SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning and welcome.
SPEAKER_01: Glad to have you with us together as we open God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: If you would take your Bible and make your way to Matthew chapter 24.
SPEAKER_01: If you are our guest this morning, we welcome you.
SPEAKER_01: We are not preaching about prophecy because you are here.
SPEAKER_01: Preaching about prophecy because that's where we are in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of you love to study and hear about prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: It is a burden for me.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't appreciate it or don't enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01: It's a burden because it's difficult to know how to preach it.
SPEAKER_01: Do we talk about prophecy in terms of what our church believes or what the Evangelical Free Church of America believes?
SPEAKER_01: Do we talk about prophecy in terms of what gets us excited about what we enjoy?
SPEAKER_01: And the answer to all of those things is no, we don't do any of those.
SPEAKER_01: We preach prophecy because prophecy is about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, if we do not understand and process prophecy in such a way that we are awed at the Lord Jesus Christ, then we've done it incorrectly.
SPEAKER_01: And that's a burden.
SPEAKER_01: How do we work through the details of prophetic scripture in such a way that we come out at the other side awed by the Lord Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 24 and 25 are considered by many people to be the most difficult to understand in the entire gospel.
SPEAKER_01: So how do we process through that?
SPEAKER_01: How do we work through that?
SPEAKER_01: How do I deliver that?
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest with you, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just going to do my best.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll explain to you what that looks like.
SPEAKER_01: These two chapters are a long speech by the Lord Jesus directed to his 12 disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 24 begins with a pronouncement of judgment.
SPEAKER_01: What an exciting thing to begin a sermon with, right?
SPEAKER_01: Judgment.
SPEAKER_01: No, not exciting.
SPEAKER_01: God the Son judged the temple and the Jewish system of religion because it failed to recognize and believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: And there is our goal for this morning is to recognize and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus judged the temple and the Jewish system of religion, that pronouncement concerned his disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Because they still anticipated at this moment, in the week that he's going to be crucified, they anticipated that Christ the King would reign gloriously in Jerusalem, and that the Romans and the Roman armies would be expelled from all of Judea and they would once again be free.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus crushed that.
SPEAKER_01: So they asked two questions.
SPEAKER_01: That's found in verse 3 of chapter 24.
SPEAKER_01: That means that everything in Matthew 24 and Matthew 25 is part of Jesus' answer to the when and the what of his judgment and his return.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the last time we were in Matthew, we looked at the first section of Matthew 24.
SPEAKER_01: His original 12 disciples asked him when certain things would happen and what they could anticipate in the world around them that would indicate, hey, this is gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: The king is coming, he's going to reign again.
SPEAKER_01: And in response, Jesus said in verse 4, listen, make sure that no one leads you astray.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first answer.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first response.
SPEAKER_01: Make sure that no one deceives you.
SPEAKER_01: He says rough times are coming.
SPEAKER_01: Times filled with war, times filled with false prophets, deceiving people, famines, earthquakes, tribulations, war.
SPEAKER_01: He said, all of these frightening things are the beginnings of birth pains.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be deceived into thinking that it is the time of the end when you look around and wonder if it can get any worse.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has not yet answered the when.
SPEAKER_01: He's only answered a portion of the what?
SPEAKER_01: What's going to happen?
SPEAKER_01: And there's more of that in verses 10, 11, and 12.
SPEAKER_01: We see betrayals, false prophets, lawlessness, the loss of love for God.
SPEAKER_01: But those with genuine faith will endure to the end and be saved.
SPEAKER_01: This is all part of the Lord's intention for the whole world to hear the good news of his kingdom, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's how the book ends, Matthew 28.
SPEAKER_01: As you're going out into the world, go and make disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be deceived into thinking that a suffering world is a sign of the end, for these are not the pains of childbirth, but only the premonitions of birth.
SPEAKER_01: The great pains of the actual end, he says, will come.
SPEAKER_01: But only after the beginnings of the pains.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says in verse 14, then the end will come.
SPEAKER_01: There's a sense of finality to that statement, don't you think?
SPEAKER_01: Then the end will come.
SPEAKER_01: Period.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if the event of the initial pains, to which the initial pains have pointed, has has finally arrived.
SPEAKER_01: Then the end will come.
SPEAKER_01: And that brings us then to the next section of Jesus' sermon, verses 15 through 28.
