of Christ when Christ returns in power and glory. We will see that Jesus will urge us to be continually watchful and on guard for that day.

When I was doing Bible study recently in the Gospel of Matthew, we went through Matthew 24 and 25, which has a lot more information than Mark gives us about these themes.  In Matthew 24:44, it says, "So you also must be ready," and then it goes on from that in that verse. Then verse 45 in Matthew 24 says, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant?" I circled the words “be ready” and then the word “faithful.” Be ready and be faithful. Then I noticed that the parables in chapter 25 line up perfectly with that. You've got the 10 virgins, five wise and five foolish. If you look at that lesson, it's all about being ready. If you're only partially ready for the second coming of Christ, you'll be eternally excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Then the parable of the talents, the five talents, the two talents, the one talent is all about being faithful with what's entrusted to you. Be faithful. That's the exhortation that I take as I go to Mark 13 as well.

Let's look at the context in Mark and also in Matthew. I have my eye on Matthew as we understand more aspects. The final week of Jesus' life, Jesus, in Matthew 23, has had a climactic prophetic encounter with the Jewish religious leaders of His day. The sevenfold woe to them, "Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites," and they were evil at many, many levels. They were whitewashed tombs, which looked beautiful on the outside but inside full of dead men's bones and everything unclean, but their greatest crime of all was they did not recognize the time of God coming to them in the person of His son. They hated Jesus.  They were not sons of Abraham because if they had been sons of Abraham, they would've loved Him, but instead they hated Him and they opposed Him and they would soon condemn Him to death, and so Jesus utters a sevenfold woe on them and culminates in the statement, "Behold, your house is left to you desolate." The emptiness of the house, meaning the nation of Israel generally, but specifically the temple, the emptiness of the temple was underscored when Jesus Himself left, "For you will not see Me again." That is the essence of their desolation, their emptiness as He goes out. At that moment, the disciples come up to Him, calling His attention to its buildings, "Look, Teacher, what magnificent stones, what incredible buildings." Then Jesus drops that bombshell on them, "I tell you the truth. Not one stone here will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down, blew them away."  So they come to Jesus on the Mount of Olives, and they ask for insight. Peter, John, James, and Andrew, the inner circle apostles, wanted to know His explanation for that statement. In Matthew 24:3, threefold question, "Tell us when will these things happen," namely the destruction of the temple, "and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" With the more elaborate answer in Matthew 24, the Mount of Olives discourse, and then the more truncated answer, Mark 13, as we harmonize, the interweaving of those themes is complex. 

I've received actually numerous emails from people who are very interested in this topic, and I'm going to keep preaching what I'm preaching, but I'm stimulated by your insights on eschatology. I think it's a deep topic, but weaving together the significant event of the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and then the issues of the end of the world and how that's coming. For us, the destruction of the temple is behind us. It's only a matter of historical interest, but also theological interest because of the significance of the Jews, but we're like, "Is there something for us to do here?" and the answer is, "Yes, there is," not just in this one teaching in Mark 13 or even in Matthew 24 and 25. It's pretty clear Jesus is expanding beyond just the destruction of the temple. He's saying we need to be ready for the end of the world, and we need to be faithful between now and then. That's what we're dealing with, the complex interweaving of these themes.

A key interpretive theme for me has been “as it was, so it'll be, as it was in the days of Noah, so it'll be at the coming of the son of man,” we see this recapitulation. Some things happen and then they happen again and again, but also, we see the uniqueness of that final day, celestial portent, things that actual happen so that there will be in fact a new heavens and a new earth, the elements melting in the heat as Peter tells us. So all of these things are huge. 

Now, specifically there's a general movement or progress between the first and second coming of Christ. There's going to be difficulty on planet Earth that's not unique to any one generation. There's going to be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places. There's going to be persecution. You'll be delivered over to councils and you'll be brought before authorities, et cetera, but they are going to be witnesses to Him in every generation and the gospel of the King will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

So whereas those signs of wars, rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes are no specific indication of anything other than the beginning of birth pains, the progress of the gospel from Jerusalem through Judea Samaria to the ends of the earth is measurable. The spread of the gospel is measurable. It's much further out than it was a week or a month after the day of Pentecost. The spread of the gospel is measurable. and we can see the progress between the first and second coming, but then Jesus zeroes in on specific events tied to a moment in history, namely the abomination of desolation teaching. It's not true of everybody at all time. It's not true of everybody all over the world, but those living in Judea, when they see the abomination that causes desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand, then run for your lives.

That teaches an important hermeneutical principle with eschatology. Bible interpretation concerning the end of the world is a right combination of Bible interpretation and current events. That's what you match together. That's the lesson of the fig tree. When you see events happening that line up with things you see in the Bible, then you'll know, then you'll know. So we move ahead.

Now, the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem required specific actions by Jesus' disciples. Get out of the city of Jerusalem, counterintuitive; don’t go into the walled citadel. Get away from it. Run away from it to the mountains and hills. So also the events surrounding, I believe, the final version of the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel. Also very important to me is 2 Thessalonians 2 in which Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Christians saying, "The day the Lord cannot come until you see effectively the man of sin and the abomination of desolation fulfilled," almost a direct quotation of Daniel 11. 

Still yet to come, still yet to come.  There's going to be all of this persecution, a time of tribulation unlike any of the world had ever seen from the beginning of the world until that point and never seen again. I believe then in His kindness, the Lord has given through the Holy Spirit more signs than just in Matthew 24 and also in Mark 13 and in Daniel, but the whole book of Revelation is given to tell His servants what must soon take place. We're told in Revelation, "Blessed are those who read and take to heart the things that are written there." So for me as a preacher of the whole Bible, I want to harmonize that but then plug it into what we're saying when you see these signs. In Revelation 8, we have ecological disasters that have never happen before ever. A third of the ocean turning the blood, a third of the drinking water fouled, that's never happened. Burning up of trees and grass, that's never happened, not to that degree. Ecological destruction, which makes sense theologically, the linking between Adam's sin and the earth producing thorns and thistles, that whole link between human sin and ecological ravaging is fulfilled in the book of Revelation. When you see all of that, plus the man of sin, the antichrist, the beast from the sea, the one world government that openly described in Revelation 13, then you'll know.   All of those marks that leads to the second coming described in Mark 13:24-27, "In those days following that distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time, men will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory and He'll send his angels and gather His elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens."

That's second coming described in language from Isaiah 13, which if you read Isaiah 13, we are not sure if it’s talking about the fall of Babylon there or, frankly, the end of the world. Isaiah's vision was immediate and then out to the end, very complex, but we know from the book of 2 Peter, and we also know from Jesus' statement, heaven and earth are going to pass away, so that includes the sun, the moon, and the stars. I can well imagine that that would happen at the time of the second coming and the angels being sent out to gather the Elect. We're going to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air when He comes with His armies in heaven, the second coming. 

Then we're told from last week the lessons of the fig tree. Look at that. When you see these things, you'll know. In the meantime between now and then, suppose you say, "Well, pastor, I don't see those things. I don't see a one world government," don't tell me about some leader whose name all have six letters, the first, middle, and last name. Don't do that. I've heard that before. Ronald Wilson Reagan, he was the antichrist. he’s dead. He's clearly not the antichrist. People do that, and I understand that. They want to calculate the number of the beasts and they want to figure all that and that shrewdness and discern. It's like, "Look, you're not going to miss it. We're talking about globe-shattering events described in the Book of Revelation. That's what we're talking about. You're not going to wonder." 

I. No One Knows That Day or Hour

So between now and then, what? In the language of Matthew, it's be ready, be faithful. A different way that Mark says in Jesus' words in Mark is “be watchful.”  I think that's similar to being ready. It begins with Jesus' statement here, "No one knows about that day or hour." Look at verse 32, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Vigilance is needed because we don't know the day or hour. That's the logic in Jesus' mind, "Because you don't know you need to be ready and watchful." Verse 35, "Therefore keep watch because you don't know when the owner of the house will come back." That's His logic. 

God's will in this matter is to conceal this information, He’s hiding it. Being in the dark is not an accident here. It's not like God couldn't have told us. If it would've been better for us to know, He would've told us. He could easily. He's told us many detailed overwhelming things about the future in the book of Revelation and other places, a lot of things we know. He could have given us a specific date and time and other milestones if He wanted to leading up to the exact time of the second coming of Christ, but God felt it best to keep His people in the dark. 

He wanted us to be ready and to be faithful in every generation. The parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins implies a long intervening period where everyone falls asleep. The sleep of the virgins isn't necessarily sinful, it just implies a long time, perhaps even death at that point depending on how you read the parable. Fundamentally, He doesn't want His servants being selfish and lustful like in Matthew 24, "Suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master's staying away a long time,' and then he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards." So to not be like that, he's keeping us in the dark. We don't know, so we need to be ready, every generation. Concerning the exact day or hour, a humble servant would say what we learned to say in Deuteronomy 29:29, which is, "The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to the children forever." So we need to let God keep secret what He wants to keep secret and then understand what He has revealed. 

Secondly, Jesus says, "The angels don't know either. No one knows about that hour, not even the angels in heaven." Angels are created beings or creatures, they're servants of God. The angels in heaven are pure beings, perfect with perfect minds, but they are creatures limited in their knowledge. Angels can learn things, there are things angels don't know. This text openly says that the angels don't know this. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1:12, "Even angels long to look into these things," these things having to do with redemptive history, having to do with the unfolding plan of God. Even angels long to look into these things. One of the best examples of angelic inquiry into these things, specifically the timing of the second coming is in Daniel 12:6. One of them, definitely an angelic being, one of them said to the man clothed in linen who was above the waters of the river, another angelic being, "How long will it be before these astonishing things are fulfilled?" That's where we get in that chapter a countdown of days, which I'll cover later in the sermon, but all I'm saying is at that moment in Daniel 12:6, one angel's asking another angel, "How long will it be?" They don't know and they're inquiring.  The angels are tracking the progress of the spread of the gospel. Jesus said in Luke 15 about the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, the prodigal son. In all three cases, there's a search for what's lost, a finding of what's lost, and then a big celebration. Jesus said in Luke 15:10, "There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." That means that God is rejoicing in the presence of His angels and they most certainly must be rejoicing with Him over the progress of the gospel every single day of redemptive history. Think about that. Just one party after another up in heaven as people are saved by the gospel, how exciting is that? They're just celebrating, but they're tracking. 

Also in the book of Revelation, don't you see the angels are tracking the unfolding judgments on the earth? They're reacting to what's happening and they're rejoicing in what's happening, and they're vindicating God in what's happening. They're tracking, they're involved. "They don't know the exact day or hour," Jesus said. Most amazingly of all in this statement is Jesus' statement that He didn't know as the Son. Now, that's mind blowing, but it's okay. We should understand the doctrine of the incarnation is infinite in its depth and majesty and magnitude. We'll spend eternity trying to understand the incarnation, trying to understand the complexity of Jesus fully God and fully man and the willing limitations He took on Himself to become a human. For example, though God is omnipresent, Jesus in His body wasn't. He was only one place at one time, and so He willingly limited Himself there. So also, though God is omniscient, it is very important we understand that Jesus limited His knowledge and therefore didn't know some things, like here, and could learn things. God has never learned anything and ever will. Now, that's mind blowing it, isn't it? 

Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? God never has had a new thought ever. God's never had an aha moment, never. God already knew it, but Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor of God of Man. When He was a young boy in His parents' home, He learned, He grew. Then there's moments where the best interpretation, I think, of the woman with the bleeding problem touching Him and Jesus stops and says, "Who touched me?" "What do you mean who touched you?" everybody said. "No, no, no, someone touched me because power has gone through me." The best explanation of that is that He didn't know who touched Him. Here at least we don't have to wonder. He says He didn't know, He openly says there's a limitation of that. When we get to Gethsemane in a couple of weeks, I think that's also what's going on there too. We'll get to that. I don't want to steal thunder from that, but I believe there is a revelation of what it'll be like to drink the cup of God's wrath that knocked Jesus to the ground. So there is that ability that Jesus has in His incarnation to learn things and to not know things. 

Jesus had supernatural knowledge. He was reading people's minds. He knew things distant and remote like the Syrophoenician woman's demon possessed daughter. The demon has gone. How do you know that he's gone? Supernatural knowledge but still limitations. We believe also that when He ascended, He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, when He got all of His glory back with the Father, that includes omniscience. He says in John 17:5, "And now, Father, glorify Me with the glory I had with You before the creation of the world." So we believe that Jesus knows right now everything there is to know. In Christ are hidden all the treasures, wisdom, and knowledge. He knows everything. That therefore is an important interpretive key on asking the next question. Did Jesus say here about that day or hour no one knows or ever will know? He doesn't say that. We know already He's exempt from the second half. No one knows, present tense, or ever will know. We know that's not true of Him.  Most scholars believe that this statement means no one on earth can ever know the exact day of Jesus' return. That's not what the verse says. It is possible that that is true, but it's not what that verse says. We know already Jesus is exempt from it. 

By the way, such expressions do exist in the Bible. For example, 1 Timothy 6:16, it says, "God alone is immortal, dwells in unapproachable light," listen, "whom no one has seen or can see." So there's an absolute statement of limitation.   So we could imagine, no one can know, no one does know, and no one can ever know the exact day or hour. Therefore, when I go back to Daniel 12 and the angel answering the other angel's question, "When will all this happen?" and he gives an answer in a countdown of days, I find that interesting. "From the time," this is Daniel 12:11-12, "From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there'll be 1,290 days. Blessed and holy or blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days." I've said this to you many times before. What is that? What is Daniel 12:11-12? Could it be that knowing the exact day of the Lord's return is on a need to know basis? If you need to know, you'll know. If you see the abomination of desolation, the final version set up and you're running for your life and you're hiding in a cave somewhere and you're counting down the days of which Jesus said, if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. He may want you to know how many more days of this we're going to have to go through. Maybe, maybe not, but either way, it's at least possible. So I can tell you this, it's on a need to know basis and, apparently, you don't need to know, so you don't know and neither do I. 

II. Be On Guard! Be Alert!

What does He exhort us to do? Then “be on guard and be alert” or in the language of Matthew, “be ready.” Be ready. Verse 33, "Be on guard. Be alert. You do not know when that time will come." Verse 35, "Therefore keep watch because you do not know." Verse 37, "What I say to you, I say to everyone. Watch." So be watchful for the Lord's coming. This watchfulness is essentially positive. We want this to happen. In the common language, we're looking forward to this. Like a little kid looking forward to his or her birthday, we're looking forward to this. We want it to happen. We're expectant for this.  Revelation 22:20, "He who testifies to these things that Jesus says, 'Yes, I am coming soon,'" and then John answers from his heart, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." Come, Lord Jesus, we want that to happen. We're taught to long for that moment. 2 Timothy 4:7-8, 4:7,-8, “'I've fought the good fight,’" Paul says, “'I've finished the race. I've kept the faith. Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day and not only to me, but to all who have longed for His appearing.'" 

Isn't that a biblical urging for us to long for the appearing of Christ, longing for it? Earlier in that same chapter, Paul taught Timothy to do all of his ministry in light of the second coming. 2 Timothy 4:1-2, "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who will judge the living and the dead and in view of His appearing and His kingdom," appearing as Parousia, "He's appearing in his kingdom, I give you this charge. Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction." So for me as a pastor, it's like I should be doing my ministry constantly in light of the second coming of Christ, aware of it. Four times in Mark, Jesus tells us to watch, be on guard for the coming of the Lord.

 Now, this expectancy shapes the way we live our entire lives. It shapes us negatively to be on guard for the dangers to our faith. We're supposed to be on guard and be defensive, in a defensive mode about the onslaught. The enemy's coming. We are in danger of our sin. The idea is we want to be healthy in our faith when Jesus comes, so we won't be ashamed as John tells us, to be holy and healthy in our faith so we will not be ashamed when He comes. Jonathan Edwards, one of his resolutions when he was 19 years old, he said, "Resolved to never be doing anything that I would be ashamed to be found doing when the Lord came in the final hour." Wow. You don't know, so don't be doing something you don't want to be ashamed doing when He returns or as Jesus says in Luke 21:34-36, "Be careful or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness in the anxieties of life, and that day will close upon you unexpectedly like a trap." You didn't see it coming. You forgot about the second coming and you went off into sin, you went off into worldliness, you went off into lust, and suddenly the day came and you didn't see it coming.

Four, it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. That's not just the fall of Jerusalem, dear friends, that’s the whole world. We need to be ready for an event that's coming on the entire face of the earth. Be always on the watch and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man, that you'll have to stand before Him unashamed of how you were living when He came. The lazy and lustful servant in Matthew 24 is shocked when his master comes unexpectedly. Matthew 24:48-51, "Suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master's staying away a long time,' and then he begins to beat his fellow servants into eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and an hour he's not aware of. He'll cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

We have to watch over our own souls, our doctrine, very carefully to be ready for the second coming of Christ. That trial will come at the end of the world and it'll be the greatest hour of testing that believers have ever had to go through in all of redemptive history. It's going to be very hard those last days, so be ready, be watchful.  

III. Be Faithful While You Watch

Then he says also, "Be faithful." Look at verses 34 through 37. It's like a man going away. "He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore, keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back, whether in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone. Watch." 

The idea of this paragraph is we are given jobs to do in the intervening time. We're given tasks to perform. These are entrusted to us and we need to be faithful doing them. We need to be faithful. Again, as with many parables, there's the concept of the absentee authority figure, the absentee Lord, the absentee owner, the absentee king, the absentee master who entrusts the vineyard or the talents or the household to some servants and goes away. He's not there. You’ve got to be faithful and be aware. Someday the owner of the king is going to come back and settle accounts here and we got to be ready for that. Got to be ready for that. There's a lot of those kinds of parables. 

Note the phrase, each with his assigned task. So you have to ask yourself, "What is my assigned task? Do I have one?" You do. What has the Lord assigned you to do? If you don't know, you better find out. What has He left you here to do? What is your work here on earth? You're not here for no purpose, so each person has specific work assigned to him. I think a key way that the New Testament teaches is the doctrine of spiritual gifts, the doctrine of spiritual gifts taught in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and other places. Romans 12 says, "Each of us has one body just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others." We have different gifts according to the grace given us. So the giving of the spiritual gift comes with a string attached, and the string is accountability to the Lord. You have to find out what your spiritual gift package is and what ministry is tied to it and be faithful doing it.

"We have different gifts according to the grace given us. So the giving of the spiritual gift comes with a string attached, and the string is accountability to the Lord. You have to find out what your spiritual gift package is and what ministry is tied to it and be faithful doing it."

Paul goes on and says, "If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let them encourage. If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is caring for others, let him do it cheerfully." So whatever your role is, do it. That's what Paul's saying, do it. Do your task. He expects us to be faithful. 

That, by the way, again, is the parable of the five talents, the two talents, and the one talent. He entrusts property and He expects you to go out and trade with it and make something of it. He expects you to not be wicked and lazy. 

As Jesus makes plain concerning faithfulness, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Faithful means you did the work the Lord entrusted to you. You stuck with it. You worked at it with all your heart. Wise means you understood the Lord's will and you sought to please Him with your efforts, to do anything else would be foolish. Don't be foolish like the foolish virgins who weren't ready. It's wise or foolish. Who is the faithful and wise servant? That's what he's talking about here. 

The great danger Jesus list here in Mark is sleep. Mark 13:36, "If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping." This is warning specifically about sleep in light of the second coming. This is clearly a sinful sleep. This is not the sleep that the Lord gives graciously to His faithful servants after a hard day's work. Ecclesiastes 5:12 says, "The sleep of a laborer is sweet," or it says in Psalm 4:8, "I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety," or again, the 23rd Psalm, "He makes me lie down in green pastures. He restores my soul." We need that. That's not what it's talking about. This is a sinful sleep.  This is, I believe, the sleep of a spiritual sluggard. You know the sluggard in Proverbs 6:10-11? "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding in the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man." Basically, the sleepiness here is laziness in the spiritual ministries the Lord's given us to do within the church through spiritual gifts and outside of the church through evangelism and missions. That's the work we are called to do. The question is, are we doing it? 

Again, he says, "Watch because you don't know when the Lord is coming," and then he divide the night into four sections, 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. So you go from 6:00 PM, that's night for them, 12-hour segment. So evening ends at 9:00 PM, midnight at 12:00 AM. With the rooster crowing, that's at 3:00 AM and then dawn at 6:00 AM. There's segments of the night. The sense is you get a progression of time and you don't know at any point he could come. You just don't know when he's going to come, and so we need to be alert. 

The dangers here are our own sinfulness and our own wickedness, and also in terms of holiness and then laziness in the harvest, laziness in evangelism and mission. In terms of personal sin, Paul nails it here in Romans 13:11-14. He says, "And do this understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh."

That's what he means by don't be sleepy. It's don't be immoral, don't be wicked, don't be corrupt. Put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. That's Romans 13, but also , it's a matter of laziness in the harvest. Right before Jesus descended to heaven, He went out with his disciples on the Mount of Olives. After His resurrection, after His 40 days of instruction, after all of that, they asked Him, "Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel? He said, “'It's not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.’ After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight.  They were standing looking up into the sky as He was going when two men dressed in white came and stood beside them and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up in the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you've seen Him go into heaven.’" Jesus had already told them what to do, "Wait in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high. The holy spirit's coming." 

Putting all together, those were Jesus' final words to the church. We will be His witnesses to a lost and dying world. That's our work to do. So the question is, are we being faithful or are we being sleepy? It says in Proverbs 10:5, "He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son." There's a harvest going on now. We're told to lift up our eyes and look at the fields that they're white for harvest. We're told the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. There's a harvest going on. The question is, are we gathering crops during harvest time or are we sleeping during the harvest and that's a disgraceful son? The question we have to ask is, "Am I exerting myself to be a witness to lost people?" This is what we're called to do.

One last thing, the doorkeeper and the steward. This specifically relates to me as a pastor, in Mark 13:34, Jesus speaks of a servant being put at the door like as a doorkeeper who gives alerts to the rest of the house. Look at verse 34, "He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch." So that's like me. My job is to keep watch and to shout into the household saying, "The master's coming. The master's coming. He's coming soon. He's coming soon." That's my job. So that's what I'm doing in this sermon, and I've done the last few weeks. My job is to call out to you and tell you these things and keep you ready. 

Also, there's a feeding ministry at the end of Matthew 24, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master is put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time.” Again, that's a pastor's call, "Feed my sheep." So I get to do two things. I get to warn you and I get to feed you, and that's what I'm trying to do in these eschatology sermons. 

IV. Applications

How do we prepare for the end of the world? If I could just boil it down to two things, I think I would just say be ready and be faithful. If you didn't get anything else, that's it. How can you be ready? First, make certain that you're in Christ, that you're one of His and not an enemy of His, that you belong to Jesus through repentance of your sins and faith in Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of your sins.  Listen to this. This is 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10. It speaks of when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with powerful angels. "He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." That's devastating. “He will punish those who do not know God through the gospel of Christ. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power on the day He comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be marveled at among those who have believed. This includes you because you believed our testimony to you.” 

That all comes down to this. Believe the testimony about Jesus and you'll be ready, ultimately ready for the second coming, but beyond that, be ready and be faithful as Christians. Watch over your life in terms of sin. Read Romans 13:11-14 and wake up concerning sinfulness. I think sometimes there's a sleepiness that comes over us and a complacency similar to one of those Tolkien books where a massive spider stings us and wraps us up with sticky web to eat us later. That's like Satan, isn't it? It's a picture of Satan. We get stung and paralyzed and weak and flabby and we're going to get eaten later.  So Romans 13:11-14 says, "Cut through all that, break free, and live in the light, not in the darkness. Give up sexual immorality, give up covetousness and greed and idolatry. Give up those things and live a holy life.” Peter tells us to live a holy life, be ready, and then watch for the second coming constantly. One of the things we do here in this church is we should help each other for that day. We should help each other. 

It says in Hebrews 10:23-25, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward loving good deeds. Not neglecting meeting together is somewhere in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching." That is second coming language, isn't it? As we see the day approaching, we should encourage each other to do good works. A healthy church will do that. Be part of a healthy church, which exhorts and encourages one another toward love and good deeds. 

Finally, be active in the harvest. We're surrounded by lostness. Statistics estimate show that Durham is going to double in population the next 25 years, up to estimates of 450,000 people. That's an additional 200,000 to 225,000 people living right within this vicinity. I would say the overwhelming, if it's our entire nation, the overwhelming majority of those people flooding into this area will be unchurched. They'll be lost. They'll be without hope and without God in the world. Our responsibility is to strategize how we can meet them and share the gospel with them, get to know them, and draw them in. Let's be faithful in that harvest.

Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank You for the clarity of Your word. We thank You for how You tell us enough to know, enough to go on, Lord, how we should be living our lives. We don't know the day or the hour, but we do know that You are coming, You will return and that we should be ready and be faithful. So I pray that You would enable us to do that. Help us to be faithful in the tasks You've given us to do. Help us to think continually about the second coming and exhort one another and provoke one another to loving good deeds. Help us to be bold in evangelism and creative. Help us to get outside of our bubble of safety and take risks and be willing to meet people and have conversations and share the gospel. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

As we look ahead to Christ's second coming, all we have is the permanence of his words recorded in Scripture.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

In this world that we're living in, it's right for us to ask what is permanent and what is temporary. This is a world of constant change. The older you get, the more you see that. Things just fade away, pass away. We've had significant events even in our culture with 9/11 in which the Twin Towers just melted away in a matter of hours and gone forever, or we also saw in the pandemic a number of businesses or patterns of life that ended, and we had a sense of the fragility of our life and of our society. I feel the older I get, the more I see how temporal is everything around me. What is permanent? One answer commonly given is the ground beneath our feet is permanent. It says in Psalm 104:5, "God set the earth on its foundations. It can never be moved." But my family and I had the experience when we were missionaries in Japan of an earthquake. It's something most people don't actually live through, but I felt the ground beneath my feet shaking. I felt the entire house we were living in shaking.  We were not at the epicenter, but we weren't far from it. The epicenter was in Awaji Island just off the coast of the major city of Kobe, 7.3 on the Richter scale, resulting in over 6,000 deaths in the city of Kobe. It was a devastating earthquake. The elevated Hanshin Expressway, which is a technological marvel, toppled over. Reinforced concrete and all that just fell over because the ground on which it was supported, cracked open. A number of months later, my family and I went to Kobe and we saw the rift or one of the rifts in the ground.  There were still some tremors and aftershocks months later. We also saw some very sobering sites. As I walked around with my brother-in-law, Bill, we saw huge piles of rubble that, of course, still hadn't been cleared away.  I saw one particular office building, a six-story, very modern office building, a steel and glass structure in which one of the floors had collapsed, the fourth floor; it went from three to five and that floor just collapsed. It was gone, some kind of structural weakness there. It was strange because you could see the Venetian blind sticking out, straight out from that now missing floor, and the entire building was slanted over about 20 degrees.

Earthquakes are terrifying because they're a sign of impermanence of even the ground beneath our feet. In our text today, Jesus spoke of the impermanence of every created thing in the universe, but He also spoke of the one permanent thing on which we can build our lives and our souls. Look at verse 31, Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." That's an incredible statement. What is a word? What is that?  It seems like the most evanescent temporary thing they could ever be. It's a sound that goes out into the air like the whisper of the wind that floats through the air and then it disappears like faint echo in a cavern. It seems like nothing could be more fleeting, more temporary, more of a shadow of reality, more like nothing than a word. For many of us, words are the very picture of impermanent, something that lasts only as long as it causes the eardrum to vibrate. But Jesus said His words will last forever and heaven and earth won't. 

The context of this statement couldn't be more dramatic and more powerful. Jesus has predicted the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem to His disciples. Verse 2, "Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one of them will be thrown down." But Jesus is saying in Verse 31, "Not just the temple, not just the city of Jerusalem, everything you see with your eyes is temporary.”  The disciples when they heard of the prediction of the destruction came to Him on the Mount of Olives and asked Him that three-part question. "Tell us when will this happen? What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? What are the signs by which we can see that final day approaching?”

By this time in Mark as we're walking through Mark 13, Jesus has already traced out some amazing aspects of the future. In verses 5-13 of Mark 13, He describes in general, but striking terms, how life in this sin-cursed world will progress between the First and Second Comings of Christ, "There will be wars and rumors or wars," and He said, "famines and indeed earthquakes in various places." There would also be the special and ongoing vicious persecution of the church. They'll be brought before tribunals and they would suffer in their witness concerning Him. There would also be a constant and escalating apostasy of believers, of people that claim to be believers, under the pressure of that persecution. Therefore, the call, he who stands firm to the end will be saved, the need for perseverance.

But more than anything, the measurable sign of the progress between the First and Second Coming is the preaching of the gospel in all nations, a testimony in all nations. We can see measurable progress being made between the First and Second Coming of the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Then He turns the corner in Mark 13 and gives us the special “abomination of desolation” teaching. That's something that's unique to that specific generation. Indeed, I argued, to the final generation as well, “abomination of desolation." First the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. Then I believe the foretelling “as it was, so it will be.” As it was, so it'll be at the end of the antichrist setting himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God [2 Thessalonians 2]. At that time, both in the year, but then again, at the end of the world, the need to run for your lives, the tremendous urgency of Christians who run for their lives.

Then as we saw last week, the description of the actual Second Coming. Look at verses 24-27, "In those days following that distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time, men will see the sun of man coming in clouds with great power and glory, and He will send His angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens." We looked at that last week. Now the sending out of the angels to gather the Elect is what's commonly known as the Rapture, the rescue of the Elect from the surface of the earth to be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. 1 Thessalonians 1 teases that very, very plainly. The things that the Jews thought were permanent, the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, Jesus revealed actually were going to be destroyed, "Not one stone left on another."

Jesus's disciples were stunned and they wanted to ask more questions. When would it happen and what signs can we see as it approaches? That's what we're going to look at today. Then deeper, I think the question is, "If all of this is impermanent, what is permanent? What can I build my life on that won't move? What can I establish my life and my soul on that will not be cast away?" He answers that, and He gives the sense of when this will happen. The answer He gives for the rest of this discourse, both in Mark 13, but even in more detail in Matthew 24:25, "Look for the signs for these things that happen.” Add up those signs. "Know that the Lord will come," it says, "like a thief in the night, suddenly and unexpectedly." So you need to be ready at any moment. You need to be ready and be faithful. 

But concerning what's permanent, what can I build my life upon? The unifying theme of this sermon today is the word of Christ. The word of Christ, the trustworthiness of Christ's words.  We're going to look at aspects of the words of Christ. It's clarity, it's immediacy, it's difficulty, and then it's permanence. In the end, all we have as we look ahead to the Second Coming of Christ is this. We have the words of scripture and no other source of information. It's going to come from here, it'll come from nowhere else. Everything comes down in the end to Christ's word. 

I. Clarity: The Parable of the Fig Tree

Let's start initially with clarity, the clarity of Christ's words, and the fact that we will be able to perceive certain things if we understand both the Scripture and the signs of the times. With eschatology, it's a combination of the two. We're going to see in the Scripture specific things laid out. We've already seen them, but we're going to keep seeing them, and then we're going to see current events. He said, "When you see the ‘abomination of desolation’, when you see that, put it together, you'll know what to do." To get at this clarity, He gives a parable, the parable of the fig tree.

Look at verse 28-29 and learn this lesson from the fig tree. "As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near right at the door." Jesus gives this parable of the fig tree. A parable is a common everyday story that has a spiritual lesson, a spiritual point in which you take common things that we're used to seeing, frequently agricultural, but not always. If you have the interpretive key, the insider information, it makes everything clear. If you don't, it makes things worse. Jesus told His disciples that they were the insiders, and He said in Mark 4:11, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but not to them. To those on the outside, they get everything in parables." What He means there is unexplained parables, parables don't make any sense if you don't get the interpretive key if you don't have them.  I've said before, all you have to do is just go to some public place, like a mall, whatever, and go up and just tell them one of Jesus' parables with no explanation and see what they say. If they're not a church person, not a Christian, they will look at you like you're nuts, and that's the way it is with parables. It doesn't make anything clear if you don't understand it. But if you understand it, it makes everything clear.

So we have this parable of the fig tree. The thing with all of Jesus's agricultural parables in particular is it takes time to develop. You get a seed planted and then it springs up and grows and develops. You got this idea of patience and of things developing and growing. We're familiar with that. The point Jesus makes here with eschatology and end times things, the lesson of the fig tree is just like what happens with the seasons, if you're trying to understand the seasons, you can look at the trees. There's certain trees that bud at certain times and you look at that, and until you see that, you don't think that summer is near, even though you have ridiculous 68 degree weather in the middle of January. What in the world? I came out on Wednesday night, and it was 68, but I didn't think summer was near because I was looking at the trees. I knew I was going to preach this parable, so I figured I'd give that illustration. No, summer's not near, even though it's 68 degrees, just weather's weird because it was 17 degrees a few days before that. But you know as soon as the twigs get tender and its leaves come out, that summer is near. When you see these things, you know that the coming of Christ is imminent. So despite the fact that there's an essential mystery to the timing of the Second Coming, the signs leading up to it mean that we're not in the dark. We can see things developing. We can see things coming.

There needs to be, as I've been saying, a combination of the word of God rightly understood and current events rightly understood when you see those things come together. Jesus says, "When you see all these things, the signs that I've been giving…” Now, of course, there are those vague, nondescript signs. By that I mean they're not unique to any generation or any era such as wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes. That's just a sign that we're not in the new heaven and new earth yet. We're still in the sin era. We're in the misery era. It's just good to know that. Wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes just shows we're in convulsions now, and that's good to know. But then you've got, as I said, that measurable progress of the gospel in Mark 13:10, "The gospel preached in the whole world as a testament in all nations." That wasn't true a week after Jesus ascended to heaven or a year after Jesus sent to heaven. It had only begun, that process had only begun. But now we've had 20 centuries of progress of the gospel.

Then we've got the teaching and the "abomination of desolation", which we'll walk through what that is, Gentile power—taking a holy space, a sacred space, taking it over, blaspheming, claiming that he's God, demanding the worship as God, all of that stuff predicted in the Book of Daniel — the “abomination of desolation”, and then that whole running for your life, the great tribulation. If those days have not been cut short, no one would survive. We have much more information about this, not just in Matthew 24. There's more detail in Matthew, but even more in the Book of Revelation. If you look at the Book of Revelation, we have the seven seals,  the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls. The Holy Spirit knew very well He was going to give His people subsequent to the time of the apostles, based on their testimony, 66 books, indeed, 27 books in the New Testament, and so there's a division of labor. There's more information than just in Mark 13 here. There's more signs that we can look at in the Book of Revelation.

He knew very well that He was going to inspire John to give us that information. If you go to Revelation 8 and you look at the ecological disasters that are described there that I think, and when I preach through the Book of Revelation, cannot be symbolic of anything. A third of the sea turning to blood and a third of the living creatures in the sea dying and a third of the drinking water on earth, undrinkable, what is that? The green grass burning up, the trees burning up, a third of the trees, burning all that. What is that? Ecological disaster such as the world has never seen. We've never seen anything like that. If you were to argue, "Well, Revelation's a apocalyptic, symbolic book," I can find it. What's it a symbol of? What is a third of the sea turning into blood and a third of the living creatures in the sea dying a symbol of? I think it's going to happen.  I think it's the consummation of the terrible effect of human sin on the ecology of earth, just like happened with Adam's sin and the ground was cursed because of him and it produced thorns and thistles. That's just the end of that journey. So when you see those ecological disasters happening and you see people unable to drink water where they live and you see forming a one-world government and you start seeing a particular leader rising, when you see those things, you know the end is near. I think that's what He's saying. 

Now, the fig tree, some people say the fig tree is Israel. Maybe you've heard that, maybe you haven't. I'm going to spend a lot of time on this. But I remember back in 1988 a former missionary wrote a book, 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988. I sure hope it wasn’t, because I definitely was left behind at that point.  One of his reasons had to do with the formation of the nation of Israel in 1948, May 14, 1948, and that within one generation 40 years after that, the end would come. Pastor Chuck Smith preached this kind of thing as well, so there's a number of people. I don't look at that it's been a lot more than one generation since Israel was formed in 1948. It's been 76 years. However, I do think it is right for us to combine current events and scripture and look at that. That's what I think the idea is of the budding of the fig tree. 

II. Immediacy:  Near…Right at the Door

Secondly, the immediacy of the word of God. He says “it's right at the door, it's near, right at the door.” Verse 29, "Even so when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door." What is near? His coming. The Second Coming is near.  There will be believers on earth, Bible believers filled with the Spirit who will know that the end is near, it's imminent because they see these things, but it hasn't happened yet. That's the sense of immediacy of something that hasn't happened yet because we believe that the Bible is a supernatural book and does, in fact, predict the future. We believe in the predictions of the future. We've seen the track record of prophecy, things that were predicted and have now been fulfilled, and we're waiting for unfulfilled things yet to come, such as the Second Coming. There is a sense of the immediacy of an event that hasn't come yet, but based on the word of God, for us, it's immediate. We know it's coming. As it says in another place, we're not in the dark, so this day shouldn't surprise us, we've been instructed. You're being instructed right now. You've been instructed before, and so you hear this. It's a sense of immediacy, and that's important.  But I want to say something more than this. I don't think I'm spiritualizing by saying this. There's another sense of immediacy which is important for me. There is by faith in the Word of God the ability to have an immediate encounter with invisible spiritual realities by faith. We are able to come right into the presence of an invisible God by the ministry of the Word. We are able to have a sense of an invisible God speaking directly to us by the Word of God. This is vital. This is the immediacy of the word. It's how we have a relationship with Jesus Christ.  It is by His Word, by His Spirit that we have that relational immediacy. I thought about verses that teach, probably the strongest for me, that teach us is in Hebrews 3 where the author to Hebrews in verse 9, quoting a very old scripture, Psalm 95, introduces it with these words: "So as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your hearts." 

"We believe that the Bible is a supernatural book and does, in fact, predict the future. We believe in the predictions of the future. We've seen the track record of prophecy, things that were predicted and have now been fulfilled, and we're waiting for unfulfilled things yet to come, such as the Second Coming."

Do you realize the importance of that statement? Let me intensify the present tense. As the Holy Spirit is saying right now in Psalm 95, "Today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your hearts." That makes even the most ancient Psalm written 1000 years before Christ, alive, it's living and active for us. The Holy Spirit is saying something to us right now, and what is He saying? "If you hear Me speaking in the word, don't harden your heart." Speaking about what? Anything the Spirit is speaking in the Word. Don't harden your heart but yield to it. That's a sense of the immediacy of the Word of God. 

Then with the idea of a door, look at verse 29, "Even so when you see these things happening, you know that it is near right at the door," meaning the door hasn't opened yet. Christ hasn't come yet, but He's at the door. It made me think about Revelation 3:20, which is a very powerful verse. In Revelation 3:20, Christ says this, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.”  O. Hallesby, in his book Prayer, made that the central text of a healthy prayer life. We frequently hear Revelation 3:20 connected with evangelism; Christ knocking on the door of your heart and that's fine. I don't have a problem with that, but I think it would be wrong for even mature Christians to cast aside the power of that verse. Jesus is knocking at the door, He wants you to open it and He wants to have a meal with you. He wants to sit down and eat with you and you with Him. The redoubling of the language says this is an intense, intimate relationship we have with Christ through the ministry of the word. What I get, putting all this together is, I can and should experience the Second Coming day now by faith, even though I know it can't come imminently. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But I should experience now by faith, reading the word of God, rightly dividing it, what that day will be like. The final day of human history, and I should experience that right now. That's the immediacy of the word of God.

Now what do I mean by saying it can't happen today? You've been listening to what I've said about Revelation 8. Do you see the ocean, a third of the ocean turning to blood and a third of the living creatures dying? No. Let’s get very specific. Let's go to 2 Thessalonians 2. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul's writing to the Thessalonians who had a very aggressive and even realized eschatology. They had been lied to. They had been told that they had missed the day of the Lord. Furthermore, reading between the lines with Thessalonians, it seems like some of them weren't working and they had quit their jobs. There wasn't a need to hold down a job because Jesus is coming, like today, and he's pumping the brakes and all that in 2 Thessalonians 2 saying, “Stop! That day cannot occur until X happens." If you rightly divide that, you're like, "All right, I can't think the Second Coming can happen until the events listed in 2 Thessalonians to occur," and that's all the stuff in the “abomination of desolation” sermon. I already preached that.  When you see all that, then you know that box has been checked where it's imminent. You're like, "Pastor, am I supposed to expect the Second Coming any day or not?" Well, yes and no. I told you the word's complex. I'm trying to feel the weight of 2 Thessalonians 2, the “pump the brakes” passage to say it can't happen until the Man of Sin sets himself up in God's temple proclaiming himself to be God. However, I'm not going to trust my own view of Jesus and deny the clear repeated teaching by Jesus that I need to be ready anytime for the Second Coming. Like the five wise and five foolish virgins, I need to be ready now. I need to buy my own now. I need to be ready now. So this much I do know, there is a personal eschatology for you called the day of your death. That's when it all ends for you. Do you know when that day is? You don't.

The same preparation you do for the Second Coming, you have to do for your own death, and since you don't know that day it's going to end up the same. In the end, I'm not going to steal the thunder of sermons yet to come, but it basically comes down to two things with the Second Coming: be ready and be faithful. Be faithful means do the work God has entrusted you to do. Don't quit your jobs. Don't whatever. Farmers need to keep sowing and reaping and they need to keep doing things. We need to keep doing work. We need to keep doing evangelism and church work and all that until that day comes. To be faithful with the job given to us, we also need to be ready. For me as a Bible teacher, I'm already thinking, "I'm not so sure about my eschatology, but I'm sure Jesus is coming back and I'm sure He told me to be ready anytime. That much I do know." That's how I put all of that together. We need to keep watch and be ready at any hour. That's the immediacy of Christ's word.

III. Difficulty: Who Is “This Generation” That Will Not Pass Away?

Thirdly, the difficulty. We already covered some of the difficulty. That was difficult, and there's more difficulty yet to come. Verse 30, "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." Let me read it again. "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." Do you see any difficulty in that verse? It's like, “that's why I'm glad you're the pastor and I'm not." Many of Christ's words are difficult. The scripture's difficult. We don't expect all of it to be easy. Many times He taught, and they didn't understand what He was saying, it happened a lot. Mark 9:32, “they did not understand.” Luke 18:34, “they did not understand.” This is a hotly-debated passage. This is a solemn declaration Jesus gives. The way I approach difficult passages is I talk about things that cannot be the answer. I actually identify them and say, "It can't be this, it can't be this, it can't be this." I think it's helpful.

The word “generation” in this verse cannot refer to the human race generally. In other words, "The human race will not be extinct before I come back." What's the point in saying that? That's good to know. It tells you nothing. Neither does it mean that the church would not be extinct before He comes back. We'll set that aside. Here's another thing that it seems like it does mean, but it doesn't. The generation of people who are alive right now when I'm speaking these words will still be alive when all of the events I've just described such as the sun, the moon and the stars ending, and Jesus coming in the clouds with power and great glory and all the angels sent out, that is not what that means. How do I know that? Because it didn't happen. That would mean that Jesus was wrong. So can we all agree to not do that because if Jesus is wrong about that, there's no point in guessing at where He is wrong somewhere else. This is the doctrine of an errancy. There's no mistake here.

Now what do we do? We try to come up with the best description of what this could mean. Even though you don't feel great about it, you end up saying, "I'm going to move on," and I've done my best to explain this verse. I'm not throwing out an errancy, and I'm certainly not throwing out the Bible, just because I can't fully understand every aspect of it. There are some reasonable explanations. The first is that Jesus is really only speaking about the fall of Jerusalem at this point and saying at this point in verse 30, "The not one stone left on another, the destruction of the temple and indeed of the city of Jerusalem will happen within one generation of this present moment," and that is true. That is a significant prophecy actually if you think about it. It is a significant prophecy. Jerusalem went centuries between being sacked, so that validates you as a prophet if that's what He meant, that the destruction of Jerusalem would be within one generation, and it was.

In support of that approach, that's the most common use of the word “generation,” like the people alive today, people alive within this room. That makes you feel good about the word “generation”, and then you're like, "All right." The problem is the full statement. Look again at verse 30, "I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until," what? "All these things have happened." All what things? We'll go back a few verses or remember last week's sermon, it's like, all that? That didn't happen. That's the very thing that didn't happen. What do you do with the phrase all these things? That's a challenge. "The sun will be dark and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken, and at that time, men will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory." That's hard.

Another possibility is that the word “generation” is mistranslated and it could refer to this race.  He's specifically talking about the Jewish people, and that's another conservative interpretation of this, that the Jews will not become extinct before the end of the world. It fits the context because obviously the Romans came in with a great intention of slaughter and they killed, Josephus tells us, over a million-and-a half Jews by the edge of the sword. There was a rage that went to heaven when they pulled down every stone one from another. They would've loved to obliterate the Jewish race at that point, and this is actually no small promise on Jesus' part. The Jews have been consistently hated in every generation. Again and again, there has been anti-Semitism and genocidal attacks on the Jewish people, right in the Bible, the Book of Esther, remember? Haman, that was a plot of genocide to exterminate the Jews entirely from the Persian Empire, and God averted it. There's long history, and I've laid out here in my sermon, the crusaders that were anti-Semitic and sought to wipe out the Jews, first crusade, 1096.

During Black Death, the Jews were blamed for the Black Death, and there were tremendous reprisals on the Jewish people. Muslims consistently wiped out communities of Jews in various lands, in Morocco in the 8th century, in North Africa in the 12th century, Tunisia, Libya, other place in the 16th, 17th century. Moorish Spain saw a terrible massacre of Jews in Grenada, 1066. In Czarist Russia in the 19th century, there were terrible attempts at genocide in Russia. The story “Fiddler on the Roof” has that as one of its significant themes. The 20th century, of course, saw the greatest most organized attack on the Jews of all time under the Nazis, and then later, again, under the Communists, the Holocaust from the Nazis, and then the Communists. Therefore, Jesus' prediction that Jews would not be exterminated is amazing, and also that they would not be absorbed into the surrounding Gentile world as many peoples have.

People become extinct, like the Last of the Mohicans, they're out. Moabites and Amorites, they're gone. We don't know where they are, maybe some people who have great, great, great ancestors who were Ammonites or Moabites, but we don't know them as such. Those peoples are gone, but the Jews are still here. I believe Romans 9 through 11 teaches why, because God's gifts and his purposes toward them are irrevocable. He has a final chapter to tell. I believe when it says in Romans 11, "All Israel will be saved," He's talking about that final generation of Jews. There's going to be a mass revival. The deliverable will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob, "And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins." That's going to be a tremendous final act of redemptive history, so I think that's what it means.

IV. Eternity: Christ’s Words More Permanent Than the Universe

Let's move on to eternity.  In verse 31-32 Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." First of all, Jesus asserts that this physical universe itself is temporary. The physical universe is temporary and many verses assert this. Hebrews 1:10-12 says, "In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens of the work of Your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe, like a garment, they will be changed, but you'll remain the same and your years will never end.” 2 Peter 3:10 says, "The day the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare." There is nothing you see with your eyes or hear with your ears, you touch with your hands, nothing physical in the universe is eternal. The physical universe will someday pass away.

But the second half of the statement, even more amazing, "Christ's words will never pass away.” Christ's words are eternal. They will last forever. In the new heavens and the new earth, Christ's words will be established and will be delighted in and celebrated and studied forever. We'll be feeding on them and resting on them and relying on them and pondering them, probing their depths forever. You must see this as a claim to deity. Only God, Almighty God could make such a statement, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words, the words I speak will last forever." This is the very statement Jesus had made about the Old Testament, the laws of Moses and the prophets. He said in Matthew 5, "Do not think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished."

God's Word, the Old Testament and New Testament, is eternal. It's eternal. He's equating His own words to the words of the Bible. This assertion has proven true so far, and it reaches beyond the end of the world. Christ's word will stand forever as Isaiah 40:8 says, "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." Let me say something, it's not in my sermon, but I want to mention it. About the earth, I do not believe that the new earth will be created “ex nihilo”, “out of nothing”. I believe it will be this present earth, but in some sense, resurrected. I think there must be a continuity between the present earth and the new earth or else the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 13, "Walk through the land, go through the breadth of it. Look and see, I will give this land to you, Abraham, and to your descendants forever." That promise would be null and void. It didn't happen.  Hebrews 11 said they died not having received the promise. There's an outstanding promise of the land still made to the patriarchs. I believe that the new earth will be this earth resurrected, just like Abraham's new body will be his old body resurrected, so there's continuity and difference. That's what I believe about the earth. 

"God's Word, the Old Testament and New Testament, is eternal. It's eternal. He's equating His own words to the words of the Bible. This assertion has proven true so far, and it reaches beyond the end of the world."

The purpose of Jesus' assertion is our faith and confidence. The most intensely wrenching circumstances in human history are described in this chapter, horrendous suffering, famines, earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars, attacks on the church, destruction of Jerusalem, a tribulation so great that no one would survive if those days that not been cut short. The events are so immense and so stupendous even to the shaking of the heavenly beings at the return of Christ, all of this tends to make us say, "Where can I stand? Where can I put my feet that won't move?" The answer is the word of God. Trust in the words of Christ. Rest securely on the foundation. 

V. Application

That's the application I'm taking from this. Let's rest securely on the word of God, first and foremost, for your own salvation. In John 5:24 Jesus said, "Whoever hears my words and believes him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He's crossed over from death to life." What a beautiful statement that is. Has that happened to you? Have you heard Christ's words about your sinfulness, your violation of the laws of God, the corruption that comes up from your inner nature that defiles you and all of us, the ways you violated God's commands, the fact that there is no remedy, no works that could ever be done, but that Jesus came to give His life as a ransom for many and that if we believe our sins will be forgiven, like the paralyzed man?  When He saw their faith, He said, "Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven." Has that happened to you? If Jesus declares, your sins are forgiven, they are forgiven. The question is, has that happened to you? The foundation of your life, the word of God. 

