What will the future bring?
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 4 January 2015
Matthew 24:1-3
Starting this first Sunday in 2015, we are going to study Matthew 24 and 25, known commonly as “The Olivet Discourse” because it is a sermon given by our Lord to His disciples on the Mount of Olives. The theme of this great sermon is the second coming of Jesus Christ. It is a sermon from our Lord about His coming and the end of the present age and the establishment of His kingdom.
The whole sermon is triggered by the question of the disciples. The answer the Lord gives is the longest answer to any question recorded in the New Testament. Its insights are essential for any understanding of the future, and as we move through we are going to be amazed studying these truths about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible says a lot about it, the Old Testament prophets, particularly Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and the book of Revelation in the New Testament. And much of it is found in the prophecies of Daniel especially when compared with Revelation. But what Jesus Himself said must be treated with tremendous emphasis, after all this is our Lord’s own teaching on His return in glory to establish His kingdom.
But it is always important to understand the background and that is where we are this evening. Everybody is curious about the future, especially the Jews of Jesus’ day. They were tired of being oppressed. They long also to see the coming of their Messiah because they know when the Messiah comes He will make things right. And so they are filled with ‘end time’ anticipation. This is the study of the last things.
They knew the Old Testament talked about God setting up a kingdom. They anticipated an anointed king, a Messiah, or in the Greek, a Christ who would come and establish the rule and reign of David again on the earth. They knew what Isaiah 9 said when there would come One, the government of the world would be upon His shoulders, and He would rule and reign. He would be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace, and of the increase of His government and peace there would be no end.
And surely they knew Daniel, and that there was the promise of great holocaust at the end but that holocaust wouldn’t be the end because there would come a stone cut out without hands that would establish an eternal kingdom on the earth. They were well aware of what the prophets had to say. What did the Jews think was going to be the end of the age? When did they think was the coming of the Son of Man or the Christ?
So let us look at the material that they wrote in those 400 years between the Old and the New Testament when they wrote religious books that were non-biblical. For example, the Book of Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon, the Assumption of Moses, the Book of Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Fourth Book of Ezra, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. They are not God-authored, but they reveal the thinking of the Jews at that time.
The Jews believed that before the Messiah came, there would be a time of terrible tribulation so that before the Messiah arrives, there would be a time of birth pain, the nation will suffer some tribulation. They anticipated a time of a breakdown of morals, a time when honor and decency would be torn down, a time when the world would become warlike. In another one of their books, it says there will be earthquakes, tumult of peoples, scheming of nations and confusion of leaders.
The second thing that they had in their eschatology was that into this turmoil would come a forerunner announcing the immediate arrival of the Messiah and he would be like Elijah. That is why they were so drawn initially to John the Baptist because he was so much like Elijah. In fact, the Jewish oral law says that money and property, if the ownership was disputed, or anything found whose owner was unknown must wait “until Elijah comes” because he would set everything right.
The next thing they saw was the coming of the Messiah. First a tribulation time, then a announcer and then the coming of Messiah Himself, the one who was the King, the great, divine figure who would come to end the present age and establish the age of the kingdom and vindicate God’s people. The next thing they saw in their eschatology is that the nations would ally themselves and gather to fight against the Messiah. Amazing.
For example in the Sibylline Oracles, we read this Jewish teaching, “The kings of the nations shall throw themselves against this land, bringing retribution on themselves. They shall seek to ravage the shrine of the mighty God and of the noblest men whenever they come to the land. And then with a mighty voice God shall speak unto all the empty- minded people and judgment shall come upon them and all shall perish.”
Again, this was the Jewish belief at the time of Christ, and it’s exactly what the Bible teaches, exactly what we understand from the Old Testament prophets and from the book of Revelation as well. The next thing they taught in their eschatology is that the result of that battle against the Messiah would be total destruction of all these nations. In other words, He will come and destroy all the hostile nations and show that their offensive and defensive weapons are utterly useless.
Then they believed the next event would be the renovation of Jerusalem. This would be the purification of that city so that it would be the Jerusalem of the great Millennium, the Jerusalem of the great eternal glory of the king. In fact, in the book of Enoch it says, “All the pillars were new and the ornaments larger than those of the first Jerusalem. So they saw this renovating of the whole of Jerusalem.
The next event they saw was that the Jews who had been scattered all over the world would be collected back. They would be re-gathered back into the city of Jerusalem. In fact, to this day, the Jewish daily prayer says this, “Lift up a banner to gather our dispersed and assemble us from the four ends of the earth.” They look for the day when the Messiah comes, defeats all these nations, renovates Jerusalem, and then re-gathers all the Jews from all over the world.
The point is, they understood the Old Testament prophets the same way we do. We understand the same sequence. And then after that, they believe Palestine will become the center of the world. All the nations would be subdued and they would come to Jerusalem to worship the king. And finally, the last point in this little eschatological flow was that there would come a new age of peace and goodness and glory that would last forever.
Now, follow their thinking. They had been under tribulation, from their viewpoint, for a long time, right? They had been under the Persians, Greeks and now the Romans. And they still remembered not long before when their people had suffered in the Maccabean period, the terrible desecrations by Antiochus Epiphanes and the Greeks. And so they may have thought the tribulation of the Roman oppression was in fact that.