SPEAKER_01: If you would pay attention to that with me as I read through those verses, beginning in verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, still speaking, says, So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.
SPEAKER_01: Then let those who are in Judah flee to the mountains.
SPEAKER_01: Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house.
SPEAKER_01: And let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
SPEAKER_01: And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that your flight might not be in winter or on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
SPEAKER_01: And if those days had not been cut short, no human being, literally no flesh, would be saved.
SPEAKER_01: But for the sake of the elect, those days were cut short, will be cut short.
SPEAKER_01: Then if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it.
SPEAKER_01: For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
SPEAKER_01: See, I have told you beforehand.
SPEAKER_01: So if they say to you, Look, he is in the wilderness, don't go.
SPEAKER_01: If they say to you, Look, he's in the inner rooms, do not believe it.
SPEAKER_01: For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: For wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew divides this section into verses 15 through 22 and verses 23 through 28.
SPEAKER_01: And originally I was going to preach on this entire section this morning, but I decided you would not want to listen to me for an hour and 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_01: So we're just going to cover the first section this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 15 through 22.
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus says in this first part is clear.
SPEAKER_01: What he means is complex.
SPEAKER_01: We see very simply in verses 15 through 22 a command.
SPEAKER_01: A command to react to certain circumstances that come about.
SPEAKER_01: He says to flee.
SPEAKER_01: When you see an abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, run, flee for your life.
SPEAKER_01: Then we see a reason in verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: He says there's going to be a great tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 22, we see a bit of divine revelation, a little bit behind the scenes, what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: He says, listen, it's going to be so bad that if God did not intentionally shorten the time period, nothing would survive.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's clear.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of.
SPEAKER_01: It makes sense just in what's being said.
SPEAKER_01: When you see the abomination of desolation, flee.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because there's going to be a great tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: And that tribulation is going to be so intense that God determined to shorten it for the sake of his own people.
SPEAKER_01: What's so difficult about that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the difficulty arises from what Jesus did not say.
SPEAKER_01: And what he did not make explicitly clear.
SPEAKER_01: Fact of the matter is, we have some of the same questions that those disciples did 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, when?
SPEAKER_01: When is all of this going to take place?
SPEAKER_01: Can you give us some clarity?
SPEAKER_01: When will these things be?
SPEAKER_01: Or is that even the right question?
SPEAKER_01: Should the question be, when were these things?
SPEAKER_01: How many of you are confused yet?
SPEAKER_01: My hand's the only one up?
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: There are three options that we can consider.
SPEAKER_01: A is that this section describes past history.
SPEAKER_01: That is, it's already happened.
SPEAKER_01: Or B, that it is a description of a future end times period.
SPEAKER_01: If you're uncertain, the answer is always C, right?
SPEAKER_01: Could be both.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a description of an historical moment in the past that somehow pictures something that's coming ahead in the future, an even greater, more intensive end times moment.
SPEAKER_01: So those who assert that A is correct, that is past history, they like to say that everything stated here was fulfilled in 70 AD, when the Romans finally overran the city of Jerusalem and the temple was demolished, no stone was left remaining on another, and the city was destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, those who argue that this describes a future end times period will assert that, yeah, while that destruction of the Jewish world by the Romans was terrible, it was not a fulfillment of these declarations.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, when you put it in line with other prophetic statements, they all reveal a future fulfillment in a climactic end time period of world history.
SPEAKER_01: Then there is C.
SPEAKER_01: And that perspective argues that Jesus was speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
SPEAKER_01: But that terrible judgment was only a precursor.
SPEAKER_01: A picture, if you will, of an even greater and more painful time that is still future to us.
SPEAKER_01: Now we could take our time this morning making the case for each of these views.
SPEAKER_01: But my goal for us in the end is to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And my goal is, secondly, not to not to tell you what our church thinks, and not so much to tell you what I think, but to lead you to your own conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: So that you can be more certain than you entered today in what you believe is going on here.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I can't do that without explaining what I think Jesus means.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to try to minimize my beliefs and help guide you to your conclusion as best as possible.
SPEAKER_01: And so with that direction in mind, I'm going to give six elements of this section that function as interpretive keys.
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to come out on the right side of understanding this passage, you have to wrestle with these six interpretive keys.