Concerning the clarity, immediacy, difficulty, and eternity of God's word, first clarity. Come to Christ, trust in Him and then He will give you the Holy Spirit to illuminate the word of God, and it will become increasingly clear to you by the power of the Spirit as you study it, clarity. 

What about immediacy? Go back to Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." He does that by the word of God and by the Spirit. Open the door, and He'll come in and eat with you and you with Him.  Intimate fellowship with Christ is available, immediacy. Again, Hebrews 3, as the Holy Spirit is saying to you right now, "Today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your heart." What does that go to? Anything covered in the Bible, any topic in the Bible. If He's telling you what sin is and you're convicted, repent and make changes in your life. If He's giving you wisdom or promises or giving you guidance, follow it. Today, if you hear his word, if you hear him speak, don't harden your heart. That's immediacy. 

Concerning the difficulty of the word of God, there are always going to be passages where you're not quite sure what it means. Doesn't that show you that the Bible came from a mind so infinitely greater than any of ours?  "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than our ways,” and God's words higher than our words," so expect difficulty.

Finally, eternality. I think it's exciting to think that when we get to heaven, we will still be learning, studying and probing the extent and the dimensions of the words of Christ. To me, that's exciting.

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank You for giving us a sure and certain foundation of our souls. We thank You that this foundation, the word of God, cannot be shaken. As Jesus said at the end of the Sermon of the Mount, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts him into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rains came down and the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock." Help us to build on the unshakeable foundation of the Word of God. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

A central article of faith of Christianity is that Jesus will return visibly and powerfully to end this era and bring in a world of eternal life and glory.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 13 as we consider the Second Coming of Christ. And as I do this morning, my mind goes back 29 years, my wife and I were missionaries in Japan. I went regularly on Saturdays to a different city, taking a  train from Tokushima to Takamatsu. In that city I would teach English and the Bible.  On one particular day, a Saturday, I was walking through the streets of Takamatsu, and praying about the ministry I was about to have. I looked overhead, and there was a spectacular cloud formation. You know what I'm talking about, one of those clouds that just heap up like a pile, like a mountain up to the sky. Very, very dramatic. It was especially dramatic in that there was a small peephole of sunlight coming through and there were rays that were streaming down. I was just overwhelmed.  I began singing the hymn we're going to close with today, It Is Well With My Soul, because I really felt that it was well with my soul. I was especially thinking about the fourth stanza which says, "And Lord haste the day when our faith will be sight, the clouds be rolled back like a scroll. The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul." Think about that when we sing at the end.

But I was thinking about that myself, and how dramatic and how awesome that day was going to be. As I was contemplating this sermon, I was thinking about that day, the day that is yet to come, and our understanding of all that will happen on that day. I would say easily the most dramatic moment in the history of sin-cursed humanity. I can't actually imagine a more spectacular and dramatic day than that, and we are going to understand it and effectively see it today by faith.  My prayer has been that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened, that you would be able to see the invisible, the future. And that you would see the glories of the greatness and the majesty and the power and the terror, indeed the terror, of that day in which everything on earth will come to an end. To see it by faith and understand it by faith, that's my desire.

How different is the circumstance of Jesus' Second Coming from that of his First Coming. Think of the Christmas hymn, A Little Town of Bethlehem, “how silently the wondrous gift is given.”  We know that an army of angels came and appeared, but just to a very small number of shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, no one else got to see that. It was just a pregnant couple, a pregnant woman, no room in the inn, and then Jesus born in the natural way. Very quiet. But the Second Coming of Christ will not be so. and we need to understand it. We need to understand it biblically. We need to understand the reasons for it.

This morning, as I was thinking about that, the reasons for the Second Coming, I listed out a series of them. Why is Christ coming back to Earth? First and foremost, for the glory of God, for the open, clear, plain, visible display of the greatness and majesty of almighty God. Secondly, to be praised and marveled at by the saints, stimulating us in worship such as we have never experienced before, and that, even for all eternity. Third, to rescue His persecuted people from imminent deadly danger. Fourthly, to bring about justice for them as they are crying out for justice day and night. To bring about justice and, indeed, vindication for His people.  Fifth, to punish evildoers, idolaters, blasphemers and wicked people who have not fled to Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. Sixth, to end the open reign of Satan and antichrist and that final government which we have described recently. Seventh, to establish the kingdom of God in righteousness and purity in answer to the prayers that have been prayed in every generation, "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To usher in the new heaven and the new earth, the perfect world free from all death, mourning, and crying, and pain. To be with His people forever and to end the reign of sin and death for all eternity. These are the reasons and many others.

I. The Absolute Certainty of the Second Coming

It's beneficial for us today to walk through this biblically, to understand it, to understand what Mark reveals about it. I begin with the absolute certainty of the Second Coming of Christ. The Second Coming of Christ is taught many, many times throughout the Scriptures. This is one of the central articles of the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ will return visibly and powerfully to end this era of human history and bring in a world of eternal life and radiant glory. We believe this as Christians.

Now, Paul speaks of the purpose of Jesus's first coming like this in Galatians 1:3 and 4, "The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age." To rescue us from this present evil age. What is this present evil age, and what world of eternal blessedness did Christ come to usher in? No text captures it better than Revelation 21:4, "He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain for the old order of things has passed away."

This present evil age in Galatians 1 and the old order of things that is passing away are the same, they're just different ways of talking about the same thing. The present evil age is characterized by the reign of sin, sin reigning in death, and mourning and crying and pain. That's this present evil age from which Jesus has come to rescue us. The new heavens and the new earth that Jesus will bring in at His Second Coming will be forever free from those enemies, forever free from sin, and Satan, and death, mourning, crying, and pain.

Therefore, the Second Coming of Christ is a central aspect of the Christian hope. We are looking forward to it. We're longing for it. We're yearning for it to come. We're seeking to speed its coming by service to God and by the proclamation of the gospel. The Second Coming is therefore taught in many places in Scripture. First, historically, by a man named Enoch, seventh from Adam. We learned this in the book of Jude.  Enoch, seventh from Adam, that's a long, long, long, long, long time ago, said these words, prophesied about these wicked men, "Behold the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, angels, to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Enoch said that. How in the world did Enoch know about the Lord coming with thousands of angels the same way we do? The Lord revealed it to him prophetically.

"The Second Coming of Christ is a central aspect of the Christian hope. We are looking forward to it. We're longing for it. We're yearning for it to come. We're seeking to speed its coming by service to God and by the proclamation of the gospel."

It started with Enoch, then many other places. I zero in into my mind to Daniel 7, the vision that Daniel the prophet had at night, a night vision. The centerpiece of it was a vision of the Son of Man, Daniel 7: 13 and 14, "In my vision at night, I looked and there before me was one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And He approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All people's nations and men of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." It's taught there in Daniel 7.

It's taught in Matthew 24 and 25, and here also in Mark 13, and we'll walk through it carefully today, but there are many other passages on the Second Coming. Jesus, for example, in John 14, spoke to his apostles the night before He was crucified, saying, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my father's house or many rooms. If it were not so I would've told you, for I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you," listen now, "I will come back and take you to be with me so you also may be where I am." It's a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ.

Then that very night after Jesus was arrested, and early the next morning when He was on trial, He quoted Daniel 7, and I'm not going to read it now because I'll read it later in the sermon, but He referred to the Second Coming at that point. It got Him killed. It got Him condemned by the Jewish authorities. Then after His death on the cross, and after His physical resurrection from the dead, and after He had spent forty days instructing His disciples and giving many convincing proofs that He was alive, after all of that training was over, He gave them His final word, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth.” [Acts 1:9-11] "After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking intently into the sky as He was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 'Men of Galilee,' they said, 'why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you've seen Him go into heaven.'" It’s a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ.

The Apostle Paul, wrote of it often. He spoke of the Parousia, the coming of Christ. He spoke of it many times, most dramatically in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-18, "The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." That's the rapture. Caught up midair, mid-heaven to meet the Lord as He descends from heaven to earth, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore, encourage one another with these words. I hope you're encouraged with these words. This is the future. This is what Paul taught in 1 Thessalonians 4, and in 2 Thessalonians 2, "Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ [the Parousia] and our being gathered to Him, we ask you brothers not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, reporter, or letter supposed to have come from us saying the day of the Lord has already come. You didn't miss it.” That ship has not sailed," et cetera. But he talked about the Parousia, the coming of the Lord.

The Apostle Peter talked about it in 2 Peter 3: 3-4, "First of all, you must understand that in the last day, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, 'Where is this coming he promised?”  What coming?  That's the Second Coming of Christ.  “Where is it? We don't see it. Where is this coming He promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”  Peter goes on to talk about how the generation of Noah before the flood were saying the same thing, Jesus made that same connection. They were saying, "There's no flood. We don't see any flood," until that flood came. Then later in 2 Peter 3 : 10  he said, "The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare."

Also the Second Coming of Christ is taught many times in the Book of Revelation, such as Revelation 1:7, "Behold He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of Him, so shall it be on men." We'll return to that passage a number of times. Then of course in Revelation 19, it openly depicts and describes the Second Coming of Christ with an angelic army, and Jesus coming with a sword coming out of His mouth with which He will slay the wicked.  Then in the final chapter, Revelation 22:7, Jesus said, "Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book." Again, Revelation 22:12 and 13, "Behold, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I'll give to each person according to what he has done. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

We believe in linear history. We believe in an unfolding history. We don't believe in reincarnation and cyclical history that goes around. No, we believe in a beginning, a middle, and an end. We believe in an alpha and omega, and Jesus is that letter and that letter and every letter in between. We believe in a purpose to history, and we believe it's going to end, this phase, this present evil age will end with the Second Coming of Christ.  Then again, Revelation 22:20, the second to last verse of the Bible, "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming soon.'" That's three times in Revelation 22 He says, "I'm coming soon." Then John replies, "Amen. Come Lord Jesus."   It seems then that looking forward to the Second Coming, yearning for the Second Coming, crying out for it as John does, is essential to our healthy lives in this present evil age.  This is a major theme taught many times in the Bible. 

II. The Heavenly Bodies Darkened, Shaken, and Removed

What aspects does Jesus give here in Mark 13, that's our purpose now, as we look through Mark 13:24-27. It begins with the heavenly bodies darkened, shaken, and removed. Look at verse 24 and 25, "But in those days, following that distress, 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.”  The context here, as we remember, is in those days following that distress. We're right in the middle now of Mark 13. The last sermon was entitled, as you remember, “Run For Your Lives.” Look at verses 14-19, "When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers? Pray that this will not take place in winter because those will be days of distress unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now, and never to be equaled again."

The Abomination of Desolation, we walked through that, devoting a whole sermon to that. The Abomination of Desolation is the defiling of a sacred space by a blasphemous Gentile power. Concerning the destruction of the temple, Jesus talked about the Gentile army surrounding the city ready to destroy it. But the Abomination of Desolation, per se, is the antichrist finally setting himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.  Jesus clearly warned his church that would be living in that geographical region, both at the destruction of the temple, but then as it foretold the final events. When you see that, when you see these things spoken of by the prophet Daniel, run for your lives, get away as fast as you can. This is what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation.

The Book of Revelation gives many more details about what life on earth will be like at that time, and how terrifying and terrible it will be. Seven seals broken, seven trumpets sounded, seven bulls poured out. Those seven, seven, sevens give heaven's response to the wickedness and sinfulness of man on earth, and they will ravage the surface of the earth. Ecological disaster such as has never been seen before, a clear link between human sin and the ecology as we saw from the beginning when Adam sinned and the earth was cursed, and it produced only thorns and thistles for him.  We learned in Romans 8 that the whole world has been cursed with the bondage of decay;  there's a link between human sin and the ecology. The ecological disasters described specifically in Revelation 8, have never, however, been seen before. A burning up of green grass, a burning up of a third of the trees on earth, a turning of a third of the ocean waters to blood, a killing of a third of the living creatures in the sea. What effect would that have on human commerce and life itself?

Then even worse, a third of the drinking water is fouled, made undrinkable. But what effect will that have on national boundaries when some parts of the world have drinking water and other parts don't? You can't live longer than a certain number of days without water, a terrifying, terrible rending of the planet because of the judgments of God. It's not an accident, but it's something God is pouring out. The unleashing of plagues on mankind resulting in painful sores and an agony so great that the people, the inhabitants of the earth, will long for death, but they will not find it. An unleashing of demonic powers billowing up from the deepest resources of the pit and coming to bring agonies and torments on people, [Revelation 9]. It's a terrifying time.

Then the coming of the beast from the sea, the antichrist, the one-world government, the one-world religion, all of those things that culminate in the Abomination of Desolation. Those are terrible days. Mark 13:19-20, "Those will be days of distress unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now, and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive," think about that, "but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened."

Immediately after the distress of those days, the Second Coming happens, and it's described here as the shaking and rending and destruction of the cosmos. Look up into the night sky. Look up into the sky and see the lights that God put there. Verse 24 and 25, "In those days following that distress, 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.”  The heavens will be rent, similar to Isaiah's prayer concerning the wickedness of man. He said in Isaiah 64:1-2, "Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you as when fire sets twigs, ablaze and causes water to boil. Come down and make your name known to your enemies. Cause the nations to quake before you." Isaiah 64, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down." It's interesting, this idea of rending the heavens, it creates a sense of a membrane or barrier between us and the heavenly realms. A rending is a tear and a rip, and out of it, Isaiah wants God almighty to come and bring judgment.

What's interesting is, this is the language used at Jesus' baptism. When Jesus was baptized, the heavens were torn, but out came a dove, a symbol of peace, a symbol of reconciliation with God. That's the First Coming, peace on earth, goodwill to man. That's the first rending happening. The second will not be so. It'll be more like Isaiah 64, the wrath of God coming out of that rending of the heavens, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken and removed.

I need to bring up the Polish astronomer, Copernicus. Some of you I'm sure are thinking about Copernicus. Maybe not, but I am, anyway. Until Copernicus, most people on earth thought that the stars, the sun, the moon revolved around the earth, the earth was the center of everything. They moved in concentric spheres, earth is center, and they moved across, so the sun would make it circuit across the sky in this sort of pattern. But along came Copernicus, and he wasn't the only one, but he led the way to teach us that actually the earth revolves around the sun, physically. That is true, physically.

However, the Bible does give an earthbound purpose to the heavenly bodies. The reason they exist is found on planet Earth. We get that from Genesis chapter one, "And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth, and it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, that's the sun, and the lesser light to govern the night, that's the moon. He also made the stars." One of the great understatements in the entire Bible, "Oh, by the way, He also made the stars."

But God made them all, and God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth. That's twice we have an earthbound statement for the sun, the moon, and the stars. Let the earth physically revolve around the sun, that's fine. But when events come to their conclusion on the surface of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars will end their career. There's an earthbound purpose to these, to give light to the earth and to mark time, seasons, and days, and years.

This proves also to me, there are no other planet earths out there having an unfolding redemptive history; that Jesus is doing that saving thing that He did here in planet after planet, after planet like some traveling roadshow. That is false. It is not true. When events come to an end here, the stars will fall from the sky. Literally, the sun will be dark and the moon will not give its lights. Either the sun's light will be blocked or reduced or ceased to give it altogether, because the sun will no longer exist. The sun and the moon, we are told, will not be needed in the new heavens and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, because the glory of God will illuminate that new universe and that new Jerusalem. It doesn't mean they don't exist, it just says they won't be needed, so maybe they won't exist at all.

The sixth seal of Revelation speaks of the same thing. Revelation 6:12-14, "I watched as he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to the earth as late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place." Isaiah 64, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down and make the mountains shake before you like boiling water."

The fourth trumpet in Revelation correlates, Revelation 8:12, "The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon and a third of the stars. So a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, also a third of the night." Isaiah had also predicted this, Isaiah 34:4, "All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll. All the starry hosts will fall like withered leaves from a vine like shrill figs from a fig tree." We have this image again and again and again.

I'm aware that in the Book of Isaiah, it's sometime linked to cataclysmic events that happen on earth such as the end of an empire, like Babylonian empire, when it doesn't literally happen that the stars fall from the sky, but it's like the events will be so big, it'll be like that. I understand that language. But since the language is used again and again and again and again, that may be just a poetical connection to what actually will physically happen at the end of the world. Now you wonder how could God do this? It's because God is sovereign over every created thing in the universe. Isaiah 40:26 says, "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name because of His great power and His mighty understanding, not one of them is missing.”  They continue to exist, according to Isaiah 40:26, because God wills that they continue to exist. God sustains the stars. A new heaven, a new earth will have a new cosmos as well. 

III. Jesus Comes With the Clouds

Next, Jesus comes with the clouds. Look at verse 26, "At that time, men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and great glory." This was predicted by Daniel and then cited by Jesus at his trials. The very thing that Daniel saw in the Son of Man vision that I’ve already read for you, Daniel 7:12-13, he saw the Son of Man coming into the presence of almighty God on the clouds, and receiving from Him power and great glory. The angels and then all peoples on earth worshiping Him and serving Him. That's the Son of Man vision.

Jesus cited that on the trial for His life before the Jewish authorities. Think of the boldness of Jesus, He knew they wouldn't be able to accept it, but He still proclaimed it, referred to it. in Mark 14:62-64, they asked Him, “'I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you're the Christ the Son of God.’Jesus said, ‘I am.’" Period. That's a claim to deity, "I am.”  Then He quotes or alludes to Daniel 7, "And you'll see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven." Now that's a clear prediction to his enemies, "You will see this. You're going to see this whether you believe in me or not. It will not take faith to see this. You will see it." “The high priest tore his clothes,'Why do we need any more witnesses?’ he asked. ‘You've heard the blasphemy. What do you think?’ And they all condemned him as worthy of death.”  Jesus predicting his own Second Coming is what officially got him killed, quoting Daniel 7. 

The clouds, Jesus coming with the clouds, I believe are both physical like I saw in Takamatsu that day, but they're also symbolic. Clouds are referred to again and again in connection with the great power of God. Clouds are awesome and dramatic. I think all of us who have flown have been above the clouds and then seen a carpet of clouds dramatically. And you can see, especially at sunset, they're all glowing, they're very dramatic things.  Clouds literally hid Jesus when He ascended from the earth. It's reasonable for them to be a feature on his return. 

But the clouds also symbolize the wrath of God, again and again, the wrath of God. Like at Mount Sinai, Moses said to the Jews, in retrospect, looking back on the day at Mount Sinai, Moses said, "You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while at blaze with fire to the very heavens with black clouds and deep darkness." God surrounded Mount Sinai with terrifying black clouds as though a lightning strike could come out of that cloud at any moment.  Psalm 18 is probably the strongest connection here. Psalm 18:7-13, "The earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the mountain shook, they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherub him and flew. He soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him. The dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of His presence, clouds advanced with hailstones and bolts of lightning. The Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the most high resounded."

It's terrifying. What's going on in Psalm 18? What is David talking about? What happens is David is in trouble on a battlefield, and cries out to God to deliver him, and then God does. He comes to rescue David in the midst of his trouble. Do you not see how that applies to the Second Coming? I believe the Second Coming is a rescue mission. I believe that the bridegroom is coming to rescue the bride because she's about to become exterminated by the antichrist, and He's filled with rage over it. Psalm 18 describes that.  Would God do all that for one person, King David? We know that God protected David in every battlefield he ever fought on. He never died in battle, so God did deliver him, and rescued him, and crushed his enemies under his feet. David himself is a symbol of Christ.

 But ultimately, I think this idea of God rending the heavens, coming with the clouds to rescue his people is consummated at the Second Coming. It's a rescue mission where the people of God are rescued from their enemies, and from imminent death. Isaiah 30:27, "Behold the name of the Lord comes from afar with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke. His lips are full of wrath in his tongue of consuming fire.” Jesus comes with the literal clouds, the physical clouds, but also metaphorically, He comes in the wrath of God.

"This idea of God rending the heavens, coming with the clouds to rescue his people is consummated at the Second Coming. It's a rescue mission where the people of God are rescued from their enemies, and from imminent death"

IV. The Mourning of the Nations

 Next, the mourning of the nations. It's not mentioned in Mark, but I want to bring it up. It's mentioned in Matthew, and it's also mentioned in Revelation 1 and Revelation 18.  Matthew 24:30, "At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn." Think about that, they’re all going to mourn. "They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.” Again, Revelation 1:7, "Behold, He's coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him. Even those who pierced Him. And all the people of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be. Amen."

A mourning. Why are the nations mourning? “It’s not the end of the world.” No, it will be the end of the world. That's it. All of the things that those unbelievers had been living for will instantly come to an end. This is depicted with the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18:9-11, “When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with [Babylon] and shared her luxury see  the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "'Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!' The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more.” 

 The party is over. All the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life is done that day. It's over. It's judgment day for them, and so they will mourn. The righteous wrath of the Lord is being poured out on them for their sins, especially because they have not loved Christ or his people. As it says in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.”  Revelation 18:18-20 says, "When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?' And they'll throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning, cry out, 'Woe, woe, Oh great city where all who had ships of the sea became rich through her wealth. In one hour she has been brought to ruin. Rejoice over her, oh heaven. Rejoice saints and apostles and prophets for God has judged her for the way she treated you.'" That's the justice of God, but there is mourning and grieving.

Let me just stop right now and say the best thing we can do is believe all of these things, and the judgment day that follows, and even more, the hell that follows that, and mourn and grieve now by faith. Grieve over sin now and flee to Christ. That's the best thing we can do is believe these things now when there's still time. At that point, the tears will mean nothing.

V. The Gathering of the Elect

Then there's the gathering of the Elect. Look at verse 27, "And He will send His angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens." This is, I believe, the primary reason, other than the glory of God, the primary reason for the Second Coming. He's come to gather His bride together, His people. The antichrist will be bearing down on them with great power, great hatred. He'll be hunting them down to force them to blaspheme by receiving the mark of the beast. Jesus said if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. That's how bad it's going to be, but for the sake of the Elect, those days will be shortened.

Everyone has their limit. There's only so much temptation we can face. No matter how courageous, no matter how faith-filled, no matter how much we are willing to suffer and die as martyrs, there is a limit to what we can endure. Remember, as I talked about last week, the night that Jesus was arrested, He made them say twice who they were there to arrest so that He could say concerning the rest of his followers, "If you're looking for me, then let these men go." John said Jesus said this so that the saying Jesus had stated would come true, "Of all those you have given me, I have not lost one."

There is a time to run away. But if that antichrist power is spreading over the earth with so much domination, and if those days had not been cut short or counted as in Daniel 12, He would say, "When the Son of Man comes, will there be any believers left on earth?" So He intervenes. Furthermore, I think He just wants to be with us. Ultimately, isn't that it? Isn't that the point of His death on the cross? He wants to spend eternity with us. He wants to feast with us in heaven. He wants to walk with us in the new heaven, new earth. He wants fellowship with us. He earnestly desires to be with us. Isn't that amazing? Doesn't it blow your mind?  

We're pathetic, and yet He loves us and wants to be with us. And guess what? We're not going to be pathetic in heaven. Praise God. We'll be really pretty amazing. We'll be glorified. He loves us. He says in John 14:3, "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me.” Why? “So that you also may be where I am." Or again, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, "And so we will be with the Lord forever." Ezekiel 37:23, have you heard this before? "They will be my people, and I will be their God.” Do you know how many times it says that in Ezekiel and Jeremiah? The answer is seven. That's how many times again and again, "They will be my people and I will be their God." He wants fellowship with us. Or again, it's cited in Revelation 21:3, "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God, and He'll wipe every tear from their eyes and there'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain.'"

He  wants to be with us. And this is at this moment, the rapture, as I mentioned. He's going to send out his angels and they'll gather his Elect. They're dispatched to collect us and bring us up to meet the Lord in the air. Let me read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 again, "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up." That's “rapture.” That's what the word means. And the Latin root is “to be captured up, caught up.” I picture like a mother cat and a kitten being grabbed by the back of the neck, something like that because we can't fly, gravity works on us. So how are we going to meet the Lord in the air? He's going to send out angels who can fly, and they will pick us up so that we can meet the Lord in the clouds. You may say, "Well, why does He want to meet us in the clouds?" I don't know, but He does. We're going to go out like a welcome committee, and meet Him in the clouds. This is the rapture. Verse 27, "He will send His angels and they'll gather His elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heaven." By the way, the Elect by then will all have been converted. Evangelism and missions will be done by then, no unconverted elect.

This is the eternal separation at this moment of the Elect and non-Elect, as Matthew 24:40-41 says, "Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will be taken and the other left." Yes, I believe in the “left-behind” thing. But the left behind here is not pre-trib seven year and all that. This is the separation of the Second Coming. If you're left behind at that moment, you are non-Elect, and the gospel era is over. The sheep and the goats are separated, the wheat and the weeds are separated, the good fish and bad fish are separated forever.  The non-Elect will be stunned and seem like they have no idea what's happening. They will not understand this. Matthew 24, "As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man." From the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage right up to the day Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

VI. Properly Preparing for the Second Coming

How can we apply this? How can we properly prepare for the Second Coming? I've already said it, but first and foremost, trust in Christ and Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins while there's time. That day is the end of the faith era. It's the end of the gospel era. It's the end of the open door to Noah's Ark era. God closed Noah's door with His own hand. God ended that. Everyone outside the ark perished. Now is the time to enter. Now is the time to believe. Now is the time to trust in Christ, to believe in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. That's how it starts.

And what does that look like? Paul spoke to the Thessalonian Christians in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, "You turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath." What does it mean? It's to turn to God away from idols. What are idols? It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life. It's all the things that lead us away from God. It's all the wickedness. We turn away from those things, away from sin to God through Christ, and we receive forgiveness for all of our sins, Jesus' blood shed for all of our idolatries. You did that in Thessalonians, you turned to God from idols, and you waited, to wait for His son from heaven. So prepare that way.

Secondly, cry out in prayer, I would say daily, for the Second Coming of Christ.  This line is already very famous. I cited it once, but you remember it's the Lord's prayer, "Our Father in heaven, hallow be your name." What's next? "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That's the Second Coming. It's a crying out for the Second Coming. Pray that. Do it. Revelation 22:20, "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I'm coming soon.'" What was John's response? "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." That's a prayer, right? Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Or again, Revelation 1:7, "Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him." John's answer, “Even so, "Amen. Let it be. I want that to happen." Or again, in 1 Corinthians 16:22, if you have New American Standard Translation, it reads like this, "If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be a cursed.” 

 What is “maranatha”? It's Aramaic for, “come, Lord.” It's a prayer for the Second Coming. Christians should cry out for Jesus to come, and this accords with our understanding of prayer. Not as, number one, giving God an idea He didn't have before, or number two, persuading God to do something He didn't want to do until you persuaded him. That's not what prayer is. Then what is prayer? It's understanding from the Word what God has said He's going to do but hasn't done yet, and ask him to do it.  Wouldn't you think the Second Coming fits that description? Has God revealed that he wants his son to come?  Yes. Has it happened yet?  No.  Pray for it. Pray for it.

Thirdly, look forward to the Second Coming and long for it. Your prayer for it will stimulate that. You should long for the Second Coming. 2 Peter 3:12 says, "Look forward to the day of God." 2 Peter 3:13, "In keeping with his promise, we're looking forward to a new heaven, new earth." Then verse 14, "So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this…” That's three consecutive verses. Look forward to it, look forward to it, look forward to it. That means yearn for it. Say, "I want this to happen."

Fourth, be holy. Again, leaning on 2 Peter 3, "Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?" Answer, you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God. 2 Peter 3:14, "So then, dear friends, since you're looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with Him." Now that day is coming, bringing about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt in the heat.  But in keeping with this promise, we're looking forward to a new heavens and new earth called the home of righteousness. Only pure people will enter the new Jerusalem. We know we can't purify ourselves by our own efforts, but we know that it's justification, sanctification, and then glorification. That's purification. John says very plainly in 1 John 3, "We know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Everyone who has this hope in Him is purified, just as He is pure.  The more you believe in the Second Coming, what Jesus is coming to do, the more zealous you should be to put evil and sin to death in your own life. Colossians 3:5 and 6, "Put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming."  The Second Coming. That's why He's coming back, to destroy those sins.

Fifth, speed the Second Coming by evangelism and missions. Peter said, "As you look forward to the day of God in speed, it's coming." Matthew 24:14, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." We speed the day of God by evangelism and missions. With every unconverted elect person who then becomes converted and crosses over from death to life through faith in Jesus, we've gotten that much closer to the Second Coming of Christ.  We are called on to preach the gospel to lost people. We're surrounded by people who, like in the days of Noah, they are not ready for the Second Coming, and we should care about that.

Sixth, serve the Lord's purposes in light of the Second Coming. 2 Timothy 4:1 and 2, "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead. And by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching." We are each given a role to play. You all have a ministry or should have a spiritual gift ministry. Do it.  2 Timothy 4, "In light of the second coming." In light of the fact that in view of his coming, you're going to give an account for your life and your ministry.

 Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time we've had to walk through this deep, powerful, and significant topic. Father, I pray that you would press these truths home. Help us to live in light of them, help us to be prepared, help us to warn others who we know are not yet prepared. Oh Lord, help us to be holy, to put sin to death. Help us to just saturate our minds in the truths of the Word so that we may live a life pleasing to God. In your name we pray. Amen.

The abomination of desolation signifies the desecration of the temple in 70AD by Romans and foretells a final desecration by the Antichrist, leading to Christ's return.

- Sermon Transcript -

Turn in your Bibles to  Mark 13. I can hardly imagine a more terrifying scenario than running for your life with some powerful, violent men chasing you, seeking to capture you, seeking to bring you in for questioning, to interrogate you, seeking to imprison you, to torture you, perhaps ultimately even to kill you. I can hardly imagine a more terrifying scenario than that.

It was a scene that was played out again and again in the dark days of World War II. Nazi troops would win battles and conquer territories, and on their heels would come the SS and the Gestapo who would seek to weed out every Jewish person and every perceived threat to the Nazi state, including Christian leaders. Refugees would have to flee in the middle of the night, breathlessly waiting under bridges while their Nazi pursuers would travel over them, so close they could hear their conversations.

Others fled by train using falsified travel permits. They had to endure the suspense of Gestapo agents moving systematically through the rail cars, checking papers, asking questions. Others fled through mountain passes into Switzerland, avoiding Nazi roadblocks only by scaling forbidden mountain sides in the snow and during freezing temperatures. Some hid among baggage and crates on freight ships, their hearts beating wildly and beads of sweat forming on their brows as Nazi guards with German shepherds were inspecting the cargo holds where they were hiding, getting closer and closer to their secret positions.

All of these refugees were fleeing because of terror, fleeing the might of the most sinister and powerful force of evil the world had ever seen up to that time. But I believe all of those experiences of fleeing are as nothing compared to the days that will come right before the end of the world, the days when the Antichrist will be ruling the world by the direct power of Satan himself, seeking to exterminate anyone who refuses to worship him as God.

Brothers and sisters, I don't know if that day will come in our lifetime, but this text implies that we are to get ready for those days. We are to get ready for what is coming. When Jesus says, "I have told you everything ahead of time," that implies a certain weight of responsibility on us; on me as a teacher of the Word of God, on me as a father, on me as a discipler and as a preacher. All of us as Christians, take seriously these themes, to immerse ourselves in them and to study them. Jesus's mentality is, forewarned is forearmed.

I have carefully studied this text, Mark 13:14-23, and compared it with the parallel texts of Matthew 24:15-26. They're almost completely identical with just a few simple differences, so I'm going to weave the two together where needed, but my home base is Mark 13.

Let's talk about context. Context is Jesus's statement of the destruction of the temple. Look at Mark 13:1-2, "As he was leaving the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Look, teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings.' 'Do you see all these great buildings?' replied Jesus. 'Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down.'" Then the disciples came to Jesus in private. Fuller version's in 24 Matthew. "'Tell us,'" they said, in Matthew 24:3, "'Tell us, when will this happen?’" Not one stone left on another, "'And what would be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'" It's pretty clear that Jesus's answer soars far above the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, and go right to the end of the world. It's very clear if you read Mark 13 and Matthew 24.  In this section of Mark 13, in verses 5-13, we have the nature of the ministry of the Word of God and the progress of the Word of God between the First and Second Comings.  That's what unifies those verses, Mark  13: 5-13. The focal point is us being witnesses to Him by the power of the Spirit and the ongoing persecution that will happen as the gospel spreads. That's been the story for 20 centuries. But then at verse 14, as we saw last week, there's a decisive break in the narrative and an event that's unique to people living in a certain place at a certain time.

When you see the “abomination of desolation”, and we talked about that last time, in a nutshell, it's a two-fold answer, both the desecration of the Temple by Roman forces in the year AD 70, and I believe going out to the end of the world, the desecration of the Temple at the end of history by the Antichrist, are in view in this phrase.  Last week we walked through all that. We saw how God has four times allowed the Gentiles to trample on His holy place. We talked about what that holy place was, how we understand that. And we saw it in the time of Eli when he allowed the Ark of the Covenant to be captured by the Philistines. Again, when the Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple, burned it to the ground. In 162 BC when the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes sacrificed pig's blood in the temple that Haggai had rebuilt, desecrating it as predicted in Daniel 8 and Daniel 11. Then again in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed Herod's temple four times.

But I also believe that it points ahead to that eschatological principle, “as it was so it will be", to one last time, all of those being dress rehearsals for a final desecration. I believe that implies, based on 2 Thessalonians 2, a rebuilt temple, rebuilt by the Jews, in what I consider to be an open defiance of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The themes clearly articulated in the Book of Hebrews, the ending of the old covenant based on animal sacrifice and the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. All of that finished at the moment that Jesus died.  But an unbelieving Jewish nation with veils over their hearts and minds, unable to see in Jesus the consummation of the old covenant, and unbelieving, reestablishing the curtain in the Temple that was torn into from top to bottom, showing a motive and a movement toward temple sacrifice, which went on for another generation after Jesus's death in defiance of His finished work.

Jesus's counsel to His people, His lasting counsel, I didn't even finish. I kind of did last week. I preached on a fragment of a verse: "When you see the abomination of desolation..." This sermon is the rest of it, but I said it last week, and it's in the title of this sermon: Run For Your Lives.. What it openly says is, "When you see the abomination that causes desolation, standing where it does not belong, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." And it goes on from there. In other words, run for your lives.

I. The Desolation Leading to the Flight

Let's talk about it. Let's begin with the desolation that leads to the flight. It is the spiritual desolation of Israel, consummated in their rejection of the Son of God, the incarnate Son of God, and their murder of Him. Israel's rejection of Jesus as their Messiah is the essence of their spiritual desolation. As Jesus says at the end of 23 Matthew 38-39, "Behold, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again.”  It's pretty simple. If you put that together, two and two together, "The essence of the desolation is you're not going to see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" In other words,  until you recognize me by faith, that I was the one sent by Almighty God as your Savior. So until you say that, you'll be desolate, empty. Desolation means emptiness.

That spiritual desolation then leads to a physical desolation, a city of slaughter left with no inhabitants. Above that or behind all that is the demonic side, a satanic and a demonic side that we need to understand. It comes very clearly in the Book of Revelation, chapter 12. There is a dragon, clearly identified as Satan, that ancient serpent. This dragon is standing by the sea in Revelation 13, and he calls from the sea a beast, a clear connection with Daniel 7, where up out of the sea come a succession of four beasts that represent empires, represent human political governments, empires with military power, with economic power, et cetera. That's Daniel 7.  We get the consummation of that in Revelation 13. It is the dragon, it is Satan that calls the beast from the sea. 

Jesus spoke about demons. You know that Jesus drove demons out effortlessly, exorcism after exorcism. People were stunned. They were amazed at His power. Even the demons are subject. In his name, easily, Jesus sent out His disciples and gave them the power as well to drive out demons. The demons were on the run, but they didn't cease existing, they didn't cease hating. They were just pushed back for a time. Jesus warned that they're going to come back.  He makes this very plain. In Matthew 12: 43-45, He says this, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and doesn't find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order." Unoccupied sounds like desolate to me. Empty. Finds a house unoccupied, swept clean, put in order. “Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” AJV says famously, "The last shall be worse than the first.”  "That is how it'll be with this generation." I thought we were talking about a man and then we're talking about a house. Now we're talking about a whole generation. It's the same, the same, the same. When the demon goes out, it's going to come back. If the individual, if the nation is not filled with God, filled with the spirit of God, filled with light, the darkness is coming back. We've already said that the nation of the Jews is desolate, empty. Not believing in Jesus, it's ready to be reinvaded by demons.

The image that I have here is of an individual in the deep woods of Alaska or Siberia or Canada, and a ravenous pack of wolves is chasing this individual. He's been able to start a bonfire and push all the pack of wolves back, but he can see their eyes surrounding his campfire. They're still out there in the darkness and they still want his blood. When that fire goes out, they're going to come flooding back in, ravenous.

We Christians, we're not secularists, materialists. We actually believe in a spiritual realm, and we believe that the events that happen with nations and with politics and with invasions has a demonic backing, though we cannot see it. I believe that it is demonic force that pushes the Romans in, and it's going to be overtly a satanic, a demonic kingdom at the end of the world. “As it was, so it will be.” We get these dress rehearsals.  It says it twice in Luke, in Luke 17:26, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." And again, Luke 17:28-30, "As it was in the days of Lot, so it will be on the day when the Son of man is revealed." “As it was, so it will be.” It's a repeated principle, an eschatological interpretive principle. We get things happening again and again, dress rehearsals.  The overt statement of this is in 1 John 2, "You have heard that Antichrist is coming and even now many Antichrists have come." Lots of dress rehearsals on that Antichrist theme. But there is one coming. So as it was in the days of the Roman desecration of Jerusalem, so it will be in the days before Christ returns. As it was in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes of Daniel 8 and Daniel, 11, so it will be in the days before Christ returns.

The destruction of the Jewish Temple in the city of Jerusalem in the year AD 70 by the Romans is a dress rehearsal for the end of the world, I believe. The signal to Jewish Christians living in Judea, Jewish Christians living there in Jerusalem, is you have to watch what's happening in current events. When you see certain things, get out of the city, get out of that area, run for your lives. He says it openly in Luke  21: 20-22. It's just as clear as anything. You don't have to wonder about it. "When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that this desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those in the city get out. Let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment and fulfillment of all that has been written."

There's a Jewish Christian Church in Jerusalem, the very ones that Paul raised money for and brought [in Romans 15] money back to Jerusalem and Judea, the Pentecost. Those were Jewish Christians that came to faith in Christ. They lived there. It was a Jewish church of Jesus Christ. Those people are living there, followers of Christ. He's telling them what to do.

Let's talk about what actually happened at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Josephus, a contemporary of those events, wrote a history, and we're able to read that history and find out what happened. Rome was the dominant world power at that point. Judea at that time was ruled by Roman procurators, most of whom knew little or nothing about the Jewish religion, which resulted in continuous provocations to the Jewish people, continuous irritations to them concerning religious issues.  A group within the city of Jerusalem, within that area of Judea, called Zealots, were very active at that time, very patriotic about the Jewish heritage and about the promised land, et cetera. They wanted the Romans out, and they convinced the general population there to rise up against Rome and rebel.

There were three stages then to the Roman response and the conquest of Judea and Jerusalem in the 1st century AD. Stages one and two resulted in the Jews surviving and even winning marginal victories. That led to the Jews having a sense of being unconquerable by the Romans, a false sense of being unconquerable. But they weren't. Shortly before Passover in April of the year 70, a powerful Roman general named Titus arrived at Jerusalem with legions, to finally put an end to the Jewish revolt and crush the insurrection. Titus encircled the city to prevent help from reaching the Jews and began this final stage, the very thing Jesus was talking about.

During this time, those who attempted to flee were either prevented from doing so, killed by the Jewish Zealous factions within the city, or captured by the Romans, tortured and crucified outside the city as a warning to those still inside the city. The Romans built an embankment, or rampart, around the city just as Jesus had foretold they would do. Titus' soldiers breached the third outer wall of Jerusalem on May 25th of the year 70 and captured the newer portions of the city of Jerusalem.

By June, the siege had progressed into the second walled area and the Jewish people retreated behind that last wall that protected the city. The Fortress of Antonia was taken by Titus on July 22nd, followed by the Romans setting fires to the gates of the temple, against the desires of Titus, their commanding general. During the attack, a soldier threw a firebrand through a window into one of the Temple's side chambers, followed by a second firebrand being thrown into the holy place, which set the whole sanctuary ablaze. All Jewish resistance in the city was quelled by September 26th in the year 70.

According to Josephus, 1.1 million Jews were killed during that campaign, a staggering number.  97,000 Jews were taken into captivity by the Romans. Over the next three years, the temple stones were dismantled entirely. Every stone involved in the Temple was leveled to the ground, which Josephus describes, saying, "It was so thoroughly laid even to the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation that there was nothing left to make those that came later believe there had ever been a building there." That's complete fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy.

Caesar eventually gave orders to level everything else, with the exception of what we can still see today. Part of one of the external walls, not directly connected with the Temple but near it, was left to demonstrate what kind of city the Romans had defeated and as a display of Roman power. That is the famous Wailing Wall that Jews from all over the world go pray in front of, and many of them, I believe, are praying for a rebuilding of the temple.

Given those horrors that were coming, Jesus gave his people living in Judea a prophetic warning: when you see the indications, run for your lives. Mark 13 is Jesus's warning for them to flee when they see the city surrounded by soldiers. There is no record at all in church history or by Josephus of Christians in Judea and what happened with them. We have no record. However, we have to imagine that many of the church did in fact heed Jesus's warning and ran for their lives. When the time was right, they fled from Jerusalem. Now, that would have been the exact opposite of what many of the Jews would have been doing when they heard that the Roman legions were marching in. They're going to run to the fortress for the preservation of their lives. That makes perfect sense. The Christians are running the opposite direction.

And as I said, the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70,  was just a dress rehearsal for the final desolations, the end of the world, because of their ongoing rejection of Jesus as the Christ, the spiritual desolation of Israel has continued in every generation since. Every generation there's been a small remnant within that generation of Jewish people who believe in Jesus. The are called  Messianic Jews or Completed Jews, et cetera. In every generation, there's been some, as predicted in Romans 11.  But the general population of Jewish people have not received Jesus as Lord and Savior, and so the desolation continues. The rebuilding of the Temple would be a consummation of that desolation. It's a direct affront to God and to Jesus, saying, "You're not the Messiah, your death means nothing. We want to reestablish the old covenant, animal sacrifices." They yearn to obey the law of Moses. They are able, I believe, by reading the 70 weeks prophecy and other predictions in the Book of Daniel and other places, to rebuild the Temple. They're able to get what they want. How that would be, with the Dome of the Rock and all that is hard to see. But it seems like the Antichrist, the ruler of the people who is to come, in Daniel 9:26, will, in Daniel 9:27, "Confirm a covenant with many for one seven," a seven-year period. In the middle of the seven, three and a half years in, he'll put an end to sacrifice and offering.  That implies sacrifice and offerings going on for the first half of that last seven-year period. "And on a wing of the temple, he will set up an abomination that causes desolation until the end that is decreed is poured out on him." Those are the predictions that we look through, et cetera.

II. The Danger That Causes the Flight

Let's talk about the danger that causes the flight. The basic concept is Christ's people must run because we can't handle the temptation of that moment.  Consistently in the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one." You're to avoid temptation. You're not to show how powerful and strong you are by stepping right into the fire of temptation and resisting it. No. Run, get out of there. A very clear example in parallel of this is found the night that Jesus was arrested. In John 17,  Jesus prays to the Father concerning the Elect.  He said, "I have not lost any of all that you have given me." He prays specifically that. As you read that in John 17, you know He's not lost them spiritually. They still believe in Him, they still are trusting in Jesus. He's not lost any of them, and He won't. But then in John 18, as the detachment of 600 soldiers comes and they're there to arrest Jesus, Jesus goes out and confronts them and asks them who they've come to arrest. He takes the initiative. "Who are you looking for?" "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus says, "I am." And at that moment they draw back and fall to the ground. That's His name, He's God. And He says, "I am," and they fall on the ground.  Again, Jesus asked them a second time, "Who are you looking for?" They pick themselves up off the ground and answer like robots: "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said, "I've told you that I am. If you're looking for me, then let these men go," speaking about His apostles. Then John comments, John 18: 9, "This happened so that the words that Jesus had spoken would be fulfilled. 'I have not lost any of all that you have given me.'" Do you realize the significance of that? If they were arrested physically, they would have been lost spiritually. They weren't ready to be tortured, they weren't ready to die, they weren't ready to be crucified, they weren't ready. And they would've been lost. So Jesus makes a way of escape for them to get out. They all ran away at that moment, all of them, including Peter.  Jesus knows that there are some trials so great our faith can't handle it.

"You're to avoid temptation. You're not to show how powerful and strong you are by stepping right into the fire of temptation and resisting it. No. Run, get out of there."

Peter, in his arrogance that night, did a U-turn and followed at a distance. You saw what happened to him. Within a short amount of time, Satan had maneuvered it so that Peter denied ever even having heard of Jesus. That's hours later. Don't think you're so mighty, so strong in your faith as so you can handle anything. Jesus says to His people, "Run for your lives. Run for your souls. Get out of there." How much greater will the trial be when Antichrist is ruling the world through the direct power of Satan, and the secret police and the ones chasing are directly demonically instructed? Where are you going to hide? It's a time of utter carnage, of martyrdom like has never been seen before. That's what it's going to be like. The beast of Revelation  13:1, it says, "The dragon stood on the shore of the sea and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea.” Revelation 13:2, "The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.”

 We've seen in multiple places, the beast, the Antichrist, is able to do great signs and wonders. "To deceive," Jesus says, "the elect, even the elect, if that were possible." The Antichrist will rule the earth and conquer the saints physically. It says in Revelation 13: 5-8, "The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for 42 months." That's three and a half years. "He opened his mouth to blaspheme God and to slander His name and His dwelling place and those who live in heaven. He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them."

That's exactly what's taught in Daniel 7 as well. What does that mean? There's going to be dead Christians, lots of believers, saints, slaughtered by the beast. He was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. That's the one world government ruling every nation on earth, one guy. All the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast. That's the consummation of wicked government, and it's the consummation of wicked religion focused on this one person.  All the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast. All whose names have not been written in the Book of Life, belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world; so the non-elect. Basically then, one world government and one world religion at that point, far too powerful for any person to resist. 

The  Antichrist's specific enemies at that point are Jews and Christians. This deception leads to the final destruction, and so we must run. Revelation 14: 9-12 says, "A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He'll be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the lamb, and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.'" Revelation 14:12, "This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commands and remain faithful to Jesus.”  In other words, that's a call to patiently endure that temptation.  The temptation is to receive the mark of the beast and worship him as God for the preservation of your life. Therefore Jesus says in verse 13, "He who stands firm to the end will be saved." 

III. The Desperation That Characteristics the Flight

That's the danger, the desperation that characterized the flight. We'll look at the verses, verses 14-19, "Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it would be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Pray that this will not take place in the winter because those will be days of distress unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now and never to be equaled again."

There's a sense of immense urgency in these verses -- do you get it? -- as you read it, there's a breathless pace here. No earthly possession's worth your soul. You won't have time -- you think about the flat roofs back then -- you wouldn't have time to go down from that flat roof, down into the first floor of the house to get anything out. There's not time for that.  Someone working out in the field doesn't have time to go back and get a garment, a cloak. There's not time for that. And it's dreadful, says Jesus, for those who can't run fast, pregnant women or nursing mothers. It's all about running for your lives with murderous enemies nipping at your heels. Pray for an easement of circumstances. Pray that it won't take place in the winter when it's harder to run, or in the Sabbath, Matthew adds, because it would be harder to travel at that point.  Anything that would slow down the flight would be a detriment.  He says, unequal distress. Those would be days of distress, unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now, never to be equaled again. KJV, ESV, NSB all use the words “great tribulation.” That's where you get the expression "the great tribulation"; it comes right from that verse. 

IV. The Destination of the Flight

 The destination of the flight, verse 14, "Then those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." The mountains, perhaps caves, crags, hiding places.  Luke 23:30, "Then they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us into the hills. Cover us.'" Looking for a hiding place from the forces of Antichrist, the forces of the desolator that sets up the abomination of desolation. Whether the Romans in 87 AD or Antichrist at the end of the world, looking for mountain hiding places in Judea.

You think about Masada, it was a mountainous area. The Jews held out for a number of years after the fall of Jerusalem, probably another two or three years. It's very hard to get to, and so a place where you can hide. The purpose at that point, at the end of the world, is to wait for the Lord's coming and to count the days. 

V. The Duration of the Flight

What's the duration of the flight? “If those days”, verse 20, “had not been…”, “If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom He has chosen, He has shortened them.”  It's a terrible time. You have to read the whole of the Scripture to understand how terrible it is. You have to read the Book of Revelation. You have to read the trumpet judgments in Revelation which has ecological disasters unlike anything that had ever been seen before. The trumpet judgments and then the bowl judgments. It's going to be hard to live on planet Earth. A third of the drinking water, polluted. A third of the seas, polluted. A third of the living creatures, dead. Trees burned, grass burned. It's an ecological horror show which leads, I think, to the one world government. That's the cause of it, I believe.

It's so bad, and the slaughter focused on believers in Jesus is so bad, and the martyrdom, the machine of martyrdom is so great, Jesus has to ask, “Will there be faith on Earth when He returns?” There have to be some believers left when He comes back. So the days are counted out, and He says, short. And if they continued on even a few more days or weeks, no one would be left.

That's what I think brings, for me, the full understanding of the mystery in Revelation 11 and 12. From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days. Because Revelation 12 is talking about the general resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, as it says in verse 2 and 3, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake," [that’s the Second Coming]. "Some to everlasting life. Others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness light their stars forever and ever." It's the end of the world.

