In my sophomore year of baseball we had the opportunity to play in an invitational Christian college tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In was a really fun experience, and the first time I saw Arizona. We had to make a stop at the Phoenix airport to pick up one of our teammates, and I remember circling before we landed, thinking, who would ever want to live in such brown place?
When we arrived in Tulsa, and started the the tournament, we won our first game. We then made our way to another game in progress, the winner of which we would play. Now you have to understand, this wasn’t just any tournament, we represented Christian colleges from all over the US. And when we sat down to watch this game, it was like watching a a rugby game. I can’t remember the names of the teams, but I do remember that one was out of Florida. The reason I remember that one is because they were memorable. The players were cussing everything in the world. Cussing the other team, the fans in the stands, and the umpires. Several times their players got up to brawl with the other team over minimal slights. But it wasn’t just the players, their coaches as well. In all my years of play I had never seen such bad behavior from an entire team, and I wasn’t the most even tempered player myself.
We left early from that game and held a team meeting when we heard that they had won. After a long discussion, we decided to protest the game. In order to get to that game, we had to fundraise the money. Our school provided nothing for us; we had to earn every penny to go. But in that moment, we decided that it wasn’t worth it to play. The prize didn’t mean as much to us, as the statement that we were there to play as Christian brothers, honoring Jesus.
We got a lot of angry comments from the other teams and coaches. One of our own teammates was so angered by our decision not to play, that he left the school the following year. Afterward, when the duo settled, we found out that the Florida school was so embarrassed by their teams representation, that they fired the coaching staff, and expelled several of the teams players. A thank you letter was sent to our coach from the tournaments organizers thanking us for taking an unpopular stance.
We could have played, and we could have won, but even if we beat the that team, it would have been a loss on their record, but not a challenge to their behavior. When our team took the stand to not play because they were not representing Christ, it did more than an “L” in their ledger. Because it said to the other schools, that a wins/loss record is nothing compared to our representation of Jesus.
And it’s this idea of taking a stand that leads us back to Matthew chapter 24, where we will be in verse 1. And as we open to Matthew 24, verse 1, let’s look at where we are so far in our final section of the Gospel of Matthew.
For the last five weeks we’ve been looking at Jesus’ authority and how, as disciples, we must submit to it. In the first four weeks of this final section of Matthew, we talked about how, as disciples, we are to be satisfied with what God gives us, seeking his will over our own, acting on his will in faith, all the while making sure that we are not trying to confine him to our limited understanding of what he can do. Taken all together, if we do not box God in, then what he desires will be what we desire, making it easy to do what he says, and be satisfied while doing it. This is what it means to live under Jesus’ authority.
But in our last week, we saw what it means to live outside of his authority. In the seven woes, we can see that to live under Jesus’ authority means to live for him. But to live outside of Jesus’ authority is to live for ourselves. Which sounds good, who wasn’t a teenager ready to live out from under their parent’s rule? Yet, just like every teenager learns that they had it better when they didn’t have to work or provide for themselves, it will eventually come to a point where those who live for their own authority will learn that it only leads to destruction.
It’s on the heels of this understanding that we come to Matthew chapter 24, and one of those passages that are so crammed packed with deep theology, that in our summer series we cannot hope to excavate everything that is there. Instead, like we do in these summer series, we are going to look at the over arching point of the passage.
So let’s read, Matthew chapter 24, starting in verse 1.
1 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, 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?”
4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.
9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 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.
15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.
22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days “‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now 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. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Now if we were to read this section as a whole, we need to read all the way to the end of chapter 25. But that would be so overwhelming that we are stopping here, because, though the overarching thought goes all the way through chapter 25, there are three sub to this larger section of Scripture.
The first of these subparts are linked by Jesus’ words in verse 4, 25, and 32. So, for our first of these three subparts we are going to focus on these first 35 verses, to understand the point of Jesus’ first sub-thought.
This whole section begins with what seems like the disciples boasting about the temple they are leaving. If you remember from last week, Jesus spoke of the desolation. God had made desolate the first temple due to Israel failing to hold their end of the covenant they made with God. This is why Jesus tells them that the second temple will also be destroyed.
The disciples are understandably interested in when this will happen. Remember, at this point they’re still in the mistaken idea that Jesus has come to Jerusalem with the goal of re-establishing Israel as a great nation. So they want to know when they can expect Jesus to begin the uprising.
And, in an uncommon response, Jesus lays out the events that must occur before he will take his rightful place as the Davidic King. But we must not miss the reason for what Jesus says. That’s where verses 4, 25, and 32 come in. In these verses Jesus tells the disciples his purposes in telling them when the end and his return will occur. He says things like, “See that no one leads you astray (v.4)… See, I have told you beforehand (v.25)… From the fig tree learn its lesson…”
The purpose of Jesus laying out the events that proceed his full taking of the Davidic throne, is so that his disciples will not follow false prophets and messiahs, and that his disciples would know the signs that proceed his coming. So everything that Jesus presents here, isn’t to give us a moment-by-moment breakdown of everything that will happen, but rather the highlights. So let’s look at these highlights.