SPEAKER_01: We must reach conclusions about what certain features refer to, what they mean or what they point to, if we are to understand what Jesus is getting at, and if we are able then to finally see Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: If we can make sense of these elements, we will be well on our way to understanding what Jesus said, what Matthew intended for us, and how we should apply what is here.
SPEAKER_01: So what are these interpretive keys?
SPEAKER_01: First, the first interpretive key is simplicity.
SPEAKER_01: Simplicity.
SPEAKER_01: When approaching a biblical text or any text for that matter, we ought to look for the ordinary, simple understanding of what we're reading, unless we are given a reason to look for something more complex.
SPEAKER_01: If you tell me it's raining cats and dogs outside, the ordinary, simple meaning of that is that cats and dogs are falling from the sky.
SPEAKER_01: But I understand, right, that cats and dogs do not fall from the sky, generally speaking.
SPEAKER_01: And so that means you mean something more complex.
SPEAKER_01: You are using that as a metaphor, as an explanation of how hard it's raining.
SPEAKER_01: So first we start with the ordinary, the simple, the normal use of language, unless there's something that indicates we should look for something more complex.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we begin.
SPEAKER_01: That implies that we let Jesus' words stand on their own rather than hearing them through our own prophetic assumptions.
SPEAKER_01: We all have beliefs, presuppositions, convictions that make us listen to things in specific ways.
SPEAKER_01: We must do our best to lay those aside and hear the Lord's words as he said them, and as best we can understand, how he meant them.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the second interpretive key.
SPEAKER_01: Begin with context.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15 is only a third of the way into these two chapters, chapter 24 and chapter 25.
SPEAKER_01: Only a third of the way in.
SPEAKER_01: But if we if we let our processing get ahead of where it should, we can get turned away from the right direction and easily take the wrong road if we're not careful.
SPEAKER_01: For example, we can easily move from the last phrase of verse 14, and then the end will come, thinking Jesus is now talking about that end.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, Jesus, you've gotten to the end.
SPEAKER_01: Great, now what can we look for?
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way we should read this passage.
SPEAKER_01: The words that begin verse 15, so when tell us that Jesus is moving to some kind of application established on what he said in response to the disciples' questions.
SPEAKER_01: So what comes next is directly attached to what comes before.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 1, 2, and 3 remind us that Jesus announced the temple's destruction.
SPEAKER_01: If the temple was going to be destroyed, then the disciples' view of Jesus' reign as king in Jerusalem was wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, somebody who's walked with Jesus day in and day out for three years can still be wrong.
SPEAKER_01: They were wrong.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't understand.
SPEAKER_01: So they asked Jesus, when will these things be?
SPEAKER_01: Help us understand, give us some clarity, and that means when will the temple be destroyed?
SPEAKER_01: And then the next question is, what will be the sign of your coming and the close of the age?
SPEAKER_01: That is, how can we know that you are coming and ending this current period of the world?
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus tells them that things will move from painful event to painful event to painful event, but that stressful time is only the beginning of the birth pains.
SPEAKER_01: When the world seems to be about to end, that is, responding to the temple's destruction, persecution, famines, wars, etc., that's only the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the end.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, the world will get worse until the whole world has heard the good news of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Then the end will come.
SPEAKER_01: That is a broad scope answer to when will the temple be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: But all of that is the beginning of birth pains, the beginning of painful times that point to what is coming.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has said nothing at this point about the end of the age and his return in answer to the disciples' second question.
SPEAKER_01: All that we've heard so far is his response to the first question, when will the temple be destroyed?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus doesn't give a date.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, date setters, that's just what happens.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you should follow his example.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, Jesus warns about being deceived.
SPEAKER_01: They ask, when will this happen?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, Don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: That means, friends, if we start thinking about dates and times and trying to match things up, there's a good possibility of being deceived.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Because the horrible times that are coming are merely a prelude.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15 then begins a section on instructions to those disciples of what to do in certain painful circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: That's our context.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm not going to give you a date.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, I'm going to caution you, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be painful, it's going to be difficult, it's going to be hard.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when things do get difficult, here's what you do.
SPEAKER_01: That leads to our third interpretive key, which is understanding the abomination of desolation.
SPEAKER_01: So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, make sure you understand this.
SPEAKER_01: Run.
SPEAKER_01: Daniel's prophecies speak of an abomination of desolation three times.