Then the counting of the days, 1,290 days and 1,335 days, goes ahead. It's not talking about Antiochus. It's not talking even about the Romans. It's talking about a general resurrection to heaven or hell and the end of the world in Daniel 12. At that time of the Antichrist, when God's people are hiding in caves, trying to survive, demonically instructed and led Gestapo-type folks are searching them out to martyr them. In the midst of that, when they're counting the days, Jesus returns for His bride. He returns to rescue her and protect her, so that there will be faith on earth when He returns.

Who are the Elect Jesus had in mind, "For the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened"? Elect are people chosen from Jews and Gentiles to believe in Him. I believe this is the consummation of the whole story of the Jewish nation. It's the consummation of their salvation. It's been a long journey, a long journey between Jesus and the sons and daughters of Abraham, the biological descendants. That consummation, I believe, is revealed in a mystery in Romans 11: 25-27,  "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brother, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." Those are incredibly important words. He's going to drive godlessness, atheism, unbelief from the Jewish nation. What's there instead? Faith in Christ, just in time. Again, Zechariah 12:10, "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a spirit of grace and supplication. And they will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves her first-born son.”  This is directly quoted by the apostle John in the account of Jesus. "In his death, they will look on him whom they have pierced." But they haven't looked yet, have they? Not by faith. At the end, in Revelation 12:10, God is going to pour out a spirit of grace on them and they will look finally to Jesus and trust. Those are the people Jesus is coming back to rescue, among others.

VI. The Destiny Beyond the Flight

What is the destiny beyond the flight? Verses 24-27, "But in those days following that distress, 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. At that time, men will see the Son of man coming in the clouds with power and great glory, and He will send His angels and gather His elect, from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”  More next week, that's the Second Coming. 

VII. Application

This morning as I was thinking about application, I wrote out some, and at the top I wrote two words. "So what?" So what? Run for your life. The overwhelming majority, if not every single person sitting here, will probably not have to run for your life, unless you're planning a move to Judea. If you're going to go live in Judea, then you might want to pay more special attention to this injunction and run for your lives. But it would have to be at the time when the abomination of desolation is set up. So how do we take this to heart?

First of all, salvation is a fleeing. Salvation itself is a fleeing, but the fleeing of far greater terror than anything Satan or the Antichrist could ever orchestrate. John the Baptist said to his enemies, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" What's the wrath to come? It's Almighty God, the omnipotent God, pouring out His wrath on His enemies. Where are you going to hide from God?  It's one thing to try to hide from Satan and from demonically instructed agents. How do you hide from an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God? There is a refuge, and that refuge is Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ is the refuge. That's where you flee, but you got to do it now. You got to do it today. Today is the day of salvation. Now's the time to flee the wrath to come.  When it comes, it will be too late. Therefore, look again to the cross of Christ. Understand what was really going on there. Look with eyes of faith and say, "The reason Jesus died on the cross is to forgive a sinner like me." Repent of your sins, trust in Him and you'll find forgiveness. He will be your refuge. As the Book of Proverbs says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run and are kept safe." Run to Christ, flee to Him while there's time.

"Salvation itself is a fleeing, but the fleeing of far greater terror than anything Satan or the Antichrist could ever orchestrate. …" What's the wrath to come? It's Almighty God, the omnipotent God, pouring out His wrath on His enemies."

Second of all, understand where world history is going. We're going to an orchestrated, planned out, scripted destination. Enough information has been given in the books of the Bible. So understand, we're going somewhere. Understand, Revelation 13 says, "The beast from the sea will rule the whole earth." So even if you don't live in Judea, the same force that's hunting our brothers and sisters down in that geographical region will be ruling the whole world., and he will hate your faith as much as he hates theirs.  The mark of the beast is worldwide, not just for Judea or those living in Jerusalem, and no elect person will ever receive it. Why not? Because we know what it is, and we know not to do it. The essence of it is that we will not bow our knee to a creature and worship that creature as God. We're not going to worship and serve the Antichrist as God, which will make us his enemies.

Know where all this is heading. His government is going to rule the whole earth. It says in Revelation 3:10, "I will keep you from the hour of testing that's going to come on the whole Earth." It's not just Judea, it's coming all over the whole world. So understand, just understand where that's going. 

Third of all, you could say, "Why should I care what happens to those living in Judea and Jerusalem?" Because you're part of the body of Christ, and it says in 1 Corinthians 12:26, "If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it.”  We should care what happens to people who are being persecuted in other parts, even today, even now. The spirit of the Antichrist is at work now, whether the Antichrist is on Earth now. We are a unity, we as the body of Christ, we should care what happens to those that are being persecuted. Though it may not be that it will happen in your lifetime, it may well happen in your children's lifetime. It may well happen in your grandchildren's lifetime or your great-grandchildren's lifetime.  Someone will be alive who needs to know this information in order to save their lives and their souls. Paul says, concerning these eschatological details in 2 Thessalonians 2,"Don't you remember that when I was with you, I kept telling you these things?" Paul thought this was important enough to teach as part of his body of doctrine and part of body of teaching that he taught to the Thessalonians. I think it's important for you all as well.

It is complicated, immerse yourself in it. Flee to Christ. I could do other things right now and say, "Flee temptations," and all that. That would be a good preaching point, but it doesn't line up with the eschatology we're talking about today. But if you want to take that, good. Flee sin this week, that's a good idea. But foundationally to eschatology, learn these facts. Teach them to your kids and grandkids. Let's be ready. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God as revealed in scripture. It is not easy to follow these things, not easy to understand. Father, I pray that you would please press to our hearts the truth that we've heard today. And even if it doesn't directly apply to us so that we ourselves have to run for our lives physically in fulfillment of these words, help us to understand these words so that they have the right shaping effect on our theology, our understanding of history, our understanding of government, of Satan, of brothers and sisters in Christ, of the Jewish nation, of all of these themes that we've addressed. Thank you for Christ. Thank you that Jesus died to take the wrath of God so that we would not have to. It's in His name we pray. Amen.

God abandoned the Jewish people because of their sins, resulting in their desolation. He does this to show that He is holy and dwells in a high and holy place.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

This morning as I was thinking about preaching this text, I decided to write a quick two-page startup guide to today's sermon. Have you ever had a complex piece of equipment and you get a sheet of paper that gives you that quick startup guide? I thought it might be helpful for today's sermon. This is my version of the quick startup guide. I hope it's helpful.

One of the things that I marvel at of the Word of God is the division of the Word of God into two categories, milk and meat. I marvel at the simplicity of the Word of God, and I marvel at the complexity of the Word of God. The essential doctrines of the Bible are so simple, a child can understand them and receive forgiveness of sins in a right relationship with God by understanding the milk, but there's more in the Bible than just milk. There is also meat or complexity.

My approach to pulpit ministry is to sequentially go through books of the Bible and take whatever's there. As we come this morning to Mark 13:14 and the phrase, “abomination of desolation," we come to what I consider to be a very deep and complex topic. I love preaching to you. I love preaching in this church because you love the Word of God and are willing to follow where it leads. I don't ever get any pushback on asking much of my hearers. This morning I'm going to ask much of you, so I am leading you into a quick startup guide.

The first thing I want to say to you is, as we resume our study in the Gospel of Mark, I'd like to ask you to turn to the Gospel of Matthew. I know what I'm doing, I understand that we're in Mark. The problem is a lot of the details that I want to get, as I explain the abomination of desolation, come from Matthew. Instead of having you flip back and forth, the passages are essentially the same, but there's some phrases and there's some lead-up that is only found in Matthew. So I'm going to ask you, as you return to the Gospel of Mark, to turn to the Gospel of Matthew. 

Our focus this morning is on one phrase, “the abomination of desolation.” The context of this complex phrase, “abomination of desolation,” is Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. He said, "Not one stone will be left on another," and what followed, the private inquiry on the part of Jesus' disciples to ask Him about that and then Jesus' complex answer recorded for us in Matthew 24 and 25 and in Mark 13 on the Mount of Olives, sometimes called the Olivet Discourse because it was on the Mount of Olives.

It falls into the theological category of eschatology or the study of end-time things. I believe that Jesus traces out the events between his First and Second Coming in some very helpful detail, and it's good for us to walk through that. It's a prophetic roadmap of what was still to come when Jesus was alive, and I believe very important for me to say to you now, what is still to come for us as well. Not everyone believes that, but I do.

In Mark 13:5-13 and in Matthew 24:4-14, we have some general description of the two millennia between the First and Second Coming, and the centerpiece is the spread of the gospel to all nations. The gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony of all nations and then the end will come, so — the work of the gospel between the First and Second Coming of Christ, attended by great suffering on the part of the messengers, persecution, difficulty, being arrested and brought before tribunals, et cetera. That is something that we've already seen.

We get specifically then in Matthew 24:15, Mark 13:14, the focus on the destruction of the Temple and then signs that are unique to just that generation. Whereas, the overview that He gives in Mark 13:4-13 and also Matthew 24:4-14 is true of every generation there have been since Jesus ascended to heaven until now. As we venture now into the “abomination of desolation," we're speaking about events that are particular to a specific group of people who are going to experience some things that not everybody experiences.

That's what we're trying to understand, the destruction of the temple and the phrase, “abomination of desolation”. That phrase comes from the prophet, Daniel, as Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, though He doesn't say it in Mark. Simply put, if you are living in Judea and Jerusalem at that point when the “abomination of desolation” is established, set up, et cetera, if we could put it simply— run for your lives.  That's where we're going next week, God willing. I'm not going to get into “run for your lives.” Today, I'm effectively preaching on a phrase and a half sentence. "When you see the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by the prophet, Daniel, “let the reader understand” ... What?  The answer is: run for your lives.

The topic is essentially a sober one and a sad one. It's very, very difficult. As I give you this quick startup guide, we have to look at the phrase itself, “abomination of desolation.” I want you to understand that the essence of the desolation is a broken relationship with almighty God, an emptiness that comes from not having a right relationship with God and God's decision to withdraw Himself from His people, from Israel because of their sins. That's the essence of the desolation, but it's more complex than that.

"The essence of the desolation is a broken relationship with almighty God, an emptiness that comes from not having a right relationship with God and God's decision to withdraw Himself from His people, from Israel because of their sins."

It has earthly ramifications in the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by invading Gentile armies as a direct act of judgment from almighty God for their sins. It's a very sobering topic. The point of connection to us, though we are not Jews, though we don't live in Judea, in Jerusalem, the “abomination of desolation” is not on Earth right now. The point of connection to us is twofold.

First of all, we need to understand, big picture, what God is doing in the universe, what God is doing with you. What is His whole purpose for creating everything? His whole purpose is a love relationship with you, with us, with His people. He wants an intimate love relationship with us. When we instead turn to idolatry, when we turn to wickedness, He withdraws. There's a desolation that comes from that, and you can be experiencing that desolation right now, that emptiness right now, though it doesn't specifically relate to the historical events of the “abomination of desolation.”

It is something we experience whenever we sin, and God withdraws. It is also the terror of hell. The worst part of hell is that God is not there in any way to bless the people that are there. It's a place of utter darkness. It's a tragedy that we're talking about here, a desolation of the Jews and of Jerusalem. It's also part of that long and complex story of God's relationship with the Jewish people, the physical descendants of Abraham, a very complex story and heartbreaking for God.  This is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem, because of these things that were going to happen. Though for us, we're somewhat removed from it. We should care about it because we should care about all people. We should care about the Jews. We should care about the story of God and the Jews, and we should realize, I believe, there's still more to come. That's vital, the phrase, “abomination of desolation.”

I've talked briefly about desolation. I'm going to do the intro of the sermon on the topic of desolation in a moment. Abomination has to do fundamentally with idolatry and desecration. It has to do with wickedness in the place where there should be holiness. It's talking about a literal place of worship, a temple, a tabernacle and then a temple, a literal place that is then desecrated or defiled through idolatry and blasphemy and wickedness. That's what the phrase means, “abomination of desolation.”  It comes from Daniel. So if we're going to do Daniel, I have to go over to Daniel and walk through it. Daniel is a very complex book. It's one of the most complex books in the Bible, and we have to roll up our sleeves to do that. Jesus urges us to work hard at this. He urges us right in the text when He says, "Let the reader understand." It's an odd aside. Jesus doesn't usually say that kind of thing. "When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet, Daniel, let the reader understand."

What He's saying is this isn't going to be easy. This isn't low-hanging fruit. You have to work at this to understand it. You have to work at Daniel. You have to work at the words to understand what this is about, but you need to know. What I'm going to argue is the “abomination of desolation” is not a one-off. I believe it's a regular pattern in God's relationship with the Jewish people. Again and again and again and again this has happened.

I will argue in this sermon that it happens in five phases. This is where I risk many of you glazing over as we walk through those five phases. I'm asking you not to do that. But there are five different phases of the “abomination of desolation,” the dynamic of God withdrawing His active presence from a holy place, the Gentiles pouring in like a flood to destroy it. All of that is a judgment by God, so I believe that we need to pay attention.  I also believe because I think the fifth and final phase hasn't happened yet, it's yet to come. Therefore, it will be relevant, if not for you, it'll be relevant for your kids and, if not for them, for your grandkids and, if not for them, for your great-grandkids, so you should care about this. We need to understand it. There's the startup guide.

On July 21, 1969, Buzz Aldrin became the second human being to walk on the moon just moments after Neil Armstrong became the first. Aldrin stepped off the ladder of the lunar module and began walking around on that lunar landscape, feeling the somewhat weightlessness of the one-sixth gravitational pull and looking out at that eerie, strange lunar landscape. As he did, he uttered a famous phrase. He called it “magnificent desolation,” magnificent desolation.

From a biblical point of view, those two are essentially a contradiction. There's an essential contradiction or irony to them. To God, there is nothing magnificent about emptiness. There's nothing magnificent about desolation. God created the universe, and it's amazing that the most common attribute of the physical universe that God made is its apparent emptiness.  The lunar landscape was indeed desolate. It was desolate of life, of trees, of water, animals, birds, other human beings. It was crater-marked with centuries of asteroid assaults. It was empty, empty, empty. But still, it was there. You could walk on it, reach down and scoop up the lunar dust. The real desolation was outer space itself.

C.S. Lewis talked about this in his classic, The Problem of Pain. This is what he wrote, "Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had asked me, 'Why do you not believe in God?' my reply would have run something like this. Look at the universe we live in. By far, the greatest part of it consists of empty space, completely dark and unimaginably cold. The bodies which move in this space are so few and so small in comparison with the space itself that even if every one of them were known to be crowded as full as it could hold with perfectly happy creatures, it would still be difficult to believe that life and happiness were more than a byproduct to the power that made the universe.  Why  would I be an atheist, I look at outer space and it's mostly empty, cold and empty.” Truly, the desolation of the universe is absolutely terrifying. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away from us. Between the solar system and that star is literally nothing." So for CS Lewis, the desolation of the universe made it difficult to believe in a God of love and light.

I believe the irony of that phrase, “magnificent desolation,” biblically would be similar to a phrase like this, “beautiful darkness." Beautiful darkness. Biblically, there's nothing beautiful about darkness. God created the light and reveals Himself in light as it says in 1 John 1:5, "God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all." I would say, in a similar sense, God is fullness and in Him there's no emptiness or desolation at all.  God did not create the universe to be empty or desolate. In Isaiah 45:18, it says, "For this is what the Lord says, He who created the heavens, He is God, He who fashioned and made the Earth. He founded it. He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited. He says, 'I am the Lord, and there is no other.'" The Bible reveals the omnipresence and immensity of God, the omnipresence, the immensity of God.  In Jeremiah 23, He says, "'Am I only a God nearby?' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so I cannot see Him?' declares the Lord. 'Do I not fill heaven and Earth?' declares the Lord.”

God, therefore, is a full being who overflows His fullness to us as creatures so that we would drink of His fullness in a love relationship.  He wants to fill every portion of the universe with His glory. He wants to fill every portion of your life with His glory. Most especially, God created sentient beings, angels and humans, to have an intimate love relationship with Him that we would know Him as He really is and see His glory and love Him with all of our hearts. But tragically, humanity has sinned and God is relationally distant from us. As the Bible says, "The wicked He knows from afar.” Yet, God has worked in redemptive history to draw near to us. The history of redemption is God coming back in to be close to sinners. He chose out a nation, the Jewish people, Abraham's descendants, to reveal that desire that God has to draw near and to have an intimate love relationship with sinful people to display this closeness.

Central to that relationship with Israel was His establishment of a holy place, holy ground, so to speak.  That idea began in Exodus 3 where Moses saw the burning bush and God said to him, "Take off your sandals for the place where you're standing is holy ground." Friends, what does that mean, “holy ground"? Especially when we consider what I've already said, the omnipresence of God, God fills heaven and Earth, what then is holy ground? I believe it is a location, a place where God chooses especially to reveal Himself relationally in His glory for the purpose of our relationship with Him.  It's a place chosen, like the burning bush, where God shines in some unique way and attracts us into a relationship with Him. Jonathan Edwards put it this way, "God, considered with respect to His essence, is everywhere. He fills both heaven and Earth. But yet, He is said, in some respects, to be more especially in some places than in others. He was said of old to dwell in the land of Israel above all other lands and in Jerusalem above all other cities of that land and in the temple above all other buildings in that city and in the Holy of Holies above all other apartments in the temple and on the mercy seat over the Ark of the Covenant, above all other places in the Holy of Holies.”  

God specifically chose to reveal His unique presence with His people by a glory cloud that descended into the tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was to be housed. The glory cloud showed that that place had become holy ground, a sacred space, and that glory cloud revealed it. Later, the same thing happened when Solomon built his temple, and he said, "Even the highest heavens can't contain you. How much less this temple I've built?”  Yet, despite all of that, God chose in His kindness and His goodness to appear in a cloud of glory and fill the Temple, as though God was there in some special way. But sadly, tragically, because of the sinfulness of the Jewish people, God withdrew His presence from them as was seen by Ezekiel the prophet when the glory cloud left or departed from the Temple. When God moved out, He left those places desolate. He left those places relationally empty. That's the nature of the desolation.

That desolation symbolizes God's departing from His people, leaving us desolate, leaving us empty, apart from God. This sermon seeks to understand that desolation and how it relates to the destruction of Jerusalem and, indeed, to our salvation. The passage looks back at the prediction of Christ concerning the destruction of the temple, "Not one stone will be left on another." Why it happened, it wasn't an accident.  It's something that God actually did in space and time. But also, I believe it looks ahead to a reenactment of it right before the Second Coming of Christ in this passage most clearly taught in 2 Thessalonians 2. That's why I believe there's not four phases of the abomination of desolation, but one yet to come. It hasn't happened yet.

Look at the text again from Matthew 24. I could do it from Mark. They're almost identical except for some phrases. Matthew 24:15-22, "So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation spoken of through the prophet, Daniel, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one in the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it would be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Pray that your flight will not take place in the winter on the Sabbath for then there will be great distress unequal from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened.”

I. Key Eschatological Principle: “As it was …so it will be.”

We're going to zero in and try to understand from the Book of Daniel the phrase, “abomination of desolation.” A key eschatological principle I'm giving, I'm going to give you two principles. Principle number one in Matthew 24:37, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." To keep it simple, “as it was, so it will be.” That's recurring themes, things that happen and then happen again and happen again to teach some prophetic truth. “As it was, so it will be.”

The second is Jesus' statement in Matthew 24:25, "Behold I have told you ahead of time.” God wants His people who read the Bible to know ahead of time what's going to happen. That's why I consider 2 Thessalonians 2 and also these passages to be important reading for Christians because I believe many of the terrifying events haven't happened yet. The protection that we're going to have, that we'll not be deceived by the Antichrist and his miracles and all of that drawn in, Jesus says very plainly is because He's told us ahead of time. We know what's coming. Forewarned is forearmed.

Those are the basic eschatological principles. These things happen again and again. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will been the coming of the Son of Man. The things that happen right before the flood will be pictures of what will happen right before the Second Coming. We get these acted out— “types.” They're called “types”, prophetic actions in history.  Things are acted out, like Abraham's near sacrifice of his son, Isaac, is a picture of the giving of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins. So also the blood of the Passover lamb painted on the houses of the Jewish people, a picture of Christ's sacrifice for us. So also the Exodus itself, a rescue of the people from slavery and bondage, a picture of our deliverance from slavery to sin. These are the kinds of things that are acted out.  God acts out history. He acts out prophecies in history. So also it is with the Temple and its desolation. As it was, so it will be. 

In Jesus' time, Daniel's prophecy had already, to some degree, come true in the Greek era between the time of Daniel and the time of Jesus. It had already come true. But Jesus said, "Yeah, but there's one more to come and then another beyond that." So there is the one with the Romans, and yet beyond it.  He's already operating from that same principle— As it was, so it will be. The words of Daniel have yet more fulfillment yet to come, Jesus is saying, in His time. I'm saying that it's still to come, yet still.

II. What is the “Abomination of Desolation”?

Let's zero in on this phrase, “abomination of desolation.” If you're in Matthew, look back at Matthew 23 and you look at 37-39 after Jesus has given His sevenfold woe against the scribes and Pharisees who represent the Jewish nation, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites," because of their rejection of Him and their hatred of Him and their plotting to kill Him and they will kill Him. Because of all that, He has turned away from the Jewish nation. Because they have rejected Him, He is rejecting them. He says very tragically in verses 37-39, Matthew 23, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Behold, your house is left to you desolate." That's an important word, isn't it? Look, “behold,” your house is desolate now. What do you mean? “The reason I say that is you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Then Jesus left the temple.”

The essence of the desolation is Jesus leaving physically, walking out of the Temple. Why is that significant? Remember in Ezekiel, the glory cloud, which symbolized the presence of God, left from the Temple. Jesus is the radiance of God's glory in the exact representation of His being. Jesus is a greater display of the glory of God than any cloud ever was. Because they have rejected Him, He is walking out, and He's not coming back. That means that that space is not sacred space anymore, it’s just a pile of stones.  At that moment, the disciples came up and said, "Look, Teacher, what massive stones. What magnificent buildings." Right at that moment, Jesus said, "Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth. Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down." Not an accident. It's a judgment of God on the Jewish nation for their rebellion against Him, their hatred of His messengers, the prophets, and especially their hatred of the Son who was sent to them. The judgment is coming.

As He's privately on the Mount of Olives, the disciples come to Him, Peter, John, James, and Andrew in particular come and ask Him, "When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" The threefold question is in Matthew, not in Mark. Those three questions woven together in Matthew 24 and 25, also Mark 13, constitute His answer.  Three topics, when will these things happen, the destruction of the temple, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? In their mind, they conflated all of them as though they're all at the same time, but we know now that they're not. The destruction of the Temple happened at least roughly two millennia before the Second Coming, which hasn't happened yet. The signs of the Coming which we're going to cover, God willing, in the next number of sermons in Mark 13, we'll talk about in detail. Those are yet to come in His discourse.

We're zeroing in now in this phrase, “abomination of desolation.” A parallel in Luke helps us to understand. This is in Luke 21. Listen to these words very carefully. "When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near." Do you see the link in Jesus' mind between Gentile armies invading and the desolation? That's how He thinks, Gentile armies invading and desolation. When you see, you know that Jerusalem's desolation is near.  "Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those in the city get out. Let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment and fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people that will fall by the sword and be taken as prisoners to all nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles," listen, "until the times of the Gentiles has been fulfilled."

That is essential reading for us to understand the “abomination of desolation.” Jerusalem is going to be destroyed by surrounding Gentile armies. He's talking about the circumstances of the destruction of the Temple and, indeed, of the city of Jerusalem in the year AD 70, about a generation after Jesus. He calls it the “times of the Gentiles." The physical desolation of Jerusalem comes after Christ has left it spiritually desolate.  It involves military conquest by the Gentiles, specifically by the Roman legions, the most powerful military nation in history. The “abomination of desolation”, Mark 13:14 and Matthew 24:15, is at least about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans. But I also believe that it will be an issue right before His coming at the end of the world. Then He said, "Let the reader understand." By that, He means the reader of Daniel.

So now we have to roll up our sleeves and go back to Daniel and try to understand it. "Let the reader of Daniel understand." Let me just tell you something about the Book of Daniel. Daniel himself didn't understand it, not fully. Daniel himself didn't understand it. You say, "Well, what hope do we have?" Here's what I believe about the mysteries of Daniel. It's on a need-to-know basis, the more you need to know, the more you'll understand Daniel.  If we are alive when the final “abomination of desolation” comes, you're going to understand aspects of Daniel that this congregation right now will not understand no matter how well I preach today. It's on a need-to-know basis. But there are levels of complexity and timing that Daniel wanted to know, but he couldn't understand because it wasn't for him. So it's complex.  Daniel would often ask for insight, and sometime it would be given him, but other times he was told to seal up the vision for a future generation. Daniel 12:4, "But you, Daniel, close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end." Close it up and seal it. In other words, Daniel, it's not for you. It's for the time of the end, for people who will live at the time of the end. There are portions of Daniel's prophecy that will only be fully intelligible to the generation that actually goes through it.

Let's talk about where this phrase, “abomination of desolation," comes from. It actually is a repeated phrase in Daniel, it’s not just one time. The desolation comes again and again, this use of the word, “desolation.” Who is Daniel? Daniel was a Jewish prophet who lived in exile in Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had destroyed the city of Jerusalem, and had taken the Temple artifacts out and eventually destroyed the Temple. Daniel lived at that time, the time of Nebuchadnezzar and on down until the Medo-Persian empire, so roughly around the year 620 to 538 BC, somewhere in there. Anyway, that's what Wikipedia told me about when Daniel lived,  I don't know. That’s about right, 600 to 500 BC. 

In Daniel chapter 8, it's the first time we have the phrase, “desolation.” In Daniel 8, Daniel sees a vision of Alexander the Great, a great king coming from the west from Greece, who will destroy the Persian empire, including the promised land.  One of Alexander's successors will viciously persecute the Jewish nation, becoming extremely arrogant, making claims that reach up to heaven. Daniel is told that a huge number of his own people would be given over to this man because of their transgressions. This individual who makes arrogant boasts that reach up to heaven is a “type” or a picture of the Antichrist. He is not the Antichrist, but he's a type or picture of the mentality of Antichrist, an arrogant Gentile leader that blasphemes and makes claims that go beyond all proportion. This is predicted in Daniel 8.

At one point in Daniel 8:13, he's asking for information. By the way, Alexander the Great's conquest happened about 200 years after Daniel died. So it was future for Daniel, but it's past for Jesus and for us. He's looking ahead to Alexander the Great about 200 years after Daniel would die. In Daniel 8:13, this is the first time that the word is used. "For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate and the giving over to the sanctuary and the host to be trampled underfoot." That's the first time we have that desolation.  There's the sanctuary, the animal sacrifices, and desolation connected with that. That's Daniel 8:13.

In Daniel 9, he rolls up his sleeves and really talks about the desolation. He talks about it a lot. Daniel 9 is the first saturated chapter on the concept of desolation. What happens is the prophet, Daniel, reads from the scroll of Jeremiah that the judgment on Jerusalem will last 70 years. The clock was ticking, and the time was drawing near.  Daniel figures out, he's an old man by this point, hey, the time is coming near for God to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, so he prays toward Jerusalem three times a day for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and specifically rebuilding of the Temple. Why? Because the Temple is where animal sacrifice happened. That was the center of their religion, and they couldn't do it while there was no temple. He's praying and confessing the sins of his people, and he uses this phrase, “desolate.”  He talks about the desolation of Jerusalem in verse 2. He talks about it again in Daniel 9:17-18, "For your own sake, Lord, make your face shine upon your sanctuary," that's the temple, "which is desolate. Oh, my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see the desolation and the city that is called by your name." He’s praying about a desolate sanctuary and a desolate city.

The Lord dispatches an angel to tell Daniel with amazing clarity about the 70 weeks of Daniel. That's a timetable about the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One, about His death and the desolation that would follow His death. He says that after the 69th week, Daniel 9:26, "An Anointed One," that's Christ, "shall be cut off and have nothing [killed] "and the people of the prince who is to come," so that the Gentile ruler, "the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”  There it is again. This Gentile ruler comes in to destroy the city and the sanctuary after the death of the Messiah. "Its end shall come with a flood and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed." Friends, this is exactly the prediction Jesus made. After the Messiah's cut off, the Temple is going to be destroyed by the ruler who is to come. That's the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 predicted in Daniel 9:26.  But there's more to come, 9:27. It speaks of the final week, a seven-year period. The last stretch is seven years. The weeks are seven-year stretches that many believe refer to the final seven years of human history. Again, the concept of desolation figures prominently. Listen to Daniel 9:27, "And he" [the prince of the people that'll come, the wicked ruler] "shall make a strong covenant with many for one week. And for half of the week, he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.”  Sacrifice and offering's animal sacrifice. "And on a wing of abomination shall come one who makes desolate" [a person who makes desolate] "until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator." 

I told you this was meat and not milk. You're reading this and like, "What in the world is this even talking about?  Daniel 9:26 talks about a Messiah who's cut off, killed, but then chapter 27 talks about animal sacrifice and desecrations. The concept is that a powerful and evil ruler will make a seven-year covenant concerning the sacrifices of the Temple and that in the middle of that period of seven years, he shall put an end to sacrifice offering in the Temple, and he shall, in some striking way, abominate or desecrate the Temple. But the end decreed by God shall be poured out on this evil person.

Then in Daniel 11, the Lord reveals to Daniel the specific history of Israel under the dominion of Greek rulers that followed Alexander the Great. One of those Greek rulers who lived about a couple of centuries after Alexander, about the year 175 or so BC, was a man named Antiochus IV. He called himself Epiphanies, “the manifest one.” He thought he was a god. The Greeks were like this. Alexander thought he was a god. They had this kind of mentality. He thought of himself as a god, and he's there in Jerusalem. Daniel 11:31 predicts him. Again, this is centuries before it even happened. This is the amazing aspect of predictive prophecy. Daniel 11:31, "His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation." There's the phrase exactly in Daniel 11:31.

Finally, in Daniel chapter 12, the concept is mentioned once again, but this time it seems to be in connection with the end of the world and the eternal state of glory that the saints will enjoy. In Daniel 12:1, it mentions a great tribulation greater than any that Israel had ever endured. It also predicts the rising up of Michael, the great prince, the archangel who protects Israel. The chapter goes on to unfold the deliverance of Israel, the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, some to everlasting glory and others to everlasting shame.

At the end of the chapter, the angel asks about the timetable for all of this. Daniel 12:8-12, "I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, 'Oh my Lord, what will the outcome of these things be?' He said, 'Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.'" There it is again. "Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand. But those who are wise shall understand. From the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days. Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days."

There's not a person on Earth who can tell us with absolute certainty what those days mean. 1,290 days, what is that? 1,335 days, what is that? I already told you, it’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know or you would know. Daniel didn't need to know and didn't know. But they're odd. The numbers are odd ... More later in Mark 13.

The most heretical thing your pastor believes is that I think actually the people who are alive at the time of the Second Coming will be counting down days until He comes. So though we do not know the day or hour, they will. That's my own thought. If you disagree, that's fine. Then you tell me what the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days signify. It's in there for a reason, friends. Nothing's in there for nothing, and no one has ever been able to understand because, I told you, it's on a need-to-know basis.  If you need to know, woe to you, it’s going to be a hard time. Jesus said, "If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive." That's how bad that time is going to be. It's a terrifying thing that He's talking about. That's Daniel, summarizing, the abomination is some kind of idolatrous desecration by a Gentile ruler connected with Gentile military power.  What is the abomination? It is an idol or an idolatry. What is the desolation? It is, first and foremost, spiritual emptiness that comes from God and then the physical destruction of the temple. That's what I believe Daniel teaches us. 

III. Dress Rehearsals: The Abomination of Desolation: Across History

Let’s go through the dress rehearsals, and then we'll be done. This is something God has done again and again. Let me just bring you through them quickly.  The first phase was in Shiloh. Do you remember in the days of the judges? In the days of the judges, God judged Israel for their wickedness and sin again and again. Because of their sins, He brought Gentile invaders. In 1 Samuel, the Gentile invaders are the Philistines, He brings the Philistines. Do you remember what happened? The Philistines won the first day's battle, so the Jews decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant from the tabernacle.  They bring the Ark of the Covenant, and they say, "The Ark will deliver us." It was like it was a good luck charm. The Philistines were terrified. "Oh, no, those gods that destroyed the Egyptians are here. Well, what can we do? The best thing we can do is try. So be like men, Philistines, and let's find out if we can win." They did win and what did they do? The Philistines captured the Ark.  Do you remember what Eli the priest did when he found out about it? He died. He fell over backward and died, broke his neck because he was terrified about this very thing. The Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines. In his family, a pregnant woman gave birth and died in the birth, and they named the baby, Ichabod, “the glory has departed from Israel” because the Gentiles had captured the Ark of the Covenant.  Remember what happened? They couldn't do much with the Ark. The Ark did a lot with them and gave them tumors and all kinds of things until they finally sent it back. It was like the Ark can take care of itself. But that was that. It was phase one. 

Phase two happened in the days of Jeremiah right before the Babylonian exile. In Jeremiah 7, the prophet was dispatched by God to go deal with, disabuse the Jews, of a basic concept and a theory.  The concept was, because of Solomon's beautiful temple, there is no way that God would ever let this city be captured or destroyed. God will defend this temple. He will protect it. “We have the Temple of the Lord. We're never going to lose.” Jeremiah had the hardest ministry in the Old Testament. He had to go and say, "That whole thing is false. Do not say the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord. Go to Shiloh and see what God did to the Ark. You think He's not going to let the Ark get captured? You think He's not going to let the Temple get destroyed?"

Needless to say, Jeremiah was not a very popular man, but he spoke the truth. God did, in fact, let the Babylonians swarm in and, as the psalmist said, "Cut it apart with hatchets and burn it and destroy it." There in Jeremiah 7, God said, "I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will be desolate.” As a matter of fact, the very beginning of the Book of Lamentations, which Jeremiah wrote after all of it was done, he looked down in Lamentations 1:1 and said, "How desolate lies the city once so full of people." The emptiness was because of their wicked and their sins. That's second phase. 

Phase three is the Greeks in Jerusalem under the time of Antiochus IV, Epiphanies, the very thing predicted in Daniel 8, also Daniel 11.  The Greek king came, Antiochus IV called Epiphanies, and he reigned from the year 175 to 164. The prediction we've already seen in Daniel 11:31, "His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation." The apocryphal book 1 Maccabees tells us what happened. Antiochus IV set up an altar to Zeus in the Holy of Holies and sacrificed a pig to Zeus there, open blasphemy and defilement of the Holy of Holies directly in God's face.  He did it specifically to enrage the Jews and the God of the Jews. This is what I believe is the spirit of the Antichrist. Antiochus IV believed he was a god, and he wanted to take on the Jewish god ,and he did so with blasphemy and with an ending of the animal sacrifice. 

Phase four was the Romans under Titus and the days of Jerusalem, the very thing we're talking about.  The Jewish zealots and revolutionaries had pushed the Roman occupiers so far. Titus said, "Enough is enough," and comes in with the legions. They defeat the zealots militarily. Though he didn't want the Temple destroyed, it was destroyed and not one stone was left on another. It was completely desecrated. When these pagans came in, they brought the effigies, the images of Caesar, and set them up in the Temple. So this is that desecration, that idolatry and the fulfillment of the abomination of desolation.

IV. Final phase:  The “Abomination of Desolation” and the AntiChrist

Those are the four phases that are passed. Is there yet one more to come? I believe there is. Here I would urge you to look at 2 Thessalonians 2, and we'll finish with that. First of all, you need to understand the significance of Jesus' death on the cross. The moment that Jesus died, the curtain in the Temple is torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus said, "It is finished." What is finished? The old covenant is finished. Animal sacrifice is finished.  A new and living way has been opened for us into the presence of God. What was restricted in the old covenant is now open to us by the blood of Jesus. The author of the Book of Hebrews makes it very plain that the old covenant is obsolete, and animal sacrifice as pleasing to the God is done forever. God will never again be pleased with the blood of bulls and goats, ever. It would be a direct affront to the blood of His Son, which was offered.

"The moment that Jesus died, the curtain in the Temple is torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus said, "It is finished." What is finished? The old covenant is finished. Animal sacrifice is finished.  A new and living way has been opened for us into the presence of God."

The author of Hebrews tells us again and again, “once for all,” never to be offered again. It says in Hebrews 8:13, "By calling this covenant new, He's made the first one obsolete.” What is obsolete will  soon disappear. When not one stone is left on another, the Temple itself destroyed. The problem is that when the curtain in theTemple was torn into from top to bottom, the priests that were there watching it, most of them didn't believe in Jesus. Certainly, they must have reported it back to the high priest, Caiaphas. He didn't believe in Jesus either. He had no explanation for the miraculous tearing of the curtain from top to bottom. But what do you think they did? They repaired it. They replaced it. So animal sacrifice went on for another generation after Jesus. What do you think God thought about that? That's an affront to His Son, and it's an affront to the new covenant. It's affront to everything He stood for. Yet, the Jews did it because they didn't believe that Jesus was the consummation of the animal sacrificial system.  They didn't believe that His blood ended for all time animal sacrifice. So in come the Romans, and they destroy the Temple, putting a physical end to animal sacrifice. It can't be done. It hasn't been done for almost 2,000 years since then. Yet, from all over the world, Jews go to Jerusalem. They go to the Wailing Wall, and many of them pray for ... What do they pray for? A rebuilding of the Temple.

For most of my Christian life, I had heard that the Temple was going to be rebuilt. Then when I read the Book of Hebrews and studied it, it's like, "That's awful." God doesn't want animal sacrifice ever again. When Jesus said, "It is finished," He meant it. When the curtain in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, that was it. When the author says, "A new and living way has been open for us into the presence of God through the body and blood of Jesus," that's it. It's finished. Yet, we've got this tragic unbelief and blindness on the part of the Jewish nation and a desire to re-establish animal sacrifice. I came to realize just because it's an affront to God and an affront to the finished work of Christ, doesn't mean it won't happen. Didn't the curtain itself get repaired or replaced? Why not the whole Temple?

Then you study 2 Thessalonians 2, and this kind of, in my opinion, cinches it. I don't really have a good interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2 apart from one final act of the “abomination of desolation.” There's one left to come. Look what Paul says. By the way, the Thessalonians had some false teachers there that told them, unfortunately, they had missed the day of the Lord. How depressing is that? They missed the end of all things.  I don't even know how you make that teaching, but I would find that depressing. Imagine if I got up next week, "By the way, we missed it. We missed it all, not just the rapture now. We missed the whole thing." This was strange false teaching and Paul came in to refute it. He writes very clearly in 1 Thessalonians 4 about the Rapture, and he writes very clearly in 2 Thessalonians 2, I would say, pumping the brakes on a sense of immediacy about the Second Coming.  He said, "Don't let anyone deceive you." Look what he says in 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, and 4. "Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction." 2 Thessalonians 2:4 sounds exactly like Daniel 11:36 to me. Listen to what Paul writes about the man of sin, "He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or His worship so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”  The end can't come until that happens, and it hasn't happened yet. 

I'm saying it still hasn't happened yet. How do I know? Look at verse 8, 2 Thessalonians 2:8, "This man of lawlessness who opposes and exalts himself over everything that is called God and sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God, Jesus is going to destroy with the breath of his mouth and the splendor of His coming.” I know that some reform scholars or others spiritualized this. They saw the Pope as Antichrist. They saw the spread of the true gospel as a fulfillment, it isn't. The Second Coming is something in physical space and time that we'll be able to see with our own eyes, and part of His agenda will be to destroy the beast from the sea, the Antichrist who, 1 John 2 tells us is coming, who sets himself up in God's temple. He's going to destroy Him with the breath of His mouth and the splendor of His coming. That hasn't happened yet.

I don't think it's helpful to spiritualize it. I'm all in favor of sound doctrine. I'm all in favor of that doctrine spreading around the world. I believe that sound doctrine pushes back the spirit of Antichrist. I believe in all of that. I believe many antichrists have come, and we need to fight them in every generation by sound doctrine. But there is an Antichrist coming. John tells us that. “You have heard that Antichrist is coming. Even now, many antichrists have come. There is one that is yet to come,” and 2 Thessalonians 2-4 describes him and Daniel 11:36 describes him. "The king will do as he pleases." This is Daniel 11:36. "He will exalt and magnify himself above every God and will say unheard of things against the God of Gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place."

One of the things he will do, according to verse 31 of Daniel 11, is to abolish daily sacrifice. The way I put all that together is the Jews will get what they wanted throughout every century, a reestablishment of the animal sacrificial system. We know from the Book of Hebrews what God thinks about that, but it doesn't mean it won't happen and that it will be enacted, it seems, by the prince of the people who will come. That is the Antichrist who will make a covenant with them.  Halfway through that time, he will put an end to it and he will take its place and he'll set himself, and I think of it as air quotes. He'll set himself up in so-called God's temple declaring himself to be so-called God and that will be considered blasphemy. I think it is also essential to the Jews turning genuinely to Christ as they will do right before the Second Coming. But that's another story for another time.

V. Application

“Let the reader understand.” That's what all of that meant. “Let the reader understand.” What are we supposed to do with it? Jesus says, "Behold, I have told you ahead of time." What are we supposed to do with that information? First, let me go back to the point I started with. Understand the desolation that comes from not living in a right relationship with God. That's the real problem here, the emptiness.

God is a full being, and He wants to fill you with Himself. He wants to fill you with the Spirit of Christ. He wants to fill you with the Holy Spirit. The clearest teaching on this is Ephesians 3:17-19. Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians, "I pray that you may be rooted and established in love and may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and that you may know that love that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

That's what salvation is, friends, filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. God is a full being, and He wants to fill you. It is idolatry, the abomination that makes desolate. So what idolatry is in your life driving out the fullness that you could experience with Christ? That's the question you have to ask. Now, I believe in a geopolitical actual military aspect of this. I believe in physical history, but I also think it's spiritual as well.

I urge you, come to Christ and trust in Him while there's time. Believe that His death on the cross ended forever the need for blood sacrifice. Jesus' blood is the blood of the new covenant. By faith in that blood, you can be washed and cleansed of all your sins and know the fullness of God. Finally, marvel at the intricacies of redemptive history. 

I've been looking forward to and dreading this sermon for weeks now. I decided it was not best to preach it in December. I think you all agree now. It probably was best to preach a couple of good Christmas sermons in December. But now we've gone through the intricacies here. It's a marvel, isn't it? Don't you share with me a marveling at the simplicity and the complexity of the Bible? Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this deep dive that we've had through the Book of Daniel, redemptive history, the things that Jesus wanted us to know. The fact of the desecration of the holy space by the Gentiles again and again and again has been a display of your holiness, a display of the fact that you don't dwell in temples built by human hands, but you want to dwell in our hearts by the Spirit. So I pray that you would help us, oh Lord, help us to walk with you, help us to put to death all the idols and the sins in our lives, and help us to be faithful to share the message of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world that needs it so desperately. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Bible instructs us to number our days wisely, for the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs holds in his hand our lifespan as well.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -  

In Daniel Chapter 5, one of the most dramatic moments in redemptive history occurred with a wicked king named Belshazzar. Belshazzar was putting on a big feast, and he was stopped in his tracks suddenly by a disembodied hand that began writing in the wall above his corrupt throne. The hand that wrote the words was terrifying to everyone there, and the words could not be understood easily or read. The hand carved letters into the plaster in the wall, and I envisioned dust sprinkling down to the floor while the hand continued to write the mysterious words. I imagine at that time that the music and the lustful revelry in the entire hall from the 1,00 noble men partying with him instantly came to an end. If you'd been close enough to the throne, you would've seen the color drain from the king's face. You would've been able to hear his knees knocking together, but the focus of everyone in that formerly riotous hall would've been the writing on the wall. That moment moved into proverbial truth.

To see the writing on the wall in our culture means to see something inevitable, something that's coming and there's nothing that can stop it. It means to see clearly that your end is near. Of course, this story is recounted for us in Daniel Chapter 5, Belshazzar's feast, and the man who read the writing on the wall at that time was a prophet named Daniel. He first, as he read it, proclaimed the great wickedness of the king of Babylon. After recounting the famous story of Belshazzar's grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, how God humbled him and changed his mind of that of an animal and then changed it back again seven years later, teaching him that God alone rules over the kingdoms of men and that all people are accountable to Him. After accounting that history, Daniel then leveled Belshazzar with this righteous accusation. He says in Daniel 5:22-24, "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them.  You praise the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wooden stone which cannot see or hear, understand, but you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Therefore, He sent the hand that wrote this inscription." 

That phrase has arrested me for years. You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Daniel then read the writing on the wall clearly so everyone could hear him, the words were “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”, and then Daniel interpreted them. "This is what the words mean. MENE; God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. TEKEL; You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. PERES; Your kingdom is divided, and given to the Meads and Persians." That very night Belshazzar was slain and the Babylonian empire came to an end and the Medo-Persian empire took over.

The words that very night remind me of Jesus's parable of the rich fool.  You remember that man who had a bumper crop and thought he had plenty of years to enjoy all of that wealth and he thought, “'What shall I do? I'll tear down my barns and build bigger barns, and I'll store up all of this harvest, and I'll eat and drink and be merry for years to come.’But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night, your soul will be required of you.’" That's an important phrase, isn't it, “required of you”? It's not an option when that summons comes. When God who gives life takes it from us, there's nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them. That's the point of my whole sermon. We do not know how much more time we have left here on Earth, and we should number our days wisely. 

"When God who gives life takes it from us, there's nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them."

Today is the last day of the year 2023. If God wills, tomorrow will come, and it will be a new year, 2024. We've been instructed by the Lord to say that, to say, "If the Lord wills.”  In James 4, it says, “'Today or tomorrow I'll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. You don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life that it's a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes? Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’" So if the Lord wills, January 1, 2024 will come for any of us, most likely for most of us, if not all of us. Therefore, it seems wise for us to heed the timeless advice that you heard read for us in Psalm 90:12, "Teach us to number our days aright," or properly, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom." 

Let's look at Psalm 90 briefly. Let's try to understand Moses, the man of God, and what he said. We're also going to go over to another passage, Ephesians 5, and we're going to try to number our days rightly so we can make the most of the time that we have left.  Moses begins by asserting that God alone is our eternal dwelling place. Look at Verses 1 and 2, "Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the Earth in the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God." The doctrine there is the majestic eternality of God. He alone is from everlasting to everlasting. He is timeless. He is eternal. He is above time. He's not bound by time, unlike us. God knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end because He ordained every day that ever has been or ever will be. The statement “from everlasting to everlasting” means that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. He's always the same, and He is our dwelling place. God is where we will spend eternity. God is the New Jerusalem. God is the new heaven and new Earth. Not to say that there will not be beautiful created things at that point or a place for our resurrected bodies to be, not at all. There will be, but God is our home. God is our dwelling place from generation to generation. 

Then Moses goes on to speak of the temporariness and the frailty of all human beings. Look at Verse 3-6, "You turn men back to dust saying, ‘Return to dust, oh, sons of men for a thousand years in your sight or like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night.’ You sweep men away in the sleep of death. They are like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening, it is dry and withered." All of us, the Bible teaches, are ultimately fashioned from the dust of the earth. To dust, someday all of us will return as God said to Adam, condemning him to the death penalty that his sin deserves. When we die, our bodies go back into the native elements from which they're originally taken, back to dust, but God is eternal. "A thousand years in his sight is as a few hours or like a single day or like a watch in the night."

God's judgments stand over all human beings. They don't just die accidentally as though God has nothing to do with their deaths. Not at all. "God," it says, "sweeps men away in the sleep of death." It's because God takes away their breath that they die. It's not an accident. "People," it says in the text, "spring up quickly like fresh new blades of grass." They flourish, they look beautiful, they're radiant and strong, but in a short amount of time they wither, they sink back down just as quickly. "In the morning, they're new. In the evening, they're dry and withered." So our time here in our strength, especially in our youth, the prime of life is very brief. We should therefore make the most of our days when we have youth, when we have strength, when we have vigor and ability because soon one by one we will lose all of those capabilities. All you have to do is walk through a nursing home and look around into each room and see most likely your future.  You see the feeble, elderly people there, all of them stripped of strength, stripped of their possessions. They'll never go to their homes again. They'll never enjoy their material possessions again. They occasionally have visitors. If they have a family structure of people that visit them, then it's kind. Sometimes they don't even remember their closest family members. This is what the text is saying happens to some degree to all of us, and so therefore, it is essential for us to make the most of every moment that we have of every opportunity. Each day has unique opportunities. Soon we can do little because age and feebleness has overtaken us and we can't do much at all.

Behind all of this, according to Moses and according to the Bible more generally, is the sinfulness of man. It's because we are sinners the wages of sin is death. The troubles are caused originally by Adam's sin but then by our own sinful choices.  In Verses 7-11, Moses recounts this, the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God. He writes, "We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath. We finish our years with a moan. The length of our years is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger for your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you?" 

Moses was very aware of the sinfulness of the Jewish nation. God had warned them according to Ezekiel Chapter 20, before He ever took them out of Egypt, before He ever took them out of bondage to Egypt, that they needed to give up their idolatry, which they had learned and their pagan ways. They weren't any different than the Egyptians that surrounded them. They were every bit as pagan and idolatrous as the Egyptians were.  He warned them and it says plainly in Ezekiel 20 to give up their idols, but He said, you would not do it. They were a pagan nation when they were brought out in the Exodus, this is what I think Moses referred to. We saw it very, very clearly in the golden calf at the bottom of Mount Sinai, how God said very plainly, "I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other God. You shall not make any idols or worship any idols." In a short amount of time, they broke all of those commandments immediately, and we see their paganism and their idolatry and their wickedness. Soon after that, after testing God in many ways and trying Him in many ways, they utterly rebelled when the twelve spies came back and brought a good report about the land. But they said that the Anakimes are there with cities walled up to the sky, and we look like grasshoppers in our own eyes and to them, and “we can't do it.”  Ten of the twelve spies gave that report, Joshua and Caleb alone spoke words of faith. God then condemned the nation to wander around in the desert until that generation of fighting men should die. In a short amount of time, destroying all actuarial charts and all that, that entire generation, 40 years, fell dead. 

Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm during those years. When he was writing also the Pentateuch, he's writing the rest of the Scripture, he's watching that generation of sinners wither and die;  they're dying before his eyes. He has this in mind, "You've taken our secret sins, our idolatries and our wickedness and our paganism and you've put it in the light of your holy presence and because of that we are dying." He says, "In a very short amount of time, we fly away and we are no more." Then he makes the central request, which is the reason why I chose Psalm 90 for this New Year's Eve sermon.

Look at verse 12, "Teach us to number our days of right that we may gain a heart of wisdom." This is a prayer. The entire Psalm is a prayer of the man of God, Moses. This is the central prayer. Looking up to God, the man of God is saying, "God, would you please teach us something that we don't know? Would you please give us a heart of wisdom specifically in the right understanding of time. God teach us to number our days properly that we may gain a heart of wisdom." We need to understand this. We need to see why it is essential for us to number our days properly. We need to number our days because God has already numbered them so that we can be wise about salvation, so that we can make the most of the days that we have left here on Earth. 

I. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Death

Let's walk through it. First, number your days so that you may be wise about death.  Teach us to number our days properly or rightly that we may gain a heart of wisdom. First of all, the Bible tells us that your days are already numbered. Your days are finite. You're not going to continue in this present state, in this present world, in this present body forever. We are all of us mortal. It says in Psalm 13:16, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." God has set a boundary to our lives. There is our birth day and there will be our death day, and nothing will change that. That's what Psalm 139 means, all the days that God has laid out for us, that all the days He has ordained were written in God's sovereign book, the book of his decrees before even one of them came to be, and that's what Moses asked for. 

Secondly, we don't know the number of those days. That number is hidden from us. God has hidden from each person the day of his or her death.  In a very real sense, therefore, we can never number our days. We just don't know. It's a bit of an ironic prayer because it's the very thing that we cannot do. We are not ever going to be able properly to number our days. Instead, it seems the wisdom that Moses is seeking here is an acute mindfulness of the limits of the days, an acute mindfulness of the fact that we will die someday, an awareness of that that should dominate the way we live our lives. This will not go on forever. As the psalmist said in Psalm 39:4-5, "Show me, oh Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreath, the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath." I think that's a partner to Psalm 90:12, "Show me how brief my life is. Show me how a breath it is. Show me how quick it is. Help me to know that." That's all we can do. We cannot actually know the numbers.

As he says here in Psalm 90 in Verse 10, "The length of our days is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away." We need to understand, as I've already said, God's direct activity in sustaining us and then in His own good time taking us out of this world. Look at Verse 3, "You turn men back to dust saying return to dust, O sons of men." None of us dies accidentally. We use that kind of language just in the human, the horizontal way. Talk about people dying from a car accident or something like that, we use the word “accident”, but there are no accidents when it comes to God. God is absolutely sovereign. He rules over all things. You could have prevented that so-called accident. People do not accidentally die when it comes to God. What Moses is saying here is He takes away the breath and they perish.

Again, in Verse 5 and 6, "You, [meaning God] "sweep men away in the sleep of death. They're like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered." As Daniel said to Belshazzar, this really convicting and haunting verse, Daniel 5:23, "You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways." If I could get one thing out of this sermon for all of you that are listening to me, intensely feel that God holds in His hand your life and all your ways. That's the point of the whole sermon. Feel that. Understand you're not your own. Understand your days are not your own to do whatever you want with. Recently, I was doing men's Bible study on Thursdays when we went to the Book of Titus. The thing about that Bible study is we take forever to go through Books of the Bible. Anybody who's gone to it knows. It's like, "Well, when are we going to be done with Gospel of Matthew? Who knows? How long will it take you to go through Titus?” This is what happens, Titus 1:1, "Paul, a slave of God." All right, stop right there. How long are we going to take on that phrase? Maybe the whole time. What does it mean to be a slave of God? Are we? We actually are, or we're slaves of sin. Roman 6 says you're a slave of one of the other. Suppose you say, "I don't want to be a slave of anyone?" Well then, you're being lied to by Satan, you’re being deceived. You are a slave either of God or of sin/Satan/death. You are a slave. We were born to be a slave. 

The beauty of salvation is we come to realize that the master that we're serving, God and Christ are good masters and the yoke is easy and the burden is light. We're not deceived, but we still live like we are our own entities. Like we get to do whatever we want with our time, energy, money. It's ours, isn't it? Isn't our time ours to spend as we see fit? No, it's not.  If you had a faithful slave back in those days in the first century and you saw him in the morning in the marketplace and he's a good slave and you asked him, "So what are your plans today?" What do you think he would say? "Whatever my master wants. Whatever my master wants." Let me ask you a question. Do you think that's the right way for a Christian to think? It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. That's what ownership language sounds like. Jesus died to buy you as He says openly in 1 Corinthians 6, "You're not your own, you're bought at a price." But we still think like free agents, don't we? We still think we get to do whatever we want with our time and our energy and our money, but we don't.

"It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord."

That's why we spent all that time on, "Paul, a slave of God," because I realized much to my shame, I don't think like that, not enough. I still think too much like a free agent, and I need to think, in the year 2024 if God lets me live, more like a slave than I've ever thought in my life. I would commend that to you. So the prayer, "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom," means to be aware that the same God who knit us together in our mother's wombs and holds in His hand our lifespan as well, in Him, we live and move and have our being. We need to be prepared for death so we can live a wise life honoring the God who holds in His hand our life and all our ways. 

II. Number Your Days To Be Wise for Salvation

Secondly, remember your days to be wise for salvation. Moses ultimately yearns for a heart of wisdom. Given the brevity of life, the wisest thing we can do is to find salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  There is nothing wiser that you could do, conversely, there's nothing more foolish that you could ever do than to live 70 or 80 years in this life and go to hell. It'd be the most foolish thing you could ever have done with your 70 or 80 years. The wisest thing you can do is to find salvation. The scriptures are given for that exact purpose, to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Since death is certain and its timing is uncertain, the wisest thing we can do is to say, "Today is the day of salvation for me," and flee to Christ because you don't know if you'll have tomorrow. 2 Corinthians 6:2 says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation, I helped you. I tell you now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation." So that's what we have, we have today.  It's all we ever have. God set aside a certain day calling it “today”. That's what we have [Hebrews 3:4].  Today is about salvation and not just justification, not just crossing over from death to life, but growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ. You're left alive here on Earth for salvation,  so the wisest thing you can do is to immerse yourself in Scripture for your own salvation and that of others. 

I would charge you in the year 2024, give yourself like never before to the Word of God. Start there. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 speaks of the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. "All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work," says it all. The Scripture is given first to save your soul from hell and secondly, to make you maximally fruitful through every good work. That's what Scripture is given to do. That's its purpose.

The scripture has power to show you your sin, has power to convict you of your sin. Scripture has the power to show you Christ and to move you to trust Him for salvation. Scripture has the power to continue to instruct you, rebuke you, correct you, and train you in righteousness and to thoroughly equipped you for every good work. There is no better way for you to use the limited days that we have left than to immerse yourself first in Scripture. A new year is a great time to renew your commitment to daily Bible intake and to prayer, a daily quiet time. 

II. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Redeeming Time

Thirdly, number your days so that you can be wise about redeeming the time. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, "Be very careful then how you live not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil." I want to say something about almost every modern translation of that verse.  They almost all say something like making the most of every opportunity, which is fine, but it's not technically what the Greek is. The Greek is “exagorazo”, which means “agora.” In the marketplace it’s a buying kind of marketplace word. “Ex” meaning "out of”, a prefix. So to buy out of, that's what redemption is. The idea of redeeming is of the payment of a price to get an individual out of trouble like slavery or a kidnapped victim or a hostage, something like that. They are redeemed by the payment of some silver or gold and the individual is brought out. You can imagine David and his men when they found out that their families have been kidnapped by the Amalekites after weeping and whatever, they went after their families to rescue them out of danger. That's the idea. Only the KJV and I think NKJV still retained “redeeming the time” language. The idea is that time, the day, is in danger. It's lost. It starts lost. You have to get up and go redeem it, or it will end lost as well.  It's just like “carpe diem”, “seize the day.” If you don't get up and exert energy and faith and love toward the day, it will be wasted. You and I have both had plenty of those days. That's what Paul says, be very careful how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. It's the same idea. Teach us to number our days so that you gain- What? -a heart of wisdom and not be foolish. Paul's using the same foolishness, wisdom type language. Be very careful then how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. That's what he's saying. 

Years ago I came across a sermon that helped me understand this text. It was preached by Jonathan Edwards when he was 31 years old, and it was called “On the Preciousness of Time.” It's one of the most convicting sermons I've ever read. I read it again last night and again this morning and I was thoroughly convicted. I realized this isn't going to be some happy New Year's Eve sermon for you all, but that's okay.  The fact is we're not supposed to come to the Scriptures and say, "I thank you God that I'm doing so well." That's not what primarily I desire to do. What I want to do is say, "Lord, show us where we need to repent. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. How can I repent? What is there in my life that is sinful and is wasting time? I need to understand that." Edward's sermon helped me understand that, the preciousness of time. His doctrine was clear. Time is a thing that is exceedingly precious. He then gave reasons. Reason number one time is precious is because eternity, your eternity and mine, depends on improving the time. It depends on making the most of the time you have while you're alive. You're born and then you live. At some point in time, you have to repent and believe in Jesus. Time is precious because your eternity depends on the improvement of it.

Edward says this, "According as we either improve or lose time, so shall we be happy or miserable for all eternity. Without the improvement of time, our eternity will be miserable, and with a good improvement of time, our eternity will be happy. As we use our time wisely with the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we walk wisely in this present age storing up treasure for eternity, in that proportion we shall be happy for all eternity. As people squander the gospel through unbelief and waste their days in sin, they guarantee their own eternal misery." Time must be very valuable indeed simply because so much depends on using it wisely. 

Second, time is precious because it is very short. It's a commodity that is in short supply. The more scarce a precious commodity is, the more valuable it is. This is basic economics, the law of supply and demand.  We've already established that time is precious, but it's even more so because the time we're told in the Bible is short. The time is short. When there's a famine in the city, even the smallest crust of bread will sell for much silver or gold. The bread at that point is far more valuable than the silver or gold. So if time is already short and we squander even a small proportion of it, how dreadful would that be? A number of years ago I listened, I do a lot of listening to books on tape while I ride my bike, and there was this book about Louis Zamperini called Unbroken. It was later made into a movie. Louis Zamperini was a World War II airman, and his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean. He and two other men survived the crash, and they're floating in two rafts tied together in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean with only a very slim hopeless survival. Their raft had meager supplies of food and drinking water.  They had a few precious chocolate bars, the calories of which could sustain them for a few vital days, and they divided the bars up into small squares and stored them. But unfortunately, one of the men panicked and while the other two were sleeping, ate all of the chocolate in one night. Their food supply up to that point was already critically low and limited. But now it was even in a worse situation because this one man had squandered it. This is a picture of us in life with a very limited supply of the precious thing known as time. Our life depends on it. It depends on the use of it, and it's limited. It's in a limited supply. 

Furthermore, thirdly, Edward says, "Time is precious because we don't know how much of it we have." They're able to do an inventory and they knew how much food they have. We are not able to actually number our days as I already said. We have a sense that they're limited.  We have a sense that there's just a few of them, but we just don't know how many. So time is precious because time is uncertain. Our lives could end tonight or they could continue for many years. We actually have no idea, so we have to make the most of what God has given us. Edward said this, "If a man has food and supplies laid up for his journey and he doesn't actually know how much food is left or how much he will need, and if he knows that his stores are going to run out, if his stores run out, he will die. His life depends on it that he'll be exceedingly careful about how he uses each morsel of food." How much more than that would people prize their time if they knew they had about a few months left or even a few days left in this world? So it is with multitudes in this world who assume that they have plenty of time left. I think about around the world, how many people who it is ordained for them to die tomorrow are thinking right now they have plenty of time left.  We who read the Bible should not be so deceived. We should be aware that we don't actually know how much time we have left. How many will be surprised by the coming of their death and think to themselves, "I always assumed that I would have more time." 

Fourth, time is precious because once it is spent, it can never be recovered again. You could imagine someone having a precious heirloom like a piece of jewelry or something like that and losing it through theft maybe or losing it or going to a pawn shop because they needed some money. You could imagine through extreme effort they might be able to reclaim that precious item again somehow. It might be difficult, but they could get it back. But that's not the way it is with any Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Once that Monday is gone, it'll never come back again. It was a unique gift. "This is the day the Lord has made." God crafted it, and how you spent it is done.  It's in the past, you can never get it again. Therefore time is unspeakably precious because once it's spent, it can never be reclaimed. Edwards says this, "Every moment of time is served up to you as if it were a meal. If we turn up our noses at it, the divine table waiter will take it away and you'll never see that dish again." You can imagine every day it's like God is a chef and you're sitting at a table with a nice tablecloth and heavy silverware and He sets before you a dish that He's crafted. This is the day the Lord has made and you get to eat that dish as He has ordained. But if you waste it, that particular dish is taken away and will never be served to you again. That's how precious time is. Ephesians 2:10 says, "We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them."

So that's what I mean by “this day.” God has crafted unique opportunities for the day, and we are to make the most of them, and we'll never have that chance again. If we have lived up to this point 50 or 60 or 70 years and we haven't improved those years, it can't be helped. There's nothing that can be done for them now, it is eternally gone from us. All we can do is to improve the time we have left. If we waste our money, we might be able to get money back, but if we waste our time, our days, they are gone forever. I remember when I was going through this, when I was preaching through Ephesians 5, it's very easy to become overwhelmed with discouragement at this topic. We are meant to be convicted, but we're not meant to be crushed. It doesn't make actually any sense for us to be overwhelmed and say, "What's the use?" I was thinking about that, that feeling of discouragement or whatever, it's like, "I've wasted so much time in my life. Well, what's the use?”  I don't know, I picture a wheat farm out West and the family's all asleep. There's a fire burning in the fields and also burning a corner of the house and part of the barn. Imagine a neighbor sees the fire and comes and rouses the family and starts yelling and say, "Get up. Your fields are on fire. Your house is on fire. Get up. You need to put the fire out. You need to save what's left." It would make no sense for those people to come to their senses, realize what the situation is and say, "Well, we've already lost so much. What's the point?" and just sink back down into the bed. That would be literally deadly for them. Therefore, the point of this sermon and the point of these kinds of reflections is there's nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024? That's the point.  So what has been spent has been spent how you chose to spend it. 

"There's nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024?"

III. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Heaven

Fourth, number your days properly to be wise about heaven. In one sense, I want to say it's actually good news that our time here on earth is brief. This is a world characterized by death, mourning, crying and pain. In heaven, there will be no more death, mourning, crying and pain. We'll be free from those forever. As Revelation 21:4 says, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away." It's good news that we're not going to be here forever. That is a good thing. If you come to faith in Christ, you've trusted in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, you're going to spend eternity in a place completely free from pain. Also, time we are told brings us closer and closer to our final salvation. As it says in Romans 13:11, "And do this understanding the present time, the hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

That implies there's some aspect of our salvation that hasn't come yet, and that's the final salvation that we'll get on Judgment Day. That salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Every day brings us closer to that good destination. Therefore, we should number our days properly, gain a heart of wisdom and think like aliens and strangers in this world. As it says in Hebrews 11, the heroes of the faith admitted that they were aliens and strangers on Earth. “People who say such things show that they're looking for a country their own. If they'd been thinking of the country they had left, they would've had opportunity to return, but they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”[Hebrews 11: 14-16] 

IV. Applications

What applications can we take from this topic? Today is the last day of 2023. If God wills, we'll venture ahead into 2024 tomorrow.  It's a good opportunity for us to look both ways. Look back at 2023 and honestly, by the power of the Spirit, evaluate yourself on this topic. Did I use my time well and wisely in the twelve months that were given me? God gave me a whole year. How did I use my time? Did I grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ in the year 2023? Am I closer to Christ's likeness than I was on December 31, 2022? Was it a year of growing for me? It may have been, it may not have been. Maybe you're further away from Christ than you were a year ago, but maybe you've grown. Just evaluate. 

Secondly, did I help others to grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ? Was I useful? Did I use my spiritual gifts? Did I use the Gospel? Did I use biblical exhortations? Did I help brothers and sisters in Christ? Did I help lost co-workers and neighbors and family members to come to faith in Christ? Did I use my time well? Did I serve God in this world?  Did I serve God's purposes or did I serve myself? Did I live selfishly? Did I waste time? What are my habits? What do I generally do with a day? What do I generally do with free time? 

Just evaluate. Say, "Lord, show me what I'm like. Show me what I do. Help me to understand myself." Like Edwards would say, "Let time seem unspeakably precious to you." Think of it as a valuable thing for me to spend my time well and wisely. This afternoon, I don't know what your plans are. What are your plans, you bond slaves of God? What you should do is you should say, "God, what do you want me to do with my afternoon?" I would commend if you have some time to be reflective based on the themes of this sermon and say, "Lord, what changes do you want to see in me in 2024 if you let me live? What new habits do you want me to develop?"

Start with the Bible. "Am I regular in my Bible intake? Am I memorizing scripture? Am I giving myself fully to scripture?" Let's start there. That primes the pump for everything in the Christian life. What's my prayer life like? God, how can I grow in that? Search me, oh, God, and know my heart. 

What bad habits do you want me to slay as was said earlier?" What are some sin habits that have crept up that are stronger in you now than they were a year ago, that you need to kill by death by starvation? What can you put to death? What lusts and habits can you put to death in the year 2024 if God gives you time to live? How can you serve this present generation? There are some things we can do here on Earth now that we will not be able to do in the new heaven new Earth. One of them is to suffer well.  If you're going through suffering, the ability to suffer well is something you'll get to do now you cannot do in heaven because there'll be no suffering in heaven. 

Secondly, you can also help alleviate other people's suffering now. You can't do that in heaven because no one of all the redeemed will be suffering at all, but we are able to alleviate suffering in this world. Maybe you didn't do that in 2023 the way you wanted to, but you say, "Lord, would you make me an instrument of your grace? Would you make me an instrument to alleviate the suffering of people around?" 

Obviously, the most important thing that any of you could do if you're lost is to come to faith in Christ. There's no point in you doing any of these other things if you're lost listening to me now, if you're not yet a Christian. I would beg you, while there's time, crossover from death to life. Understand that God sent His Son. That's what we celebrate at Christmastime. The incarnate Son of God came, took on a body and blood so that He could give that body and that blood to bring us to Christ, bring us to salvation. Trust in Him. That is the purpose of time. Once that's happened, then say, "Lord, help me to redeem the time, make the most of the time that I have here on Earth." 

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the opportunity we've had to look at this sobering text. God, we know that if we're Christians and we look back at 2023, we have to be honest and say it was mixed.  There was some wood, hay and straw mixed in with the gold, silver and precious stones. We know that if we're Christians, we did some good works. It's impossible for us to be alive in Christ and not bear some fruit. We also know that we wasted a lot of time. So Lord, I pray that you would help all of us who are Christians to look ahead to 2024 with resolution by faith relying on you to waste far less time in 2024 than we did in 2023, that more of our days would be gold and silver and costly stones than wood, hay and straw. God, help us to be faithful in sharing the gospel. We're surrounded by lostness. We're surrounded by people who don't understand what life is about. They're like Belshazzar. They're eating and drinking in idolatrous ways, and they don't know that time is short. Help us to be willing to tell them the truth for the sake of their eternal souls. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis traces the angelic worship of Christ throughout the whole of scripture.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT-

On May 21st, 1738, Charles Wesley lay seriously ill in bed fearing for his life. But as he lay there fearing for his life, he feared more for his eternal soul because at that point he had no assurance of salvation. He and his brother John, had been pursuing a religion of Christianized good works and morality. They were part of a group called the Oxford Holy Club, and they sought to earn their salvation by good works, by mission trips, by other things, but they had no assurance of salvation. They only had ever-increasing anxiety about eternal hell and destruction. For almost two years they sought this assurance.

John and Charles Wesley had been on a mission trip to the New World and on the way back, they were in a serious storm with a group of Moravian believers. They saw the supernatural joy and peace and confidence even in the midst of that storm that those Moravians had. They had absolutely no fear of death, but that could not characterize the Wesleys at that point, so they began to study the religion of the Moravians who often spoke of the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the soul of a genuinely converted person.

The Wesleys had seen that supernatural peace during that storm, and they longed to know it, a total freedom from death. The Moravians linked that sense of assurance to the promise in Romans 8:16, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children, but they had not experienced that testimony, that assurance at all. If anything, things just seemed to get worse and worse for them until that day, May 21st, 1738 for Charles Wesley, ironically, Pentecost Sunday, Pentecost Sunday commemorating the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church.

Charles Wesley had been fighting for his life against his illness, but also pleading with God for assurance of salvation. As he lay alone in his bed between visits by his brother John and doctors and well-meaning friends, Charles had a personal encounter with God through the out-poured Holy Spirit that changed his life forever. Assurance flooded into his soul. He felt strange palpitations in his heart, and he cried aloud, "I believe, I believe." He wrote in his journal that day, "I have now found myself at peace with God and rejoiced in the hope of loving Christ."

Now his more famous brother John Wesley would soon have his own conversion experience at a prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street there in London. Though John Wesley would become the leader and driving force of the movement known as Methodism, Charles Wesley would become the movement's poet and hymn writer. He wrote over 6,000 hymns seeking to put the theology of Christianity in lyrics that illiterate people could understand easily.

Seven months after his conversion, Charles Wesley was walking through the streets of London on Christmas day. The bells were ringing, celebrating the birth of Christ. He hurried home and wrote the poem that would become arguably the most celebrated Christmas song of all time, now known as Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.

The original poem that Charles wrote was, "Hark! How all the welkin rings. Glory to the King of Kings." Welkin means “heavens.” A number of years later in 1753, the greatest Methodist preacher of them all, George Whitfield changed the lyrics to what we know today, "Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king. Peace on earth and mercy mile God and sinners reconciled.”  That improvement is well appreciated. It's already a challenge to have one obscure word, hark meaning “listen,” and even more obscure archaic word, “welkin,” would probably have sunk him for good.

 The heavens were indeed ringing with the praise of angelic army the night that Jesus was born. We can obey the word “hark" to listen to their celebration only by faith. Faith in the word of God. There is a listening of the soul with the ears of faith that we must do to be able to listen to them celebrating. There's a seeing to see the incarnate Christ laying there. There's a seeing we can only do by faith, faith in the word of God.

I. Angelic Worship of Christ

The call to listen to the angelic praise is a doorway into my Christmas meditation with you today. I want to trace out over all of redemptive history, even before history began, angelic worship of Christ. Angelic worship of Christ. My purpose is not that we will merely hark to angelic worship of Christ, but join with them in understanding the greatness in the majesty of Jesus Christ and that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven through that worship. Hebrews 1 makes it plain. When God brought his son into the world, He wanted the angels to worship him. Hebrews 1:6 says, "When God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, ‘Let all God's angels worship him.’"

This is an amazing statement if you think about it. It's an open claim to God of God concerning the deity of his son. The scripture makes it plain that God commands all worshiping beings, angels and humans to worship him and serve him only. Worship is reserved for God, and yet here's God calling on the angels to worship his son when He brings him into the world. That is proof that the Son of God, the birth of Jesus is a matter for worship. This is deity coming into the world, and the angels complied.

"The scripture makes it plain that God commands all worshiping beings, angels and humans to worship him and serve him only. Worship is reserved for God, and yet here's God calling on the angels to worship his son when He brings him into the world. "

I want to trace out more fully the history of angelic worship of the second person of the Trinity and follow it in historical order in nine steps. First, angels worship the pre-incarnate Christ. Second, angels announced the coming Christ. Third, angels celebrated the birth of Christ. Fourth, angels protected the newborn Christ. Fifth, angels strengthened Christ in his weakness. Sixth, angels announced the resurrected Christ. Seventh, angels celebrated the heavenly ascension of Christ. Eighth, angels assisted in the spread of the gospel of Christ's kingdom. And then ninth, angels will celebrate Christ's glory for all eternity.

II. Angels Worship the Pre-Incarnate Christ

First, angels worship the pre-incarnate Christ. Christ alone of all human beings that's ever lived, made a voluntary choice, a willing choice to enter the world as a human being. He's the only one that that is true of. He made this assertion to Pontius Pilate when He was on trial before Pilate in John 18, “Jesus said to Pilate, ‘You are right in saying that I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born and for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’"

In other words, "I chose to enter the world and I chose to enter the world to build a kingdom based on truth and to invite people into that kingdom of truth." That was a choice that Jesus made. He's the only human being that ever was pre-existent before He took on a human body and chose to enter the world, and that is to build a kingdom of truth. So also this statement in John 6, Jesus said, "I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life and I will raise Him up at the last day."

It is the same thing. "I chose to enter the world not to do my will, but to do the will of the Father. And this is the Father's will that I save all the elect that He has given me." Philippians 2 makes it plain that Jesus shared eternal glory with God on a heavenly throne of glory before He entered the world. He had equality with God, a radiant glory with Him. That's what Charles Wesley meant when he said, "Mild he lays his glory down, born that man no more may die."

Before Jesus was born, the angels saw that glory and they worshiped him in his glory. Two key passages show this in the Old Testament, Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1. First, Isaiah 6:1-3 says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs. Seraphs each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another. 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.'"

The Lord the seraphim worshiped was Jesus. John 12:41 makes it plain that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him. The seraphs are angels, an order of angels, the spirit beings of the word. The Hebrew word literally means “burning ones.” They're like on fire. They're brilliant, they're bright. This lines up with the statement made of them in Hebrews 1:7 in speaking of his angels, he says, "He makes his angels winds as servants, flames of fire." The seraphim are burning ones, they're on fire, a holy fire. 

This fiery terminology also lines up with the vision in Ezekiel 1 of cherubim, fiery beings that could almost defy description and who move mysteriously below a throne of glory.  Ezekiel 1 says this, "I looked and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north, an immense cloud with flashing lightning surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in that fire was what looked like four living creatures." Picture a cloud that is radiant and bright and in the center of it, it's on fire, a fiery cloud. In the center of that are these four living creatures called cherubim. These cherubim have four faces and two sets of wings, and there are these high mighty, awesome glorious wheels under them. Wheels sparkling like diamonds and the cherubim move like lightning with fire flashing back and forth among them. Ezekiel 1:13-14, “The appearance of the living creatures were like burning coals of"fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures. It was bright and lightning flashed out of it." The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning. It's energetic, crackling with energy, crackling with light and fire, and that the cherub had moved north, south, east, and west with lightning speed and whatever direction the spirit moves them.

High above those cherubim sat the enthroned pre-incarnate Christ. Ezekiel 1:22 and following, "Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse, sparkling like ice and awesome like a barrier, like a ceiling. And under the expanse, their wings were stretched out, one toward the other and each had two wings covering its body. And when the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings. Then there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings." This is awesome. They stood quiet under the voice of the one seated on the throne. There's a reverence that they have and a quietness. They lower their wings and they wait to hear him speak. They're ready to do His will. They're motionless, they're reverent. They're waiting on the voice of the pre-incarnate Christ.

This is the description of that glorious throne, Ezekiel 1:26-28, "Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like glowing metal as if full of fire. And that from there down he looked like fire. And brilliant lights surrounded him like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day so was the radiance around him." This was the appearance of the likeness, of the glory of the Lord. ‘And when I saw it,’ says Ezekiel, ‘I fell face down.'"

You have this angelic activity moving wheels within wheels that just defies description, and brightness and loud noise and power and then a barrier and then high above that a throne and one seated on it. That barrier represents the infinite gap between creator and creature. It's an infinite gap between God and the highest archangel and all creatures below. That gap represents that difference, the holiness of God, God, the creator over all creation. They recognize it, and they're quiet under it.

Ezekiel the prophet was granted this vision of the pre-incarnate Christ on the throne of heavenly glory. This is the glory that Jesus laid aside when He entered the world and was born of the virgin and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. This is the glory laid by, this is the glory you wanted back at the end of his ministry. When He said in John 17:5, "And now Father glorify me with the glory I had with you before the creation of the world,” it's a glory He deserves. A radiant display of his greatness, which He laid by.  Before Christ was even born, the angels in various orders of various types worshiped and served him. 

III. Angels Announced the Coming Christ

Secondly, the angels announced the coming Christ. The word “angel “is just a transliteration of a Greek word, which means “messenger.” Those that are dispatched with a message from God to earth. God regularly in the Old Testament dispatched angels to bring messages from God. At the time of Christ being conceived, the angel Gabriel was dispatched. The angel Gabriel told in his encounter with John the Baptist’s  father, Zechariah, he said  "I'm Gabriel and I stand in the presence of God." He has the honor of proximity, of closeness to the throne of God. That's Gabriel.

He was sent also to the Virgin Mary with the most amazing message that any angel has ever carried to any human being. In Luke 1, he said to Mary, “'Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You'll be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end.’  ‘How will this be’, Mary asked the angel, ‘since I'm a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high wall overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.’"

This is a message that Gabriel spoke to Mary, the deepest theology ever communicated in the pages of scripture. “Mary, you'll have a baby and the baby will have no human Father. He'll be conceived miraculously by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit will overshadow your body and that's where this baby is going to come from. This baby will be the Son of David. He'll have a genealogy through you and also through Joseph, and he will be rightly called the Son of David. He'll be human because he is your baby and also descendant of David of the house and lineage of David. But he will also be divine because he's called the Son of God.”

This is the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the virgin birth. It's central to our faith. Jesus Christ was born in the normal way, looked like any other human baby that was born, but He was conceived by the supernatural power of God on a virgin's body. And so this doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus as being fully God, fully man is central to the Christian faith, was initially announced by an angel, announced by an angel to Mary.

The angel was also dispatched in a dream to Joseph, the guardian of that Holy Family to give him a different version of the same message. Matthew 1, “Joseph, Son of David, ‘Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She'll give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.”

The angelic message to Joseph concerning this baby's mission is a little bit different, but easily harmonizeable to Mary.’s  The child born is going to reign on a throne forever. To Joseph, He's going to save His people from their sins and we know that that's by His death, His bloody death on the cross, but the theology of the essential nature of who this baby is is the same. I mean fully God, fully man is wrapped up in the word Emmanuel, “God with us”, conceived in a human mother by the power of the Holy Spirit. The angels were dispatched to carry this message and the theology of Jesus Christ to Mary into Joseph.

IV. Angels Celebrate the Birth of Christ

Third, angels celebrated when this baby was born, they were there to celebrate the birth of Christ. This is the most famous angelic involvement. Angels were sent to Bethlehem the night that Jesus was born, and they were sent to worship Him. This is the direct and obvious fulfillment of God's command in Hebrews 1:6, when God brings his firstborn into the world, He says, "Let all God's angels worship Him." They came to do that in  direct obedience to the command of God.

First an angel, a single angel, is dispatched to the shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, as we’ve already heard. “There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks. At night, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. And this will be as sign to you. You'll find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Again, angels are given a role of dispensing theology to human beings. But this time it's simple working-class shepherds who are just out there at night watching over their flocks in the hills surrounding Bethlehem. Suddenly an angel comes with heavenly glory, a radiant display. This is one of the key texts for me. Understand that glory involves sometimes physical light, a radiant display. And so it is. This angel came with the glory of the Lord that shone around there at night, and it caused instant terror. The angel gives the message that Christ the Lord is born in Bethlehem. He is Christ, He is Lord, He's Savior.

These terms are initially understandable. They immediately take root in the heart of any believer, but they will take all eternity to unpack in their fullness. The shepherds understood these words. The simple proof of the angel's words was the oddity of seeing a baby wrapped and laid in a feeding trough for animals. That's highly unusual. So when you go down and you see this baby wrapped up in swaddling clothes, that will be a sign that our words are true. “Then suddenly a huge multitude of the heavenly host appears. A great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests."

This must have been what Charles Wesley and George Whitfield had in mind when they wrote, “Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King." God told them to do it. It says, "Let all God's angels worship Him,” and they did it with gladness and with powerful voices.

I want you to understand a word that is easy to misunderstand and that is the word “host.” I asked some people earlier this week, "What is a heavenly host?" And they said, "Well, when you host somebody, you're opening up your home, you're welcoming them." Friends, that is not what host means here. It's not like the angels are saying, "Hey, you all come." I know I'll never say it like you guys do, "Y'all come," saying, "I want you to come and enjoy." That's not what's going on. It's not what the Greek word means. The Greek word is “stratia”, which is a military term. This is an army, a huge army.

Imagine how that would've looked to us rebels against heaven to have a heavenly army arrayed in military weaponry surrounding us. It really would be terrifying. It's not a choir of angels, it's an army of angels. If you want to see the kind of damage they can wreak on planet Earth, read the Book of Revelation. The kind of damage that they wreak gladly when God tells them to do it, pouring out wrath on the ecology and on the people of Earth before the Second Coming of Christ. It's an heavenly invasion.

But not that night, though they could have done that kind of damage because we all deserved it. We're all rebels against the throne of God. They were there to celebrate the birth, effectively, of our and God's champion who came to fight on our behalf. They're there to celebrate as He went forth, as David did in the day when he defeated Goliath. He is the representative of heaven and of us, the people of God to fight our battle for us.  They're there to celebrate, and there's lots of them. It's not a little, it's a huge army. They're not there to invade rebellious Earth and destroy it like we all deserve, but they're there to proclaim, "Glory to God and peace from God to those on whom his grace or his favor rests." That's the message. This is the same army of angels that will be dispatched in waves in Revelation to destroy all sinners at the end of the world. But at this point they're there to celebrate the birth of the Savior forth. 

V. Angels Protected the Newborn Christ

God also dispatched an angel to warn Joseph in a dream to flee the murderous King Herod and his killing soldiers. Matthew 2, “After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the Land of Israel for those who are trying to take the child's life are dead.’ So he got up and took the child's mother and went to the Land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judean places, his father Herod, he was afraid to go there having been warned in a dream. He withdrew to the district of Galilee and went and lived in a town called Nazareth.”

An angel was dispatched to Joseph in a dream to say, "Get up and take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you." They escaped just in time before the soldiers came and killed all the boy babies two years old and under. Then later, once Herod was dead and the danger had passed, the angel came and told Joseph to bring the child back. Certainly angels protected Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus at that point, but I'm certain that angels protected Jesus throughout the 30 years that He was growing up. The demons knew who He was. Satan knew who He was, and yet He lived a normal upbringing.

He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God. When He grew up, He was a carpenter. When the time came, He was revealed out of obscurity by John the Baptist. But in all of that, there must have been a wall, an angelic wall of protection, around Jesus as He was growing up. Revelation 12 depicts the devil as a dragon ready to devour the male child who will rule over all the world the moment it was born, but he couldn't do it.

VI. Angels Strengthened Christ in his Weakness

 Fifthly, during Jesus' life on earth, He was subjected to all the same weakness that we are— pain, weariness, hunger, thirst. At two key moments in Jesus' weakness, his physical bodily weakness, angels were dispatched to strengthen the King of angels. First, after his temptation by the devil in the desert. In Mark 1:13 it says, "He was in the desert forty days being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals and angels attended him." It's an amazing thing how Jesus, the infinite King of glory, was so weakened by his fasting that God had to send angels to keep him alive and to feed him out in the desert.

Second, in his agony in Gethsemane, in Luke 22 it says, "An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him and being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." We cannot fully understand what was happening in Gethsemane as Jesus was fully aware that He was about to drink the cup of God's wrath in our place on the cross and to shed His blood in our place. God, I believe, mysteriously revealed to Jesus' human mind what it would be like to be under the wrath of God and it just about killed Him, dropping Him to the ground, and He was growing faint. An angel was dispatched in some mysterious way to strengthen Him to survive that moment in Gethsemane as great drops of blood were pouring from His face. It is a marvelous and an amazing thing that this infinite King of glory needed help, physical help from angels at those two times.

VII. Angels Announced the resurrected Christ 

After Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, angels were sent from heaven to tell his followers that Christ had risen just as He had predicted. In Matthew, an angel came down and rolled back the stone and sat on it. I've always loved that picture. He's very comfortable in the presence of Roman soldiers. He's not afraid of them at all. They're terrified of him and he just easily rolls a massive boulder and sits on it. It's just a beautiful picture. But he's there announcing the resurrection.

The same thing in John's Gospel. You have two men dressed in white sitting in the empty tomb where Jesus' body had been. One at the head, the other at the feet. In Luke's gospel, the same thing as women went to finish the burial rituals that had been hurried because the Passover was coming. It says in Luke 24, "Suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground. But the men said to them, 'Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen just as he said.'"

Angels are not usually dispatched to proclaim the facts of the gospel of Christ's death and his burial and his resurrection, though they would do an amazing job, ordinarily not. But here at the very beginning of the spread of the Gospel, after the resurrection of Christ from the dead, angels are dispatched to tell his immediate inner circle of followers what had happened.

VIII. Angels Celebrated the Heavenly Ascension of Christ

 Seventhly, angels celebrated the heavenly ascension of Christ. After Christ rose from the dead, He spent forty days with His disciples, giving them many convincing proofs that He was alive.He was training them and teaching them and getting them ready for the spread of the Gospel worldwide to the ends of the Earth. After that, after He had given all of that proof, at the end of that time, forth days, He ascended from the surface of the Earth up through the sky, through the clouds, and ultimately into the heavenly realms.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that He passed through the heavens, plural, through circles of heavens, so higher and higher. First, the atmosphere, and then beyond all the physical realms of heaven, what we call sky and outer space and beyond that into the circles of heaven, the heavenly spheres of existence in the spiritual realm. He passed through all that. The author of Hebrews gives us the language of passing through, and the scripture reveals that as He did, the angels celebrated his passing as a triumphant conqueror. In Psalm 47, it says, "God has ascended amid shouts of joy and the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets, sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises to our King, sing praises."

It's a marvelous picture we get of the angels celebrating the accomplishment of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ. I also think it's interesting the angels were dispatched to tell the disciples to move along now and get on with their lives as they're standing there outside Jerusalem with their heads craning up, looking and waiting for the Second Coming of Christ 2000 years ago. God sent two angels to say, "Time to move along." “They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going when suddenly, two men dressed in white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, they said, ‘Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you've seen Him go into heaven.’”

IX. Angels Assisted the Spread of Christ's Kingdom 

Eighth, as I just said, Scripture does not assign to angels the work of evangelism and missions. The ministry of reconciliation has been entrusted to us, the followers of Christ. That's our job. It is our work to go to the ends of the earth and to proclaim the gospel. As the scripture says, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?" But it's not angels that do it. However, angels have consistently assisted that spread as they were dispatched from heaven to do. For example, in Acts 8, an angel working along with the Holy Spirit told Philip the Evangelist where to go so he could proclaim the Gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch. We can see angels dispatched to guide evangelism and missions in Acts 8.  So also God dispatched an angel to rescue Peter and the Apostles from prison in Acts 5, and also Peter from prison in Acts 12, causing chains to fall off and making the twelve soldiers guarding him to fall into a deep sleep. Also an angel is dispatched to Cornelius the centurion, to tell him to send men to Joppa to find a man named Peter who would bring a message by which he and all his household would be saved. The angel was not dispatched to give the message. He could easily have done it, but instead to send messengers to get Peter to come and do it. So it was angels that did that.

"The ministry of reconciliation has been entrusted to us, the followers of Christ. That's our job. It is our work to go to the ends of the earth and to proclaim the gospel."

In heaven, we're going to find out throughout thousands of years of redemptive history, how active the angels have been in the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. As the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 1:14, "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" They have helped the spread of the gospel for 2000 years.

X. Angels Will Celebrate Chris’s Glory for All Eternity

Ninth and finally, angels will celebrate Christ's glory for all eternity. As I said before Christ was born, angels worshiped and celebrated all along. As redemptive history has unfolded, we are told that angels were learning. "They long to look into these things," Peter tells us. 1 Peter 1:12, “Even angels long to look into these things.” They weren't omniscient. They didn't know where all this was heading. They were learning as events were unfolding. As we see for example in Daniel 12, one angel asks another angel about timing and timetable. They don't know when the timing is going to be for all of these things. They're eager to learn, and they are learning as events unfold on planet Earth.

As those events unfold, they celebrate them, like the birth of Christ. They're celebrating. It's not like they didn't know it was coming, but now it's broken into history and they are celebrating.  They're tracking events unfolding, and they're learning and they're celebrating with pure hearts. I believe that they're going to celebrate when all is said and done for all eternity. They're going to celebrate what was done to rescue a multitude of sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation. They're going to celebrate what God has done through the second and the third person of the Trinity. By the working of Jesus' bloodshed on the cross, by His resurrection and by the outpouring Holy Spirit on the people of God, the spread of the Gospel, the angels are going to celebrate every detail of what happened for all eternity.

In Revelation 5:11-12, it says, "Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and 10,000 times 10,000, 100 million angels. They encircle the throne and the living creatures and the elders. And in a loud voice they sang, ‘Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.’" So there's 100 million angels celebrating the Slain Lamb, who by his blood rescued people for God. Just as it said earlier, "You are worthy because you were slain and with your blood, you purchase people for God from every tribe, language, people and nation." You're going to celebrate that, that radiant glory for all eternity they're going to celebrate.

We wouldn't even know about it except that God had dispatched an angel to John to write the Book of Revelation. As it says in Revelation 1, "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John." An angel was entrusted with the Book of Revelation to bring down to John and the island of Patmos.  Then He says, at the end of Revelation 22:16, “I, Jesus have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and I'm the bright and morning star." Angels will be worshiping and celebrating Christ's victory at the cross for all eternity. Revelation 7 says, "After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and language standing before the throne and in front of the lamb. They're wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands and they cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne to the lamb.'"

The next verse, "All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, they fell down on their faces before the throne. And they worship God saying, 'Amen. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen.'" The angels are celebrating a redemption they didn't need. It wasn't for them that Christ became incarnate. Surely it is not angel He helped but the sons of Abraham, us, flesh and blood, and yet the angels are celebrating with every bit as much joy as if it had been them. They're going to celebrate it for all eternity.

So what about you friends? What about you? We here at First Baptist Church do not believe in a secular Christmas. We believe in Christ at the center of it. We want to join in that angelic worship and celebration. We want to see who this child is, this incarnate son of God, and we want to join the angels in celebrating. What about you? What about you? I understand at Christmas time it's a time for people to go to church maybe with family and friends. My desire is that there'd be no person listening to my words today, who would be in a lost, dying state.

All you have to do is hear all of this truth that you've been listening to of who Jesus is, of why He came. Of what He did at the cross and of how God raised him from the dead, and understand it is by simple faith in that story that you will be forgiven of your sins. There is no reason for anyone in this room to end up perishing eternally. To be terrified when that army does invade and punishes the rebels who never would yield to God and to Christ. There's no reason for that.

All you need to do is cross over from death to life is simply listen and hear like, "Hark, the herald angels sing." What are they singing? "Glory to the newborn King." See this incarnate deity laying there. See in that, your own salvation. If you are already a Christian, I want to wish you all a wonderful merry Christmas. You're going to enjoy time with your family tomorrow, but as you do so, let's bring Christ right into the center of that time. I don't know what your traditions are, what your habits are, but in our family, we love to read scripture as part of our celebration, to talk about the actual facts of the birth of Christ, of the gospel. Choose some Scripture and read it together with the people that you're with. Make Christ the center of your celebration. 

Close with me now in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this time of year in which we get to focus on a vital detail of our Christian faith, and that is the incarnation of Christ, the giving of the God man, the birth of Jesus as the savior of the world. We needed Christ. It was a rescue mission. As the angel said to Joseph, "You'll give him the name Jesus, because he will save His people from their sins." Lord, we need that. We thank you. I pray, oh Lord, that you would be working deeply in the hearts of people who hear this message that they would believe and trust and follow you. And for all of us who years ago did, Lord pray that you'd renew our faith and help us to celebrate as the angels did In Jesus' name, Amen.

Jesus Christ left heaven to enter this sin-cursed world as a human being to open the doorway back into the presence of God.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

This fall I was visiting my family, the part of my family that lives up in Boston and my daughter Carolyn, and I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In one of the galleries there we saw a painting that just arrested me and seized my imagination and caused me to ponder for a long time.  The painting was entitled, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and it was painted by Thomas Cole. It's a dramatic scene, of course, depicting the most tragic event in human history. Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden leading to God's curse on them and on the world and the judicial sentence of death descending on them. God then righteously expelled them from the Garden of Eden and put a guardian cherub with a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way into the Garden lest any of them or their descendants should eat from the Tree of lLife.

Thomas Cole, who painted that painting was an ardent evangelical Christian who lived in the first third of the 19th century, and he painted this masterpiece in the year 1828. Cole was a founder of the Hudson River School of Landscape Painting. He dearly loved the pristine beauty of nature all over the world, but especially in his home area of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. Cole's painting of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden is basically divided in half. The right half of the painting is the beautiful Garden of Eden with clear blue skies, fair weather, clouds, stunningly beautiful snow cap, mountains in the distance and alluring lake in the valley between the mountains, lush greenery, abundant with colorful flowers in the foreground, paradise lost. The left half of the painting is bleak with dark colors of volcano erupting lava in the distance, flashes of lightning coming from the ominous storm clouds, a straggly apparently dead tree dominating the foreground with apparently dead animals at the foot of that tree.

Adam and Eve themselves are tiny, barely noticeable as they hurry from the Garden of Eden into the dark dying world that their sin destroyed. They hurry into that cursed world across a stone bridge that spans a deep chasm shrouded in darkness. The waters of a flood seem to be hurdling down the chasm toward them. Between the brilliantly light right side of the painting and the dark left side is a passageway, like a doorway made of stone, like the entrance it seems to a cave. In the center of that doorway, brilliant light emanates with overpowering rays. Those rays perhaps represent the glory of God chasing the two sinners from paradise, or perhaps the flaming sword in the hands of the guardian cherub ready to kill them if they should try to double back. It is of the expulsion from the presence of God and of this brilliantly lit passageway back into the presence of God that I want to speak tonight. It was in order to open this doorway back into the presence of God that Jesus Christ left heaven and entered this sin curse world as a human being.

My texts tonight are Ephesians 2:13 and Hebrews 10:19-22. Hear them again, Ephesians 2:13 says, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." And again, Hebrews 10:19-22, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most Holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain that is his body. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our heart sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

I. Expelled From Eden

First expelled from Eden, Adam and Eve were created perfect by God in the image of God and placed in that perfect world in which everything had been declared very good by God. Adam was formed first from the dust of the earth and put in the Garden of Eden to serve and protect it. Adam was clearly commanded by God, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for when you eat of it, you'll surely die. This freedom to eat from any tree in Eden was evidence of the lavish generosity and love of God. The fruit was varied, it was delicious, it was nourishing. The prohibition to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was evidence of the holiness of God and his absolute sovereignty, his right to put limits and boundaries to our freedoms. It is also more evidence of his love because He knew perfectly well what unleashing evil into the history of the world would do. Tragically, we all have an increasing sense of what happened.

Eve was deceived by the serpent and was lured to eat from the forbidden fruit. She gave some to her silent and passive husband who was with her and who utterly failed to protect his wife, his unborn children, and the Garden of Eden, indeed the entire world from the devastating effects of the serpents lies. They both ate. Their eyes were open to their nakedness, they were stripped of the glory that they had been given by God and they began to hide from each other and from God. God confronted Adam and condemned him for his sin. They both came under instant spiritual death and would live the rest of their lives under a temporarily deferred but absolutely certain death penalty.

As Thomas Cole depicted, the whole world fell into the dark curse of decay and death because of Adam's sin. Adam and Eve were expelled from the presence of God as Genesis 3, tells us. The Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life. 

II. Distant From God

The infinite loss that day was to be driven not only from the beautiful Garden of Eden, but from the glorious presence of a loving and Holy God, distant from God. The Bible reveals that all of us are naturally distant from God because of our sin. Psalm 138:6 says, "Though the Lord is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar." From afar. Also, Proverbs 15:29 says, “The Lord is far from the wicked.” This is relational language because we know the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent."

It says in Acts 17, He is not far from each one of us, "For in him we live and move and have our being." But the Holy God is infinitely far from wickedness and evil corruption and sin from darkness itself. Habakkuk 1:13 says, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong." Our text in Ephesians speaks of the immeasurable distance between us as unconverted people and this Holy God. Ephesians 2 says, "Remember that at that time you separate from Christ excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world." And it says in the next verse, "You who were once far away." A picture of this distance between a Holy God and a sinful people was established in the Tabernacle and then later the Temple of the Old Covenant.

The lessons of the Old Covenant may be summed up in the first command that God gave to Moses at the burning bush. In Exodus 3:5 God said to him, "Do not come any closer. Do not come any closer." Then he said, "Take off your sandals for the place where you're standing is Holy ground." Again and again, the Holy God has been saying to sinful humanity, “do not come any closer.” Before He descended in fire on Mount Sinai, the Lord commanded Moses to erect a barrier, a fence line around the base of the Holy mountain so that no one could ascend that mountain because God would have to kill them. The Tabernacle represented God's desire to dwell in the midst of a sinful people, but it was made of curtains that represented barriers between a Holy God and a sinful people. We are not welcome, “this far you may come and no farther.”  So as sinners, we were distant from God. 

"The Tabernacle represented God's desire to dwell in the midst of a sinful people, but it was made of curtains that represented barriers between a Holy God and a sinful people. We are not welcome, “this far you may come and no farther.”  So as sinners, we were distant from God."