And then shows up John the Baptist. Here is the one like Elijah. And then suddenly comes Jesus Christ. And He heals people and He raises the dead and He has this amazing power to feed multitudes. And He is a miracle worker who banishes disease from Palestine during the duration of His ministry. And He comes riding on a donkey into Jerusalem at the Passover. And they say to themselves, “This is the Messiah.” And the first thing that will happen is that the nations of the earth are going to gather against Him and He is going to destroy them.
And so they immediately think He is going to start a war and the Romans are going to be the first ones to get it. And once He has done that, then He is going to purify Jerusalem. He is going to throw out all the hypocrites and all the false religion and all the false worship. And then we are going to see that glorious final temple where the true worship is going to go on. And then He is going to gather all the Jews from all over the world and establish the eternal kingdom.
Now that is in the mind of these disciples as we approach Matthew 24. Well, how did they feel when Jesus told them that He was going to die? That was not in their end scenario. And so they are thinking, “No, that can’t happen.” They cannot comprehend the death and the resurrection of Christ. And they have a very compressed view of Christ. They see it all happening when He comes the first time. They don’t understand that He came once, and now we got a long time period until He comes again.
That’s why God calls that a mystery because it was not revealed in the Old Testament. In fact, Paul calls the whole New Testament a mystery hidden from ages past because it unfolds a time period not seen previously. “Mystery” meaning that which was hidden. Now, what brings it into focus here is Matthew 23:38-39, “See! Your house is left to you desolate; 39 for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’ ”
So when they hear Jesus say, “I am going to renovate your house and then I am going to come,” they really think He is on schedule. But Jesus just said “your house desolate”, not “My Father’s house,” which He used to call that. Now it’s your house because God left. And you won’t see Me again until I come in Messianic glory.
So let us read Matthew 24:1-3, “Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. 2 And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” 3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”
They are simple guys and they look at this massive temple surrounded by walls on the top of a mount. It was more like a fort than a temple. It’s impossible to think that it could be put up, let alone that it could be torn down. The Babylonian Talmud says that they never saw a finer building than this temple. And Luke says it was built with beautiful stones. In fact, Josephus tells us that Herod built the place.
And when you read Josephus he says the thing was leveled to the point where you would never know that anybody ever inhabited the place. The Romans tore the whole thing down, because if they were going to conquer the Israelites effectively, they had to totally devastate their entire religious orientation. So Jesus says using a double negative – “not even one stone shall be left here upon another.” And that’s exactly what happened.
So they say in Matthew 24:3, “When will these things be? And what shall be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” They connect these two things; “Your coming and the end of the age.” And they were really excited and anxious. And this carried on, even after the resurrection, in Acts 1:6 after the resurrection, they asked Jesus, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were still asking that.
What are they thinking as we begin Matthew 24? Right now is the kingdom, right now is the judgment, right now is the establishing of the eternal kingdom of the glory of Messiah, right now it is all going to happen. But the whole point of this sermon of Jesus is to tell them this: “Hey brothers, this is not going to happen right now.”
The Old Testament prophets looked ahead and compressed all the time factors and just saw Messiah coming, setting up His kingdom. They didn’t see a big gap and that is why it’s called a mystery. So the disciples say, “What shall be the sign of this and of the end of the age?” What a phrase, “the end of the age.”
It is used five times in Matthew, that same phrase – the end of the age. And the word sunteleia means the complete end, the final end. It is used also, not only in this verse but in Matthew 28:20, where Jesus promises that we have authority as we go out to make disciples. And then He says, “Lo, I am with you to “the end of the age.”
In Matthew 13:39, the parable of the wheat and the tares, it says, “The harvest is the end of the age.” The end of the age, then, is the time of God’s harvest, Jesus says, and the reapers are the angels, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the age. It says in Matthew 13: 42, “Cast them into the furnace of fire where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
So the end of the age means the very end of everything, when God comes in final, complete judgment and takes the unbelieving and sends them to hell and the believers go into His presence forever. So the disciples’ question is about the end of the age. It is an ultimate kind of question. Now you can go back to Matthew 24 for one moment. They’re asking Jesus questions about final ultimate things.
When is the Messiah coming in full glory? When will the final judgment take place when the ungodly are damned and sent to hell and the righteous are sent into the glory of the kingdom? And what is the sign we look for to indicate it’s going to happen? The Lord’s answer begins in Matthew 24:4, “And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you.”
Now, listen very carefully, the Lord’s answer begins in verse 4, and Jesus is answering their question. And their question has to do with the second coming of Christ and the end of man’s age. He says nothing about the destruction of Jerusalem from now on. That was outside the Olivet Discourse in verse 2 before the question was even asked. And it’s only a small example of the kind of judgment that God is going to bring in the end of the age when the Messiah comes again in His glory.
And so what Jesus is saying to them is, look, what you have seen is not the end of the age. What you have seen is not preliminary to the full coming of the Messiah in His glory. Let Me show you what is the indication of His full coming. Let Me show you what are the signs of His second coming. Let Me show you what does indicate the end of the age. And that is the theme of the sermon in the Olivet Discourse.
It takes them from where they are to what will be the character of the time when the Lord comes again. And so He lifts them from their historical moment into the far future, a future which we have yet not entered into, and describes all the events surrounding the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is what we are going to see as we approach verse 5 next week.
Oh Lord prepare our hearts so that we are more and more influenced by this to tell others about Jesus. Lord, we know that You are coming again in the near future and yet there so many people right here in Denver that do not know about You, that will die without a relationship with You. Lord give each one of us that desire to follow the Great Commission to preach the gospel to whomever You have put in our path. Let us pray.