SPEAKER_01: Three times.
SPEAKER_01: It refers to something awful, something unfit, something unholy, something that is blasphemous.
SPEAKER_01: Something that brings about or causes something to become or to be desolate.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes You'll see it translated as the abomination that causes desolation or the abomination that makes desolate.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says it will be standing in the holy place.
SPEAKER_01: The holy place is a common term for the temple.
SPEAKER_01: So we see then that Jesus is linking his sermon back to the beginning of the chapter to his discussion about the temple.
SPEAKER_01: He's continuing that same context.
SPEAKER_01: They will see, Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: Daniel's abomination of desolation in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: When they do, they must flee.
SPEAKER_01: So here is our first hint about that simple, ordinary meaning.
SPEAKER_01: This is our first hint that the simple meaning may be only some of what is happening.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_01: Daniel mentions the abomination of desolation three times.
SPEAKER_01: The middle occasion is in Daniel 1131.
SPEAKER_01: And that passage has almost always been understood as a prophecy about the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
SPEAKER_01: They called him the madman.
SPEAKER_01: In 168 BC, on his way back from Egypt, Antiochus was angered by the Jews and he set up an altar to a false god on top of the altar of burnt offering in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: He sacrificed a pig, perhaps the most atrocious thing he could do in the Jewish world.
SPEAKER_01: He sacrificed a pig on that altar, and he took the pig's blood and he scattered it all around the temple implements and he made the Jewish high priest eat the pig's flesh.
SPEAKER_01: It was an abomination of desolation.
SPEAKER_01: He ordered the Jews to continue to sacrifice pigs on that altar.
SPEAKER_01: We have Jewish documents showing us that that was a common Jewish interpretation.
SPEAKER_01: That is, that Daniel 11, 31 was fulfilled in Antiochus IV.
SPEAKER_01: We have early church fathers telling us that that was the common understanding, that what Daniel spoke of, of the abomination of desolation, was Antiochus bringing an abomination that made the temple desolate.
SPEAKER_01: So Daniel prophesied about an event that was future to him, but it already happened by the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: There had already been an abomination of desolation in the holy place.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says here that the disciples should watch for in the future the abomination of desolation that Daniel spoke of, indicating it's still future.
SPEAKER_01: So how do we understand something that is still future when it already happened in the past?
SPEAKER_01: So now do you do you have a little more clarity about this isn't as ordinary and as simple as we first might have thought?
SPEAKER_01: So then we start looking and saying, what else might there be here?
SPEAKER_01: What do we do with this?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there are three passages in Daniel that refer to an abomination of desolation.
SPEAKER_01: Daniel 9, 27, Daniel 11, 31, and Daniel 12, 11.
SPEAKER_01: The first one is a common passage that comes up in prophecy discussions.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the end of time.
SPEAKER_01: Specifically, Daniel talks about 70 periods of sevens.
SPEAKER_01: And there's this abomination that makes desolate in the last of those sevens.
SPEAKER_01: And it's connected in that chapter with the end of times.
SPEAKER_01: Then in the very last chapter of Daniel, Daniel chapter 12, he references a time that will be like something that has never been since there was a nation till that time.
SPEAKER_01: And he says it's at the end of the days.
SPEAKER_01: So Daniel points to this abomination of desolation seemingly as two different events.
SPEAKER_01: One that has this historical connection to a Greek ruler in the times before Christ, and yet another abomination of desolation that seems to be still future to us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by all descriptions, that middle event was terrible.
SPEAKER_01: But Daniel seems to use that historical event to picture an even more horrendous event at the end of the age.
SPEAKER_01: That shows us a significant element of prophetic writing.
SPEAKER_01: Prophetic writings will often point to an event in history that is similar to something that will happen in the future.
SPEAKER_01: And that happens all the time in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Even when you don't think it's prophetic.
SPEAKER_01: For example, Hebrews tells us that the arrangement of the temple was only a shadow.
SPEAKER_01: It's only a picture of the real thing because the real thing is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Eden, the Garden of Eden in Genesis, is supposed to remind us of the real thing.
SPEAKER_01: Heaven, the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice what Jesus says in Matthew 24, 21.
SPEAKER_01: For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, know and never will be.
SPEAKER_01: That never will be parallels the end of Daniel.