III. Christ Has Drawn Near To Us

Third, Christ has drawn near to us. Christ has drawn near to us. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, this Holy God has drawn near to us.  “Emanuel,” which we sang about this morning and again tonight means “God with us.” God gave his only-begotten Son a body with blood so that a doorway could be open into his presence by means of that body and that blood. The incarnation means “the Word became flesh” with a literal human body. But why? What was the reason? The reason was to bring sinners near to a Holy God by the blood and by the body of Jesus. Listen again to Ephesians 2:13, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Again, Hebrews 10, "Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most Holy place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith, having our heart sprinkled to cleanse us from the guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."

The incarnation means that God, the Son, took on a body with blood so that the death penalty we deserve for our sins could be paid in full. By the baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in the manger, we are brought near to a Holy God. 

IV. Christ Has Brought Us Near To God

Christ, fourthly, has brought us near, so therefore, let us draw near. By faith in Christ we who were on the outside excluded, exiled, banished, cast out, evicted from the paradise of God's glorious presence by faith in the blood of Christ shed on the cross, we have been brought near. That is exactly what Ephesians 2:13 tells us. If you have trusted in Christ, you have been brought near positionally and for all eternity to God, one with Christ by faith in Christ, by faith. Speaking of nearness to God, Ephesians 2:13 tells us we have been brought near once for all into the presence of God, into the Holy of Holies, into the throne room of God, into a reconciled relationship with God.

"By faith in Christ we who were on the outside excluded, exiled, banished, cast out, evicted from the paradise of God's glorious presence by faith in the blood of Christ shed on the cross, we have been brought near."

But Hebrews 10, exhorts “Let us draw near to God.” So the one is positional and can never change. The other is experiential, relational by faith in Christ, drawing near to God in relational closeness, in a sense of intimacy with a loving God. So draw near brothers and sisters, let us draw near by faith. Let us have our bodies washed with the pure water of the Word. Let us have our hearts sprinkled from a guilty conscience. Sense that you are dearly loved. Draw near, draw near to a Holy God, draw near by Jesus's work, draw near by immersing your mind in Scripture as it testifies to Jesus. Draw near by prayer, confessing your sins with confidence of a perfect cleansing. Draw near by repentance and by the power of a changed life through the Holy Spirit. Draw near, the author to Hebrews tells us in full assurance of faith that God dearly loves you. He cannot love you more and will never love you less.

Draw near now through the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, recognizing by faith, the body and the blood of Christ in these elements, symbolically, yes, but by faith recognizing that the incarnation came so that we who are far away might draw near.

 Close with me, this time of meditation in the Word with prayer, and then we'll turn to the Lord's Supper. 

Father, we thank you for the amazing truths of the Word of God. We can never plumb their deaths. We can never fully understand these themes. We can never fully understand what it meant to be expelled, to be exiled, to be aliens, to be distant from you and to fully understand in this world what it means now in Christ to be brought in here. Help us to understand these things by faith in your Word. And now as we have the opportunity to partake in the Lord's Supper, bless this time. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We're going to partake in the Lord's Supper. We have an unusual way on Christmas Eve of celebrating it. These tables just set up and whereas ordinarily at the Lord's Supper, we send deacons out with the elements and pass them through the pews and you stay where you are. On Christmas Eve we invite you to draw near and to stand around the tables. And so what we do is we just have people come and stand and as the table is reasonably full, then we serve those people and then those folks go and sit down and the next group comes up. We would ask that only people who have testified, who have come to personal faith in Christ and testified to that by baptism, partake. If not, we ask that you refrain. But this is a time for us to enjoy the Lord's Supper.

And so I'm going to read the words of institution and then we will celebrate in groups around the tables. Hear now what the Lord said, "For I receive from the Lord what I also passed on to you." The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me." In the same way after supper, he took the cup saying, "This is the cup. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

Now, let us pray. Father, we thank you now for the opportunity that we have to draw near through the body and blood of Christ and to partake by faith in this symbolism of your life, of your death, and also of your resurrection. We pray that you'd bless it now and add the blessing by the power of the Spirit through faith in the Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. 

The entire mission of Jesus follows this pattern: nothing visibly spectacular at first but growing to a level of majesty we can scarcely imagine.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 49. Christmas probably is the biggest event of the calendar. Every year, I would say it's the biggest holiday there is. A Gallup poll in 2019 says that 93% of Americans, in some way, recognize or celebrate Christmas, and it's not just here in America, it's something that is a worldwide phenomenon. Over 2 billion people observe Christmas in some way worldwide, if not more. Christy and I were very surprised when we were missionaries in Japan to see Christmas decorations going up in the malls there in Tokushima. There's the green and red, and there's all the Christmas, jolly old St. Nicholas, and all that. Santa was everywhere. There it was, Christmas in Japan, where about 1%  are evangelical, but there they were celebrating Christmas. I have a friend who lives in the Persian Gulf.  We communicate via Zoom from time to time, and he told me that there are Christmas trees all over that Muslim nation. 99% of the people there are Muslim and they still have Christmas trees.

If you look a little closer though, we realize Christmas isn't as big as it should be. 71% of Americans say they don't look on Christmas as a religious holiday at all. That's a huge percentage of people that see it in a secular sort of way, and we think that must be true of the billions around the world that stop working, gather to eat and to drink, and to celebrate in some way. We're aware of the fact that Christmas, however big it is, needs to be a lot bigger.

That brings me to the text that we're studying today, Isaiah 49, in which it is said by God to Christ, "It is too small a thing..." I want to zero in on that concept and link it to Christmas. Christmas is too small, it's smaller than it should be, however big it is, it still too small. In the text, it is said, "It is too small a thing for you to save the Jews alone." Too small a thing. Now what an amazing achievement that would be, the salvation of the Jewish nation.  When Jesus Christ finally achieves it, what a great achievement that would be at the end of human history, as I believe the mystery that Paul talks about in Romans 11, where he says, "All Israel will be saved." I believe that that will come, that will be a climax to the long, and torturous, and painful journey that Almighty God has been on with his chosen people, the Jewish nation, the descendants of Abraham. But however great that will be, God says in this text, "It is too small a thing." God intended a glory far greater than that, a multitude from every tribe, and language, and people in nation standing around the throne celebrating the salvation of God.

The idea of my sermon today is captured in another place in Scripture. "O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together." To magnify means to make great or make greater. We cannot make an infinite God any greater than he is, but He does need to be greater in our own estimation. That's where He is too small.  That's why Christmas is too small, in our own minds, in our own estimation, and the Word of God is the remedy. 

Look at the text again. Isaiah 49: 1-6, “Listen to me, you islands. Hear this, you distant nations. Before I was born, the Lord called me from my birth, He has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of His hand, He hid me. He made me into a polished arrow, and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I'll display my splendor.’ But I said, ‘I have labored to no purpose. I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing, yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God.’ And now the Lord says, ‘He who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, where I'm honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength.’”

He says, "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob, and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth." I believe that it is Christ speaking in this passage. He's summoning all nations to listen, look at verse 1, "Listen to me, you islands. Hear this, you distant nations." I've already made the assertion, but we need to ask, "Who is speaking in these words?" This person is speaking of himself and for himself, but He relates something He says that God says to him, the Lord says to him, "The Lord spoke to me." So who is the speaker in this ancient oracle? There are three possibilities. It is Isaiah the prophet himself speaking, or it is the nation of Israel collectively having a certain role to play, and that's home base of verse 3, where the speaker says the Lord calls him, "My servant Israel.”  Or it could be the Messiah, the Christ, speaking through the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, through the prophet Isaiah in the first person.

If we look at verse 6, this is a key. He says, "It is too small or too light a thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I'll also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth." The servant who's speaking here is someone who both restores the tribes of Israel and is also the light for the Gentiles. There's no way that can be the sinful nation of Israel. Israel can't bring Israel back, so that's eliminated. It's certainly not Isaiah the prophet, the man of unclean lips, he would never have arrogated to himself the statements made here. The New Testament solves this question for us directly by quoting this passage and ascribing it directly to Jesus.

Shortly after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary took the baby Jesus to Jerusalem to be circumcised in fulfillment of the law of Moses. A prophet named Simeon was waiting for him. Moved by the Holy Spirit, he took the baby Jesus into his arms and said these amazing words in Luke 2, "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and for glory for your people Israel." So he calls him the light for the Gentiles or for the nations. So also Paul and Barnabas, when they're preaching in a synagogue in Pisidian, Antioch, quoted this and directly connected it to Jesus in Acts 13:47, "This is what the Lord has commanded us, I have made you," [singular,] "a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the Earth." Paul and Barnabas, didn't think that they were the light to the Gentiles, but they were there at Pisidian, Antioch on his behalf.

The statement that had been made to Jesus, "I will make you a light for the Gentiles," they took as their marching orders, but it was Jesus that was the light for the Gentiles. Therefore, the speaker in Isaiah 49 is none other than Jesus speaking, long before He was incarnate by the Virgin Mary, speaking prophetically by the power of the Holy Spirit in the first person. This shouldn't surprise us because He does the same thing in His most famous quotation of Isaiah. At the beginning of His public ministry in Nazareth, He went to his hometown, Nazareth. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and He took the scroll of Isaiah, and He unrolled it to Isaiah 61. He read these words, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," [first person] "because He has anointed me," [Messiah Christ means anointed one] "to preach good news to the poor." He went on and quoted more of Isaiah 61, then He rolled up the scroll and sat down, and He said, "Today in your hearing, this scripture is fulfilled."

So  “I am the Messiah, I am the anointed one, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.” But if you just read Isaiah 61, it's the same thing. It's an ancient oracle written in the first person. It's Jesus speaking prophetically long before He was born by the spirit of God. We have that same kind of pattern here, and this is one of a series of what's known as “servant songs,” the servant of the Lord. There are four of them, the four servant songs. Sometimes the text speaks about the servant of the Lord, and sometimes in the servant song, the servant speaks himself directly. These four servant songs give us a sense of the purpose of God in sending Jesus. This is the thing that's so amazing, Isaiah was written more than seven centuries before Jesus was born. Uzziah died in the year 733BC, a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah. This is a long time before Jesus was born and it gives us great confidence, doesn't it? To know that the whole plan had been written out in detail in prophecy long before Jesus was born.

We have these four servant songs. The first is in Isaiah 42, which depicts Jesus as a gentle Savior. Isaiah 42: 1-4, "Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight." The speaker there is God, He's speaking about the servant of the Lord, Jesus. "I will put my spirit on Him, and He will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout, or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness, He will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on the Earth, and in His law, the islands will put their hope." That's the first of the four servant songs, directly ascribed to Jesus in Matthew chapter 12. When it says, "The bruised reed He will not break, and the smoldering wick He will not snuff out,” it is speaking of Jesus's wonderful tenderness and skill in binding together broken-hearted sinners and saving them. He's a gentle and a loving Savior, and that's the first servant song.

This servant song, Isaiah 49, is the second of the four, and we're going to walk through it this morning. The third is in Isaiah 50, again, it speaks in the first person. It speaks of the sufferings of the servant. And then the fourth, Isaiah 52 and 53, is the most famous of the four servant songs. Both of those last two, Isaiah 50 and Isaiah 52/53 speak of the suffering servant of the Lord, the intense sufferings of the servant of the Lord, culminating in the substitutionary, atoning death of Jesus. 

I. Christ Summons All Nations to Listen

This servant song, Isaiah 49, will depict Jesus as a messenger for the glory of the Lord to the ends of the Earth. To take the greatness of God from small beginnings to a worldwide eternal kingdom, the glory of the Lord shining to the Gentiles, but it begins so powerfully as Jesus speaks in the text to the distant islands and nations to listen to His voice calling on all peoples, all over the world, across all time to listen to Him. Look at verse 1, "Listen to me, you islands. Hear this, you distant nations.”  This verse shows the scope of God saving plans. Christ is calling to the ends of the Earth. Christ is the King of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords. All nations on Earth are His, for the Father has given them to Him. And He summons the islands, He summons the distant nations, the farthest places, the remotest locations. For example, the Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic, the semi-nomadic tribes, the cave dwellers of Papua New Guinea belong to Him. The blonde haired Norsemen, descendants of the Vikings, who now live in civilized and technologically advanced cities in Norway. The tall Dinka in South Sudan, perhaps the tallest tribe on Earth. All of these distant lands and all the others are summoned by Jesus Christ, the king of all the Earth, to listen to His voice, "Listen to me." 

II. God Called Jesus Before and After Birth

He wants them to know the origin of His saving mission, it was by the call of the Father before He was born. God called Jesus before and after His birth.  Look again in verse 1, "Before I was born, the Lord  called me.” Jesus is unique in all of human history. He existed before He took on a human body. He's the only human being that chose to enter the world. He was called by His father, and Christ's mission was determined in the mind of God before the foundation of the worlds. Before God said, "Let there be light,” before God created the heavens and the Earth, this plan was established and determined in the mind of God. 1 Peter 1: 19-20 says, "We were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake." This is no new plan thrown together hastily at the end, but it was planned in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8 also speaks of the lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

"Jesus is unique in all of human history. He existed before He took on a human body. He's the only human being that chose to enter the world. He was called by His father, and Christ's mission was determined in the mind of God before the foundation of the world."

III. God Formed, Sharpened, Polished and Concealed Jesus

 It says in the text that God formed, sharpened, polished, and concealed Jesus.  Look at verse 2, "He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me. He made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver." God prepared His son, the Lord Jesus, and He prepared the world for the coming of Christ. He orchestrated all of these things. Before the foundation of the world, God the Father, shaped his plan for the world through the Son. Everything in the universe, visible and invisible, was created through the Son.  John 1:3, "Through him all things were made. And without him, nothing was made that has been made." Colossians uses the same concept, the Word through Colossians 1:16, "For through him or by him, all things were created. Things in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or powers, or rulers, or authorities, all things were created by Him and for Him.” So through Him, by Him, for Him. If that's true of the physical universe, how much more are the plans for the salvation of sinners, from every tribe, language, people and nation made through the Son, by the Father through the Son.

God, the Father, agreed to save the Elect through the blood of his incarnate Son before God made anything at all. Ephesians 1 says, "For he chose us in him," that is in Christ, "before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace." His people were chosen in Christ, before the world began, to end up holy and blameless in heaven.  That's all this preparation that was made before there even was a world, before Jesus was conceived and born, the preparation language was ascribed to the unfolding plan of God, and then history unfolded. The calling of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, the birth of Isaac by a miracle, by the miracle power of God, and then of Jacob, and then of the 12 tribes, and then the bondage, the slavery in Egypt, all of that. The exodus through Moses, then all that subsequent history of the Jewish nation, and also the detailed history of the Gentile nations as well.

God orchestrated all of these things according to His plan and His purpose. You look at the history of Israel recorded for us in the Old Testament, the history of Israel under the laws of Moses, and their tragic, consistent rebellion against God, and their consistent idolatry, and their consistent resistance of the Holy Spirit, and the messengers, the prophets, that came and they would not listen. Their subsequent exiles by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and God's graciousness and allowing a small remnant of them to return to the Promised Land under Gentile domination and rebuild their lives, rebuild the temple and the city. Then the subsequent history of that small dominated nation in the times of the Gentiles, dominated by Gentile powers, until the time of Christ. Then in the fullness of time we're told, Galatians 3, "At the right time, God sent his son Jesus Christ." At just the right time, everything had been prepared, everything had been shaped and prepared for that moment in time for Jesus to come, and so we see that preparation language.

Then God prepared a body for Jesus. He prepared a body for him in the womb of the Virgin Mary, Jesus was a holy embryo. This is an infinite mystery, something we will never fully comprehend, but His body was prepared step by step. It was miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit came over the body of Mary. But then it unfolded, it seems, in the natural way like any other baby is knit together in his or her mother's womb. The Virgin Mary was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, as the angel said, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you, and so the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." Mary said, "I'm a virgin, how can it be that I would have a baby?" That's how it happened, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the ordinary 23 chromosomes that would've come from a father, came from the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit.

Other than that, it seems his body was formed step-by-step as the child develops in the mother's womb. The text in Isaiah says that God made his mouth like a sharpened sword. Before his mouth could be a sharpened sword, He had to have a mouth at all. His physical mouth, and then the lungs that gave him breath so He could speak. Indeed, every bodily system needed for physical life, God willed to give him. By the power of the Holy Spirit, knitting his body together, but in the ordinary way it seems of human gestation. Psalm 139, "You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the Earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

That's David the psalmist talking about his own physical creation by God inside his mother's womb. But how much more is that true of Jesus? Again, Job spoke the same way of his own body being knit together. Job said to God, "Your hand shaped me and made me. Remember that you molded me like clay. Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? Did you not clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness." How amazing is that process anyway for every baby, but how much more significant is it for the incarnate son of God? All the days ordained for Jesus were written in God's book before one of them came to be. He was concealed, but this concealed son of God was revealed at the right time. "Hidden in the womb of the Virgin Mary like a polished arrow," it says, "concealed in the quiver, just as God's plan for the salvation of the world was hidden in the mind of God but then suddenly revealed when Jesus broke on the scene."

Romans 16 speaks of the proclamation of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages pass but now revealed and made known. Ephesians 3:9 also, this mystery which for ages past was kept hidden in God who created all things. Colossians 1:26, "The mystery that had been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints." This mystery is Christ, the incarnate son of God, the Savior of the world, our hope for glory. Isaiah tells us that God concealed him in the shadow of his hand until the right time. The language here in Isaiah 49 is military. Jesus' mouth is likened to a sharpened sword, He is likened to a polished arrow. Jesus was unleashed by God the Father as a weapon to destroy Satan's dark kingdom, to smash it to bits, to destroy it, to bind the strong man, and to plunder his house, and to destroy him eternally in the lake of fire. By his own death, by Jesus' own death, to destroy him who held the power of death.

In order to do this, God had to give Him a human soul, infinite mystery, and house it in a human body for that is what death is, the separation of the soul from the body. God gave Him blood, blood cells to course through His body, blood vessels to carry that blood, so that at the right time, He could shed His blood as an atonement for our sins. God gave Him bones as the frame of His body, but He ordained that not one of them would be broken when He died on the cross. God gave Him eyes to see the suffering of His afflicted sheep, He gave Him ears to hear their cries of pain, and all of this God prepared for His Son in the nine months that He was knitting Him together in His mother's womb. Then He hid Him once He was born, He hid Him from Herod's satanic attacks. Herod sent soldiers to hunt Him down and slaughter Him in Bethlehem, but God concealed Him and protected Him so that He would not die. The demons would've killed Him in the 30 years while He was growing up.  He was getting ready to be revealed publicly to Israel, but they were held at bay. They would not be permitted to come after Him. They knew who He was, but He was protected and concealed, and He was concealed from public view until the right time came for Him to be manifested publicly to Israel.

John the Baptist came as the forerunner, and he saw in the days of his baptism and the days of his preaching, John saw Jesus come. The only perfect man that has ever lived and he declared, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." John said, "I have seen and I testify that he is the son of God." John the Baptist said his central mission was the unveiling of the hidden son of God. In John 1:31, "The reason I came baptizing with water is that he might be unveiled or revealed Israel." The time of concealing was over, it was time for Him to be revealed. Think about the sharpened sword that was Jesus' mouth. How was Jesus' mouth like a sharpened sword with the awesome power of the words that He spoke?  By His words, demons were driven out instantly. They were terrified of His word, they fled from Him, and no human weapon could ever bring terror to demons or to Satan. Satan has no fear of any weapon that we form, no weapon system. Remember when we were going through the book of Job and we talked about Leviathan, and I thought that he pictured Satan? For Leviathan in Job 41, it says, "The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart of the javelin. Iron he treats like straw, bronze like rotten wood. Arrows do not make him flee, slingstones are like chaff to him. A club seems to him but a piece of straw, he laughs at the rattling of the lance." There's no weapon that human beings could make, no sword that we could fashion that Satan would tremble at. But the demons were terrified of Jesus and they fled at His word.

When the demoniac from the Gadarenes with 5,000 demons inside was confronted with Jesus, they ran to Him and fell on the ground before Him, begged Him that He would send them into the herd of pigs and not send them into the pit before they appointed time. He said one word in the Gospel of Matthew's account, "Go," and they fled. It was the power of the word of Jesus over the demonic forces. Jesus' sword is terrible, and swift, and unbreakable against all his enemies. At His second coming, He is depicted as having a sharp, double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. Revelation 19, "Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter, He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. And with His breath, He will slay the Antichrist, the most powerful and most wicked human being that will have ever lived in all of history."

It says in 2 Thessalonians 2, "The lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of His mouth and the splendor of His coming." All He'll have to do with the Antichrist is say, "Be dead, go to hell,” and it'll be done. That's the power of the sword coming out of the mouth of Jesus. How much more terrifying when He speaks to His enemies on judgment day, when all the nations are gathered before Him and He sits on a glorious throne, and He separates the people, all of them, one from another, into two categories, and only two, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He's going to say to the goats, to the lost, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." That "depart from me" is His sharp sword cutting them off from Himself, and from life, and from everything good that there has ever been or ever will be. That's the terror of the sharp sword coming from the mouth of Jesus.

Yet in an amazing way, his polished sharp sword heals us from our sins. Much like a surgeon's scalpel is able to cut out the tumor, it's able to take out the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any double-edged sword. It's able to penetrate, even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marriage, judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. At the day of Pentecost, the people heard the gospel and they were cut to the heart, they were pierced by it and saved, because of that sharp sword coming out of Jesus' mouth. 

IV. The Apparent Failure of Jesus’ Mission

Now we come to a mystery and that is the apparent failure of Jesus's mission. If Isaiah 49:1-6 is indeed the pre-incarnate Christ speaking of his mission in the world, if it is, what do we make of this one statement in verse 4? "I said, 'I have labored to no purpose, I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.’"  That sounds really discouraged, doesn't it? I put in all this time, I did all this labor, and nothing has come of it. If this is still Jesus speaking, and it must be because the text continues in the same pattern, how could it be? At what point would Jesus say something like this? The mystery of the incarnation, the entire mission of Jesus follows the same pattern. Nothing visibly spectacular at first, small, insignificant, not very glorious, and just getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Growing to a level we can scarcely imagine. Isaiah 53 speaks of this very thing in verse 2, "He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.” He's not impressive. When the King of Kings and Lord of Lords entered the world, it was in abject poverty and humility, born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger. When the shepherds went and saw them, they saw a baby wrapped up in cloths, that was it.

When the Magi came, having been led by the star, they just saw a normal human baby. He had no majesty, no glory. He was just simple, and so throughout His ministry. He had no outward majesty, no radiant glory shining around Him. He looked like an ordinary man, and a very poor one at that. He had no place to lay His head. He had to be supported by a group of women who supported Him out of their means. This culminated in His arrest, in weakness. He didn't fight, He just went like a sheep to the slaughter. His disciples all deserted Him and fled the moment that He was arrested. Jesus said they would do it, "This very night you will all fall away in account of me, for it is written. I'll strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered." They're all gone. His closest, most trusted allies, disciples that he had poured into for three years, they're gone.

And the time of His death, as He was dying on the cross and his blood was flowing out of His body, all He had to show at that moment, for a worldwide awesome movement in the kingdom that would last for all eternity, was His mother, some other women who were friends of the family, and one of the 12 apostles, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved,  who was an eyewitness to His death. That was it. The only perfect ministry there's ever been, the only perfect teaching and perfect miracles, all of that perfect example, and that's it. But I said, "I have labored to no purpose. I've spent my strength in vain and for nothing." The seemingly gloomy statement shows how small the kingdom of Christ would've appeared at that moment. If any of us who are followers of Christ could be there at that moment, we would see what it looked like, and it didn't look like much. It certainly didn't look glorious, it certainly didn't look like it would conquer the world and last for all eternity. 

It started small, like Jesus' own body in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  Microscopically small, so also the kingdom, which would one day conquer the whole Earth and last for all the eternity. But at that moment, all of those beautiful outcomes were in the hands of God. As He died, He said, "Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit." I think we could go beyond and say, "Into Your hands, I commend my kingdom. Do something with this.” That's why in Isaiah 49:4, it doesn't last long, this seemingly gloomy statement. "But I said, ‘I have labored to no purpose. I've spent my strength and a vain for nothing. Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God.’" And God says, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.  Ask of me, and I'm going to give you the nations as your inheritance.” You cannot measure the zeal that God the Father had to make much of what Christ did by dying on the cross, but at the moment of death it seemed like a failure.

Therefore, like Jesus' body itself grew, Jesus' kingdom starts small also and moves out to its appropriate scope, and then we see the eternal glory of Jesus' kingdom. The text speaks of a glory too small for Christ. Look at verses 5-6, "Now the Lord says, ‘He who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I'm honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength.’ He says, ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I'll also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth.’" This is Jesus speaking by the Spirit through the words of Isaiah that Isaiah wrote down. He talks of his formation in the womb, the incarnation, Jesus would say, "The same God who formed me, formed my body in the womb of the virgin has glorious plans for Me." Yes, the original mission was to the nation of Israel.

Paul says plainly to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, "Salvation is from the Jews." He said to the Syrophoenician woman, "I was sent only to the lost tribes of Israel." Now this text says Jesus' first mission was to bring Jacob back to God and gather Israel to himself, to restore Jacob and bring back the remnant, those of Israel that I have kept, that remnant. But that mission is too small. The Hebrew literally says it's too light, it's too trifling a thing. "I've got bigger plans than that for you, Jesus." Bigger plans than that, however great that is. That Jesus, the eternal son of God, would be the tribal savior of only one ethnic group on Earth, that is too small a thing. Why? Romans 3: 29-30 says, "Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too?" Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised through faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

One God for the entire world, one savior. So therefore it is too light a thing for Jesus to only be a Jewish savior. He has a worldwide plan, God does. "I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth." A light for the Gentiles, and that light directly equated with salvation. As Isaiah said earlier, in Isaiah 9:2, “The people walking in darkness have seen what a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” It says in the next verse, Isaiah 9:3, "You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy." So we're going to have a bigger nation. He says in Isaiah 54, "Lengthen the tent ropes and the stakes, and get a bigger tent, you're going to need a bigger tent, O Zion." So it's too small a thing for just the Jews, there are going to be some honorary members of the family of Abraham. By repentance and faith in Christ, they're going to be grafted into this incredible work.

"One God for the entire world, one savior. So therefore it is too light a thing for Jesus to only be a Jewish savior. He has a worldwide plan, God does."

It is too small a thing for it just to stay Jews only. They rejoice before you as those who rejoice at the harvest, as those who rejoice when dividing the plunder. It's a time of joy. Jesus is the light for the Gentiles, giving the light of truth, shining the light on yourself, the light of the truth about yourself, that you're a sinner who has violated the laws of God as I am, that you deserve hell. Death is coming. You see the light of yourself, and you come into the light because you're not afraid, because you know what you're going to find there is a savior who is gentle and humble, and you're going to find rest for your souls, and salvation for your souls. That light is shining on you, and you can see yourself clearly for the first time, but you can also see the light of the glory of God in Christ, and He's beautiful and attractive, and you want him. That's the light, as it says in “Amazing Grace.” "Amazing grace, how sweet this sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found was blind, but now I see." 

Jesus is the light for the Gentiles who would bring God's salvation to the ends of the Earth. And what is that but missions, friends. You may be wondering, "Why did you do Isaiah?" It's like, I want to get to missions. I want to talk about missions. "Well, Pastor, you did that last week." That's true, I want to do it this week too. It is important that we understand God's worldwide plan for the greatness of Jesus. Jesus is still too small, and His kingdom is still too small. It's bigger than it was yesterday, praise God, but it's still too small and it's going to get bigger and bigger. More and more people, and more and more conception of the greatness of Christ, and that process is going to go on for all eternity.

Romans 15, "I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews, on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy, as it is written. ‘Therefore, I'll praise you among the Gentiles, I'll sing hymns to your name.’" Again, it says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." And again, "Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and sing praises to Him all you peoples." And again, Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations, and the Gentiles will hope in Him." 

V. Application

This time of year, we collect money for missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. We have a greater focus on missions, our minds drift away throughout the year. We should be thinking about it daily throughout the year, but this is a good time for us to recommit and reconnect. Think about sacrificial financial giving. It is by offerings like this that missionaries are cared for, paid for, and able to stay on the field. Let's be sacrificial in our giving.

We do this so that we may finally realize, God the Father's, determination in Isaiah 49:6, that Jesus would have the full glory of the salvation of the elect from every nation. As Revelation 7 says, "After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne, and in front of the lamb. And they were wearing white robes, and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb.’" Isaiah 9 says, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he'll be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his kingdom and of peace, there will be no end." This kingdom is going to get bigger for all eternity, not more people, procreation will be done. But in your estimation of the greatness of Jesus, you're going to spend eternity learning just how infinitely glorious and great Jesus is.

I'm looking forward to that, aren't you? Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the time we've had to study. Lord, we thank You for the gospel and pray, oh Lord, that You would just be speaking very plainly. Like even now, oh Lord, be speaking. Speaking to people who have yet to cross over from death of life. Let them hear the truth, and let them know... They've heard the gospel multiple times this morning. Let them know that it is for them, that they would see in the light of the truth of the Word of God, that they need a savior, and that Jesus is that savior. And repenting and trusting in Him, find life in His name. And for all of us, oh Lord, help us to be committed to shining that light in many dark places in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Gospel must be preached to all nations because God has elected some from every tribe, language, people, and nation to be in heaven.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

Turn in your Bibles if you would, to Mark, chapter 13, and you can also turn as well to Matthew 24. We're going to be looking at both of those places. The Scripture reveals that despite all of its swirling complexity, human history has a purpose. We are moving to a destination. We're going somewhere with all of this. It's not just random chaos, but God has a plan and a purpose. The destination the Bible reveals, to which we're going, is a perfect universe, a perfect world free from all sin and a beautiful radiant city. The New Heavens and the New Earth are that perfect universe and that radiant city is called the New Jerusalem. The Bible reveals that the light source of that new universe and of the New Jerusalem, according to Revelation 21 and 22, is the glory of God, the glory of God.  Revelation 21:23 says, "The city”[the New Jerusalem] "does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and the lamb is its lamp." Again, in the next chapter, Revelation 22:5 it says, "They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light." But what is that? What is the glory of God?

In my studies and my meditations, I've thought a lot, it's an important topic. I believe the glory of God is the radiant display of the attributes or the perfections of God. Sometimes it's just brilliant light, as 1 Timothy 6:16 says, "God dwells in unapproachable light." Well, think about that, unapproachable light. How amazing must that be? For this reason, the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision were constantly covering their faces, though they had no sin or guilt, but just in that unapproachable light, the presence of the glory, they were covering their faces.

For this reason also, the theophanies, or the displays of God, where God shows up in human history are frequently attended by overpowering light, like in Ezekiel's vision of the likeness of the glory of God by the Kibar River east of Babylon. Ezekiel 1 says, "High above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. And I saw from what appeared to be his waist up, He looked like glowing metal as if full of fire. And that from there down He looked like fire and brilliant light surrounded Him, like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell face down."

So radiant, light, brightness connected with the glory of God. Also at the time of the birth of our Lord in Bethlehem, an angel appeared to shepherds outside Bethlehem and it says in Luke 2:9-10, "There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over the flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified." This was a glory of the eye, not of the mind or heart. It was just bright light, and it stunned the shepherds that night.

But the glory of God is seen not just in brilliant light, sometimes it's in the radiant display of the perfections of God, the attributes of God woven into the tapestry of historical events. That takes the eye of faith to see it, but it's there. The attributes of God woven into the tapestry of history. The perfections of God, attributes of God, include His wisdom, His power, His love, compassion, justice, patience, kindness, mercy. These are attributes.

God has ordained history, the story of history, for this reason to put Himself on display in the sequence of events and unfolding history. He put Himself on display in a history, a story, that He predestined before Christ began, written in His own mind before time began. The sequence of events, this history, has all been written out by the author of history and it's intrinsically connected with the Christ event, the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said in Revelation 22:13, "I am the alpha and the omega. I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end." History is linear, and Jesus is history. Jesus is what the story is all about.

The radiant display of the glory of God in heaven, I believe, will consist in part in a retelling of His mighty works in saving His people from their sins and in their individual context all over the world, across the centuries, a retelling of the mighty works of God and saving sinners. I believe it's the most glorious thing God has ever done. His glory is greatly on display in salvation.  Revelation 7:9-10 says, "After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes, and they were holding palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'"

"The radiant display of the glory of God in heaven, I believe, will consist in part in a retelling of His mighty works in saving His people from their sins and in their individual context all over the world, across the centuries."

Here's a multitude, a huge quantity of people, from all over the world, every imaginable context, standing around the throne of God in heaven praising God for salvation. The specific stories of these individual people that make up these millions from every nation on Earth, will bring infinite and eternal glory to God.  A few verses later, Revelation 8:13, "Then one of the elders asked me, 'These in the white robes, who are they and where did they come from?'" As I've said many times before, that story will take forever to tell fully. It is so complex, but it is woven through with light, it’s woven through with glory. "These redeemed," who are they and where do they come from? Well, how long do you have? We have all eternity. So, pull up a chair and let's hear the story of how God redeemed this one and that one and the other one from all over the world. Heaven will be filled with the stories of the greatness of God put on display in the amazing tapestry of history that He wove in every century.

This is the story of missions. The spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem to the ends of the Earth across every generation of history, that unspeakable glory as before us this morning. We're going to focus just on two verses of scripture. Mark 13:10, right in the middle of our Mark study, and then a parallel verse, Matthew 24:14. Mark 13:10, "And the gospel must first be preached to all nations." Matthew 24:14, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come."

I want to tell you something about the science of Bible interpretation. The Gospels, there are four of them, three of them basically take the same approach to the life of Jesus. Matthew, Mark ,and Luke. They're called synoptic because they see things from about the same perspective.  Then the fourth Gospel, John, comes at it from a different perspective, but they all tell the same thing. We believe that all scriptures God-breathed is perfect, so therefore these are four perfect accounts of the life of Christ, but they have some differences with one another. When we have those differences between, let's say, Matthew and Mark, we harmonize. We don't pit them against each other, we put them together. We try to harmonize, and that's not always easy to do.  Generally, I look on it as a two-for-one sale. I'm going to take both statements here as true, and if one of them tells me one thing, He said that and that's true, and if one of them tells something else, He said that, and I just harmonize, I put it together.

I. Context: Jesus’ Prediction of the Destruction of the Temple

Let's talk about the context here. We're moving through the Gospel of Mark. Mark 13 is Jesus's description of the history of the end of the world and the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the end of the world. It came from a statement Jesus made in Mark 13:2: "Not one stone will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down." This was a prediction of the destruction, at least of the Temple, but probably really of the whole city of Jerusalem and focused on the temple.  It was the final week of Jesus's life. Things were hurdling to a conclusion, the dramatic turbulent events culminating in His arrest and His trial before the Jewish leaders. His condemnation by them is being handed over to Pontius Pilate for condemnation by the Romans and then His crucifixion by Pontius Pilate and the Romans. So that's where we're heading.

Jesus has given a seven-fold denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees, the spiritual leaders of the Jewish nation. It's fully depicted in Matthew 23. It's just quickly summarized in Mark. But it culminates in this statement in Matthew 23: 38-39, "Jesus says, 'Behold your house is left to you desolate.'" This is a very important statement—your house is left to you desolate. “Desolate” means “empty." The reason I'm saying that is, "For, I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say ‘Blessed is He comes in the name of the Lord.’" “Not seeing Me again” is the essence of your desolate house. That's what makes your house desolate. Then Jesus dramatically walked out of the Temple, never to return again.

The disciples came up at that moment and chose that moment to talk about how beautiful the Temple was. We shouldn't be surprised at this. This is what the disciples, the apostles were like, frequently off message. This is who we are as well. “As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings.’ ‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus. ‘Not one stone here will be left on another, every one will be thrown down.’" That must've been incredibly distressing to them. They come to Him later, privately, when He's out of the city, He's up on the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley, they're out of the city and they're there. As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, Matthew 24:3, “The disciples came to Him privately. 'Tell us,' they said, 'When will this happen and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?’"

Matthew 24 and Mark 13 cover roughly the same ground, but Matthew 24, in much more detail. There's almost nothing found in Mark 13 that's not found in Matthew 24, and there are other things besides in Matthew 24, so I have my eye on both. Matthew 24 has the full question the disciples asked and the fuller answer that Jesus gives. The three parts of the question in Matthew 24 are, "Tell us, when will this happen?" And, "What will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?" The complexity of Matthew 24 and of Mark 13 comes in discerning and kind of to some degree, unweaving the tapestry of Jesus's answer. What is He talking about right now in this part? Is He talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in 870 AD by the Romans? Is He talking about the end of the world? What is it? They weave it through.

Jesus, I believe, is giving a history of the world between His First and Second Comings. It's bigger than just the destruction of the Temple. Just to tell you, if you look at Mark 13:10, a key word for me in that is the word “first.” First. "This gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations." First before what? Before the destruction of the temple? That didn't happen. So clearly, Jesus's scope is bigger than the destruction of the Temple. He's looking at, I believe, all history, from the First to the Second Comings of Christ, and He's traveling and traversing that history.

Look at verses 5-13, Mark 13. Jesus has said to them, “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name claiming I am He and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There'll be earthquakes in various places and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. You must be on your guard. You'll be handed over to local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of Me, you'll stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them."

Here's our focus verse, verse 10, "And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given to you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents, and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of Me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved."

Last week, we traced out those thirteen verses and looked at the whole answer. Just to summarize, it begins with a warning against false teaching. He goes from that to a prediction of the ordinary convulsion of events of history, wars and rumors of wars. That happens in every generation, almost every year of history, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom. That's all the time. There'll be famines, earthquakes, various places. He calls all this the beginning of birth pains. The birth pains means a terrible convulsion or pain resulting in something beautiful and wonderful.  We're heading to a good destination, but we have a lot of pain to go through first. That's what “beginning of birth pain” means. 

Then He mentions persecution. They will be handed over to the local councils. They'll be flogged in synagogues. These will be opportunities for them to be witnesses to Him. They will testify to Jesus. "On account of me, you'll stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them." The flow of human history is a canvas on which the masterpiece of redemptive history is being painted. These commonplace convulsions, wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, arrests, trials, all of that is being sovereignly controlled to accomplish the spread of the Gospel, to accomplish the salvation of God's people, to accomplish the glory of God. That's what's going on here.

It's amazing how God controls history even down to the micro-level, to achieve His purposes. I found a number of years ago a great example of this in the life of John Calvin. John Calvin is a great reformer who spent most of his life in Geneva, a great theologian, tremendous leader. However, he was not originally Swiss. Geneva is a city in Switzerland. He was French and he was basically a refugee, a religious refugee running for his life because he believed in the Reformation. The Catholic King of France was persecuting what they called Lutherans, and  he was running for his life.  By this time, he had already written a significant theological work, and he was on his way to the French city of Strasbourg. He had in mind a quiet life as a scholar. He was going to be quiet in his room and eat little bowls of gruel and write theology books, and that was going to be his life. That would've made him happy. He was that kind of person.

At any rate, he was a scholar but already well known. Amazingly, en route to Strasbourg, he couldn't go there because an obscure war had broken out between the King of France and Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor. It's not at all one of the most famous wars ever. It's one of those wars and rumors of wars that Jesus talked about.  But as a result, the straight road to Strasbourg was blocked with troop movements. So here, this fleeing man, this refugee has to divert through the city of Geneva. At any rate, there he is in Geneva, and William Farel, who started a Reformation work there hears that Calvin is there, and he thinks this is just the guy that we need for the Reformation here in Geneva.  He was right, but Calvin had no such intention. When Farel came and said, "I want you to work here in Geneva," he said, "No, no, I'm going to go have a quiet life writing books in Strasbourg." He didn't say it just like that, but it probably went something like that. After Farel tried to persuade him and wasn't successful, Farel rose up in what Calvin called intemperate zeal and threatened him with the judgment of God if he chose a quiet life of academia rather than taking part in the Reformation in Geneva. Calvin was wired to fear that kind of thing and said, "Okay, I guess I'll stay in Geneva,” and he did. He was there most of the rest of his life.

What's my point? Wars and rumors of wars for a purpose. "Are you saying that God orchestrated a war between Catholic King Francis of France and Catholic King Charles the Fifth, so that John Calvin would end up in Geneva and not Strasbourg?" Yes, that's what I'm saying, and other things too. Other things too, but at least that. That's what God does. Isn't it amazing that history has a purpose? Even as it seems to be churning and random and destructive, God is at work in the midst of all of it.

The central work of all of this is, "You will be witnesses for me. You'll be my witnesses. You are going to proclaim this gospel." Look at verse 10, "And the gospel must first be preached to all nations." The power of the Holy Spirit is central to this mission. He said, "Do not worry ahead of time what to say, what to speak. It will not be you speaking, but the Holy Spirit." The Spirit is the driving orchestrator and force of the spread of the gospel, the third person of the Trinity, that is His role and He's extremely good at his job.  As Acts 1:8 says, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes in you and you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria to the ends of the Earth." 

In the midst of all this, there'll be a tremendous amount of pain for the witnesses, painful betrayals, family relationships will be compromised. Your own closest relatives will turn their backs on you. "Everyone will hate you because of Me," Jesus says. Intense persecution, and that's what makes this journey so glorious. The courage, the boldness, the suffering, the willingness to pay the price. That's the story. That's big picture. 

II. A Command in Mark

Let's zero in on the command, Mark 13:10, “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations." In Mark's version, Mark 13:10, it takes a command form, effectively. It's a command in Mark. It uses the Greek word “dei”, which means “it is necessary,” but that's frequently a command, a sense of a command. It is necessary for the Gospel first to be preached to all nations.

What is the Gospel? The Gospel is the message of the kingdom of God with Jesus as the King of the kingdom of God. He's the centerpiece, he is the King, he's the Lord, he's the Savior. The Gospel is the good news about Jesus Christ and all that that means. That's what the Gospel of Mark has been unfolding all along. It's a message about the kingdom of God, that God is King.

"What is the Gospel? The Gospel is the message of the kingdom of God with Jesus as the King of the kingdom of God. He's the centerpiece, he is the King, he's the Lord, he's the Savior. The Gospel is the good news about Jesus Christ and all that means."

The kingdom is the spiritual realm where the subjects of the King are delighted to have God as their King, and they're pleased to obey Him and to follow Him. They're delighted about it. God's sovereignty over rebels is a different matter, but the advancing kingdom of God has to do with individuals who throw down their weapons of rebellion and come in gladly under the kingship of Christ.

The Gospel is, as we've said before, God, man, Christ, response. That God created the universe, the heavens and the Earth, and as the Creator, He has the right to make laws and rules by which we live our lives. God, the Creator, God the King, God, the Lawgiver and God the Judge. That's God.

Man, we are created in the image of God to have a relationship with Him, to have a love relationship with Him and to love each other, but we have sinned. We have broken the two Great Commandments. We have not loved God with all of our hearts, all mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We have sinned. Therefore, we stand under God's judgment,  physical death, eternal death in hell.

Christ is God's answer to that problem. The Son of God, fully God, fully man, born, took on human flesh. We celebrate it this time of year. He lived a sinless life under the laws of God. He died in our place as our substitute, a transfer of guilt effected. When we believe in Jesus, our guilt put on Jesus, He dies in our place, His righteousness is given to us, and that's the white robes that we're going to stand in on Judgment Day and for all eternity. The imputed righteousness of Christ, that's what Christ came to do.

Then the response, we need to repent of our sins, turn away from our rebellion against God the King. Believe in Jesus, trust in Him, and we'll receive forgiveness of sins. That's the Gospel: God, man, Christ, response. It is necessary for that message to be preached, to be proclaimed to all nations. That's what He's saying. That has to happen first, before the end of the world. That's what first, first is tied to the end of the world.

Why? Why is it necessary? Why don't I give you four reasons, four reasons why it is necessary for the Gospel. Let's keep it simple, because Christ the King commanded it. We'll start there. Christ told us to do this. These were his last words before He ascended back to heaven. The Great Commission, so-called, which is a commandment to all of His followers, to make disciples of all nations, is in all four Gospels, a different version but in all four Gospels and in Acts.  The most famous version is Matthew 28, "Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and Earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age.’" To all nations in all eras of history, that's the Great Commission. It is necessary, therefore, that this happened because it is the will of God and of Christ for us.

Secondly, it is necessary because the Gospel is the only way for sinners to be forgiven and reconciled to God. There is no other way. There is no other plan. The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Or as it says in Romans 10:12 -15, "There is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then, can they call on one they have not believed in and how can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they're sent?" As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News?’”  

That's the logic of missions. It's a logical work that Paul does in Romans 10, using a series of rhetorical questions, assuming negative answers. The statement is made worldwide, anyone in any nation on Earth who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus in faith will be saved.  But how can someone call on someone they've not believed in? They can't do that, can they? No, of course, they can't. No one can believe in someone they've never heard of, can they? No, of course they can't. And no one can hear without someone preaching or proclaiming the message. No, they can't. Absolutely not. And no one can do that preaching unless they're sent out. Hence, the need for missions. That's the logic of missions, and it's the answer to why it is necessary for this Gospel to be proclaimed.

Thirdly, it is necessary for the Gospel to be proclaimed to all nations because God has chosen people in every tribe and language and people and nation. They're called the Elect, chosen before the foundation of the world. God wants those people reached. Jesus said in John's Gospel, "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. They must be brought in, and there'll be one flock and one shepherd." Those are people, not just Jews, but all the ends of the Earth. God has people out there. There will be people from every tribe, language, people, and nation. It's been ordained. They were chosen in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless and they have to be brought in, and the only way they're going to be brought in is by the preaching of the Gospel. That's the third reason.

The fourth, it is necessary for the Gospel to be preached for the maximum glory of God. That's the ultimate reason for everything. It is for the glory of God that this be done. Ephesians 1:11-12 says, "In Him we're also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him, works out everything in conformity to the purpose of His will, in order that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory, that we might be, exist, for the praise of His glory and that we might praise His glory, that we might ourselves notice His glory.”  So we will be glory, and we will see glory, and we'll praise Him for it. That's the reason why. Or again, in Romans 15:9, "That the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy." So those are four reasons why it is necessary for the Gospel to be preached.

To whom should the Gospel be preached? What we've already said, to all nations. To all nations, the Greek is “panta ta ethne”. The word “ethne” is from which we get the word “ethnic”, and that's the key. We as Protestants, as Evangelicals, we have had a progressive, growing understanding of missions over the last 500 years. Little by little by little, we've understood more and more clearly our obligation in this matter.  For the first three centuries, the church just exploded all over the Roman Empire. People were going everywhere preaching the gospel. Apostles, non-apostles, everybody, and it was spreading everywhere. It went as far north as Scotland, it went as far south as Sub-Saharan Africa. There's clear evidence of this. It went as far east as India. It went as far west as Tarshish, which is like Gibraltar. It was all over the place, and the Gospel was spreading.

However, once the Dark Ages fell and politics wove together with some form of Christianity, Christendom came about. We had the Crusades, which are the most abhorrent misconstrued incident of mission that's ever been in history;  we still paying the price. But there was this mixture of church and state, and it was a mess.  To make matters worse, the Gospel itself, for the most part, was lost in a false “gospel of works" religion. The Dark Ages fell, but praise God, the Reformation came and scraped away all that darkness and the Gospel was reclaimed. The Gospel of justification by faith alone, apart from works of law, was shining in those Protestant churches, Lutheran churches, Calvinist churches, the Anabaptist churches.

But those folks weren't doing missions initially. They were really just trying to survive. Missions, at that point, was done mostly by Roman Catholics through the Jesuits, who were spreading the power of the Pope and of their Catholic kings, like the King of Spain and the King of Portugal to distant places like Japan and other places. But they didn't bring the true Gospel with them. Meanwhile, the Protestants continued to establish doctrine and to reach their own countries, but not doing missions.  But God worked in Protestant churches, little by little, a clearer understanding of our obligation concerning missions in four key steps.

The first step, or insight, comes from William Carey. He was a Baptist, a cobbler, a blue collar guy, and he wrote an incredible work called An Inquiry into the Obligation Christians Have to Use Means for the Evangelization of the Missions to the Heathen. Heathen will be pagans or lost people. He was a trailblazer in Protestant missions. The insight is that we Protestants should do missions. We should go to distant lands and share the Gospel. Not just the Jesuits should do that, we should do it. That was step one.

Step two came from a leader named Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor was a missionary to China. He went on his first missionary trip and just like most missionaries did in the mid-nineteenth century, he stayed on the coastlands such as Shanghai, port cities. He had a vision for the inland regions of China, teeming hundreds of millions of Chinese that had no hope of hearing the Gospel. He founded something called the China Inland Mission. So step number two is, we need to get off the coast and go into the dark heart of Africa, the dark heart of India and of China, and find people there who have no physical access to the Gospel. Step two, inland missions.

Step three came from a leader at the end of the 19th century into the beginning of the 20th century named Cameron Townsend. He was a missionary in Latin America and South America. He was working with some tribal people, and they were doing all of their work in Spanish, the trade language. At one point, one of these tribal men said, "If your God is so smart, how come he doesn't speak my language?" Good question, right? Good question. So Cameron Townsend started a ministry called Wycliffe Bible Translators to get the Bible into the heart language of people all over the world, and that work continues to this very day.

Insight number four came in the middle of the 20th century from a missionary leader named Donald McGavran, and he began to see that the issue wasn't reaching political nations, like nations that are represented at the United Nations. It had to do with understanding the word ethne as a people group, a group of people characterized by a language and a culture and a heritage and a self-identifying focus. And so that started the people group conception of the work. “Panta ta ethne” means to all people groups.