First, Jesus gives us three parts of the his return: events that proceed the end, events during the greatest tribulation of humanity, and finally his return.
The proceeding events, will have people claiming to be the returned Jesus, but are not. We can see this happen all around us. In fact, years ago I did a study of people claiming to be the Messiah. Starting in the 1800s, a person claiming to be Jesus came on the scene roughly every dozen or so years. By the 1900s, that number went to 1 every 8 years. Today, there are handfuls of people around the world that currently led groups who claim to be some sort of reincarnate Jesus. A popular one is Vissarion in Russian who has gathered a large following.
But false christs are just one sign. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes will also be in this stage of proceeding events. Another study I did found that, starting in the first century AD, a large scale war occurred roughly every 80 years. So at least one every century. But in the 1900s that number went down to 1 every 11 years. And since the turn of the 21st century, the world has seen nothing but war. Even now, there is a major war in Ukraine that is effecting the world, and there is a rumor of a war in Taiwan.
Yet, all these things Jesus says are, “birth pains.” Just because we see them, just means we are getting closer. But added to these proceeding events is that Jesus’ disciples will have greater tribulation. The Church will see great betrayal, love in this world will grow cold. We are seeing these things as well. Too often we look to the western Church to see the things that effect us, but the world wide Church as seen greater persecution in the last fifty years. In Africa the Church is being persecuted like never before. We in the western Church are just now feeling it, but there’s more to come. We see love grow cold everywhere in our society, but it has been growing colder and colder for decades.
But these are just the proceeding events, the event that seems to end these proceeding ones, is what Jesus tells us in verse 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.” Jesus’ Gospel will be witnessed to in every nation. That means that there will be a witness of the Gospel of Jesus in every corner of this world, to every people group, and once that happens we have moved from the proceeding events to the events of the greatest tribulation the world has ever seen.
There are two events that Jesus focuses on here, the first is the Abomination of Desolation, and the second are more false prophets and christs.
The Abomination of Desolation comes from the Old Testament book of Daniel, chapters 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11. The temple that Jesus said would be torn down, will have a third one built in its place. This isn’t a temple that God decrees, because God no longer dwells in man built buildings, but rather in the lives of his disciples. This third temple will restore the sacrifices of Israel’s covenant, But soon after, a person will enter the temple and proclaim their own deity to rival God’s. The sacrifices to the covenantal God of Israel will cease, and the world will turn to a new god to follow.
It is here that the outflow of false prophets and false christs will explode exponentially. They will all be calling the people of the world to follow this false deity. And it will be a horrific time for those who call on the name of Jesus for salvation.
But there is one more transitory event that happens. In verse 29, Jesus combines the end times language found against Israel in Isaiah’s thirteenth chapter, with the language in Isaiah’s thirty-fourth chapter, to let us know that his return will be a sign so massive, that all the earth will see it. What we see in our sky will have such a disturbance that if we’re not awake yet, this is our last opportunity to come out of our slumber. Jesus proceeds this last sign with some eerie words, “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.”
The imagery of vultures at a corpse is to relay to us the death of this world. But it is also to remind us that when we see the vultures, we know what they are doing. And so, when we see these signs we know what is about to happen.
Finally Jesus returns, he gathers his people to himself, and begins his eternal rule. There is more that the Scriptures teach on this subject, but our goal in this summer series is to see how these moments we are given by way of the Holy Spirit’s direction, connect to the overarching themes of this particular Gospel.
And we can see this in Jesus lesson of the fig tree. Jesus says, “Now 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. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.”
Just as there are signs to know when seasons change, we must know and be ready and mindful of the signs that proceed the coming of Jesus. For almost 2,000 years the Church has been looking and waiting, and we can see that the signs that Jesus spoke of seem to be happening in our day. So what must we do?
Jesus tell us that he gives us the information so that we won’t be led astray. We won’t be people who follow false prophets, christs, or any other. That we will be his disciples, under his authority, seeking his will, satisfied with his purposes.
This week I want to challenge you to first, not be afraid, that’s not the purpose that Jesus has for telling us what will happen at the end. Secondly, there’s a quote up on a wall of the church for the men. It reads, “Don’t pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men.” I want to challenge you to have a paraphrase of this quote as your prayer this week. As you here about the wars, about the persecution, about the famines and earthquakes and problems of this world, pray this, “Lord, make me a stronger disciple.”
Our Lord could return soon, let us as his people pray for that day, let us be on the look out for what our Lord has said, and let us walk strong in his ways, that we may be gathered together with him on that greater and glorious day. Amen.
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