SPEAKER_01: So it's possible then that Jesus does what Daniel did.
SPEAKER_01: He may be prophetically announcing the temple's destruction that may include some kind of abomination that makes it desolate, that points to an even greater terror at the end of the age.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what does that imply?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a fourth interpretive key, and that is fleeing.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said that if the disciples saw the abomination of desolation, and he didn't describe what that would be.
SPEAKER_01: Just assuming you're going to understand this.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember, they already have some historical context to that.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was saying something similar to when the British tax your tea, we know what that's talking about, right?
SPEAKER_01: Boston Tea Party.
SPEAKER_01: We have some historical context when we start talking about another country across an ocean taxing something as specific as tea.
SPEAKER_01: We have some historical context to that.
SPEAKER_01: Israel, the Jewish people, the disciples had a historical context about that abomination that makes desolate.
SPEAKER_01: They had that Jewish desolation of their temple fresh in their minds.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus doesn't need to describe what an abomination is that desolates a temple.
SPEAKER_01: He says, when you see that, flee.
SPEAKER_01: A time would come, Jesus said, when the danger would be so great that the disciples should be praying right then.
SPEAKER_01: They should start praying then and there that the time to flee would not be at a bad time.
SPEAKER_01: That says a whole lot.
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to just stop right there and camp and talk about what that means about praying.
SPEAKER_01: About what Jesus implies about praying.
SPEAKER_01: He says, you should start praying right now that God doesn't send that at a bad time.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have time to talk about that, about prayer.
SPEAKER_01: But he does say that fleeing on the Sabbath would not be a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Why would that be?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Jewish people, you'll remember, had regulations on how far they could walk.
SPEAKER_01: Generally amounting to no more than about a half a mile on a Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Well, if you had to get out of town quickly, an average city block, that's about seven to eight blocks.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't get you very far, does it?
SPEAKER_01: But if you are a Christian, if you are a follower of Christ and you are fleeing and you go further than that, then pretty much everybody knows who you are and who you belong to.
SPEAKER_01: It identifies you.
SPEAKER_01: Escaping when pregnant or nursing would be difficult if time was of the essence.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus mentions winter.
SPEAKER_01: That's the rainy season for Judea.
SPEAKER_01: That would be an unsafe time to travel with muddy paths, swollen streams, flooding rivers.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says to his disciples, When you see the abomination of desolation, that's a time to flee for your life.
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, early church writer Eusebius wrote that Christians in Jerusalem fled to a place called Pella when the Roman army set its sights on Jerusalem around 69 A.D.
SPEAKER_01: They saw the fulfillment of Jesus' words in the siege of Jerusalem that ended with its destruction and the destruction of the temple and the Roman army standing in the place of the temple.
SPEAKER_01: And so they fled for their lives.
SPEAKER_01: Why would they flee for their lives?
SPEAKER_01: Why would a church historian just three or four hundred years later say, I remember, the stories have come down.
SPEAKER_01: The Christians left Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: They fled when the Roman armies came.
SPEAKER_01: Why would he say that?
SPEAKER_01: It's because of the next interpretive key, which is the Great Tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: What do we do with this?
SPEAKER_01: How do we understand this?
SPEAKER_01: The Roman siege of Jerusalem, no matter how you describe it, was a time of great tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: The Jewish historian Josephus is known to have exaggerated a lot.
SPEAKER_01: So it's sometimes a wrestling match to try to figure out what is real and what's not real, what's exaggerated and not exaggerated.
SPEAKER_01: So we can't rely entirely on his numbers, but Josephus reported that the siege of Jerusalem resulted in over a million residents of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas dying of starvation, being killed in the war, or taken into slavery.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's exaggerated, and we back off from that.
SPEAKER_01: The siege was so long and so terrible that reports of cannibalism surfaced.
SPEAKER_01: So even a small number is hard is a horrific account.
SPEAKER_01: Tribulation is a word that has its roots in the concept of squeezing.
SPEAKER_01: I am I for some reason I get captivated by those stories of massive pythons and anacondas.
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're like 20 feet long and their stomachs as big as a barrel because they swallowed something and now they can't move.
SPEAKER_01: You know where I'm going with this, right?
SPEAKER_01: They capture their prey and they they wrap themselves around that prey and they start applying pressure and more pressure and more pressure until their life is effectively squeezed out of them.