Now, how many people groups are there in the world? No one knows, only God knows. It's very difficult to see lines of border and demarcation between people groups. Donald McGovern did his work in India, and there are probably at least 5,000 people groups, if not more, in India, but there's a lot of overlap. Joshuaproject.net, which you can go and check that out, they say 17,446. As an MIT engineer, I'm like, "I don't think there's that many significant figures." I would say roughly 18,000. or roughly 16,000. I don't think we can get down to 17,446. However, there's a lot. There's a lot of people groups. IMB has a smaller number of people groups.

Then you go to the next level, which is “unreached people groups.” What are unreached people groups? It's defined as less than two percent evangelical in that nation. When I was a missionary to Japan, the Japanese were the largest unreached people group in the world, less than two percent evangelical. Since then, they've been superseded by another group. But that's a people group.  That's what “unreached” means. “Unengaged,” another U is added, meaning, as far as the IMB knows, there is no effort to try to reach that people group. There's no one working on that, as far as they know. So you've got the UUPG, which is unengaged, unreached people groups. That's the focus. That's where the work should go. It is necessary for us to do that, for the church to do that. It is necessary for us to reach them with the Gospel. And this stands as a permanent command from our Lord and King Jesus Christ. "If you love Me, you'll keep my commandment." That's Mark 13:10, the command.

III. A Prophecy in Matthew

Look over at Matthew, where it comes across as a prophecy, or perhaps a promise. I'm okay with either one. Look what it says in Matthew 24:14, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as the testimony in all nations and then the end will come.”  So prophecy, promise. What is Jesus saying there? "And this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as the testimony of all nations, and then the end will come." The preaching of the Gospel to every tribe, language, people, and the nation is as guaranteed as the end of the world is. They're equally guaranteed. It's going to happen.

This is a remarkable assertion by Jesus, more remarkable than not one stone left on another. Picture Jesus on that tiny little rocky outcropping there in the Mount of Olives surrounded by a band of followers that were frequently off message. You know those guys. Surrounded by a very small number of people saying, "This thing that we're doing here is going worldwide, everyone on Earth will hear about this." All peoples on Earth, all peoples, all nations will hear. That's incredible. Effectively, then, “the Jewish conception of their own kingdom will end, the Messianic kingdom, and My kingdom will be established and will reign for all eternity." That's awesome.

How does He know that? He knows it because He's God, but He also knows it because the Old Testament scripture predicted that this would happen. God willing, next week, we'll look at Isaiah 49, but in Luke 24,  "This is what is written. The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. And repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." It's going to happen.

Which scriptures? Many. There are many scriptures. But I'm going to look at Isaiah 49 next week. Isaiah 49, 1 and 6, "Listen to me, you islands, hear this, you distant nations." Islands and nations, distant nations. God says to Jesus, "It is too small a thing for You to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make You," [Jesus] "a light for the Gentiles that you may bring My salvation to the ends of the Earth.” Jesus is actually not saying anything different than Isaiah the prophet said or that many other prophecies gave.

Friends, this is a great encouragement. How does a team play if it's guaranteed, if they think they're absolutely going to win? They're going to play better than if they think they're going to lose. How does an army fight if they think ultimate victory is guaranteed? They fight better. We are going to win because Christ is going to win. This gospel is going to win.

The task seems difficult. 3,150 unreached, unengaged, unreached people groups. None of them are easy to reach, or they would've been reached. They're in very difficult situations or places.  I went through and thought about some of our units. If you guys don't know what the word “units” means, it means either a married couple, like a family or single. That's why we use the word units because some of them are single men and women, but sometimes family. We call them a mailing address or a group, a family unit. That's what we mean by it.  I was reading about units in Turkey, 1.29 million practice Shia Islam. They speak North Levantine Arabic, a significant minority in Turkey. Their goal is to keep their Arabic culture alive in the secular Muslim state of Turkey and pass that on to their children and grandchildren. They mix elements of Sufism, which is Islamic mysticism and Shia Islam.

Then we've got Thailand, where we have some units, I won't say their names, but they're there working, and there are people there that are following a certain flavor of Theravada Buddhism. Then in Bangladesh, overwhelmed with poverty, where we have another family unit there. People there are practicing Sunni Islam. They're tragically poor, and they're in darkness, in the grip of darkness.

When we think about how difficult it is, and how long it takes to learn a language well enough to share the Gospel in it, and how long it takes to learn a culture, and how long it takes to make friendships, and then that whole journey, and then how long it takes to see one person cross over from darkness to light, that's the challenge in front of us. We need to be encouraged.

Remember the lesson of the fig tree that we preached on a number of months ago? Mark 11:23-24, "Truly, I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he has said will happen, will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mountain moving, faith-filled prayer is made for the Great Commission. That's the mountain that needs to be moved.

Remember what I said about prayer at that time. Prayer is not you giving God an idea He didn't have before or persuading Him to do something He didn't want to do. That's not what prayer is. Prayer is you learning from Scripture what God is doing in the world and asking Him to do what He has decreed and ordained to do but hasn't done yet. That's what it is. God has decreed and ordained that people from every tribe and language and people and nation will be standing in those white robes around that throne. That's what He's decreed.

It is encouraging to see the progress of the Gospel. Those other signs, wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, those don't mark anything. They're characteristics of every generation. But the progress of the Gospel, that's like a ticking clock to the end of the world. If you were to put dots on a map all over the world of what we would consider to be healthy Bible-believing, gospel-preaching churches in the year 1550, where would you put the dots? It would be almost all Central and North Europe, 1550.  If you advance 50 years later, [1600] you would see more dots in those same areas, but still nowhere else. If you put dots where you had healthy Bible-believing, gospel-preaching churches in 1650, by then you would have to add some North American colonies, in Virginia, and New England, and other places, and more over Europe, but nowhere else [1650].

If you advance another 50 years, many more dots up and down the 13 colonies. Many more dots in Europe, and nowhere else. By 1750, by then you had the Great Awakening, lots of dots all over the 13 colonies that eventually became the United States of America. You have some dots in the Caribbean where some Moravian missionaries went and sold themselves into slavery to preach the Gospel to the slave population there. Then, of course, Central and North Europe, some in the Catholic areas in Europe as well, but nowhere else.

By 1800, William Carey's in India. So you put a dot there. But all the rest, just more dots in those same areas. As the new country of the United States spreading westward, there's more dots there, et cetera.  In 50 more years, unbelievable. The 19th century, called the great century of missions, and they started to explode. By this time you've got Hudson Taylor in the inland regions. You've got dots in China. You've got a lot more dots in India, definitely dots in Burma. Because by the time Adoniran Judson finished his work, there were 25,000 baptized Burmese Christians. Now in 1850 there are dots all over. And by this time you can start putting them in Sub-Saharan Africa and other places.   Add another 50 years, 1900, the great century of missions has ended. You got churches all over Asia, Mongolia, India, Burma, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa. In 50 more years, post-World War II, you've got the Gospel spreading to the islands of South Pacific, Irian Jaya, and Papua New Guinea. Soldiers that had fought there then went back to some of those places with the Gospel. Remarkable.

50 years later, the year 2000, the map's covered with dots, the entire world map. There's not a political nation on earth that doesn't have a healthy church. Not one. All the nations, I don't know how many nations are in the United Nations,230 some odd, all of them have some healthy church planted. But still, you've got those unreached people groups. So big picture, I can't tell you this progression without smiling. We are winning, the Gospel's spreading. The Holy Spirit is good at His job. He puts a compulsion on people, and they go where He wants them to go, and they lay down their lives as He wants them to, and the Gospel spreads.  But there's still work to be done. I'm not going to burden you with statistics, that would be hard to communicate. But there's been a kind of a flattening of mission endeavor over the last 10 or 15 years. It's a little discouraging as you look, and it's just a narrow window, but missionary thinker Ralph Winter said, "More of the same will not get it done.” The burden is laid on churches like us and many other churches around the world to recommit ourselves to missions, recommit ourselves to the work left to be done, and to give sacrificially as we are called to do. 

IV. Applications

First and foremost, if you're here listening to this mission sermon, but you came in here not a Christian, your work is to believe in Jesus. No point in talking about missions if you're lost. First and foremost, you've heard the gospel: God, man, Christ, response. I'm calling on you while there's time, repent and believe in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

If you're already a Christian, understand both the command in Mark 13 and the promise or the prophecy in Matthew 24. Take it seriously. This is the command laid on us, but rejoice in the sovereignty of Christ to get it done. Be confident in the final outcome. The Lord is going to win. He will be glorified. I'm looking forward to all eternity of hearing those stories. It's going to be phenomenal.

Pray confidently in the spirit of Matthew 9 for more laborers, laborers in the harvest field. Churches like ours send out two precious commodities to the mission field: people and money. That's what IMB does. We gather people, and we gather money from Southern Baptist churches and point them strategically in directions. The Lottie Moon Christmas offering that we take every Christmas, our goal is $150,000. The Southern Baptist Convention exists in part for that. It was originated for that, and it's why we do. It's the crown jewel, I think, of our cooperation with Baptist churches all over the country. We pool resources to do a job too big for any one church to do. We couldn't afford to send very many fully-supported missionaries, just one church, to these various places. So we pool resources with thousands of churches. Truly, 100% of the money you give to Lottie Moon goes to missions. I was a trustee for nine years. What that means is we take more money in than Lottie Moon. It takes more money than Lottie Moon to put those missionaries on the field. I don't know how they tag dollars that go... Whatever, it gets pooled. The point is, the budget is bigger than the Lottie Moon offering. Where does the rest of the money come from? It comes from something called the Cooperative Program, where throughout the year, 12 months a year, we pool resources and a chunk of that goes to missions as well. A hundred percent of your giving goes, and our goal is $150,000.

What I always say to you as a member of this church is engage, pray about your financial giving. We also have the opportunity through our home fellowships and through just your own initiative to get to know our friends that are serving overseas. We live in an iPhone or a smartphone world. You can contact them and be with them real-time. I FaceTime with these folks. You can find out what they're going through, support them, pray for them.

I'm going to end this time now in prayer, and then we can get ready for the Lord's Supper. Father, thank You for the message that we have heard, the Gospel message of the Gospel going to the ends of the Earth and to the end of time. Now as we turn our hearts to the Lord's Supper, we thank You for the Word that we've heard and for the ordinance we're about to partake in. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Jesus, the glory of God and the glory of Israel, is also the ultimate prophet who proclaimed God’s judgment on the nation for its sins and rejection of Him.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 13. You can also refer to Matthew 24. I'm going to be leaning on both of the chapters but mostly walking through Mark 13, as we begin to look at a topic that theologians call eschatology or the study of end times or last things. In 1925, the American poet TS Eliot wrote his masterpiece entitled The Hollow Men. It was a reflection of his generally gloomy outlook on the direction of human history after the devastation of World War I. That terrible so-called “War to End All Wars” left permanent scars in the minds and hearts of many. Pictures of bleak battlefields that were stripped of all trees, all vegetation, all life, looking more like a moonscape which had been pounded by artillery for years. Deep craters, mud and death everywhere. TS Eliot looked at that, he looked at human history and he wondered bleakly where it was all heading. In the poem he spoke of men with heads filled with straw, men without eyes groping through a valley with dying stars, in which little by little all energy just seems to leak out or drain out slowly from the universe until nothing is left. The poem ended famously with these words, “this is the way the world ends.” “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.” That's TS Eliot's opinion or poetic prophecy. 

But it's just, in my opinion, another example of the fascination that human beings have with where this is all heading. Where are we going in all of this and more specifically with the conceptions of the end of the world? Doomsday scenarios, apocalyptic visions, dystopian societies clawing out some existence on a dying planet after World War III has wiped out most of the human race or some other such thing. It says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God has set eternity in the hearts of men, but they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” We have a sense of a movement towards something but we don't know what it is. We can't figure out where we've come from. We don't really understand the history that leads up to this, and we don't know ... even James says, what's going to happen tomorrow? But we have a fascination in it. We're interested in it. In our culture, especially movie makers cash in on this kind of thing. They depict earth in its final stage after some thermonuclear holocaust, like in the movie “Planet of the Apes” or “Dr. Strangelove” or others. Or perhaps a pandemic which wipes out all of earth's population, such as in the movie “I Am Legend.” Or some kind of ecological disaster, climate change, global warming, or some kind of solar flares like in “2012” or “The Day After Tomorrow.” Or a blight that kills all vegetation except corn, that’s “Interstellar.” Or even alien invasions, that's “The War of the Worlds”, or conquest by artificial intelligence robots, “The Matrix." I'm sure I've missed a few of the ways that the world ends. 

How exactly will the world end and how will we know when it's coming? Is there anything we can do about it? These are questions that burn in the hearts of normal people, and they burned in the hearts of the disciples of Jesus as well. These are the questions that Jesus Christ seeks to answer in Mark 13 and also Matthew 24 and 25. One of the key issues He brings up is, what are the signs by which we can see the impending end of the world as it approaches? 

Jesus amazingly begins, in the account we're going to look at today, Mark 13: 1-13, by talking about things that will happen commonplace in every generation and are no certain signs of the immediate end of the world. But in the midst of it ... as we're going to talk about next week more especially, is the central purpose of history, the unfolding of history, and that is the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. The unfolding of uncertain signs that are true in every generation is a matrix or a canvas on which the painting, the masterpiece of the spread of the Gospel ... or what we call the external journey, goes on. Today we begin a fascinating and vital journey into true prophecy, not the prophecy of movie makers or of American poets, but the prophecy that flows from the mind of God. The only one who really knows the future is the sovereign God who decrees it. God is sovereign and therefore when He tells us what's going to happen, we need to listen. 

I. Christ’s Shocking Prediction

It begins with Christ's shocking prediction there in Jerusalem, in Mark 13:2; "Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down."   We need to understand the significance of this moment. We get it more clearly in the Gospel of Matthew, at the end of Matthew 23 and on into 24. As Jesus has finished his words of judgment, his seven woes on the scribes and Pharisees and condemns them, then the glory leaves the temple. In the Old Covenant, the glory cloud represented the presence of God, the special presence of the omnipresent God with his people, the Jews. God's glory cloud entered the tabernacle when Moses had finished constructing it. The glory cloud entered the tabernacle and filled it, symbolizing the special presence of God there in the tabernacle. So also, centuries later when Solomon completed the construction of his temple, the glory cloud entered the temple and filled it. But sadly, tragically, when the Jews forsook the true God, the only God, for idols and did this over centuries, the glory cloud departed from the temple. Ezekiel saw it in Ezekiel chapter 10, "He beheld the glory," called sometimes the “Shekhinah” glory.  You're not going to see that word but it just means the dwelling glory of God. The dwelling glory departing the temple because of Israel's great wickedness and idolatry, the glory leaving the temple. That rendered the temple really nothing more than a empty or desolate pile of stones, which then the Gentiles were about to flood in and destroy, the Gentiles being the Babylonians at that point. 

In the kindness of God, a remnant of Jews ... a very small remnant compared to the original population that entered the Promised Land, 42,000 came back and were given permission by their Gentile overlords to rebuild a smaller version of the temple, which they did. The story is told in Haggai and also in Ezra and Nehemiah. But now in Matthew 23 and 24 the true glory of God, the dwelling glory, the incarnate glory of God leaves the temple. He walks out because the Jews have officially rejected him from being their Messiah. In Matthew 23, seven times He says, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites." He condemns them. They are spiritual leaders and representatives of the Jewish nation. Jesus said in Matthew 23, "They sit in Moses's seat so you must obey them." They do represent the law of God, but they were deeply corrupted men. They were whitewashed tombs that looked beautiful on the outside, but inside full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. As Jesus says in Mark 12, "They devour widows' houses and for show make lengthy prayers." That's who they were. It culminates with these devastating words in Matthew 23:37-39, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those sent to you, how often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling. Behold, your house is left to you desolate."   This is an incredibly important statement. Behold, look, your house is left to you desolate ... an important word. "I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  In Matthew 24:1 and also in Mark 13, Jesus then left the temple, He walks out. It's not just the actions, it's the words and what He says, "Your house is left desolate. It's empty because I'm walking out. I'm not coming back until you say, 'Blessed is he comes in the name of the Lord.'" So out He goes, it's a hugely significant moment in redemptive history. Jesus is the ultimate prophet from God. He is the one who has been sent. After all these other servants have been sent and have been mistreated and killed, then the the absentee owner of the vineyard sends His son. But they reject him and they are conspiring to kill him, so therefore Jesus is leaving. He's departing and Israel's house, the temple is going to be left desolate. That is vacant, empty, stripped of glory. Why? Because He is leaving and He is the incarnate glory of God. Hebrews 1:3, “the Son is the radiance of God's glory in the exact representation of His being.” 

The glory cloud symbolizes Jesus. Jesus is the glory of Israel. He's the glory of God, and He's leaving because of Israel's wicked unbelief. They had rejected Jesus. They would officially do it at his trial. But they had already made the decision that if anyone declared that Jesus was the Messiah, they'd be cast out of the synagogue [John 9]. They've rejected him and out He goes. The glory departed the temple. Indeed, Jerusalem itself will be nothing more spiritually than an empty, vacant set of piles of stone, ready again for the Gentiles to come in and destroy. That's what's going on.

At this moment the disciples who frequently weren't on message ... Do you get that sense? They're frequently just missing what's happening. They represent us. They come up at that moment, and one of them in particular just can't get over how beautiful the temple is. Look at verse 1, “As Jesus was leaving the temple one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings.’" This is really remarkably poor timing but it’s significant as well. Herod's temple was indeed an impressive temple. Some of those stones were truly massive. Josephus, the contemporary Jewish historian a generation later from Jesus, tells us that some of the stones were as large as 45 feet long, 12 feet high and 18 feet in width. That's a single stone. Approximately 1.5 million pounds, astonishing. Furthermore, the building itself was lavishly beautiful. King Herod was a vicious, wicked tyrant. He was the one that ordered the slaughter of the newborns in order to kill Jesus after He was born. He's just a terribly wicked man. But he thought to ingratiate himself to his people by adorning the temple with stones of marble and with a lot of gold and other glitter. It was rather a very impressive building. 

Human beings in general marvel at human achievement. We get blown away by what humans can do and humans can do amazing things, created in the image of God. But from the Tower of Babel, then through Nebuchadnezzar gloating over Babylon ... “this great Babylon that I've built for my own glory and display of my splendor”, et cetera, we are drawn in and amazed at human achievements. God is not. Stephen says in Acts 7, quoting the scripture, “God says, ‘Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things and so they came into being?’" God's not impressed. God instead yearns for a people characterized by brokenhearted humility and faith and repentance. That's what He's yearning for, and the Jews did not have it. So Jesus makes this shocking prediction, verses 1-2,  “As Jesus was leaving the temple one of his disciples said to him, “'Look teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings.’ ‘Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus, ‘Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down.’" 

"God …yearns for a people characterized by brokenhearted humility and faith and repentance."

Jesus frequently used object lessons, pointing to things, “Look at it”. But this is very much the topic. They were the ones calling his attention to the stones, to the temple, that's what they're talking about. “Do you see them? Look at all these great buildings.” I don't know whether his hand swept over the temple complex itself or the entire city. As you know historically, the whole thing was going to be destroyed, not just the temple. So it could be He was talking about the entire city of Jerusalem, as He wept over Jerusalem, as He lamented over Jerusalem, but specifically the topic there was the temple. Either way, these words would have been shocking to these Jewish disciples. Every stone placed on top of another will be toppled down. This entire place will be leveled. It's going to be raised. Humanity in pride builds upward and goes lofty and high. Like in Isaiah 2, these lofty towers and these cedars of Lebanon and all this rising up, it's just a symbol of human pride. Like the Tower of Babel, God casts it downward. This is nothing less than the prediction of the total destruction, not just of the temple I believe but of the entire city of Jerusalem. 

That prediction would be fulfilled a generation later in 70 AD. Josephus, a contemporary at that time, a Jewish historian, tells the story of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. It was the decisive event of the first Jewish-Roman war. It was followed by the fall of Masada three years later in 73 AD. The Roman Army was led by the future Emperor Titus. It besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem, which had been occupied by zealous Jewish defenders, zealots, since the year 66 AD. For four years they had held out. Jerusalem is notoriously difficult to conquer, very difficult, it was easy to defend. Therefore frequently what would happen is, when the Gentiles like the Babylonians or the Romans would finally topple the city, they would be so filled with rage at how difficult it had been that they took it out on the defenders and on the city and that's what they did. Despite the fact that Titus wanted the temple preserved, they didn't. They burned it to the ground and they were determined, the Romans were, filled with rage, to remove even foundation stones so that it couldn't even be seen that there'd ever been a city there. The Romans did this kind of thing. It's the fulfillment of Jesus's words, just vindicating him as an accurate and faithful prophet of God. 

The spiritual significance is this, Israel had rejected God, so God had rejected Israel. Ezekiel 16 poignantly portrays a spiritual marriage between God and Jerusalem, his love relationship with Jerusalem and through Jerusalem, the people of Israel. But they had betrayed that love and had been spiritually unfaithful to God, spiritually adulterous through idolatry and wickedness. Despite his incredible patience, He swore that He would level it by means of a Gentile nation. This is his regular pattern. He said it in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, before Israel even entered the Promised Land, "I'm going to make you angry by those who are not a nation. I'll make you envious by a nation without understanding." He's clearly predicting Gentile destruction of the Jews if they do not keep the laws of God. Again and again, that's what God did. He would raise up Gentile armies who would come in and trample his people. In this case it was the Romans. 

He would pour out wrath on the Jewish nation and it began what Jesus called “the times of the Gentiles.” Luke 21:24,  “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” We're in those times now, “the times of the Gentiles.” What does that mean? It's a shift in the focus of God. First, God would give up the Jewish nation to Gentile armies to be trampled by the Romans. Then He would pour out his grace and mercy on the elect among the Gentiles all over the world to the ends of the earth, and rescue them from every tribe and language and people and nation. He would graft them into a cultivated olive tree, a Jewish olive tree, deriving nourishing spiritual sap from the patriarchs from the Jewish heritage, so we become sons and daughters of Abraham. Meanwhile, Israel would be experiencing a hardening in part; in every generation, some Jews believing in Jesus, but for the most part not. Until we're told a mystery at the end of time when God will turn the Jews back to himself through faith in Christ and be saved, so all Israel will be saved. That's the whole story of “the times of the Gentiles”, and part of it includes Gentile domination of the city of Jerusalem. 

This is the prediction of “the times of the Gentiles”, the destruction of the temple. It is also spiritually significant because it signals absolutely the end of animal sacrifice and the end of the Jews' ability to perform the Old Covenant. It's physically impossible for them to do. The destruction of the temple clearly means an end to animal sacrifice. The Old Covenant has come to an end, and now Jesus's death on the cross fulfilled the animal sacrificial system. Once He died on the cross, Hebrews 8:13 says that that old system, that Old Covenantal system was obsolete and aging and  would soon disappear. The writer, writing clearly before the destruction of the temple is predicting, I believe there and in Hebrews 8:13, the destruction of the temple, It would disappear, you wouldn't see it at all. The moment Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, signaling the end of animal sacrifice. The Jews should have known at that point, the priests should have all repented and come to Christ. There would have been no need for the temple to be destroyed. It would have been a Christian church. It would have been a symbol of the Old Covenant animal sacrificial system that has now been fulfilled in Jesus. But they had, through unbelief and hardness of heart, reestablished animal sacrifice, sewed up the curtain that was torn in two from top to bottom, reestablished all that. So God had to shut it down, and He did it by the Romans.

"The destruction of the temple clearly means an end to animal sacrifice. The Old Covenant has come to an end, and now Jesus's death on the cross fulfilled the animal sacrificial system."

The Jews cannot obey the law of Moses. Please do not say there is a spiritualized Judaism in which the animal sacrifice is not important. How could anyone ever say that? Read the first five books of Moses. There's an entire book, Leviticus, devoted to animal sacrifice from beginning to end. It is essential to the Jewish religion and it cannot be done. Even more later when the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock there, one of their sacred pilgrimage sites at the end of the 7th century. So Jesus makes the prediction, "Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down." [Mark 13:3-4] 

II. The Stunned Questions 

We have this stunned questions by the disciples in private. As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will these things happen and what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?" That's a simpler version of the more extended question he asks in Matthew 24:3, "When will this happen?" This being, not one stone left on another. "What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" It's asked in private on the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley. They're up on the mountain, they can look down over the temple. I'm sure they could look down over the city of Jerusalem when they're sitting there privately. The disciples must have certainly been stunned and troubled by Jesus's prediction. They still fully expected that Jesus, the son of David, would just be another David, and that He would reign on a physical throne in Jerusalem and that animal sacrifice would continue, because they really didn't understand the need for his own blood to be shed for their sins—that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin that was waiting for the incarnate son of God to die. It was essential for their salvation. They didn't understand that. They were picturing Jesus in a palace of cedar, on a throne of gold, ruling over the Gentile nations. 

The idea that those Gentile nations would gain military ascendancy over Jerusalem and destroy it, would have been anathema to them. They would have hated it. They didn't understand any of these things. The key inner circle, Peter, John, James and Andrew, approached Jesus privately while He's sitting on the Mount of Olives. This probably was very wise. If the population in general had heard what Jesus was teaching here, they would not have taken it well. They're coming privately and they're asking for an explanation. Undoubtedly they could look down over the temple and over Jerusalem while this is going on. Because it's on the Mount of Olives, some scholars call this the Olivet Discourse, especially the longer version in Matthew 24 and 25, or sometimes the Little Apocalypse. In Matthew's Gospel, these three questions and Jesus's answer to them are woven together in a rather complex tapestry. What are the three questions? Question number one, "When will this happen?" Namely, the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. Number two, "What will be the sign of your coming?" The word “coming” is “parousia,” meaning the Second Coming of Christ, which they could not have fully understood. But certainly the parables Jesus tells in Matthew 24 and 25 will prepare them for the parousia, the coming. He also must have already been teaching, though I'm sure they didn't understand, "What will be the sign of your coming?" Then of the end of the age, the question of the end of the world. These are the three questions in Matthew 24:3. It's not as clear in Mark 13, but they're woven together. 

The complexity of Mark 13 and of Matthew 24 and 25 is to try to figure out what He's talking about at any moment. Is He talking about the destruction of Jerusalem? Is He talking about the end of the age? Is He talking about the Second Coming? What is He talking about and how do we understand that? As they go on, the questions go much bigger than just the destruction of the temple. They're thinking about everything. "Where is all this heading? If the temple gets destroyed, what's next? Where are we heading?" Jesus's answer I do believe does include the events connected with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. But it goes beyond and extends to the entire age, right to the end of the world. So therefore I believe aspects of what Jesus says in Matthew 24 and in Mark 13 have yet to be fulfilled. They're still in front of us. 

For me an interpretive key on eschatology from Matthew 24:37 is, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the son of man.”  If I could just keep it simple; as it was, so it will be. We get recurring themes. You get the theme of the holy place like the tabernacle, the temple destroyed, rebuilt, and then this recurring theme, the abomination of desolation, which we'll talk about in the new year. On the teaching on the Antichrist, in 1 John 2:18 it says, “You have heard the Antichrist is coming and even now many Antichrists have come.” What that means is, there's lots of lesser Antichrists that come that do dress rehearsals of the final Antichrist. But there is an Antichrist coming, so that's what I would say. Also the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD is a foretaste of a final and full destruction that is yet to come. 

III. The Warning Against Spiritual Deception

Jesus begins his answer in verses 5-6. He begins with a warning against spiritual deception.  In verses 5-6 Jesus answered, "Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name claiming I am he and will deceive many." The danger in every era is false teachers and false Christs. It's the single greatest threat to the church, greater than worldliness, greater than persecution, is false doctrine. So false teachers are going to come in every generation. One of the great hallmarks of many ... not all but many cult leaders is eschatological focus, a sense of the imminent end of the world and that they themselves are the key leader that God has sent for the people at this end of the world time. It's happened again and again and again. It's a fascinating study of these kinds of cult leaders that claim themselves the key leader and that the end is imminent. The Zwickau Prophets during the Reformation were like that. The Millerites in the 19th century, they led into the Jehovah's Witnesses that made predictions of the end of the world that did not come true. The Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and all that, making all of these kinds of ... It happens again and again and Jesus warns. 

He doubles down in verses 21 and 22, "At that time if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or look, there he is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive even the elect, if that were possible." We'll talk more about that in time. I'm not getting to that today. I am mentioning it because it connects with this idea of false teachers that come and give false doctrine, and that culminates in the Antichrist himself who will be able to work great signs and wonders. He’s called the “man of lawlessness” in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11. The Antichrist was coming, the final one. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie. He allows the Antichrist to work miracles. 

Jesus says, "To deceive even the elect, if that were possible." But it's not possible because you are forewarned in the scripture. You're told ahead of time this is going to happen, so you're ready. You should take this seriously, this idea of a world leader who can do signs and wonders and miracles. Get ready and tell your children and tell your grandchildren ... and if you live long enough, tell your great-grandchildren so they'll be ready. Because there will be a generation whose eternal salvation depends on knowing these truths. Forewarned is forearmed, Mark 13:23, “So be on your guard, I've told you everything ahead of time. Now we have the convulsions of a hate-filled dying world in verses seven and eight. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.” 

IV. The Convulsions of a Hate-Filled, Dying World

Here we have the wickedness of humanity continuing and unfolding, wars and rumors of wars, empires rising and falling. Human beings, with no love for God and no love for each other, violating overtly the two Great Commandments, will continue to hate and plunder and kill each other. That's human history and to some degree you could argue it's one of the reasons for history. We wanted an education at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is what evil looks like. God is drawing it out and showing it to us, so we can see how awful it is. Then He mentions the physical convulsions of planet Earth, ecological disasters. He  calls it famines and earthquakes. After Adam's sin, God cursed the ground because of him. It would produce thorns and thistles for him. We know from Romans 8 and from personal experience that the curse went beyond just the harvest of thorns and thistles from the ground. It extends to every area of physical life here on earth. Romans 8:20-22 makes it plain that God has cursed planet Earth because of human sin. Earth's ecology, God subjected the Earth's ecology to cycles of death and destruction and vanity. Earthquakes and famines that Jesus mentions, are just evidences of God's curse on the Earth. In every generation earthquakes and famines ... and other natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, mudslides, plagues, et cetera, display that the natural order has been cursed because of human sin. It's going to continue and Jesus says vaguely, "In various places." It's just going to happen in various places. He's not trying to be specific. He's saying, this is what life's going to be like. It's going to continue like this. These are what I would call non-specific signs. Is there any generation since Jesus in which there weren't famines and earthquakes and nations rising against nation and wars and rumors of wars? Every generation, there's no specificity to it. It's just general, but that's what life's going to be like. 

Jesus calls them the beginning of birth pains. He uses this language in John 16, also Romans 8:22 says, “The creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Jesus talked about the anguish of his own disciples. The anguish they would have when they would see him arrested, beaten and crucified but then on the third day raised to life, He likens it to birth pains. In John 16:21-22, "A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So it is with you. Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you'll rejoice and no one will take away your joy." That's talking about his own resurrection, which is a foretaste of the New Heaven and New Earth that's coming, but the process before is birth pains.  Jesus says this, "All of the rending and convulsion of planet earth is the beginning of birth pains but the end is yet to come," He's saying. Now, that is very hopeful, isn't it? If you look at John 16, Jesus says, "It's going to be painful for a while, but after that you're going to have joy and no one will take away your joy.” Lasting eternal undimmed joy will never happen in this world but it will happen in the world to come, where there'll be no more death, mourning, crying in pain. That's what Jesus's resurrection is pointing toward. In the meantime, there is the convulsions and the pain of labor, giving birth to something joyful afterwards.

"Lasting eternal undimmed joy will never happen in this world but it will happen in the world to come, where there'll be no more death, mourning, crying in pain. That's what Jesus's resurrection is pointing toward."

V. The Costly Growth of a Living Kingdom

In the middle of all of this is, the real point of it all, and that is the costly growth of the kingdom of God. History has a purpose and the purpose is the salvation of sinners out of every tribe and language and people and nation. That's the reason for all of it. Wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, that's just the matrix of it or the blank canvas on which the real masterpiece is being painted. What is that real masterpiece? It is the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth, saving people for all eternity. Look what He says about that costly growth of a living kingdom. Mark 13: 10 is the thesis verse. We're going to spend a whole week on it, God willing, next week, verse 10, “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.” It's amazing this word “gospel", right in the midst of all this darkness and sorrow and misery, is good news. The good news is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the gospel. Jesus is the good news. Salvation through faith in Christ is the gospel. It is the good news. This good news must be preached to all nations in the midst of all these convulsions. The entire Gospel  of Mark has been about understanding that gospel, that good news. Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or about Jesus Christ, the son of God.” These prophecies that Christ gives here in Mark 13 are incredibly sad and heavy and dark. "Not one stone left on another. Every one of them thrown down. Wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places, sorrow, destruction and death." Yet, Jesus hopefully calls them birth pains and what's being birthed is a perfect people of God redeemed from every tribe, language and people and nation through the blood of Christ, through faith in Christ, and a new heaven and new earth, which will be drawn out of this present cosmos through fire ... Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3, into perfection. That's what we're heading toward.

Mark 13:10 is the centerpiece of all this, the kingdom of Christ is going to spread through the world through the proclamation of a verbal gospel, the Gospel. It's not random suffering for no purpose, rather, God is orchestrating these birth pains to end in eternal joy and glory. The suffering of the messengers of that gospel is clearly predicted. The suffering of the messengers, it's a laborious, a painful journey that the church has to go on. Look at Verse 9-13, “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me, you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them, and the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Wherever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say, just say whatever is given to you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” 

Jesus warns us, his followers, again and again, as the world hated him, it's going to hate us. It's going to hate Christians as well, and that hatred is actually going to increase. It's going to be greatly ramped up into the world. The persecution on the messengers of the gospel will be both informal and formal. Informally, family members and friends will betray and hate Christians. Verse 12, “Brother will betray brother to death and a father, his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.” This is utterly heartbreaking. You look at Verse 12 and you're like, what would that actually mean for those people, to have those closest to you hate you and turn you over to death because they hate Jesus? That's how bad it's going to get, the betrayal. But the persecution will also be formal. It will involve synagogues, religious tribunals, governmental agencies, governors and kings and emperors and presidents and supreme courts, and all these formal tribunals that the messengers of the gospel are going to get hauled in front of. This has been a repeated scene in twenty centuries: the messenger hauled up in front of the authorities giving an account. It happens again and again and again. 

The Apostle Paul, the last third of the book of Acts is that; Paul on trial, Paul on trial, Paul on trial. They're standing before either religious tribunals or governmental inquiries, etc. Bottom line, all of that is going to culminate in the hatred of the Antichrist, when he controls the government of the entire world and uses his supernatural powers to seek to eradicate the church of Jesus Christ, precipitating the Second Coming of Christ I believe. So that tribunal aspect is going to keep coming and the persecution is going to get worse and worse. Summed up in Verse 13, “everyone will hate you.” It seems to me like American evangelicals need to understand, we're not going to win a popularity contest. We need to understand the truth. The more that our surrounding culture digresses from biblical Christianity, the more they're going to hate us. We need to be aware of that. That doesn't mean every single person will hate. There will be unconverted elects who will eventually cross over from death to life. But in general, the world's evaluation of Christians will be fiercely negative.

In the middle of all of that persecution and tribunals and all of that, will be the powerful equipping by the Holy Spirit. The promise of the Spirit as power to witnesses. Acts 1:8 says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” We need the Spirit's power. The tribunals will be terrifying. The synagogues and the religious councils and the governors' courts and all of that, it's going to be terrifying. We're going to in our flesh, quake and melt in front of it. But we'll be positioned to be witnesses to them [verse 9], to preach the gospel [verse 10]. Jesus speaks of the violence of the persecutions. It says that they'll be betrayed by family members to death, to execution. But before that execution happens, the martyrs die, they speak words of witness. The blood of martyrs is seed for the church. They powerfully speak words of witness empowered by the Spirit of God. He says, "Don't worry ahead of time what to say, for the spirit will tell you what to say at that time." Some of the greatest statements in church history have been made by martyrs on trial. They could never have written that material ahead of time. The Holy Spirit knew what to say through them. A very good example of this is in Acts 4 when Peter and John were arrested for doing a miracle and they're brought before the Sanhedrin, and they are so filled with the Holy Spirit and they are absolutely fearless. They say, "If we are hauled in front of this tribunal and asked to give an account for a miracle done to a cripple, then know this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified, by whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." 

Wow, where did that come from? The Holy Spirit came on them. It says, when they saw the courage, the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they're just regular people, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. Stephen's whole speech was saturated with the Spirit of God. Also, Polycarp's courageous message when they burned him at the stake in Smyrna at the end of the first century. Felicitas, the Roman noble woman said, "While I live, I shall defeat you and if you kill me, I shall defeat you even more." It's one of my favorite statements ever in church history, “you can't win,” something like that. “There's no way you can win. If you let me go, I'm going to keep preaching the gospel. I'm going to keep winning disciples. If you kill me, then things really take off.” Awesome. Jan Hus said, "What I proclaim with my lips, I now seal with my blood." Martin Luther, though he was not martyred, he thought he was going to be martyred just like Jan Hus. He said, "Here I stand; I can do no other.” Courageous, bold. Do not worry ahead of time, the Holy Spirit will come on you at that trial of faith. 

The increase of persecution will be a severe test of nominal Christians, people who aren't serious. They're in the habit of going to church but they're not really Christians. The fires of persecution will weed those people out. In Matthew 24:10 it says, “At that time, many will turn away from the faith and betray and hate each other.” So they're apostates. The increase of wickedness, it says, will cause people's hearts to grow cold. Natural affections will be replaced by animal-like instincts. The survival of the fittest [Matthew 24:12] because the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. True Christians can never fall away from Christ. But in the Parable of the Seed and the Soils, there is that stony ground that springs up. But when heat comes, when trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, they quickly fall away. Jesus gives a warning to all of his true followers, he who stands firm to the end will be saved. You have to stand firm in your faith through all that persecution. That's Mark 1-13.

VI. Applications

Let's take some applications now. First and foremost, it's simple, come to Christ. Come to Christ. There is macro-eschatology, the big story of the world. But then there's your eschatology, do you know how much longer you have to be alive? Do you know when you're going to die? That's the end of your time here on earth. Do you know when that is? No one knows. All of this wickedness and convulsions and famines and earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars, all of that is caused, the Bible says, by sin. There is one and only one remedy, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross. Flee to Christ while you can. You don't know how long you have. You've heard the Gospel here this morning. All you need to do is repent of your sins, turn away from your sin and trust in Christ and you'll be forgiven. You'll be forgiven. So come to Christ, come to Christ for salvation.

If you're a Christian, come to Christ for wisdom. I love what Peter, John, James and Andrew do. They didn't understand and they came to Jesus privately and said, "Explain it." Just like with the parables, Jesus gives them the secrets. The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you but not the outsiders. He'll tell you what you need to know. If you want to know things about the future, come to Christ and ask and He'll tell you the Scripture by the Spirit. He's not going to tell you more than the Scripture but the Scripture says everything you need. So come to Christ for wisdom and expect it in the Scriptures by the Spirit. 

Then, understand the direction of history. History has a direction. It has a purpose. This is not random sorrow and destruction like there's no purpose at all. No, there's a purpose to everything. History has a direction. Revelation 21, the second to last chapter of the Bible, in verses 6 and 7 Jesus said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." History has a journey. It's a story being unfolded and Jesus is that story. “I am the Alpha, I am the first letter and I'm the Omega, I'm the last letter. The beginning and the end.” Then He says, "To him who is thirsty, I'll give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this. I will be his God and he will be my son." That's the purpose of history, salvation. Come to Christ and drink. Come to Christ and drink, and never think that history is spinning out of control. God is sovereign. He is on his throne. 

When the so-called eternal city Rome fell to the vandals in the 5th century, many Christians thought it was the end of the world but it wasn't. When the Muslims swept across North Africa, destroying lots of good churches ... and then swept across the Strait of Gibraltar and conquered all of Spain. Then when they swept up into France in the 8th century, many thought it was the end of the world, but it wasn't. When the Vikings were pillaging and ravaging monasteries and churches all throughout the Northern part of Europe and then on into Russia and even down into the Mediterranean and all that, people begged God, deliver us from the fear of the Norsemen. They thought it was the end of the world, but it wasn't.  When Mongol warriors extended the largest contiguous empire that had ever been ... coming in from the Asian steppes and no band of Christian knights could defeat them, and they just won battle after battle after battle, many thought it was the end of the world, but it wasn't. When the Black Death swept across Europe and killed a third of the population ... and all of their good luck charms and all of their incantations and all of that stuff could not drive it away. They really thought everyone's going to die of this disease. The end of the world is imminent, but it wasn't. When the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople, finally fell in the 15th century because of a new invention, cannons with gunpowder ... and the Muslim banners fluttered over Eastern Orthodoxy, over the most significant site of Eastern Orthodoxy. The backdoor to Europe was finally thrown open it seemed to Turkish invasion, many thought the end of the world was imminent, Martin Luther did, but it wasn't. The 20th century dawned with a war to end all wars and millions died in that senseless conflict. When European poets said, “I see the lights of humanity extinguished all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” Then twenty years later, an even worse war came with an even more terrifying scourge, Nazism, subjugating one nation after another.  It seemed they could never be defeated. Many thought the end of the world was imminent, but it wasn't. So also Communism when it spread from one country to the next, the dominoes were toppling in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and all kinds of places ... and it was godless atheism and openly hostile to the church, many thought the end of the world was imminent, but it wasn't. 

Now there will come a time, the end of the world will come but God is sovereign over all these things. In every one of these cases, the church continued and even flourished. Nothing can stop the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So let's rest assured in that and realize what our calling is. Our calling is to be holy and to spread the gospel. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to begin this study in eschatology, in Mark 13. I thank you for the themes that Jesus lays out and He tells us very clearly ahead of time what's going to happen. Lord, continue to strengthen us for our mission in this world, that we'll be courageous and clear and bold, and unafraid of what's happening with governments, unafraid what's happening with natural disasters, knowing that we will suffer. It's not going to be painless but we know also all of it has a glorious purpose. We thank you in Jesus's name. Amen. 

God chose his elect before the foundation of the world to be primarily foolish in the eyes of the world, he did this specifically to shame the powerful and wealthy.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 12.  We're looking this morning at the text verses 38-44. Most of God's choice of servants throughout history have been obscure people. Their acts of service have been unnoticed by the general population. They've been unrecorded by the historians of their age, seemingly lost for all time in the hiddenness and the forgetfulness of the obscurity of history. But God never forgets. God sees everything that we do, and He never forgets any act of service. The account that we are studying this morning of the tiniest, most seemingly obscure act of giving done by an unnamed and obscure woman was recorded and celebrated by the Holy Spirit in two different places, here in this text and also in Luke 21. It was God's intention that every generation of His people since that time read this account.

This account teaches us many things, but especially it teaches us that God delights in secret acts of piety and humble service that no one ever notices, but that He does. God knows His obscure servants because the overwhelming majority of His people are precisely that, obscure servants. Look at the clear declaration given us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1. He says there, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of the world and the despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before Him."

"God delights in secret acts of piety and humble service that no one ever notices, but that He does."

This text says that God specifically put His church together in His own mind. We learned from other passages, before the foundation of the world, God chose His church with a majority of people who were not wise by human standards. They're not the geniuses, they're not the intelligentsia, they're not the Nobel Prize winners, they're not the poet laureates, they're not also many influential, they're not the movers and shakers in their generation. They're actually the opposite. They are the moved and the shaken. Not many of them were nobility, not many of the aristocracy, not many of the A-listers, the Hall of Famers, the world champions. God chose His elect before the foundation of the world to be primarily foolish in the eyes of the world, weak in the eyes of the world, lowly. He did this, He says in that text specifically to shame the wise, the powerful, the wealthy, the nobility.

When will that shaming occur? Certainly not for the most part in this world, but it will happen on Judgment Day and for all eternity. That's when it will be obvious that all that mattered is what Christ thought about you, your person, and your works. All that mattered is what Christ thought about you and how He evaluated you. So God loves the obscure, He loves the insignificant, He loves the works that fly perpetually below the radar of our screen that the world never noticed.

I noticed this theme some years ago as I was reading through the Bible and my annual Bible reading program brought me to the book of 1 Chronicles, everybody's favorite book. I don't know if you remember what's in 1 Chronicles. It begins with a series of genealogies of the tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes. There are 911 names in those first nine chapters. Yes, I counted them. Other than David's descendants, the tribe of Judah, over 90% of those names had no cross-reference at all to any other passage in the Bible. In my study Bible, there were no footnotes about those people because we know nothing about them other than what tribe they were and their name or whatever it says in the verse. The question came to my mind, why are they here at all? Why did the Holy Spirit inspire the author of 1 Chronicles to write their names down and then the Lord protected that copy throughout every generation so that all of us would read those names, people that we don't know, and recorded for all eternity. We have no further explanation of their lives, not a word about their deeds, their dreams, their hopes, their expectations, their fears, their achievements, their accomplishments, none of it. So why are they there? I don't know, but it may be to teach us that God cares about obscure people just like you and me, and that though we don't know anything about those people, God knows everything about those people, and that their lives matter to him. Most of God's people in every generation are exactly those kinds of people. They're obscure whose lives will almost be totally forgotten within three generations of their death.

We're coming around to that time of year when some of us watch It's a Wonderful Life. Others can't stand it. You watched it one time and you were like, "Why is this movie on every year?" But I love that movie. The movie is about a simple guy named George Bailey who's an obscure individual, who lives an ordinary life, running the Bailey Building and Loan so that common working class people can have homes to live in. At a key moment, he makes a moving speech to the villain in the story, Mr. Potter, a wealthy man who's taking advantage of these poor people. In that speech, he basically says, "These common people that the Bailey Building and Loan cares for and provides for are the people who do most of the eating and sleeping and living and dying in this town and in this country, and though they don't matter to you, they matter to my father who started the Bailey Building and Loan, they matter to me."

It's a very passionate speech, but Jesus goes infinitely beyond that sentiment. He actually uses the commonest actions of obscure people to build the city in which we will live forever, the radiant new Jerusalem whose stones were put in place by the humble actions of the kind of obscure people that we're looking at today, like this woman who gives the two copper coins. The entire new Jerusalem is built by those types of labors, those types of works. That's what this account is about in my mind, an obscure woman, a widow with no name, almost no resources, who is carefully noticed and celebrated by the only observer who really matters and that's Jesus Christ. He's the judge of all the earth. It is a strong statement that Christ notices and uses hidden acts of sacrifice to build his kingdom of glory.

The context is one of stark contrast. Putting these two paragraphs together, you may say, "What do they have to do with each other?" You've got the Scribes and Pharisees, religious leaders of the day who Jesus just rips in this account with their outward displays of religion that dominated Jewish society, but were actually deeply corrupt. They were wolves in sheep's clothing, plundering poor widows like this one. Then you've got this widow who Jesus, it seems, celebrates. I put it together in terms of the concept of a foretaste of Judgment Day of what Jesus thought about this one category and what Jesus thought about the other.

I. Jesus Gives a Foretaste of Judgment Day

That's the unifying theme of the two paragraphs, Jesus gives us a foretaste of Judgment Day.  We begin as we look at that by saying things are not what they appear. There should be a growing sense in the heart of maturing Christians. The things on earth are not as they appear to be. Many of the most powerful people on earth, the wealthiest people on earth are to be the most pitied because of their spiritual condition and the road that they're on. Many, on the other hand, are the meek and lowliest people on earth, Jesus says, who stand to inherit everything, the meek who will inherit the earth.

The  Judgment Day that is coming is a day of great reversals, a day in which the lowliest and most obscure of Christ's servants will be exalted to the heavens and crowned with stunning glory, and a day in which those most glorified in this world, the most outwardly powerful and wealthy and dominant will be stripped forever. There is a day coming in which all secrets will be unveiled and all works judged with a perfect eye by the judge of all the earth. That day is called Judgment Day. The Scripture reveals who that judge will be and that judge is Jesus Christ. My task as a pastor and a regular preacher of the Word is to make that Judgment Day vivid in your minds every day, that you think about that day, you get ready because that Judgment Day is most certainly coming.

Jesus is presented in Scripture as the judge of all the earth. Many passages speak of him as a perfect judge. Isaiah 11, for example, speaks of this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit that shoots from the stump of Jesse — Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. The spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what He sees with his eyes or decide by what He hears with his ears, but with righteousness, He will judge the needy. With justice, He will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. With the breath of his lips, He will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt, and faithfulness his sash around his waist. That is Jesus portrayed as the judge of all the earth in Isaiah 11.

Jesus openly made this claim for himself. In John 5, He said that the Father has given Him the honor of being the judge of every human being that ever has lived or ever will live because He's the Son of Man. John 5:22, 23, "The father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the son that all may honor the son even as they honor the Father." It's an incredible statement to make saying that the entire human race will honor Jesus the way they honor God when He sits up to judge the human race. A few verses later, John 5:26, 27, "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the son also to have life in himself and He has given him authority to judge because he is the son of man." Then in verse 30 of that same chapter, "By myself, I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just I seek not to please myself but Him who sent me."

That's an open claim that Jesus makes of having an honor equal to God himself and that God has given Him the role of being judge of all the earth. He says the same thing in Matthew 25, speaking of the Second Coming, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory." He'll sit in honor and glory and power judging. That's the picture. "All the nations will be gathered before him and he'll separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." Jesus, the judge of all the earth. On that day, He will, it says in Proverbs 20:8, winnow out the wicked with his eyes and He will reward his faithful servants with eternal honors.  Proverbs 20:8 says, "When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes." He's going to separate out the wicked, the goats, and He'll reward his faithful servant as He says in Matthew 10:42, “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, these messengers, because he is my disciple, he will never lose his reward.” That's a tiny act of service similar to the widow giving her two copper coins. You’ll never lose your reward because Jesus will see every cup of cold water given to help missionaries, to help servants of the word along. He will reward them, and they'll get the same reward as the messengers, the missionaries, the pastors, et cetera, the support system. It's an incredible statement.

