Our text this morning is found in the chapter that we read, Matthew chapter 24 and verse 3. Now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, his 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? The future is a matter that we all take a great interest in. whether it's in terms of the more speculative ideas about the future or whether it's in terms of thinking about our own personal futures. What will the next year bring? What is going to happen in terms of the economy? What's going to happen in terms of politics? Is Sir Keir Starmer still going to be Prime Minister this time next year? That kind of thing comes to our minds. but our chapter deals with a greater and wider future. The disciples in our text are concerned with the future. When will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Christ has spoken about the temple in Jerusalem being destroyed, this building that had stood for centuries. It had only fairly recently been gloriously rebuilt by Herod, and now the Lord says that within a generation it will fall. And the idea is immensely traumatic for the Jewish people. The temple was to them the great symbol of their identity as a nation, as a people. And therefore the disciples, thinking on this, can only imagine that its destruction would mean the end of the age and the second coming of Christ. But, of course, he didn't. It's very important when you read this chapter to remember the question that they're asking, and that they may have made assumptions that were not true. And Christ, in fact, corrects that misunderstanding they have that the destruction of the temple and the fall of Jerusalem would be the end of the age. There are, in fact, two events mentioned here. One is past, the other is still for us future, because there's another important point to remember, which is that something that was future for the people at the time it was written can be past for us. And Christ's answer Not only speaking about what's going to happen but also how we are to live in the light of the future that is absolutely certain. How are we to act? We have first of all Christ's witness. First of all his witness that Jerusalem will fall. Secondly that he will come again. We have secondly his warning against deception and against complacency. And thirdly, his call to watch, to be ready. Witness, warning, and watch. And first we see his witness. Christ bears witness. And first he bears witness to the things that are going to happen, as he says, within this generation. Verse 34, sure as I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Now, the obvious way to understand this, the way that the disciples understood this, is it meant that generation, the people alive there at that time. Now these events happened around about AD 33. AD 70, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. The culmination of a war that began with a revolt of the Jews under Roman rule. They killed Roman soldiers and, of course, the Romans then sent their legions to destroy the rebels. The temple, this huge building, the structure that was such a symbol more so than there is any building in this country that's a symbol of Britain. During the Blitz, St Paul's Cathedral stood as a symbol of resistance. You see those photographs and film of the Great Dome there standing amidst all the smoke and fire of the buildings round about that were destroyed. It was a symbol And for the dome of St. Paul's to have been destroyed would have been immensely traumatic because it was that symbol. But the temple was an even greater symbol because the temple was the symbol that God was in the midst of his people. And for it to be destroyed would be God saying that he was no longer in the midst. And it was the result. of the rejection by the leadership of the Lord Jesus Christ. The people who ran the temple, the priests, the Sadducees, they called for his execution. It was Caiaphas, the high priest, who proposed that it is better for one man to perish than for the whole nation to perish, and therefore that it didn't matter what Jesus had done, they had to kill him. Now a great error has been committed by people who have looked at this and said, well therefore all the Jewish people in all history are guilty. No. The leaders at that time were guilty and they brought destruction upon that city by their own wickedness. Now the results of what they did echo down the generations but it's very much Like what happens when a wealthy man blows everything, goes bankrupt, then all the following generations won't inherit what he had, but they don't inherit his guilt. They merely suffer the consequences of what he has done. So it was with the Jewish leaders in those days. And Christ bears witness that there will be this destruction in AD 70. He doesn't give the date, of course, but he does tell them that there are things that are going to happen that will prepare the way for that. And certainly, all the way from verse 4 through to verse 28, he's talking about the fall of Jerusalem. He's talking about the fact that there will be wars and rumors of wars. Now, there's never been a time in human history which hasn't suffered wars and rumours of wars. Human history can be told in terms of wars. There are historians who make wonderful careers based on just talking about wars, because that's human history. So much human history is wars and battles, kingdoms rising against kingdoms, famines, pestilences, earthquakes. Again, there's never been a time when this hasn't happened. The earth, the whole world is groaning, Paul says, under the burden of sin. But then there's more than that, the Lord says, verse nine. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. Persecution, the persecution of Christians. Again, that's happened in every generation. God's people have always been persecuted. Ever since Cain hated his brother Abel, God's people have been persecuted. The church has always suffered persecution somewhere. And all those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, Paul says, shall suffer persecution. These are things that are not signs that anything's about to happen, they are signs that the world is in a mess, and the world is going wrong. False prophets, there have always been false prophets, people who have said, God told me! To which the response is, no he didn't, and they reveal this by what they say, that they will contradict God's word. That fundamentally is why when Mohammed went to the Christians and said God's talking to me when he went to the Jews and said God's talking to me they said no he's not because what you say contradicts the Bible the Bible existed before Mohammed when Mohammed turns up he starts saying well the God of Abraham spoken to me and the Jews say no he hasn't because he doesn't contradict himself you don't understand you have no knowledge of the Bible that's why modern Muslims have to say the Bible's been changed not because it has been, but because it contradicts Mohammed. False prophets, whether Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, the man who founded the JWs, there are false prophets in abundance. Every generation brings them forth. And therefore the great call to God's people, and we'll come back to this in the final point, is to endure. He who endures to the end shall be saved. Because Christ also bears witness to his second advent, that he is coming again. Because you have the language that applies very much to the destruction of Jerusalem, but you have the language that cannot be applied to that. the language that speaks of the end of the age. He tells us in verse 26 that the false prophets who say Jesus is here or there are not to be believed because as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. So that when the Jehovah's Witnesses, and I don't know if they still say this because they stopped coming to my door some while ago, which in many ways is a shame because I was only willing to talk to them. But they used to say, well, Jesus came back invisibly in 1914. And that's very much the, well, see, he's in the inner room. You can't see him. Now, as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Christ's coming is visible, public, Nobody can miss it. It's not something that happens in a corner somewhere, or off in some remote desert. He will come again. Then the sight of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. He will come again in glory. and bring in the end of the age. And when he comes again in glory, he comes first of all to gather his people together, verse 31, but also to bring judgment upon his enemies. And we have in the last section of this chapter the contrast, verses 45 through 51, between the two servants. And he's talking here particularly about The leadership. You've got the wicked servants who are the religious leadership in Jerusalem, the priests, the scribes and the Pharisees. And they are the people who publicly stand as leaders and teachers of God's people. They are supposed to be the ones, verse 45, who give the household of God their food in due season. They have the teaching and pastoral ministry. But instead of exercising that ministry for the good of the people, what they have done, verse 48, 49, they've said, my master's delaying his coming, and he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards. They have become abusers. And sadly, we have seen over the centuries abusers in the Christian church. There is no denomination that has not suffered from abusers getting in. And that's largely because abusers are very often very cunning people. And we know it's not just the church. It's every part of society. There are people who are abusers. There are people, we've seen, of course, one thing that's very public at the moment is the Jeffrey Epstein business. this vicious, horrible man who sought out power and wealth in order to use these powerful people to pursue his own wicked ends. We've seen it in football, in the performing arts, in various sports, and we've seen it in the churches. There are people who want to abuse their position, whether it is people like Epstein who are particularly interested in their base sexual appetites, or whether it's people who are interested in power, being somebody important. And what's behind this abuse when it happens in the church? It's people saying, well Christ's a long way away, Christ doesn't care. But Christ does care. and Christ will judge. Those rulers in Jerusalem who said, well, his coming's a long way off. Well, there was something that God did in A.D. 70. Before then, of course, you've got the Revolt and Josephus. And now Josephus has a bit of an agenda of his own. He was a Jewish general who saw which way the wind was blowing and deserted to the Romans. In fact, he was in charge of a garrison, and they were surrounded, and the order was, if you're surrounded, fight to the last man, and when you can't fight anymore, everyone who survives commits suicide. And the leader would be the last one to do it. Well, Josephus waits around until all his men and officers have killed themselves, and then opens the gate and says, I surrender, I give up, don't kill me. So he has a bit of an agenda which is justifying his going over to the Romans. But he says that Jerusalem suffered such infighting that more people died in the city at the hands of one another than at the hands of the Romans. Now he's probably exaggerating. However, there certainly was this infighting, this slaughter The leaders found themselves unable to control the people whom they had moved to revolution and many of them were killed by partisans of other rulers. That's what happens when order breaks down. Christ is coming in glory and That is the end of the age, and there is an age to come, the new creation to follow. So the witness, first of all, the witness to the near future and the future unknown. Secondly, there is a warning. First of all, there's a warning. Don't be fooled. Take heed that no one deceives you. There are deceivers in the world. There are false prophets. And these are the people who come, verse 5, many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. The people who come and say they're the Messiah. And there are many, many cults that have somebody who turns up and says, I'm the Messiah. All over the world, many of them are very small. Some of them are quite big. Don't be deceived by people who claim to come in the name of Christ. And they come in various kinds. Again, there's