SPEAKER_01: That's the image here.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus promised a time of squeezing, where the pressures of worldly evil, of terrible things, of death and destruction will attempt to squeeze the life out.
SPEAKER_01: And it will not only be a squeezing, it will be a great squeezing.
SPEAKER_01: That is why Christians fled when the Roman armies approached Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: That makes great sense historically.
SPEAKER_01: What was that letter A on our number three?
SPEAKER_01: Three things.
SPEAKER_01: Makes great sense historically.
SPEAKER_01: The Roman military standing in the temple's ruins would have been an abomination.
SPEAKER_01: There are even reports, we don't know if they're true or not, that the Roman general Titus set up an idol in the place of the temple after all the stones were knocked down and the fire had melted all of the gold, and that the soldiers were picking the gold out amongst the rubble, casting off the stones off the temple mount.
SPEAKER_01: There are reports that Titus set up an idol to be worshipped on the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_01: So we can reasonably ground what Jesus said in history.
SPEAKER_01: Yet some would still say, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: If we look though at Revelation chapter 12, there is an awful lot there that seems to describe a future fulfillment of this prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we do with that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would suggest that we have to wrestle with the phrase no and never will be.
SPEAKER_01: This squeezing is going to be so great that there will be no event after it that will ever compare.
SPEAKER_01: There is something about this great squeezing that can never be equaled, never be outdone in its terror and its evil and its blasphemy?
SPEAKER_01: Can we say that as bad as 70 AD was for Jerusalem and the Jewish people and the Jewish religion, that it was worse than the time of the black plague in Europe?
SPEAKER_01: Can we say that it was worse than World War I?
SPEAKER_01: Can we say that it was worse than Hitler's crusade against the Jewish people or the atomic bombs of World War II?
SPEAKER_01: Place whatever you want in those categories.
SPEAKER_01: Something about the way Jesus says this has a sense of something greater, of something more intense, more horrendous.
SPEAKER_01: Like Daniel 12, Jesus says a terrible time is coming for the temple, for Jerusalem, and the Jewish people, but there's something about this ultimate squeezing that will be an end.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing will top it with a final abomination that makes desolate as Daniel 9 and Daniel 12 speaks of.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote to them, Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together with him, we ask you not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed.
SPEAKER_01: Why would they be shaken or alarmed?
SPEAKER_01: Either by a spirit or by a spoken word or even by a letter from us.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't send it.
SPEAKER_01: Saying what?
SPEAKER_01: To the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
SPEAKER_01: The day of the Lord is a phrase that's often used in connection with that phrase, a great tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: Let no one deceive you in any way.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: For that day will not come unless a rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, that son of perdition who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
unknown: Huh.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds an awful lot like 70 AD.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a bunch here that doesn't seem to fit 70 AD, so what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Do we go with an historical fulfillment or a future fulfillment?
SPEAKER_01: Or somehow both.
SPEAKER_01: There is a sixth interpretive key, and that is a shortening of the tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: How do we make sense of this?
SPEAKER_01: If those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.
SPEAKER_01: Literally, as I read when we read through this, no, no flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Seems as though, so Jesus is using not the term that refers to human beings, but to a physical flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Because there would be no flesh surviving if God did not, for the sake of the elect, cut those days short.
SPEAKER_01: So our first interpretive key comes into play again in this verse.
SPEAKER_01: The simple understanding doesn't completely make sense with 70 AD.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that was a dreadful war.
SPEAKER_01: And it was it was a dreadful siege of the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: It was disastrous.
SPEAKER_01: But it was kind of localized.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they marched through Judea.
SPEAKER_01: There were several locations of battles, but it was primarily centered around Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: It seems a stretch to say that no flesh would have lived had God not intervened to shorten that battle.
SPEAKER_01: Or was he just talking about the flesh in Jerusalem or Judea?
SPEAKER_01: We can make it make sense if we think merely about the Jewish people, but there's also a plain sense that seems to be more universal.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of has the sound of, listen, if God doesn't, if God doesn't do something about shortening this great squeezing, earth will be empty.
SPEAKER_01: The point is that the great squeezing is so terrible that no flesh would survive if God did not purposefully shorten the time of the squeezing.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps we can say that the besieging of Jerusalem and the horrors of Jewish wars were pictures of the intensity of the squeezing that this world will someday see, but will never see again.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we say it's just historical, if it's just the Jewish wars, then we have to say that the kind of squeezing that the Jewish nation received in World War II had nothing in comparison with that.