II. Jesus Exposes the Spiritual Predators

Jesus begins in this passage by exposing the spiritual predators. This is the final week of Jesus' life. We're walking through that. Jesus is in the temple and He's teaching. He's been ministering, healings, it says in one of the other Gospels, not here in Mark, but He heals, and He does his teaching ministry. These are the final words in Mark's Gospel that He speaks to his unbelieving enemies.  The Scribes and Pharisees have dogged his steps every day of his public ministry. They hate Him, they're opposed to Him, they're genuinely wicked people. But to others, they appear as righteous. The Scribes and Pharisees are the spiritual leaders of Israel. Jesus says in Matthew 23, they have a legitimate authority, they sit in Moses' seat, so you must obey them. They have a legitimate authority, but they have misused that authority. They've abused that authority, and Jesus calls them out. This is their final chance to be convicted by the only perfect prophet that's ever lived, to take his fiery words, his convicting words to heart and repent of their sins and find salvation in Him. Like a surgeon cutting open the body to find the tumor, He exposes their wickedness.

Mark's account here is greatly truncated compared to Matthew’s account. It's greatly reduced. Look at verses 38-40, "As he taught, Jesus said, 'Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows houses, and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.’” That's it. Just a few sentences here. But in Matthew 23, He gives the seven woes to the Scribes and Pharisees in this rhythmic pattern, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites,. . .” a whole chapter. It's a lengthy chapter in Matthew 23.

Here he just says Scribes or teaches of the law. Matthew adds Pharisees, he puts them together. Jesus warns the people to watch out for them. Earlier He had called them the blind leading the blind. Now, here He exposes their love for ostentatious displays of religiosity, flowing robes, the trappings of godliness and of piety, but there's no real spiritual power behind it, there's no life behind it, no genuine holiness. They love the horizontal honors they get from the Jewish population, they love to be greeted in the marketplaces, they love the places of honor, they love to be in the most important seats in the synagogues. They love this kind of thing. They were used to it, they expected it, they probably felt they deserved it, and it seems that the people felt so too because they gave it to them. They gave them this honor. But Jesus also exposes their hypocrisy for a show. He says here in Mark's Gospel, they make lengthy prayers. They're just putting their piety on display.

But then Jesus also probes to their secret wickedness, they devour widows’ houses. They take advantage of widows who had no protection. Because of their positions of power in the society, they could go over a widow's estate and give her binding spiritual, religious, legal advice. Furthermore, they could and did demand exorbitant fees from widows for their services. If the widow couldn't pay, they had the right to confiscate their homes. It's really horrible and disgusting, especially when you consider what James says in James 1:27, "Religion that our God and Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress." They were taking advantage of widows in their distress. It says in Exodus 22:22-24, "Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused and I will kill you with the sword."

Jesus's harsh words to them in Matthew 23 and his brief words here is a foretaste of the coming sword, and that sword is going to come on Judgment Day for them. He's representing a rage from God against them for this, the fact that they devour widows’ houses. He's using his words as a foretaste of the sword. Remember how in Revelation He's depicted as having a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. He has this rage and He's clearly revealing what's going to happen to these wicked religious leaders on Judgment. Look at verse 40, they will receive the greater condemnation.  I believe this principle is based on one's knowledge of the Word of God. The more you know and didn't obey, the worse it's going to go for you on Judgment Day. That's why I've said before, the worst place to go to hell from is a healthy Christian family that poured the gospel into you from childhood and you never repented. I do believe the more you know and don't live up to it by faith, the worst it will be for you in Judgment Day. How about these Scribes who were pouring over every letter of the law of Moses and they weren't living it out? It's a terrifying thing. In Greek it says they'll have greater condemnation or abundant judgment, actually overwhelming judgment.

"The worst place to go to hell from is a healthy Christian family that poured the gospel into you from childhood and you never repented. I do believe the more you know and don't live up to it by faith, the worst it will be for you in Judgment Day."

The woeful statements, as I said, are in Matthew 23. The rhythm is seven times, a sevenfold condemnation that He uses with his words, a prophetic statement of woe, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites." He probes their hypocrisies, their outward show of inward corruption. He calls them whitewash tombs which look beautiful on the outside but inside full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. It is a terrifying chapter to read and it culminates in this statement of judgment on them, Matthew 23:33, "You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell?" It's a terrifying statement coming from the judge of all the earth.

Then He makes the prediction of Jerusalem's destruction because they always persecute the prophets sent to them. "Therefore," Matthew 23, "I'm sending you prophets and righteous men and teachers. Some of them you'll kill and crucify, others you'll flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all this will come down on this generation." Then He says this, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling. Behold your house is left to you desolate for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

That sets up the next chapter that we're going to go to, God willing, Mark 13, the prediction of the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem, but it all comes on the tail end of his condemnation of these terrible religious leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees.

III. Jesus Extols an Obscure Giver

That's the condemnation He gives to those corrupt religionists. Now we turn to the widow, the obscure giver, and Jesus extols her. Look at verse 41-44, "Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple Treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on.'"

It begins with Jesus's physical position. It's very significant, Jesus sitting down and watching. I want you to get a foretaste of Jesus on his Judgment seat. That's what you get the picture of. He's sitting down and He sees everything. As in Revelation 1, He has eyes of blazing fire. He's watching what's happening in the midst of all this hustle and bustles, just a busy day, people coming and going, and they're pouring money into this treasury, into this box, and He's observing it. This is a picture you should have in your mind. Jesus is seated on his Judgment throne and watching everything I do. He's evaluating me. That's what Judgment Day is all about. We're all going to come before his Judgment seat and give an account for everything we've ever done in our lives. This account gives us a picture. We can picture it in our minds. He's seated and watching and observing, and He's talking about it.

All of this is going on, and the monies are coming, people are making contributions in the temple grounds. He's sitting there just watching it. Sadly, the monies that are being collected in this big box, they go to the Scribes and Pharisees, the very ones that Jesus has condemned. They're going right to those wicked people, and it's tragic. You can picture a wooden chest with a hole and a metal-like trumpet-looking thing, like a funnel. The people would come in and they would pour their money in. It was all coins, it wasn't paper money. It would be precious metals, gold, silver, copper. The larger the donation, the more money, the more sound it would make.  It would just rattle and clang down the thing if you're putting in lots of amounts.

Some of these people were coming in and making a big show of what they were offering. I think they have these kind of money things like at the Harris Teeter store too. Sometimes people bring huge amounts of coins and it's like... I can't imitate it, but it's just this loud noise and they're all coming and they're giving. Lots of heavy coins. The gold is the heaviest, the densest and lots of that. It's just coming down. I think it lines up somewhat with Jesus' condemnation of this kind of outward showy giving. In Matthew 6:2, He says, "When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their award in full." I don't know if there's actual trumpets, but this thing was like that. It was making a lot of noise if you gave a big amount.

While all this is going on, all this racket and bustle, along comes this woman and she's got in her hand these two little copper coins. The text identifies her as a poor widow. She was at the lowest level of their society socioeconomically. There was no one to protect her. She had no resources. Again, she's completely obscure. The text tells us nothing about her. Her gift would've made almost no difference at all in the running of the temple or anything. It was just a tiny, seemingly insignificant amount. Jesus watches her carefully. I think He could only have had supernatural knowledge of what she put in. Imagine how small these coins were. She extends her hand, opens it, and walks away. How do we know it was two copper coins? It's just that supernatural knowledge the Bible gives us, but Jesus knew. He watches her carefully and He has supernatural knowledge of her condition like He does of that Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and the man she now has is not her husband.

Jesus has supernatural knowledge of her circumstances and He speaks of the significance of her giving. He knows that those two coins represented everything she had in the world, all she had to live on. He speaks of that significance of the action. One could easily question her judgment in giving this amount, think that she was actually behaving foolishly. There's actually a well-known commentator that took this whole angle. He said, "These two accounts are put together where you have the victimizer and then the victim." I think it makes a certain amount of sense. However, he goes too far when he says that the text in no way presents the woman as a model of giving. That I cannot agree with.  If you just read the paragraph, you'd think that Jesus is actually commending her faith-filled giving. He's talking about sacrifice, He's talking about the gift is proportional to what it meant to you. It's proportional to your sacrifice. It's not a value system on an absolute scale. It has to do with what that money meant to you. So I think that commentator went too far when he says, "Look, there is nothing commendable about what she..." Actually, he goes so far as to say, "She's somewhat foolish, but she's an example of a widow who's being plundered and being taken advantage of." That part I can agree with. But that she's not a role model, I can't go that far.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if you remember that story in the Old Testament about Elijah, during the famine, during the drought, he was being fed by some ravens, and he was by the brook, but then that dried up, and then it was time for him to move. God tells Elijah, 1 King 17: 9 and following, "Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there.  I have directed a widow there to supply you with food." The thing that's funny about that is she knew nothing about that, but God says, "I've directed her." In other words, it's a done deal. She's going to take care of him. He went to Zarephath, and when he went to the town gate, the widow was there and she's gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, "Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I might have a drink?" As she was going to get it, he called, "And bring me, please, a piece of bread." You get the feeling in the account, "Now you've gone too far. I'll get you a little water, that's hard enough to come by during a drought. But the bread now, that's a whole different matter.” So she says, "As surely as the Lord your God lives, I don't have any bread. What I have is a handful of flour in a jar and I have a little olive oil in a jug. I'm gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it and die." She's basically saying, this is her version of the two copper coins, this is all I have to live on, this is it. But then Elijah said to her, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you said, but first, make a small loaf of bread from me from what you have and bring it to me. And then make something for yourself and your son for this is what the Lord the God of Israel says, the jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land."

He gives her a promise from the Lord. The key thing with this woman in the Elijah story is she believed that promise. She was willing to act in faith on that promise. She went away and did as Elijah had told her. There was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family for the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry in keeping with the Word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

I do not think we can say this widow is an example of foolishness having given too much. Think again, the rich young ruler, Jesus commanded him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor. I don't think that she's negative. As a matter of fact, I want to turn around and say she is an example of sacrificial giving that will stand across all the ages and is worth celebrating. 

IV. God Delights in Obscure Servants and Hidden Works

God delights in obscure servants and hidden works of sacrificial giving. He delights in them and Jesus notices them. As I've said, most of God's servants are obscure people who do their good deeds in a hidden way. God sees what they will do and will reward it based on His principles. Jesus said, "When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing that your giving may be in secret, then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you fast, put oil in your head and wash your face so it'll not be obvious to others that you're fasting but only to your Father in heaven and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Those are three examples, giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting where God observes secret acts of hidden piety and rewards them on Judgment Day.

Culminating all that, He talks about storing up treasure in heaven. In Matthew 6, He says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." That whole section, Matthew 6:1-21, commends a life of secret piety and giving in which your works are not being done to be observed by others, but God sees and He rewards them and He's exhorting you store up a whole lifetime of those works, that's going to be treasure for you in heaven.

Later, as I mentioned, when teaching about rewards in Matthew 10, He sends out the disciples two by two and makes this amazing statement, which I alluded to a moment ago, "Whoever welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet, will receive a prophet's reward. Whoever welcomes a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives one of you messengers of the gospel, even a cup of cold water, he'll certainly not lose his reward." What is Jesus saying there? He's saying that the hidden support system people get the same rewards as the upfront famous people. The ones that supported Luther or Calvin or John Owen or whatever, the ones that no one even knows about that enabled them to live and to do their works and all that, they will be honored and rewarded with the same kind of reward that the upfront famous leaders get.

That means on Judgment Day, there'll be some surprises. A lot of them as a matter of fact, because Jesus says about this widow, she gave more than anyone else gave. You see, she gave more. She gave the most. It's not something we would've seen. One of the Judgment Day principles is the gift is accepted based on what it meant to you, not based on its absolute market value. He says in 2 Corinthians 8:12, "If the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have." That means the harder it is for you to give, and I don't just mean financially, it could be in evangelism, it could be your time, your energy, it could be hospitality, it could be anything, if it's hard for you to do and you do it anyway, it's more commendable than if it comes out of a surplus. I think most of the giving we give is out of surplus. It doesn't pinch us. It's not a real sacrifice. But for this widow, it is a real sacrifice.

That means Judgment Day is a great reversal. Some of the greatest servants of Christ will be Judgment Day surprises like this widow, and many, if not most of them, will be women. I've studied church history. History tends to focus on men, on great leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, military, financial, and they've generally been men. There are great men who have made great sacrifices and they will be worth getting some reward in heaven. They are what they appear to be, godly men who served. But there are also millions of hidden women whose faithful work for the kingdom was never been seen. Single women who served in obscurity, mothers who raised generations of Christians, who poured into them the Gospel from infancy. We don't know what they did, but God knows. This account, this woman, this widow with the two copper coins is like the prime witness in my whole account here that there's going to be great reversals and surprises on Judgment Day and that God honors the secret works of obscure servants including women.

In the book that I wrote on heaven, The Glory Now Revealed, I focused on this woman and two copper coins. By the way, that's why I couldn't go with that commentator and his observance saying that she was no good example. I was already in print, so I couldn't back out of it. So I'm going to stick with it, but I really do, I think if you read this paragraph, I think you get commendation by Jesus, not criticism. She's the prime witness in that chapter on obscure heroes and obscure movements in history that'll be revealed on Judgment Day.

But it wasn't just her or just women, there were a lot of people. My favorite obscure missionary hero that I learned about as I was working on that book was a man named James Gilmour. He was a missionary to Mongolia in the 1870s. I've carefully studied the history of missions, and I'd never heard of this guy. He labored in the most severe climate imaginable, with temperatures dropping to as low as 40 degrees below zero. He survived on handfuls of millet, trekked over 300 miles a week, over 40 miles a day to reach people in the remotest places on planet earth. He struggled with extreme loneliness. He struggled with a constant sense of total failure to his mission.

Why do I say that? The Mongolians that he was reaching were not hostile to him. They were generally hospitable, they were amicable, but they just weren't interested in the Gospel. They believed in their Buddhism and their spirituality. They were fine with how they were. Though they tolerated him ministering and they didn't overtly persecute him, they had no interest in what he was saying. He recorded over 24,000 gospel presentations and only three conversions. I have never read in all the church history of anyone that was so faithful with so little return on his investment.  Think about that, I mean, it's probably why you haven't heard of him. If he had saved 10% of the people, It's like, "Great missionary leader." He was a great missionary leader, but just not in the ordinary way. He was faithful. What would it be like for you? Imagine your personality. Imagine you in that place and you have shared with 3,000 people and none of them have come to Christ. You're going to share with another 3,000, still no one. What kind of perseverance does it take to keep going when you get so little return? Of those 24,000, for all we know, a larger percentage of them will actually be in heaven. You know how it says, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God made it grow." Sometimes seeds are planted and you never know what happened to it. But James Gilmour is that kind of an individual. He reminds me of the heroes in Hebrews 11. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated, the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves, in holes, in the ground. That was James Gilmour.

As I finish, I was thinking recently about a movie I watched, a powerful movie called A Hidden Life. It was about a farmer who lived a simple life with his wife and daughters in the Austrian Alps during World War II. His name was Franz Jägerstätter, and he would've been completely obscure had he not been one of the rare men who stood up to Adolf Hitler. He was a conscientious objector who was willing to serve in the army, but not to take the vow of personal obedience to Hitler that every soldier had to take. He would not do it, and because of that, he was severely punished and even martyred by the Nazis.  The movie's called A Hidden Life, and it comes from a quote by a female author named George Eliot who wrote a book called Middlemarch, and this is the quote, "... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might've been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." That's most of us.

Within three generations if the Lord doesn't return, people will not visit your tomb. They will not know much about you. All of your works will be forgotten by everyone alive on planet Earth, but Jesus will never forget. The call for me at this end of Mark 12 is to live a life of faithful obedience to the commands of God, to trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior because without that, you can't store up any good works, only wrath, but to trust in Him and then to live a quiet and a hidden life that God will reward on Judgment Day.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for this incredible account of this woman. We thank you Lord Jesus that you were there to see it and to comment on it and to celebrate it. And Lord, I pray that we would be faithful, that we'd be willing to live a hidden life that's not hidden to you, a life that is obscure to the hustle and bustle of the world age, but not obscure to you, a life that you'll reward on Judgment Day faithfully, not missing anything that we do by faith in service to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Christ, son of David and the Son of God is the meticulous, precise Bible interpreter and also the meticulous, precise Savior.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

I. A Precise God Speaks a Precise Word

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 12. We're looking this morning at verses 35-37. Anyone who knows me knows I have an esteem for church history. I love church history.  One of my favorite people to study are the Puritans who were English Christians in the 16th, 17th century. They were remarkable people who accomplished far more than most ever do because they knew the God they believed in, and they sought to orchestrate every aspect of their lives in conformity with what they read in Scripture. They were meticulous and precise in the way that they lived. They were precise in their doctrine, very careful in their doctrine. They were precise in their public worship. They were precise in their Sabbath observances, in their family lives, in their private prayers, in their secular employments, in their politics. They tied everything to the perfect truths they saw in the Word of God. One Puritan pastor, Richard Rogers, ministered in Essex and was told by a wealthy nobleman in his parish, "Mr. Rogers, I like you and your company, your group very well, but I find that you are too precise." Rogers replied, "Oh, sir, I serve a precise God.”  We serve a precise God, and evidence of the precision of God surrounds us every moment in the universe that we live in. We see in His meticulous, in His careful creation, evidence of His precision. Advances in science over recent centuries have shown how just precise the universe really is.

I was reading a book recently by Eric Metaxas called Is Atheism Dead? He argues that recent advances in science have made atheism more and more unreasonable. In it, Metaxas talks about arch-atheist evolutionist and enemy of the gospel, Richard Dawkins, who is relentless in his hatred of Christianity. He goes all over the world to ridicule and to debunk Christianity, but in an unguarded moment was asked, "Of all of the arguments for the existence of God, which do you find most difficult to overcome?" He said, "That's easy. The evidence of a finely tuned universe, that the universe has physical constants that are so precise, if they deviated even a tiny, tiny amount, life would be impossible. Actually, existence would be impossible, and there's a stacking up of these that makes it difficult to refute the evidence of a precise God who made them all."

Classic example of this is what's called the “Goldilocks” planet that we live on. You remember the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, how this wanderer comes into a cabin and finds some porridge, and the first bowl is too hot and the second bowl is too cold, the third bowl is just right. The same thing happens with the chair and with the bed and all that. Earth is like that, it’s the Goldilocks planet. The distance from the sun, Venus is too close, so it's too hot, Mars is too far, so it's too cold. The earth is just right. Also the gravitational force of the earth, the power of gravity is just right to retain the gases in the atmosphere necessary for life. The atmosphere itself is just right. When it comes to oxygen, 21% of the air you breathe is oxygen, 78% is nitrogen. If there were more oxygen, things would be igniting all the time around us, burning, combusting. If they were too little, we would have trouble staying alive.

So it is with water. Water is weird. I know we're used to it, but it's just a weird substance. It's got some amazing attributes. For example, simply the fact that the solid form of it floats in the liquid form, ice floats. Because of that, then ice floats to the top in lakes and ponds and rivers and doesn't descend to the bottom where the sunlight could never reach it. And eventually, it would quench out life because of an ice age. So it is with the genetic code of every cell in your body, the DNA, the string of proteins. They are so meticulous and precise that if anything were deviated at all, life would be impossible. These are examples of a precise God and His precision in creations around us all the time.

This precise God also had a precise plan for human history and for our existence. All the days ordained for each one of us were written in God's book before one of them came to be. That's true not just of us individually, but it's true of the entire flow of human history. God ordained a precise sequence of nations and empires, kingdoms and smaller nations to rise and fall in exactly the way He ordained.  In Acts 17:26, it says, "From one man, He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth." He determined the time set for them in the exact places where they should live. That's a precise God orchestrating all of human history.

"This precise God also had a precise plan for human history and for our existence. All the days ordained for each one of us were written in God's book before one of them came to be. That's true not just of us individually, but it's true of the entire flow of human history."

At the center of that precise plan by this precise God was a plan for the salvation of sinners like you and me from every tribe and language and people and nation. Peter in preaching on his great Pentecost sermon said this in Acts 2:23, "This Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. And this one you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." That's a precise plan concerning Jesus, that He would be born, as Galatians tells us, in the fullness of time at just the right time in history, and according to this plan, He was killed. This precise plan was predicted in a precise book. This is the precise book, the Bible, and in it is a set of precise prophecies meticulously laid out in the Hebrew language, in Hebrew letters in the Old Testament.

This morning we're going to see the precise son of God,  Jesus making a surprising observation and drawing a stunning conclusion from one verse in scripture, a psalm, actually based on one word in that psalm actually based on one letter, the ending letter of that one word. Everything comes down to that one letter. That's the precision of Jesus and the argument He's going to make today.

Jesus spoke about the precision of scripture and His esteem for it in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew 5:17 and 1, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a pen stroke will pass from the law until all is accomplished." KJV has “jot and tittle”. But it's just an iota, which is a Greek letter. But Jesus was actually referring, I believe, to the Hebrew letter, the yod.  You can see in Psalm 119 the shape and some of the English translation, the shape of the various letters. It's hard to see the relative size, but the yod is the smallest Hebrew letter. It looks like an apostrophe, like the apostrophe as like the possessive that we use, apostrophe. It's like a little apostrophe. It's pronounced ye, like a Y sound. That's what a yod is. The pen stroke refers to the way that the letters are shaped, like the finishing of a letter, what some printers will call a serif. On the end of a letter, it gives a shape of a letter.  Jesus is saying, "Until heaven and earth pass away, not a single yod will disappear and not a single pen stroke will disappear from the law until everything that God ordained in the scriptures is fulfilled." Actually, He said that His own words would outlast heaven and earth. "Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will never pass away."

This meticulous Scripture gave rise to a very meticulous Jewish culture. The Jews were very precise over the written word of God. They knew that there were 613 commands in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 613 commands. They knew that 248 of them were positive and 365 were negative. Doesn't it make you wonder what they did with their time? They're there walking through and categorizing that, that’s what they did.

The Scribes also counted letters in each of the books that they copied. They meticulously counted the letters. They knew the middle letter of each book and they knew, indeed, the middle letter of the Pentateuch. I bet you're wondering what it is. It's a vav, which is a W in the Hebrew word for belly in Leviticus 11:42. That's the middle Hebrew letter, and they would count forward and count back, and if they didn't arrive at that vav, they knew something was wrong somewhere. That was the precision.

Jesus applies this kind of meticulous precision to prophecy in Psalm 110. In Psalm 110 in verse 1, His entire argument comes down to a single letter in the Hebrew. Actually, it is the letter yod, the one I mentioned earlier, the little ye sound, the little apostrophe. With that closing letter in the way the Hebrew words are formed, the word adon, which means Lord, is turned, possessive, adoni, my Lord. The whole thing comes down to that. How is it that David, writing that, called Messiah, His son, my Lord? It all comes down to one letter. That's the precision here.

What is the goal? What is Jesus' goal? The goal is the same goal that there is in Scripture. He's not trying to ensnare or trap people or prove His intelligence or His meticulous nature; none of the above. He wants to save sinners. It's salvation; that's His goal. For that is the purpose of scripture.  2 Timothy 3:15 says, “The holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” 

II. The Central Question: Who Is Jesus?

 The whole thing comes down to the identity of Jesus. Who is Jesus? That is the focal point of this conversation. Jesus brings it up. It is the final week of Jesus' life. It is the Wednesday of Holy Week. Jesus' enemies are coming at Him in waves trying to trip Him up. They want to condemn Him to death. They're coming at Him concerning His sense of His own identity. That is essential also to our own salvation. All four Gospels, I believe, are written for the same purpose as the Gospel of John. John 20:31 says, "These are written." You can put that on all four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," or perhaps God the Son, "and that by believing that, you may have life," that is eternal life, "in His name."

It all comes down to the identity of Jesus. Jesus' enemies are openly challenging Him concerning His identity and His authority. Back in the previous chapter, Mark 11:27, 28, while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priest, the teachers of the law, the elders came to Him. "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you authority to do this?" They're asking Him His authority to cleanse the temple or to teach. Who do you think you are?

This brings us right to Jewish conceptions of the Messiah, the Christ. Throughout history in Jesus' day, even up to our own time, Jewish people have conceived of the Messiah as purely human and only human. He would be a ruler, powerful, mighty in battle, able to defeat Israel, Gentile foes and conquer their lands, bringing in a worldwide Jewish empire of immense power and worldly wealth. That was what He would be. Then, having conquered all the Gentile foes of Israel, He would sit on a throne in righteousness and justice in Jerusalem and rule to the ends of the earth. But it was purely a human conception. He would be militarily powerful and He would bring in worldly wealth to the Jewish nation. Mighty, yes, powerful in battle, absolutely, wise in rulership, of course, but human only.

Their fundamental answer, which they give in the text, and we'll walk through that in a moment, is the Christ, the Messiah, is the son of David, which in their mind basically meant another David. What David was, that's what the son of David will be. Maybe better, maybe more powerful, maybe wiser, but still just a human king. That's all. That's how they conceived of it, another David. Certainly not a savior of souls before a wrath-filled holy judge. They didn't think they needed that. As the book of Roman says, they sought to establish their own righteousness by the law. They didn't think they needed any help. They didn't conceive of the Christ, the Messiah being a savior from sin. They didn't think they needed it. They certainly didn't conceive of the Jewish Messiah being a savior for Gentiles so that there would be, in the end, one new people, Jew and Gentile together in one beautiful, worldwide kingdom. They didn't conceive of any of that.

The Jewish leaders are there, and they hate Jesus. They're opposed to Him. They're fighting Him. The Scribes, Pharisees, elders, chief priests, teachers of the law, they all banded together in overt hatred of Jesus. Why is that? Jesus had assaulted their concept of religion, He had assaulted their conception of their own righteousness, He openly challenged their interpretations of the laws of Moses, especially on Sabbath regulations He exposed their hypocrisy. He called them lost. He called them blind leading the blind. He said their righteousness was like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but inside full of corruption,  so they hated Him with a passion.

Furthermore, He had openly exposed their financial greed, how the whole religious system that they ran there at the temple made them a den of thieves. They were jealous of His popularity with the crowds. The crowds were wildly in love with Jesus, and they were jealous of that, so they hated Him. They especially despised His claims to be divine. He said, "Before Abraham was born, I am." They picked up stones to stone Him. When they're questioning Him healing on the Sabbath, Jesus said, "My Father is always working to this very day, and I too am working." They hated Him all the more because He made Himself equal with God, claiming to be God. They considered His claims to be God to be open blasphemy, and they wanted to kill Him.

They come on this final week of His life, the Wednesday of Holy Week, with a series of questions, one after the other, wave upon wave. The Pharisees banded together with the Herodians to ask their most devious and dangerous question about taxation. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? They figured they had Him either way. If He said, "No, we shouldn't pay taxes to Caesar," then Caesar will hear of it and, through Pontius Pilate, put Him to death. But if He says we should pay taxes, then they will look on Him as a collaborator, like a tax collector, and they'll hate Him. He'll lose the patriotic Jews. They figure they have Him either way. But Jesus, with His supernatural wisdom and knowledge, gave an answer they couldn't deal with, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God’s.

Then the Sadducees banded together, they who deny the resurrection. They come with that ridiculous test case about seven brothers married to one woman, et cetera, and thus proving they thought by the law of Moses that resurrection is impossible. Jesus exposed their error. You're in error because you don't know the Scriptures or the power of God, and proved the resurrection.

Then some other Pharisees get together to ask them which law or which commandment is the greatest? The problem was the one they chose you ask actually wanted to know the answer. He actually yearned to know the truth. They have a much more favorable exchange in Mark's Gospel than you see in the other Gospels. Jesus told the man, "You're not far from the kingdom of God,” because the man genuinely wanted to know the answer and wanted to live it out.

But now the time has come for Jesus to turn the tables. "You're asking me a series of questions. I have a question for you."  He brings up this question. He's not doing it to try to trap them, He's not doing it to try to trick them or to show His superiority, He wants to save them, He came to seek and to save the lost. God has no pleasure in damning souls to hell. Ezekiel says very plainly in Ezekiel 18:23, “'Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?’ declares the sovereign Lord, ‘Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?’" That is the spirit of Jesus. "I don't enjoy condemning people to hell. I would love for you to turn from your wicked ways and live and find salvation." That's His motive.  This is exactly why that same week He wept over Jerusalem, as depicted in Luke 19, “As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, ‘If even you had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes.’" Jesus is giving all of them one last invitation to believe in Him as He really is. 

III. Jesus Makes His Case From Scripture:  Psalm 110

So He makes His case from the Scriptures, constantly pointing to scripture as its proof of His identity and His mission. In this case, it's Psalm 110.  If we combine Matthew's account from Mark's, we get the whole flow. There's a little more detail in Matthew, so I'll be leaning on both, but you could just listen or follow along in Mark. In Matthew, Jesus raises the question. Matthew 22:41, 42, “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He?’" They, in Matthew's account, give the answer, an easy answer. “‘Son of David,’ they replied.” That's how it begins in Matthew.  In Mark, it reads this way, “While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked them, ‘How is it that the teachers of the law say that Christ is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls Him Lord. How then can He be his son?” That's the whole account in Mark.

You get the reactions a little different in Matthew than in Mark. In Matthew 22: 46, it says,"No one could say a word in reply. And from that day on, no one dared to ask any more questions." He's silenced his enemies in Matthew 22:46. They don't know what to say.

It's extremely significant that these Jewish experts in the law didn't have an answer to Jesus' question, therefore there isn't one other than the right one. Over the centuries, the Jews have had a chance to look at this question and answer it. There is no answer other than that which points directly to the deity of Christ. But unfortunately, as Paul talked about in Corinthians, the veil covers their faces when they read these scriptures and they can't see the truth, but there's no answer. They have no answer.

Mark focuses on the delight of the crowd. Look at verse 37, “The large crowd listened to him with delight.” They're like, "Wow. I never saw that before." Can I just tell you in general, the Bible says more than you think it does. I'm going to give you just a principle for the rest of your life. There's more in the Bible than you think there is, so just keep studying it. There's always more to learn.They were amazed. They're like, man, "I never saw that. I've been reading Psalm 110 my whole life, and I never asked that question."

What's going on? Jesus raises a question. Does Jesus answer the issue? No, He doesn't. He raises the question. How can David, speaking by the Spirit, call his own son his Lord? We're putting it simply. How can David's son be David's Lord? Do you have an answer? What's going on there? This is what Greg Koukl would call in his book, Tactics, putting a rock in someone's shoe. What does that mean? Ask them a question they can't answer. Something that jars them, something that keeps them up at night. If you were to die tonight and you were to stand before God and He were to ask, "Why should I let you into heaven?" What would you say? That's the Evangelism Explosion question. That's a rock in someone's shoe. Are you ready to die? Sometimes we feel like as evangelists, we need to kind of clinch the deal. We need to seal the deal. Sometimes all you need to do is put a rock in someone's shoe. In this case, it's this question, how can David's son be David's Lord?

The Jews obviously were partially right. The Messiah, the Christ is the son of David. If you go back to, 2 Samuel 7, David has a desire to build a temple for God. He thought the Tabernacle's temporary tent wasn’t sufficent, it was time to build a temple. He wants to build one. Nathan, the prophet, comes with the word of God saying, "You are not the one to build the house for me. But a son coming from your own body will build a house for me." 2 Samuel 7, 12-14, "When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body. And I will establish His kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name. And I will establish a throne of His kingdom forever. I will be His father and He will be my son." It's called the Davidic Covenant.

We know the immediate fulfillment is David's biological son, Solomon, who built the actual physical temple. But we know that the words go bigger than this because the real, final, permanent temple of God in which God dwells by His Spirit is the church of the living God that He builds with living stones through evangelism missions. Jesus is the one who's going to build the eternal and final dwelling place for God. We know that there’s immediate fulfillment and long-term fulfillment.

But there is this Son of David theme right from 2 Samuel 7. It just continues on throughout many, many passages in the Old Testament, picking up on this. For example, Psalm 89, 3-4, "You said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David, my servant. I will establish your line forever, and I'll make your throne firm throughout all generations." Or probably the most famous, the most well-known is Isaiah 9: 6-7, "For to us, a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end." Listen. "He will reign on David's throne and over His kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." Isaiah 9 is a powerful prediction of an eternal kingdom of David.  In Jeremiah 23: 5-6, “'The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.'" This is centuries after David had died, but, "I'm going to raise up to David a branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.”   “In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called the Lord, our righteousness." That's so beautiful, the Lord is our righteousness. That's His name. That's a gospel. Jesus is our righteousness, Jeremiah 23.

Or again, Ezekiel 37: 24-26, "My servant, David, will be king over them. And they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant, Jacob, the land where your father's lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever, and David, my servant, will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers and I'll put my sanctuary among them forever."

Again, this is centuries after David had died. It means the Son of David will reign on a throne in David's name forever. They weren't wrong. The Gospels prove it as well. The very first fact told us in the New Testament, it's the simplest, shortest genealogy. If you have a desire to memorize a genealogy, may I commend Matthew 1:1, it’s a very good abbreviated genealogy. "The record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." My friends, that's the first fact the New Testament tells us about Jesus. He is, in fact, the Son of David.

Then Matthew gives a comprehensive genealogy to prove that Jesus was biologically descended from David through Joseph, His earthly father, Joseph. Luke has a different genealogy, but again, most scholars believe that's Mary's genealogy, also a descendant through David. Again and again in the Gospel, Jesus is called Son of David. He doesn't reject it, He accepts it like the two blind men in Matthew 9:27, “As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, calling out, ‘Have mercy on a son of David.’" Or that Canaanite woman, she cried out, "Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession,” son of David. Blind Bartimaeus, Mark 10:47, when he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me."

Even just recently, at his the triumphal entry, they're all shouting, "Blessed is the one who comes in David's name. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David, Hosanna and the highest." David, David. David, and He accepts it. He is, in fact, the son of David. The Messiah, the Christ, was truly the son of David.

IV. What You Must Believe To Be Saved

But friends, this is the point. That's inadequate, that’s not enough. You have to think greater thoughts than that to be saved. First of all, over the centuries, David had lots of descendants. There were lots of descendants of David. Joseph was called by the angel, son of David. Joseph isn't our savior, but he is a son of David, and the angel calls Him, son of David. That's not enough. Jesus wants to expand your conception of Himself.  If I can just tell you, I believe that will go on for all eternity. Your conception of Jesus will keep growing and growing and growing and growing forever and ever. Jesus will never run out of new ways to show you His glory. But He's pushing at us now by the Scripture and by the Spirit to expand your conception of the greatness of Christ. All of us underestimate Jesus, so He's going to Psalm 110 to reason. He wants to challenge them, He wants to push at them.

Let's look at His key exegetical assumptions, the keys to Jesus' argument, and let's walk through it. Key number one is the Davidic authorship of Psalm 110, it’s key to everything. If David didn't write Psalm 110, we're finished. But Jesus asserts it. "How is it then that David, speaking by the spirit, calls him Lord? For he says, "The Lord says to my Lord, if then David calls Him Lord, how can He be His son?"" This is the key to the argument. David wrote Psalm 110. If David did not write Psalm 110, the whole argument falls apart. If Psalm 110 was written some centuries later by some pious Jews, there would be no problem with those pious Jews writing about the Messiah being called “my Lord”. It's no problem. The author of that psalm would have no problem, and it's not an issue. But if it's David, now we have an issue here. Jesus clearly asserted that David was the author of the Psalm, and therefore he wrote the words, “my Lord.”

Key number two, David wrote the Psalm under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is key to everything we do here at First Baptist Durham, the inspirational authority of the Bible. We believe every single word in this is written, was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore is free from error. Jesus openly ascribes the statement to the Holy Spirit through David. How is it that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls Him Lord? That guards David when he was writing Psalm 110 from error. He didn't make a mistake. It was really the Spirit that wanted him to say, "My Lord.” The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a stool for your feet."

Assumption number three, the fact that Psalm 110 was Messianic, that it's talking about the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus asked, "What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah? Whose son is He?" The one you're all waiting for, the expectant savior that's going to come, the Davidic son. What do you think about it? We're talking about the Christ. How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls Him the Christ Lord, and then they quote Psalm 110? The Jews didn't stop them there and say, "Oh, whoa, wait. That's not even talking about the Christ." They knew it was. It was a messianic psalm. If so, the psalm itself doesn't make much sense. Who's he talking about? “The Lord said to my Lord” what? "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." If that's not the Messiah, then there's some other great personage that we would want to know about. Who are we talking about here?

A couple of verses later, the Lord has sworn and will not change His mind. "You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”. The author to Hebrews just works on that for a whole chapter. Who are we talking about? If that's not the Christ, who is it? Someone who sits at the right hand of God whose enemies God crushes, and he is a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Who is this? It's Messianic. This is the Messiah. That's key to the argument.

Assumption number four, the fact that under the laws of Moses, a son is never greater than his father, especially when it comes to kings and princes. In the 10 commandments, sons are commanded to honor their fathers. Furthermore, a king sitting on a throne, his son, we would call in English a prince. Is there a difference between being the king and being a prince? There's a big difference.  Suppose the prince wants to be king. We'll read about it with the rebellion of Absalom. He has to kill his father to do it. Even when at the end of David's life Adonijah wants to usurp and grab, and he makes Solomon his heir, David's not going to be calling Solomon “my Lord.” That isn't happening. Actually, it's the other way around. They say, "My Lord," to him even though he is on his deathbed. Then interesting, like you're all supposed to say to a king, "Oh king, live forever." If you want to be King Solomon, you're hoping that doesn't happen. But at any rate, the fact is you're never going to have the father calling the son, “my Lord.” They knew that. That's the final assumption David calls him “my Lord.” That's the little squiggle, the little yod after the word adon, adoni, “My Lord.” It all comes down to that one pen stroke.

If then David calls Him Lord, how can He be His son? That's an interesting question. How can David's biological son be also David's eternal Lord? There's only one answer to that, and that is the mystery, the Christian mystery of the incarnation; that Jesus is both fully human and fully God. Like John the Baptist, David himself could say, "He who comes after me is greater than me because he preceded me." David's son preceded Him. Jesus is, therefore, unique of all human beings that ever lived in that He chose to enter the world, He chose to be born. He told Pontius Pilate that, "For this reason, I was born. And for this, I entered the world to testify to the truth.”  Like John the Baptist said, "He who comes after me is greater than me because He was before me." Chronologically, He was born after me, Jesus was born after John the Baptist, six months after, but He preceded him. John knew that because He's a son of God, He's incarnate. He existed before He was human. This is an infinite mystery, the incarnation.

1 Timothy 3:16 says this, "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great. He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached on among the nations, was believed on in the world and was taken up in glory." But look at what in the verse almighty God invites David's son to do. "The Lord said to my Lord..." What did he say? "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." This is quoted eight times in the New Testament. That's how significant this verse is, “Sit at my right hand.” Jesus is exalted. After His death on the cross and after His resurrection, He passed through the atmosphere, He passed through the sky, He passed through the heavenly realms until at last Ephesians 1 tells us He was seated at God's right hand, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and given every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. That's what “sit at my right hand” means. That's what He's invited to do. David's son, His biological son, is invited by Almighty God to share His glory and His sovereign throne.

It's also a threat, isn't it? Don't be one of Jesus' enemies because the verse says, "God says to Jesus, ‘You sit at my right hand and I will crush your enemies.’" If you are Jesus' enemy," the text says, "God is going to destroy you." Psalm 2 makes that plain. If you fight against the Lord and His Messiah, He will destroy you. God will put His sovereign power against you. He'll make all of His enemies a footstool for your feet.  This is the most sublime and infinitely complex mystery of Christian theology. Jesus is fully God and fully man, biologically descended from David but Almighty God in the flesh. And before Him, every knee will bow, every tongue will swear that Jesus is Lord, that means God, to the glory of God, the Father.  That includes David right now, who I believe is absent from the body and present with the Lord. What do you think he's doing up there? Is he not on his face worshiping his greater son, worshiping the glory of Jesus? That's what's going on. Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. He is the exact representation of His essential being. Anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father. In his death, all the attributes, the perfections of God were put on display for all eternity. The justice of God, the love of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, these attributes are on display in the death of Jesus. That's who Jesus is. If you believe in him, someday you will see His glory with your own eyes. You will see Him face-to-face. You will see Him exalted and radiant and glorious. And you, yourself, will share in His glory because you will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father. Yes, son of David, but He's infinitely more than that, He is the son of God.

"This is the most sublime and infinitely complex mystery of Christian theology. Jesus is fully God and fully man, biologically descended from David but Almighty God in the flesh."

You have to believe this. You have to believe this to be saved. If you confess with your mouth- what? -Jesus is Lord. What does that mean? It means Jesus is God. That's what it means. And believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  Or if you can make Thomas' confession. Thomas said very plainly when he saw the evidence of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, "My Lord and my God." That's what David means under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. "The Lord said to my Lord and my God, sit at my right hand." That's what he's saying. Can you make that confession? Can you look at the incarnate Jesus, read about him in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, look at that personage and say to Him from your heart, "My Lord and my God." If you can do that, you'll be saved. Your sins will be forgiven.

V. Applications

I began talking about a precise God, meticulous God. The God who made this universe and all the physical constants and all that. That's interesting to some people, to other people not because they’re not into science. I get it. But know this: This precise God, someday you're going to stand before Him and give an account for your life. You're going to be assembled together with all the nations and you're going to give an account for everything you've ever done in the body.

It says in Revelation 20:12, "I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne and books were open. Another book was open, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. And Jesus himself said, ‘I tell you, you'll have to give an account in the day of judgment for every careless word you have spoken.’" That's the precise God you're going to stand in front of.

I remember I was sharing the gospel with a coworker once, and I quoted that verse talking about Judgment Day. He said, "I don't remember everything I've said." I said, "That's fine. God's written it down, He remembers." And his eyes got big. That is the precise God that we serve. He remembers everything you've ever done, and you have to give Him an account. No one can survive that without Jesus. It's impossible to survive Judgment Day without faith in Jesus Christ. Imagine on the other hand what it's like to have Jesus own you as one of His own and say, "My righteousness is her righteousness, his righteousness. My name is around him or her. This is one of my sheep. I'm extending. Welcome to this person. Come into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world by your Father." That's what you need.

This is a tender warning. "Sit at my right hand," the text says, "until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." Don't be Jesus' enemy. Flee to Christ, and He will be not just your friend but your brother, He will be the lover of your soul, He will be your Lord and your God.

We have opportunity to witness this week. I would suggest find someone and put a rock in their shoe. Ask them a question that they can't shake. I was on an airplane, and woe to people who sit next to Andy Davis on an airplane. Who knows where that conversation's going to go? But I remember we had reached a certain point and I felt like there was nothing more I needed to do in the conversation. The person wasn't ready to come to Christ. I actually said this to this person, who's a businessman. I said, "I'm going to pray that tonight you'll be unable to sleep because of the things we've talked about." And I think that's good. Sometimes all God wants you to do is put a question in someone's mind that they can't shake that they need to think about.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the opportunity we've had today to study your word, to walk through Jesus' incredible question that He asked His enemies. Lord, I pray that we would not be your enemies, I pray, I thank you that in Christ we are adopted, we are loved. We're part of your bride. We are delighted. But we know that we don't deserve any of those things; it's only by your grace. Father, this week as we assemble with family and friends, as we have the chance to be together, help us, oh Lord, to just give thanks to you, knowing that we don't deserve any of the blessings we have, but ultimately to give thanks for Jesus, our savior of whom we can say by the working of the spirit in our hearts, my Lord and my God. In your name we pray. Amen.

Every moment of the day, Jesus Christ's call to us is to pour ourselves out in service to the needy, deny and spend ourselves for them, and love them as we love ourselves.

- Sermon Transcript -

The scripture tells us that all of creation is groaning because of human sin, groaning through its endless bondage to decay and death. But the groaning of nature is nothing compared to the groaning that sin has caused among the human race itself. I can hardly imagine what it must be like for the perfectly compassionate God to hear those groans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Bible tells us that God saw the miseries of Israel when they were in bondage in Egypt. He heard their groaning because of their task master's lash, and we are told He was deeply concerned about them. It's a picture of the compassion of God. Then after saving Israel from slavery in Egypt, He taught them not to oppress their neighbor, because then their neighbor would cry out to him. Exodus 22:27 - "And If he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate."

How costly has human sin been? How many times have people rebelled against the Second Great Commandment that we are studying this morning, and have not loved their neighbor as themselves? How many groans have gone up as a result? Not only so, but our general human condition, caused by Adam’s fall into sin, has resulted in miseries, not caused by any direct evil human choice, but they're just part of our fallen condition.

Diseases, like cancer, leave people groaning in hospital wards all over the world. Natural disasters, like hurricanes, and tornadoes, and floods, have wiped out crops, and destroyed homes, and taken lives, and left misery and groaning in their wake. God heard the collective groan of pain and suffering from the human race, and in mercy He moved toward misery. Out of compassion, He moved toward misery. He sent his beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to enter this world, fully-human in the incarnation, to make his dwelling among us, and to share our sorrows. Jesus, in mercy, moved toward misery, and now He's calling on his people to do the same.

Our tendency, naturally, is to flee misery, to run away from it, to avoid it. In our society, there are so-called first responders who are paid by our society to move toward misery, to move toward the car accident, to move toward the fire, to move toward the flood, to move toward the bomb threat, to move toward the collapsed building, but most everyone else instinctively flees. Jesus, in the Second Great Commandment, especially in the parable of the Good Samaritan, has commanded his people, in mercy, to move toward misery, and to alleviate it. That is the call of the Jericho Road that's in front of us this morning. It’s exactly the opposite of our self-saving, self-serving nature. We desire to be insulated from suffering. We desire to move through this world of pain with as little personal pain as possible, until we finally escape it, and go to heaven, a world free from all death, mourning, crying, and pain.

I remember well, a number of years ago, the first time I was ever out of the country, riding through the streets of Mombasa, in Kenya, my first overseas mission trip. It was the last week of a summer-long trip. We were staying in a comfortable resort right on the Indian Ocean. Some of us wanted to see the city, Mombasa, and so we were touring, in some of the poorer districts of Mombasa, in a brand new air-conditioned van. That was nothing unusual for any of us Americans. We're used to air-conditioned vans. What was new for me, anyway, was the site of urban poverty in a country not our own, another country. I had never seen poverty like that in all my life.  The more streets that we drove down, the more uncomfortable I became with what I was seeing. The shocking disparity I saw between what I know to be my life, the life I'm used to, and what I was seeing through the tinted glass in that air-conditioned van ride. It also became a symbol of the way that I was making my way through this world, that that air-conditioned van ride, that bubble of security, was the way I honestly wanted to move through this misery-filled world, to be in a different way of understanding this phrase: “In the world, but not of it.” It's like, that has nothing to do with me, and I've been convicted ever since of that tendency.

I had a second experience a year later, when I was in Pakistan, my second time out of the country. I was on a team, at that point, that summer, ministering. It was 1987. We were ministering to refugees who had fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan.They fled because of the Russian invasion in that summer of 1987. Again, I had never seen poverty like that in all my life. As a matter of fact, they're still the most destitute people I've ever seen in my life. They had literally nothing, except the clothing that they were wearing. Because they had fled for their lives, they brought nothing with them. Most of them had recently lost loved ones, violently, to the ravages of war. They had a haunted, and terror-filled look on their faces.  They were squatting in a desolate area, across the border, in Pakistan. They were barely tolerated by the Pakistani government. They were basically ignored by the local Pakistani population, and they made an impact on me. But it wasn't really even them that I have in mind. It was a later experience I had in that city, Peshawar. We were going through the streets of the city, and we became accustomed to being accosted by beggars in ways that we don't really face here in our culture. They would come up to us, and pathetically point to their mouths, and to their stomachs, indicating that they were hungry. They were starving to death.

The missionaries that we're working with told us that there were professional begging syndicates that used women, children, cripples.  They were organized by strong men, similar to the way pimps work with prostitutes in our country. The missionaries didn't seem that concerned. They'd been in that country for decades, and it just wasn't something they were really that worried about, but they saw our unease with the topic of beggars, and they suggested, "Well, why don't you just go buy some naan", which is that beautiful flat bread in one of the bakeries. “Just carry it with you, around, and as you do your work, and then as they come up and point to their mouths, and their stomachs, you can give them food, immediately.” I thought that was a great idea. So we bought naan, and I carried it around. It was still steaming hot, delicious, really some of the best bread I've ever had in my life.

Sure enough, later that morning, one of the beggars came to me, and she pointed to her mouth, and her stomach, and triumphantly, I produced the bread. When I gave it to her, she angrily threw it on the ground, and walked away. She didn't want bread, she wanted money, and she was using this hand and stomach thing. What really bothered me, however, was my reaction to what she did. I felt somewhat relieved. Relieved from what? Relieved from the whole problem. You can see why. The whole thing's kind of a scam, right, and we don't really have to be that concerned. The only problem was as the morning continued, soon another beggar came with a child and did the same kind of gesture. So I produced the loaves, and she took them immediately out of my hand, and gave one to her daughter, and they both started eating it like they hadn't eaten in a week.  So now I was stuck. My earlier happy kind of outcome was now destroyed. I gave her the bag that I had. I realized that I was seeking, like the lawyer in the story you just heard, to justify myself. 

This is the big danger, that we seek to justify ourselves, and exonerate ourselves, from the vast problem of the haves and have-nots in the world, and I don't think that Jesus is meaning to exempt us. He's not going to give us... Not in this sermon, not in any good solid right teaching, you'll ever hear a way out from the problem. Probably the most convicting thing I've ever heard in this, is when Jesus said, "The poor, you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want." Why is that convicting? There's another understood statement: "We'll talk about that on Judgment Day, how much that was." It's going to be a topic of conversation.