SPEAKER_01: Do we want to take that interpretive route?
SPEAKER_01: So this singular element suggests that we're not merely looking at a local historical event, but a terrorizing event that God may be designing to be an image of when the end will come.
SPEAKER_01: And now it's your turn to reach your conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: Is it historical?
SPEAKER_01: Is it future?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it both?
SPEAKER_01: It's your turn to reach your conclusion, at least till next week.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, the bottom line here is that biblical history is full of situations where God uses examples, people, situations, circumstances as pictures of something much greater, much grander, much more intense, maybe much more painful.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what Jesus does here?
SPEAKER_01: How do we make sense of this with the rest of Scripture, with Daniel and with Revelation?
SPEAKER_01: How do we put this in the progress of revelation and the scope of all of history?
SPEAKER_01: How do we fit this into God's purpose and plan of restoring his sin-cursed world to himself?
SPEAKER_01: I would suggest to you that the way we begin to do that is by looking to the king.
SPEAKER_01: We go back to the beginning of our context.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples are confused.
SPEAKER_01: They're struggling with what Jesus has said, much like we do.
SPEAKER_01: They're looking for their king, for their ultimate king.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Don't distract from their questions.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't dissuade them from their questions.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say you're asking the wrong questions or you're asking terrible questions.
SPEAKER_01: He's giving them some answers.
SPEAKER_01: But they are answers that always come back to Jesus having the answers.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we come to the end of something like this, we must look to the king.
SPEAKER_01: How do we look to the king?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first we trust in his sovereignty.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who knows.
SPEAKER_01: Not only does he know, but he is sovereignly in control of history such that he can sovereignly shorten the time of the great squeezing.
SPEAKER_01: We can trust in the righteousness of the king.
SPEAKER_01: When Abraham was overlooking the plain, the valley in which his nephew had lived with his children and his grandchildren, not his grandchildren, his children.
SPEAKER_01: He knew that God was coming to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_01: He knew that what was about to happen was going to be a great kind of squeezing.
SPEAKER_01: But he rested in this.
SPEAKER_01: We can trust in his goodness.
SPEAKER_01: He always does what is good because he always does what is right.
SPEAKER_01: And what is right is good.
SPEAKER_01: If you belong to him, he will care for you in the right way.
SPEAKER_01: Notice we have circled all the way back around to Jesus planning and proclaiming destruction on the temple and on the holy city.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because they did not acknowledge him.
SPEAKER_01: Take this opportunity to trust in the King.
SPEAKER_01: With all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you belong to him, he will care for you in the right way.
SPEAKER_01: I love the way that Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Martin Lloyd Jones once put it.
SPEAKER_01: He said, faith is a refusal to panic.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because you trust in the King.
SPEAKER_01: And when we trust in Him, we can hope in Him.
SPEAKER_01: Last Sunday we looked at Hebrews.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews chapter 10 ends with these words, yet a little while.
SPEAKER_01: Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay.
SPEAKER_01: This world is not our home.
SPEAKER_01: We yearn for a city whose builder and maker is God.
SPEAKER_01: And on our way we look to him through the clouds of pain, of suffering, and of evil, looking for our king.
SPEAKER_01: And we see him.
SPEAKER_01: Not clearly yet, but dimly.
SPEAKER_01: But one day we will see him face to face.
SPEAKER_01: And we walk through this world waiting day by day, going, making disciples, because we know our foundation is firm.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Robert Murray McShane could say, you will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: Then, when the world is to you a vast howling wilderness, then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.
SPEAKER_01: May you look to him.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, cause our eyes to rise to you.
SPEAKER_01: May you fill us with your spirit to give us strength day by day, moment by moment.
SPEAKER_01: We know that there will be times when, like Peter walking on the water, our eyes get distracted from you and they get concerned about the wind and the waves.
SPEAKER_01: May you reach out and rescue us in those moments.
SPEAKER_01: But even more, may you give us faith, strengthen our faith, ground our faith, grow our faith.
SPEAKER_01: So when all is said and done, we may stand firm.
SPEAKER_01: Upon you, our eternal foundation.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.