"This is the big danger, that we seek to justify ourselves, and exonerate ourselves, from the vast problem of the haves and have-nots in the world, and I don't think that Jesus is meaning to exempt us."

This morning, we're going to look down the Jericho Road. We're going to look at the Second Great Commandment's call to a heart of compassion, a heart of mercy, that instinctively moves toward misery, and not away from it. That's what I think the call of the Jericho Road is. It's dangerous, because it searches us. Like the Scripture says, "Lord, you have searched us, and you know us." The Scripture is searching us. That's what law does, by the way. Jesus said, "What do you read in the law?" This is law. This whole parable is law. We need to understand that. We need to, therefore, see what is the law supposed to do. What does it do in your life? I went through that in the beginning of my sermons on the two Great Commandments that say, "Law fundamentally crushes your self-righteousness, and brings you to Christ, but then once you've come to Christ, then the law tells you the right way to live."

That's what I expect this law, this Jericho Road, to do. The Jericho Road has to do with interactions with other human beings. The Lord Jesus is testing us to the core. Are we going to see misery, and move toward it in this world, in our trip through the world, or like the priest and Levite, are we going to see it, and move by on the other side of the road? Are we going to put a road between us and the misery? We can imagine, if we're honest, a life in which we move, like that air-conditioned bubble, through this world of misery with as little compassionate suffering as we can, and the Lord is calling us to a better kind of life. It's a relentless call of Jesus Christ, that we would pour ourselves out in loving service to others, to deny ourselves for them, spend ourselves for them, and to love them as we love ourselves.

I. The Two Great Commandments

Again, our context here. We're in the Gospel of Mark, but I chose to focus, this morning, on the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an illustration of the Second Great Commandment, but our home base is the two Great Commandments, and this is the last sermon I'll preach on the two Great Commandments. In Mark 12:28, one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him, of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one is this, said Jesus, "Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

As we compare this to the text you heard this morning, in Mark, about an inquirer, a lawyer, who in my opinion, is an honest seeker of spiritual truth. He's a very different individual than the one who came in Luke. In Luke, he comes to justify himself. In Mark, I think this man comes to know the answer he wants to know. The recitation of the same answer is given, but in Mark's Gospel, it's Jesus that gives it. In Luke's Gospel, it's the lawyer seeking to justify himself that gives it. We can know the right answer. These two commandments, the two Great Commandments, are intertwined. True love for your neighbor depends on first, loving God, but true love for God always results in loving your neighbor. They're intertwined. 1 John 4:20 , "If anyone says I love God, yet hates his brother, he's a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." They're intertwined.

II. What Does It Mean To Love Your Neighbor

What does it mean to love your neighbor? That was the question in front of us last week, and last week I gave this definition: Love is a heart attraction, resulting in cheerful, sacrificial action, for the benefit of another person. Heart attraction, cheerful, sacrificial action. Love is heart attraction. There's a heart movement toward the person. We see that in the Good Samaritan. He is moved with pity, moved with compassion. The Good Samaritan has a heart attraction to the individual. Love is also a sacrifice. It's a willingness to give something valuable: time, energy, money yourself, your attention, your gifts, your personality. Without sacrifice, there's no love, and the more sacrifice there is, the greater love, but the sacrifice must be given cheerfully. You have to be delighted to give it, not reluctantly, or under compulsion. There's something flowing from that heart attraction, and it results in beneficial action. The actions you take are going to be beneficial to the person you're helping. That's last week's definition.

The two aspects I argued last week are indispensable. There has to be a heart attraction, or God doesn't see it as love, and there has to be sacrificial action, or God doesn't see it as love. If it's just the one, or the other, it doesn't meet the criteria of the Bible.  Jesus has given us a beautiful example of this through his perfect ministry. A very good example of this is in Mark 1:40 and 41, Jesus' heart of compassion. "A man with leprosy came to him, and begged him, on his knees, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean'. Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. 'I am willing', He said. 'Be clean.'" The number one emotion ascribed to Jesus, in the gospels, is compassion. Again and again He knit his heart with people like this leper.

What would it be like to be a leper? Filled with compassion, He wants to alleviate his suffering. His mercy moves toward misery, and He heals him. In that case, the Holy Spirit, through the gospel writer, Mark, ascribes it to Jesus. Filled with compassion. But later, in Mark 8, He ascribes it to himself. He describes himself. "During those days, another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, 'I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me three days, and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way.'" That's a beautiful picture of that heart connection with a suffering person, or in that case, a crowd. “ I have compassion. I can't just ignore what's going to happen. If I send them home, they're going to collapse.” Jesus says that He has compassion, that’s his heart attraction. 

What about his sacrificial action? No one sacrificed more to fulfill the Second Great Commandment than Jesus. Day after day after day, there was a huge urgent crowd of sick people surrounding him so fiercely that, at some places, He almost couldn't breathe. In some places, they couldn't bring the next paralyzed person to him, so they had to dig through a roof. He was crushed by need, every day, and He never once pushed back, or complained, or did anything but be there for hours and hours, caring for sick people.

But of course, the ultimate display of the Second Great Commandment is Jesus' death on the cross. No one has ever more perfectly fulfilled the Second Great Commandment than Jesus's substitutionary atonement on the cross. He took our sins, and the wrath that we deserve under the justice of God, on himself. He took our misery on himself. He took hell, our hell, on himself, on the cross, and died under the wrath of God. There is no more perfect display of the Second Great Commandment than that. That's Jesus’ giving example.

Now, He calls on us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The words of the command is: “To love your neighbor as yourself.” What does that mean? We talked about this last week. You have spent, since last week, a whole week loving yourself. I'm not saying it's wrong. There's not a sense, at all, in the command that it's wrong, that you need to stop loving yourself. It's not saying that at all. It's saying, expand your love. The way you already love yourself, love your neighbor as you do love yourself.  How is that? You're constantly thinking about your own preferences, your goals, your pleasures, your desires, your aspirations. Turn it around. What is somebody else's preference? What is somebody else's goal? What is somebody else's aspiration? What is somebody else's emotional state? Expand yourself, and take theirs into you, the way you do for yourself. That's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.

 Also, physical needs. You will alleviate whatever misery you have, as best you can. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  Are any of you uncomfortable right now? There's not much I can do to help you. The temperature's not exactly right, et cetera, but you know at least you can shift around in the pew, and get yourself comfortable. If you have some problem with your lower back, you're going to alleviate it. Love your neighbor as yourself. How can I alleviate suffering? How can I alleviate pain? Mercy moves toward misery. That's the command. We're told in Philippians 2:4, "Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others." That's the Second Great Commandment.  The non-Christian is fanatical about self-interest. It's what they do. Philippians 2:21 says everyone looks out for his own interests. Looking out for number one, survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog selfishness is the root of what makes life here on Earth so utterly miserable. It's been going on since the beginning of our journey in evil, from the tree.

But a loving Christian learns to see others' needs as if they were his. A Christian looks at that third world's urban poverty and says, "What would it be like for me to live here?" What would it be like if I were one of those people on the other side of that tinted glass? What would it feel like for me to be a day laborer in India, clamoring with a hundred, or 200, other day laborers, surrounding one guy who had 10 jobs to offer that day? That's it. If you're not one of those 10 people, you won't work that day, and your family probably won't eat that day. What is that like? I saw day laborers like that, from a hotel room in India, when I was there a couple years ago. 

Also, a Christian looks at the lostness of a coworker. It has nothing to do with socioeconomics. It has to do with the fact that they're lost. They're without hope, and without God in the world. They're under the wrath of God, and they're accumulating more wrath every day.  We're told in Romans 2, "Every day, more wrath." What is that like? What is it like, that every day that they live on earth, they have more wrath waiting for them when they die? What is it like to be on that broad road that leads to destruction? What is that? Paul responded in Romans 9, with this, "I have great sorrow, and unceasing anguish, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ." For the people of Israel, the lost among his own people. “I would be willing to give up my salvation for them, but I can't, but I'd be willing to do it.” That's what it looks like. It's mercy moving toward misery, and seeking to alleviate it.

Jesus gives us this new command: "A new command, I give you: Love one another as I have loved you." That's the newness of it. The Old Testament already told us, love your neighbor as yourself. That's why the lawyer gave him that answer, it was well-known. It's well-known as a summary of the law, Leviticus 19:18. But Jesus says in John 13:34, "A new command, I give you: Love one another as I have loved you." You must love one another. Ultimately, as I said, Jesus going to the cross, greater love has no one, than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. 

We're not going to be called to die for somebody else. Paul says in Romans 5, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die." It's a very unusual thing, that you would, literally, physically give your life for someone else. It does happen, but it's rare. But the question is, how can you metaphorically die for another person? How can you die to yourself in evangelism, or in mercy ministry, benevolence ministry? How can you die to your own preferences? It feels like dying, because you have things you want to do, and instead, you don't do them. How can you, like Jesus, be willing to die for a neighbor? It says, in 1 John 3:16... “This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." There is a laying down of your life, similar to Jesus dying on the cross.

III. Heart Attraction Described: 1 Corinthians

The heart attraction, we walked through last week. I want to remind you of it, from 1 Corinthians 13. What does it mean to have a heart that's genuinely attracted? Without it, any sacrifice, even the greatest sacrifice, will be as nothing on judgment day. 1 Corinthians 13:3 , "If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." Meaning, on Judgment Day, it's not rewardable. I can do this incredible sacrifice in an unloving way. My heart isn't attracted to the person in that way. I have not gone out, in compassion, to them. Then he just beautifully describes what that heart attraction looks like. 1 Corinthians 13:4, and following, "Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It's not rude. It's not self-seeking. Love does not delight an evil, but rejoice in the truth.”  That's what it's like. It carries itself. Love carries itself that way. You could do the most amazing benevolent ministries in the city here, or anywhere, but if you're not like this, it's actually doing more harm than good. That's that heart attraction, resulting in sacrificial action, but it must move out to act, and that's what the Good Samaritan is all about. Look at it if you would, or just listen along. 

IV. Sacrificial Action Described:  Luke 10: 13

Luke 10:25-37, look at the words again. "On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher’, he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” A very important question. What must I do to inherit eternal life? “'What is written in the law?’, He replied.” How do you read it? “He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘You have answered correctly’, Jesus replied. ‘Do this, and you will live.’”  But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" It’s a very important moment in this whole account. He wanted to justify himself, and ask, who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, "A man was going down, from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him, and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two silver coins, and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him', he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'"

His inquiry begins as an effort at self-justification. The lawyer was seeking to justify himself, rather than to repent of sin. I can tell you the big picture. The whole point of this excursion into the Second Great Commandment, the law, and this Good Samaritan story, is not to help any of you justify yourselves. Rather, it must be to convict you, so that you can live better, or so that you can come to Christ, but not so that you can look at it and say, "I thank you, God, but I already do the Good Samaritan stuff." Not at all. That's the point. He's seeking confirmation that his righteousness was enough. He's already done enough.

So, day after day, we seek that air-conditioned van ride through the world. We seek to be the priest and the Levite, going on the other side. But along with that, as knowers of the Bible, we seek to justify ourselves. We want some escape, some way to say, "Hey, what I've done is enough." We will make excuses. We'll come up with concepts like the undeserving poor. Things like that. What is undeserving poor? Somebody who I don't have to help, because their poverty, or their circumstances, are their own fault. So we're exempt, because they're undeserving poor. Or we'll look at the costs, and say, "Look, you got to realize how busy I am in my life. You got to realize I have my own limitations." Or I have my own family needs, et cetera. I understand. We make these kinds of excuses. We all try to draw boundary lines around who we should love, so tightly, that it excuses the most difficult mercy ministries.

There are two key questions in front of us in this parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is my neighbor, and what does it mean to love him as myself? But above that is the question, what must I do to be saved? The big question is: What must I do to be saved? Then below that, within the parable, these two questions, who is my neighbor, and what does it mean to love him as myself? Let's walk through the parable.

The setting is the deadly, dangerous, Jericho Road, which was notorious for robbers that could hide in the mountainous clefts, and the twists and turns of the road. This was just a well-known dangerous spot. The story unfolds, as you know. There are six people in the parable. First, we have the victim. We know literally nothing about him. We don't know nothing about him. We don't know his nationality. We don't know his race. We don't know his age. We don't know his socioeconomic status. We don't know anything. That's striking. You get the feeling that none of that matters. It's not important who he is. He's human. He's been attacked. He's lying, bleeding, by the side of the road. Nothing else about him matters. Therefore, Jesus's answer to the question who is my neighbor is: “Anyone in need. It doesn't matter who the person is.”

Next we have the robbers. Let me line up the mentality that each of the actors in this drama has about resources, about money. The robbers have this attitude: “What's yours is mine, if I can take it from you.” These are the people in the world who are takers, they’re thieves, they’re violent. They absolutely are breaking the Second Great Commandment. No doubt. They're criminal elements, and they will assault, or invade, or do what's necessary to take other people's stuff. The robbers; what’s yours is mine, if I can take it from you.

Then you've got the priest, and the Levite. They're basically the same. It's just two times the same person. The doubling is for emphasis. There's no essential difference between the priest and the Levite. It's just doubled for emphasis. Their attitude is: “What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours,” period. I mean, you live your life, I'll live mine. Your problems are not my problems. My problems are not your problems. This is the way most people go through this world.  Furthermore, Jesus makes it clear that both the priest and Levite see the guy on the side of the road. They see him, and move by on the other side. They willingly choose not to get involved. The separation by the road, the distance, represents willful ignorance, staying far enough away from the suffering so you don't know its details, because if you find out the details, you might get drawn into it. You might get involved, and you don't want to, so you're on the other side. It's willful. It's a symbol of willful ignorance, and that's also a problem for most of us Christians. Most of us aren't just cold-hearted, bad people. We just are ignorant of the suffering of the people in the world. We just don't know that much about it, and we choose to be that way.

Notice, also, that they're both religious people. The priest is religious, the Levite is religious. They're religious people. It's just a common problem. The lawyer, who's coming, is a religious person seeking to justify himself. For us, we need to be mindful of the fact the most terrifying sins that we're going to be pressed on, on Judgment Day, will be sins of omission. These would be good works, that God went ahead of you, in advance [Ephesians 2:10], and set up for you to do, and you didn't do it. That's what sins of omission are. Good deeds, good works God set up, and you didn't do them. This is the topic, very much the topic, of the sheep and the goats, which isn't a parable, it's just an analogy of what Judgment Day is going to be like. Jesus is going to come and sit on a throne of glory. He's going to assemble all the people that have ever lived in front of him, and He's going to separate them into two groups; the sheep and the goats. He's going to say to the goats, the reprobate, those about to be condemned, "I was hungry, and you did not feed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me in. I was sick, and you did not visit me. These are things you did not do." The sins in the sheep, and the goats, are sins of omission. We know full well there are sins of commission too, but that's not what He describes there.

"We need to be mindful of the fact the most terrifying sins that we're going to be pressed on, on Judgment Day, will be sins of omission. …Good deeds, good works God set up, and you didn't do them."

What will it be like for us, on Judgment Day, to see a replay of our lives, and see all the good works that God set up, day by day, for us to walk in? What will that be like? My job as a pastor is to make that moment acute to you now, by faith, and by the ministry of the Word. To make it sharp. Make it clear what's going to happen. You are going to give an account to Jesus, and so am I, for every moment you've lived on earth. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good, or bad.” [2 Corinthians 5]. "Please don't tell me" [Romans 8:1] "I thought there was no condemnation." Friends, I'm not talking about condemnation. I'm talking about accountability. You're going to give an account to Jesus, and that includes sins of omission.

Then we've got the innkeeper. What's his attitude? “What's mine is yours, for a price.” This is the innkeeper, a merchant. This is a professional medical person. This is their job. It's what they do, but that's not Second Great Commandment stuff. That's the market. That's the job. That's what it calls the price. 

Then you've got the Good Samaritan. His attitude is “what's mine is yours, if you need it. What's mine is yours if you need it.” I find it amazing that Jesus chooses the Samaritan to be the hero. Jesus loved doing this kind of thing. It's like, "Oh, I'm not supposed to heal on the Sabbath. Watch me heal on the Sabbath." He goes right at things that would be irksome to the Jews.  The hero of the story is an outcast, that they all hated. I think the feeling is if the victim had been a Samaritan, and we are supposed to... In the story, we're Israelites. What are we supposed to do? Help the Samaritan. That's the point. So what does he do? He helps sacrificially. He stops. His heart is moved with compassion. He's drawn over. He stops. He helps. He pours oil and wine on the wounds. He binds them up. Immediate first aid is given, then he puts him on his donkey, and gets him down to an innkeeper so that he can be cared for. He spends the night caring for this individual, and then he gives of his money, paying the two days' wages to the innkeeper, to meet the needs, and he promises to come back later, and make certain that the man's all right. He's invested, he's committed.

Then Jesus summarizes the whole thing [verses 36-37], “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” It an interesting way to phrase that. “Then the expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’" You just feel like, for all of us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that's what He's saying to us, “Go and do likewise”.  Now we have those questions. Who is my neighbor? Any needy person that God brings into your life. What does it mean to love him as I love myself? Sacrificial acts of service to meet the need presented. 

Let's ask the hard questions. It starts with that whole question, what must I do to be saved? Is mercy ministry necessary for me to go to heaven?  That's an interesting question, isn't it? What must I do to inherit eternal life? Do I have to be the Good Samaritan in order to go to heaven? Let me say, directly, the law cannot save you. No one is saved by obedience to the law, and this is law. When Jesus says, "go and do likewise”, He understands the theology of salvation by grace very well. He's just doing something different there. He's not saying law can save you. Then what is the function of the law? It is to convict you, to kill you, basically, and bring you to the cross. Fundamentally, we are not justified, that is forgiven of our sins, by our own mercy ministry. We are justified, forgiven of our sins, by Jesus's mercy ministry toward us. Jesus had compassion on us, and in mercy, moved out to alleviate our eternal misery, which is hell. Therefore it says, in Romans 59, "In order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, we're going to spend eternity glorifying God for his mercy." We're not justified by our own good works, we’re not justified by our own obedience.

"We are justified, forgiven of our sins, by Jesus's mercy ministry toward us. Jesus had compassion on us, and in mercy, moved out to alleviate our eternal misery, which is hell."

The next question: What is the scope and dimension of my life of loving my neighbor? Like the lawyer, aren't we ready to ask who is my neighbor again, and again? We tend to excuse ourselves from this service. I've argued that the law crushes you, kills you, and brings you to the cross, but then it's not done with you. Then having been forgiven, we are now filled with the Holy Spirit, who wrote the law to begin with. Now, He enables you to obey it, by his power through Christ. We circle back to the Good Samaritan, and say, "Okay. How can I do this? Who is my neighbor?" Let's begin by acknowledging we have the tendency to justify ourselves, and try to get out of it by... Like I said, the whole idea of the deserving poor. I'm not saying that there's not addictive behaviors that destroy people's lives, and it would be very good for them to stop doing them. I'm not saying we should just give money to anybody that comes up and asks, especially to addicts, knowing full well that that money will go right into intensifying their addiction. I think we have to be intelligent about it. What I'm saying is, we can't excuse ourselves from this whole thing. That's all I'm saying.

V. Priorities in Love

How then can we be transformed to be a person that actually fulfills this law? I want to give you priorities that I have discerned in Scripture based on this topic. What are our priorities? Top priority: Justification before mercy ministry. First, make certain that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. What is the work of God? John 6, "This is the work of God. Do you believe in the one he has sent?" Start there. Don't try to earn your way to heaven by your good deeds, by being the Good Samaritan. You'll never do enough. Besides which, it's apples and oranges. You can't use present, or future, obedience to the law, to pay for past disobedience to the law. You can never get ahead or get extra credit. If you do a Good Samaritan thing today, you were supposed to do it. So you can't use it to pay for the fact that you didn't do a Good Samaritan thing last week. So, the top priority is your own justification by faith in Christ, before any mercy ministry.

Second priority: Minister to the soul, above the body. What would it profit someone, if they should gain the whole world, and lose their souls? Therefore, any mercy ministry this church does has to prioritize the proclamation of the Gospel, for the salvation of souls. It is more important, like when Jesus forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, before healing him of his paralysis. There is a clear priority structure. Your sins are forgiven. This was, by the way, the flaw of the social gospel, and I worry sometimes that American evangelicalism might go right back into the social gospel again, caring more for the temporal needs of people, and forgetting that they are on their way to hell, apart from the gospel. Therefore, I think this is a good slogan: We Christians care about alleviating all misery, but especially eternal misery. And what is eternal misery? It is condemnation in hell. So the top priority of our ministry to others is the soul above the body.

Third priority: Ministry to the family of believers, especially your own family, above ministry to outsiders. Our top priority, in terms of physical provision, is for our own biological family. As in 1 Timothy 5:8,”If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith, and is, worse than an unbeliever." In other words, all you families, and heads of households, and all that, take care of your own people. Don't bring them to the church for benevolence. That's the strong message of 1 Timothy 5. But then, even within our benevolent ministry, we should care about the needs of Christians, before we care about the needs of outsiders, as it says plainly in Galatians 6:10, "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." What does the word “especially" mean? That's our top priority, but it doesn't exclude the other ministry.Wh  Start with the household of faith. We start with believers. We seek to alleviate their misery as best we can, and then it moves out from there.

Then fourth: Ministry to the poor, above ministry to the rich. What does that mean? Jesus said in Luke 14, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, or relatives, your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back, and so you'll be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you'll be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." That's the priority structure, but that doesn't mean we can't do mercy ministry to rich people, because they suffer in other ways, and ultimately, through the proclamation of the gospel.  Those four priorities should shape the way we do mercy ministry. 

VI. Application:  Moving Toward Misery

As I finish applications, let's just start, all of us, with repentance. “God, show me my sin.” It could be, for some of you, repentance and faith in Christ. You came here an unbeliever. Start there. Repent, and believe the good news of the Gospel, for the forgiveness of your sins. Start with that. But if that's happened to you years ago, say, "Lord, how am I like the lawyer seeking to justify himself? How am I like the priest who saw him, and move by on the other side? How am I like the Levite who saw, and moved on the other side?" Then, "How can I then move out into mercy ministry here, where I live? Who are my neighbors, my actual physical neighbors? What do I know about them?"

We have less of a neighbor-feel than we've ever had in our society. Do we even physically know our neighbors? What do we mean by the word “neighbor”? Wouldn't it be a shock if we actually, in some cases, got to know our neighbors, and then found out what was going on in their lives? Maybe see a tree down, and bring a chainsaw over there, and maybe find out that one of them has been in the hospital for while, and bring a meal.

Love your church member as you love yourself. Take the church phone directory. Go through it. Pray for people daily. A page a day, or two pages a day, whatever. Then also say, "Is there some kind of suffering in the church that I can alleviate, some way that someone's hurting? What can I do?" Use the home fellowship as a basis for that. 

Then love your urban neighbor as you love yourself. Our urban setting has changed radically in the last number of years, some call it gentrification. More and more wealthy people are buying up ramshackle properties, and then renovating them, et cetera. You used to be able to walk, literally, three minutes, and get to poor and needy people, and care for them. Now it's a different time, but like Jesus said, "You'll always have poor people."

So the question is, what benevolent ministries can our church be involved in? We're already involved in refugee ministry. We could be involved more. There are always more ministries. Find out what opportunities there are in our city for this kind of service. And then finally... I'm going to preach, God willingness, on this sermon soon, in Mark 13. How can we love unreached, people groups better? How can we care about eternal suffering of people that have never heard the gospel? How can we love our lost coworkers better. In evangelism, how can we use mercy ministry to couple it with the words of the gospel? What is God calling us to do, individually, and as a church?

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to walk through this powerful passage. God, teach us to have a heart of mercy that moves toward misery. Teach us, O Lord, to care about the suffering around us, and to seek to alleviate it. Give us opportunities to share the gospel with people who are on that broad road that leads to destruction. Help us, out of compassion for them, to do that. God, give us opportunities to alleviate suffering here in our community. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Christ died to fulfill the Second Great Commandment — love your neighbor as yourself, and to enable us at last to fulfill it ourselves for all eternity!

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

I want to begin this sermon by speaking directly to all of you, who are my brothers and sisters in Christ. I feel a privilege this morning as a messenger of God to tell you that you are infinitely rich, and not only are you infinitely rich, you're getting richer by the day, and someday you're going to come into an infinite inheritance, the scope and magnitude of which I guarantee you underestimate. My task this morning as I begin this sermon is to give you a sense of that richness, the sense of that wealth, that inheritance.  

Imagine that I were a lawyer entrusted with the opening up of a sealed will, and you've been invited to come and hear as an heir what you're going to get.  Imagine a fabulously wealthy business magnate has died, and you're part of the family, and I am going to read the will. I read your name, and I tell you that you stand to inherit millions of shares of blue-chip stock in a Fortune 500 company, thousands of bonds, shares in some oil fields in the Persian Gulf. The list goes on, and on and your mind starts to spin with the realization that all your financial problems are solved forever. That's not what's happening today. I'm not doing any of that, but I am telling you that if you're a Christian, you are an heir to a vast fortune of immeasurably, even infinitely, greater value than any of those things I just listed.

Ephesians chapter 1 mentions the word “inheritance” three times. I was pondering that this morning. Ephesians 1:11 says, "In Christ, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory." The first mention of the word “inheritance" in Ephesians 1:11and  then Ephesians 1:13, "In Him also, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you are sealed in Him with the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing your full inheritance until we acquire possession of it.”  That's the second mention of inheritance and the gift of the Holy Spirit as a down payment, a payment or a foretaste of that full inheritance. 

But the one that really captivated me this morning, the reason I'm mentioning it to you now, is the third mention of the word “inheritance” in Ephesians chapter 1. Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians and, through Him, for all of us, that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened in order that we would know the hope to which He has called us, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.  That phrase captivates me this morning. That's why I'm even mentioning this whole concept to you today, the vast inheritance you have in the saints. Sometimes, when we're listing the various forms of wealth held by fabulously wealthy people, we talk about how they made their wealth and what their wealth was in. We use that kind of language, like we would say that Rockefeller made his money in oil. Carnegie made all his money in steel. Vanderbilt made his money in railroads, that kind of thing. Warren Buffett made his money in stocks.

So what's our inheritance? According to Ephesians 1:18, our wealth is in saints. Your wealth is in the saints. I'm not going to have you do it, but look around, look left and right. That's your wealth, right there. Your brothers and sisters in Christ are part of your inheritance. You might say that's a little bit of a letdown. I was hoping for something better in heaven. You know that again and again, from this pulpit, I've preached that your genuine wealth is God. What you get when you go to heaven is, you get God. There are so many statements of this, so many pictures of this— the Levites didn't get an inheritance, but God was their inheritance. They represent all of us, I think.

A beautiful statement in Genesis 15:1, "Fear not Abram, I am your shield. I am your very great reward." God is your reward. God is what you get. Heaven is all about God. Heaven is all about the glory of God. That's what you get. However, there are other verses that expand our sense of the inheritance. A simple one in the Sermon in the Mount is “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” We don't just say, "God, we get the earth. We inherit the earth." There are many other such statements and Ephesians 1:18 is one of those.  If you look at the earth, we, the redeemed, are going to get the earth. We're going to get not this cursed earth, but we get this earth, I believe, resurrected in a new form called the new heaven and new earth. You're going to get it. You're going to be an heir with Abraham of the earth, and that new heaven, new earth is going to shine with the glory of God.  They're not separate. You get God in the form of the new heaven, the new earth, as He has made it beautiful, and His radiance and His glory will shine, for the earth is full of His glory, and it'll be even more evident in the new heaven, the new earth.

So with that idea, go back to Ephesians 1:18, our inheritance is in the saints. We are rich in the saints. Our wealth will be in some part each other, and that is in a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation. That's why I say you are immeasurably wealthy, and you get wealthier every day because every day more people cross over from death to life, and they become part of your inheritance, and you get them just like they get you. I understand why you would feel a little bit disappointed in this because you know you're no great shakes. I'm not trying to insult you, but it's only recently that these words would be overtly true of you.   Romans chapter 3, "There was no one righteous, not even one. No one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They've together become worthless." Think about that word. Imagine a worthless inheritance, but that's what we were,  but it is not what we are.  We were at one time worthless, "There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin in misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes." That's what you were. That's what I was, but it is not what I am, and it is not what I will be for all eternity. 

However, because of how terrible we are in our sin, it's not surprising, a little bit shocking, that one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century in 1944, John-Paul Sartre, said famously, "Hell is other people." Hell is other people. Imagine being his friend and reading that.  “Tell me, Jean-Paul, how you really feel about our friendship?” Hell is other people. What I'm saying today, based on Ephesians 1:18, is, heaven is other people. Think about that. Heaven is other people, in part, not in any way minimizing that God is our reward. Actually, it's because the glory of God is going to be shining in unique and beautiful ways through each of the redeemed that each one of them is part of your inheritance because each one of them will shine with the glory of God and of the Father in ways that will be special, unique, and beautiful, and I argue because I believe in a dynamic heaven in which you'll never be omniscient.

You'll have a lot to learn. You haven't met most of your inheritance yet. You don't know them yet. You won't know them when you die. You'll meet them in heaven, and it's going to take a long, long, long, long time to meet them, as God in some sense says, "Have you considered My servant Job? Have you considered My servant so-and-so?" You will have the opportunity to consider each of your brothers and sisters and the glories of each one.  At that time, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father, and you are going to see how beautiful they are, how radiant they are, and how glorious they are. As it says in John chapter 3, "Everyone who lives by the lie does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But everyone who lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." So each of their good works, which will have been perfected by the fire of Judgment Day and come through shining, each one of them will be a display of the glory of God in their lives. Their glories will be your glories, their honors will be your honors, their privileges will be your privileges because we're all part of one body, and when one part of the body is honored, the whole body is honored with it.  You have a glorious inheritance in the saints, and it's getting richer every day, not just in the redemption of people crossing over from death to life but in the good works they're doing. They're enriching the kingdom of God every day, and so are you, by your good works. I believe that it's relevant to today's text because it is the perfect fulfillment of the second great commandment when we get to heaven. 

Our sin has made us constricted. We pull into ourselves. All we really care about is us. We pull in, and we become like a medieval castle with a moat and a drawbridge. The drawbridge is pulled up, and we're all about me, intensely committed to selfish me. That's what sin does to us.  Redemption does the opposite. It makes us open and expansive to include others more and more and more so that others’ delights are our delights, others' blessedness becomes ours, and we get to live that out now by the power of the Spirit. The more we do, the more the glorious gospel of Jesus will be put on display. The more our church is characterized by that kind of heavenly openness and love in which we really genuinely delight in the blessedness of others, we're willing to sacrifice to make somebody else blessed, and we find delight, personal delight in somebody else's happiness, the more the gospel's going to shine in this church.

I tell you, this region, this country needs it. This is a dark place, and we are put like a light up on a pedestal to shine in this dark place. We're a city on a hill. We're called to do this. “Behold how they love one another,” one of the ancient observers of Christians said.  Or as Jesus said, "By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." It's this open expansiveness that gets up out of self and includes another in our own happiness so that their blessedness is ours, their delight is ours.

Years ago, I saw a movie that pictured this for me, and it depicted a love scene in the movie. It wasn't actually romantic at all, but it was between a man and a woman. It comes from the movie Driving Miss Daisy.   Morgan Freeman plays an African-American man hired to drive around an older Jewish woman in the South a number of decades ago, and it depicts their budding relationship. It moves from employer-employee, eventually, at the end of the movie, to friends, just genuinely friends.  Morgan Freeman is very elderly at this point, as is the woman Jessica Tandy plays. The woman is very old, she's in a nursing home, and maybe some mild dementia, et cetera. He goes to visit her at the nursing home, and she's sitting there. It's Thanksgiving time, and they have a conversation. They haven't seen each other in a number of years, they get reconnected, and she's not all there, but she definitely knows that he's with her, and she has a piece of pie in front of her that she hasn't started yet, and at some point he says, "Now you haven't eaten your pie." He starts to feed it to her, and as he feeds her each piece, the acting is just really excellent in this. As he feeds her each piece, it's like you can see him enjoying it as though he's enjoying it through her. The enjoyment of that pie is his.  It's a beautiful scene, and I think it captures a little bit of what I think it means to love your neighbor as yourself, that you are expanded, your heart is expanded into the joy of someone else's joy. Or we could say negatively, "If someone else is suffering, you're suffering with them, and then to alleviate that suffering brings you delight." You're free now from that pain because you are so joined in your heart. That's what I think it means to love your neighbors yourself.

Let's talk about the context. It's the last week of Jesus' life. He's already made the triumphal entry to the cries of “Hosanna.” He's cleared the Temple of its filthy money changers, and He continues his ministry of teaching and of healing there in the temple area. He's in the final stage of His life because His enemies are overtly, clearly plotting His death. They want to kill Him. The chief priest, the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, they want to kill Him.  They set up one trap after another. First, the Pharisees and Herodians, with their question on taxation, designed to get him in trouble with the Romans and get Him killed. Then the Sadducees, with their ridiculous question about resurrection, that case study with the man that had seven brothers and married to the one woman. Remember that? Then, along in Mark's Gospel, comes this expert in the law who seems different than them. He's a different spirit. I think he really genuinely wanted to know the answer that of all the commandments, which is the greatest, and Jesus's commendation of him is unusual. Jesus answers, "The most important one is this, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.' The second is this, 'Love your neighbors yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

In the last few sermons, we've looked at the first and Greatest Commandment, the vertical one, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now we're going to look at the second one. This commandment is an old commandment that's made new. It's an ancient commandment. Jesus is quoting the law of Moses, as He did with the first and greatest commandment. He's quoting again with the second commandment. It's Leviticus 19:18, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." Love your neighbor as yourself. What does that mean?

It's not, you have to first love yourself, and then you'll be able to love your neighbor. It's not that. In the sense of this verse, you already fanatically do love yourself. From infancy, you have been fanatically committed to yourself. The infant howling at 3:00 AM is loving him or herself. They can't articulate it, but that is what is going on. They have a need, they want it met. They're increasingly aware of a particular person who keeps meeting the need, and they want that person. They can't even say mama yet, but they are, from infancy, committed to self. This is innate. The command tells us to do for others what we've been doing all our lives for ourselves.

One of the articulations of this is in marriage, and I think it makes it a little clearer exactly what this commandment entails in marriage. It says, "Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it." That's a very practical explication of the Second Great Commandment in the context of marriage. It's very easy to see a very clear connection between the Second Great Commandment and the one Paul gives in marriage, but he specifically is very physical with it. The way the husband feeds and cares for his own body is the way he should look after his wife. I think we could say the same thing in general for our neighbor.

Look how you care for yourself. When your stomach is growling and empty, you feed it. When your tongue is dry, you drink. When you have an itch, you scratch it, even if it's right between your shoulder blades and very difficult to reach. You do what you need to do to alleviate the pain. If you are in pain in any way, you alleviate it, you shift how you're sitting in your pew. If one part of your body is falling asleep or whatever, you're going to adjust to alleviate the pain. If your body is cold, you're going to put on a sweater. If it's hot, you're going to get into some AC and alleviate it. If it's raining, you seek shelter. You do this constantly. You've been doing this every day of your life, pretty much every moment of your life, from infancy. The way you've been doing that for yourself, do it for your neighbor, do it for everyone else.

I. An Old Commandment Made New

This is an ancient command—love your neighbor as you already do love yourself. But . . . we’re told a new commandment, a new command. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, after the foot washing, He said, "A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this will everyone know that you're My disciples if you love one another." It is effectively an old commandment made new, as John writes in 1 John 2:7-8, "Dear friends, I'm not writing you a new command but an old one which you've had from the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in Him and in you because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining."

How is this old command, or ancient command, made new? Jesus is the answer. It's because of Jesus that this old command is now incarnated and it is made new. How is that? First, by Jesus's example; Jesus showed us how to love our neighbor as ourselves. He gave us a role model that we should imitate. He's the only one in history that has ever perfectly fulfilled this horizontal commandment.  As we read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we see all of His encounters with men and women and children and with everyone. We just have much information education now in what it looks like to love our neighbor as own self. Then we see it definitely in the atoning work of Jesus and the atonement of Jesus. Jesus said in general universal principle, John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you." The principle is laying down your life. Jesus's teaching tells us what it means to love our neighbor.

Jesus's death on the cross is the perfect pinnacle of a human being loving his neighbors. It is a perfect pinnacle example of the Second Great Commandment being fulfilled. As it says in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we're still sinners, Christ died for us." Jesus loved His enemies. He gave the infinite gift of Himself under the wrath of God so that we would not suffer eternity in hell. He cared about where we were heading. He cared about alleviating eternal suffering, and He was willing to take it into Himself so that we would be set free, and by gazing therefore at the example of Jesus and at the cross of Jesus.

This is a new command. It's an ancient command made new now, and it's made new because the Spirit of Christ is in us working it. If you're a Christian, the Spirit of Jesus is in you, working this horizontal command so that you'll love your neighbor as yourself, and by the Spirit alone can we do it. We've seen this again and again in Ezekiel 36:26-27, "I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from you your heart of stone, and I'll give you a heart of flesh and I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep my laws." Consummated in the two Great Commandments., the Spirit of Christ is in us, moving us to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That's what the Spirit is moving you to do if you're a Christian.

Therefore, in Galatians 5:22, the first thing it says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love." That's what the Spirit does in you. When He's working in you, He makes you love. Only by the spirit of the indwelling Spirit of Christ can we truly love our neighbors. God is the source of that love, and He gives us that love that flows out vertically through us, then horizontally out by Christ's mediatorial work and by the linking, connecting work of the Holy Spirit of God. That's how it happens.  1 John 4:7-8, "Dear friends, let us love one another. For love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  There is a beautiful picture in Revelation 22 of the throne of God in the center of the new Jerusalem and the river of the water of life flowing eternally and endlessly generated from the throne, and out it flows. This river of the water of life is crystal clear. I don't think it's very difficult to say, it's also a river of love. So love just flows from God, for from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. He is the source of love, and you cannot love, not like this, apart from Christ.

"Love just flows from God, for from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. He is the source of love, and you cannot love, not like this, apart from Christ."

Let me stop and say to all of you, are you in Christ or are you apart from Christ? Have you received from Jesus Christ the forgiveness of your sins? Have you realized that you are that sinner described in Romans 3, that you are worthless and a viper, and on your way to hell?  Jesus came to intervene, to save you, and to die into the wrath of God for your violation of God's laws. Have you come to that place and asked Him? Have you called in the name of the Lord for the forgiveness of your sins? If so, that the moment that happened, you received the gift of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. You began a career of love vertically, and horizontally.

II. Love Defined

Let's try to understand it. What is love? How will we understand love? We're going to go again to Jonathan Edwards, and Edwards taught us that the soul has two faculties. First, the ability to comprehend or understand things in the universe, including our neighbor, that we're able to understand. It has that capacity to study and know. Then secondly, to be inclined or disinclined to that thing that it studies and knows to a greater less degree, such as liking or loving or disliking and hating. The soul does this.  This is what is designed to do by God.

I pictured it in terms of a magnetic attraction like a bar magnet north-south attracted, and then, to a greater less degree is, that number line of affection, positive being liking on up to loving and the negative numbers being disliking onto hating. Therefore, I give this definition of love. Love is a heart attraction that results in cheerful, sacrificial action. Love is a heart attraction that results in cheerful, sacrificial action.

First, it's heart attraction. Your heart is attracted to your neighbor. Your heart goes out to your neighbor and includes your neighbor within yourself. Therefore, it is not enough just to act. Many people say love is an action, and they're quoting a verse I'm about to quote. It's important that love is action, I get that, but first there has to be the heart attraction. If there's no heart in it, there's no love.  You can give the utmost gift, the costliest gift, but if your heart isn't attracted, if it doesn't go out to your neighbor and yearn to bless that, and you don't find personal delight in it, it's nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:3, maybe, in some sense, one of the harshest verses in the Bible, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing." Wow. I can't imagine a more amazing gift. The individual gave all of their worldly possessions to the poor and died, and they get nothing. Why? Because they didn't do it in love.  It's incredible. What that means is, behind that is, there must be a heart attraction. There has to be a yearning to bless the person. My heart is linked to yours. Jonathan Edwards put it this way, "In some sense, the most benevolent, generous person in the world seeks his own happiness in doing good to others because he places his happiness in their good. His mind is so enlarged as to take them as it were into himself. Thus, when they're happy, he feels it. He partakes with them and is happy in their happiness." Isn't that beautiful? That's Morgan Freeman enjoying the pie through Jessica Tandy. That's what it is. My heart is going out. It's expanded and includes you. If you personally get no delight out of your service to your neighbor, you get nothing on Judgment Day. You have to enjoy doing it, delight in doing it. 

But there has to be an action. Now we get to that other verse I was mentioning. You can't just have really sweet feelings for everybody, and it never amounts to anything.  1 John 3:16-18, "This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth." So you've got to have both sides of that equation. You got to put it together. You can't just have the sweet feelings and do nothing. You can't just do things and not have the feelings. It's together. But it has to be sacrificial actions, it’s got to cost you something. Isn't that what sacrifice is? David said, "I will not offer the Lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing." It's got to cost you. You can measure love by sacrifice. “Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.” You see, it's a measurement, greater love. So the more the sacrifice, the more love has been revealed.

Obviously, literally, to die for someone else is the greatest sacrifice anyone... It's the greatest thing you could ever do. But lesser gifts are sacrifices as well. You're giving of your time, of your energy, of your money. You're giving something that costs you something. You are in some way depleted because you gave to your neighbor, you made a sacrifice for them. But it has to be cheerful. So it's like, "Pastor, you put too much in the definition." But there are Bible verses behind each of these. What kind of giver does God love? God doesn't just love a giver, God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7, "Each of you should give..." He's talking about finances, "Each of you should give what he has determined in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion because God loves a cheerful giver." Therefore, Jesus was a cheerful giver on the cross. This is infinitely mysterious, but it's true. In Hebrews 12:2 it says, "We should fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross scorning in shame and sat down at the right hand of God." He looked beyond the misery and the horror of the cross to the good thing that would come from it, the joy. What is that joy? His joy in saving a multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation, so that they would be with Him and see His glory and spend eternity in heaven.  This is my composite definition of love. Love is a heart attraction to another person that results in cheerful, sacrificial action on behalf of that person.  

"Love is a heart attraction to another person that results in cheerful, sacrificial action on behalf of that person."

IV. What Love Is and Is Not

Let's describe it a little more— what love is and what love is not. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 describes negatively and positively what it is and is not, "Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. It's not easily angered. It's not proud, it's not rude. It's not self-seeking. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

So love is patient, it puts up with a lot. It's long-suffering. It's kind. It freely does good things for people. There's a kindness to love. There's a gladness, a gentleness, a giving nature to love that is wrapped up in the word “kind”. There's a kindness to it. It doesn't envy. It's not jealous over the benefits given to others. There's no envy or jealousy. It is glad to see other people blessed and benefit. You're not in competition with them in that regard. It doesn't boast. It's not proud. This love that we're talking about here is actually a very humble thing.  It's humble. It's not rude. Let's put it this way, it's well-mannered. There's just good manners to love. I think all that system of manners that parents teach their children, it's basically Second Commandment stuff. When you're at the table, you don't talk with your mouthful. All of those rules are preciousness of others, you’re caring about others. So it's not rude. It's not self-seeking. It doesn't constantly say, "What's in it for me?"

We shouldn't misunderstand that. There should be heart desire. So there is something in it for me. I should desire it. But it's not that selfish, independent, "I want to get something whether you get anything or not." That's what self-seeking means. It's not easily angered. It has a short fuse, it doesn't fly off the handle quickly, and it keeps no record of wrongs. How difficult is that? I'm not remembering what you did to me last week. I'm ready to forgive because I've been forgiven much. It doesn't delight in evil. There's no schadenfreude. It seems like so much of the internet, so much of the digital media is delighting in other people's misfortune, finding humor in some bad thing that happens to another person.  Love doesn't do that. That’s not loving. If we see somebody dragged down, we don't delight in it. We rejoice in the truth. What does that mean? Jesus is the truth. I rejoice to see Jesus come into somebody's life. I rejoice to see the Bible's truth flourishing. It delights in Christ and the Bible succeeding in the world and people living according to it. We love that.  Then it always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. It never fails. It just stands with individuals, and it's there permanently. If you ask, what is love like and what is it not like? I would commend 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. How does it act? I can tell you how it does not act. It doesn't do any harm to the neighbor. Romans 13:9-10, "The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet.' And whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one command, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.”  Remember, I talked a few weeks ago about there have to be negatives after prohibition? You can't just tell our corrupt generation, love is love. Just love how you feel. No, there's a bunch of prohibitions in the Bible, but what Paul says in Romans 13 is that all of those prohibitions are summed up in the positive command to love. Because love doesn't do any harm to the neighbor. So you shall not commit adultery. It is not loving to break up someone's marriage to be a homewrecker. That's not love. Paul talks about that in another place. Don't take advantage of your brother by winning over his wife. That's not love. That's damaging to him, stealing, damaging, taking his things. Those prohibitions are summed up in the statement “love”, because love doesn't do any harm. So that's what love does not do. We don't damage each other, hurt each other. That's where gossip and slander comes in. If I'm gossiping and slandering, I'm destroying somebody's reputation.

What does love do? It acts in such a way that the individual is, in some way, blessed. You could do it negatively by alleviating suffering, positively by helping them grow and grace in the knowledge of Christ, bringing blessings into their lives materially, physically. A great statement is Jesus' depiction of Judgment Day  in Matthew 25, "All the nations will be gathered before Him and He's going to separate the people one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He'll say to the sheep, the righteous on His right. He'll say, 'I was hungry, you gave Me something to eat. I was thirsty. You gave Me something to drink. I was a stranger, you invited Me in. I needed clothes, and you clothed Me. I was sick, and you looked after Me. I was in prison, and you came to visit Me.'" That's a whole list of actions that you can do out of love. Those are all Second Great Commandment actions, especially on the issue of alleviation of suffering. We Christians should care about suffering. We should care about all suffering, and we should desire to alleviate it.

Next week, I'm going to preach on mercy ministry, on the Good Samaritan, and the alleviation of temporal suffering. I heard a long time ago, and I like this, we Christians care about the alleviation of all suffering, but especially eternal suffering. What is eternal suffering? It is the torment of hell. How could that torment be alleviated? There's only one way, by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. How should we care about that? We should care whether people are going to hell or not. It should matter to us, and this is what I taught this past week, Romans 9:1-3. The apostle Paul said this, "I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, the nation of Israel." What is he saying? Saying, "I would be willing to give up my own salvation if they could be saved.  I could wish that, but I can't because I'm not their mediator. I'm not their savior. That was already done by Jesus. But I'm telling you that's the level of my concern for them.” I believe that we don't witness, we don't share our faith like we should, because we don't grieve over lostness and over its ultimate destination like we should. We should ask God to give us a heart of grief and brokenness over lost people, the alleviation of eternal suffering. That's what it is.

V. Heaven: Love Perfected

As I close today, I just want to expand your mind and bring you into that heavenly realm that we're going to go to, that new heaven, new earth, that eternal state. When both of these commandments, the First and Second Commandment, will be consummated in each of us, how much are you looking forward to that? How beautiful is that world of love going to be when, at last, you'll finally love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength, and you'll at last love all of your neighbors as yourself? And you're going to have a lot of neighbors. Revelation 7:9-10, "After this I looked, and there before me, it was a great multitude that no one could count, from every tribe and language and people in nation standing before the throne and the front of the lamb. They were wearing white robes and they were holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'"

Let's imagine that the thesis of my Heaven book is true. That you'll have a perfect mind and a perfect heart, but you'll never be omniscient. What that means is, you'll be able to learn things in heaven, and the central topic of heaven is the glory of God. The central and the greatest display ever there has ever been of the glory of God is in the redemption of His people by the blood of Jesus Christ. It's the greatest display of glory there ever has been, ever will be. How much of it did you know here on earth? A very, very tiny percent, 0.0001%. How much will you learn in heaven? Much. All of it. How long will it take? Forever.

Imagine meeting a new brother or sister, one that lived 263 years before you. They'll be in heaven. He's not the God of the dead but of the living, and you'll meet them. How could you know them? You couldn't. But you'll meet them in heaven and imagine two things. You want to know two things. How were they saved, and how were they used? Imagine being so expansive in your love that you'll actually care about the answers. “Tell me your testimony. How long do we have? Okay, I'll give you two minutes.” It's not going to take two minutes to find out how God sovereignly saved each of your brothers and sisters in Christ, what He orchestrated providentially to bring messengers and evangelists into their lives, either through their family, through missionaries, or through an evangelists, and you're going to be enthralled because it is to the glory of God how they got saved.

As the elder asked a couple verses later in Revelation, these in the white robes, "Who are they and where did they come from? You've got forever to answer that question. How awesome will that be? "So please tell me, how did God save you?" Imagine Jesus himself saying, "Let me tell you what I did in his life or her life." Then the second question, "How did God use them? What are their good works? What are their rewards?" Again, you're not in competition because if one part of the body is honored, the whole body will be honored with it. You're going to be delighting in their honors, performance, and privileges as though they were your own because we're part of one body. How awesome will that be? That is where we're heading, brothers and sisters. The more we can live it now, the better for the gospel here in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank You for the time we've had to just immerse ourselves in the Second Commandment. We know that it's for the failure of the Second Commandment that all the wars, dissensions, factions, divorces, fighting, and crimes have ever been committed. We thank You that You, Lord Jesus, by Your blood and by Your spirit, are the only remedy, and You are a perfect remedy. We thank You that You have made us rich now in each other, and You're making us richer by the day. Enable us, oh Lord, to love one another by the power of the Spirit to live out the gospel and put the gospel on display here in this region. In Jesus' name, amen.