some who claim a secret appearing. But also, don't be deceived by false conclusions based on current events. We've seen the war in Gaza. It looks like it's over for now, which is a wonderful thing, because people not being killed is always a wonderful thing. And there's been all kinds of speculation that people have had, both concerning the war itself, and now that it's apparently over, there are some people going, oh, this is a sign. No, it is not a sign. It is not some amazing, oh, you see people going, oh, Trump's dividing the land. The land is already divided. The Palestinians are already living where they are living. They had what amounted to a huge amount of autonomy before Hamas did their wicked and foolish thing, before they committed mass murder and sparked the war. There have been intifadas before. There may be intifadas again if things go wrong. These are not signs. These are not things that we're to say, oh, there's a clock ticking. There are foolish people online who have been claiming and who claim that the 23rd of September would be the rapture. God's people take it up from the earth. Well, that didn't happen, did it? And they then went, oh, we've got the calendar wrong. It should be the 6th of October. That didn't happen either. And they're now going, oh, this, that. No. They're wrong. They're false prophets. Don't be fooled by people doing stupid mathematics. What part? I've said many times. Verse 36, Jesus says, Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Now what part of no one knows the day or the hour do the date-setters not understand? The answer is any of it. They don't understand, they don't listen to the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ says it's foolish to think that we can predict the second advent. No one knows when it will come. It will be an hour when it's not expected. And therefore it's foolish to think that we are to be trying to predict the time. But also we are to beware of complacency. It is to be as in the days of Noah, verse 37. Now what aspect of the days of Noah is being referred to here? It's not primarily the wickedness of the world. The world is wicked. The world's always wicked. It's fallen. No, rather it is, verse 38, as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark. They were careless. They were complacent. They were like those Peter speaks of in 2 Peter when he talks of people who come laughing and mocking and saying, where is the promise of his coming? Because everything continues the way it has been from the beginning of the creation until now. They were careless. They were living as though they had the whole of time ahead of them. They forget, of course, two important things. First of all, everybody dies. and we don't know when, and we don't know how. Or there are people who say, well, I shall just make sure I repent on my deathbed. You may not have a deathbed. Many people don't. My dad, earlier this year, he'd just been discharged from hospital. They said, you're fine, you'll recover. Just take it easy. Day after he was discharged, he dropped dead in his house. Simple as that. You do not know when the end of your life comes. Our Puritan forefathers were quite right when they applied, no man knows the day or the hours, not only to Christ's coming but to the hour of our death. Don't be complacent. Don't be complacent that Christ isn't that Christ doesn't care because that's when it comes down to people, God doesn't care, God isn't watching that's what the wicked servant does, he says the master isn't coming I can do what I like and then I can quickly sort things out before he comes and he will come at an hour unknown the warning which leads to the great imperative here, the call to action, what are we to do? Watch watch, because the hour is unknown. God has not chosen to tell us when it will be, and he has chosen to tell us that there is no way for us to know when it will be. There are no signs that we can observe, you can't open the newspapers, the websites that try to look at the signs of the times and say, what's the likelihood? They're all a total waste of time. No one knows the day or the hour. And this is supposed to lead us to watchfulness, to being prepared, because that's what watching here means. Be prepared. It's not watch what's happening. It's watch yourself. It's watch how am I doing. It's be awake. Be alert. Be ready. Be prepared, as the old Boy Scout motto has it, because the hour is unknown. Be awake. Be ready. It's the sort of watchfulness that the car driver needs, being aware of all the vehicles around him. Not dozing off at the wheel. Being aware. How is it seen? Well, it's seen in faithfulness. Verse 45, who then is a faithful and wise servant? Well, he is faithful and wise at the same time. The two go together. He is wise because he knows who his master is. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. says the scripture, that is to say, a true reverence for God, knowing who God is, is the basis of wisdom. Because wisdom is how we live in the world, how we behave ourselves. And part of wisdom is saying we live in God's world, therefore the world follows God's rules to some extent. Yes, of course, human beings in rebellion against God try not to follow God's rules, but still, God is the creator. We can only go so far against him. And one of those rules is whatever a man sows, that he reaps. That is to say, our actions, our behavior affects our future. And we see that in just the common things of life that the man who is lazy about his job, the man who doesn't do his job well, gets disciplined for it. I remember when I worked at Marks and Spencer's, there was a man in the warehouse in the night shift and he said, temporary staff, he said, well, every year I come back and so I just slack off and do as little work as possible. Well, one day he did even less work than possible. and they made it known to him that they would not be hiring him again because he was a lazy so-and-so with lazy bones and his laziness then meant that he wouldn't get that temporary job again next time it came round. What a man sows that he shall reap. Wisdom and faithfulness. God has called us and he's put us in various callings. We've all got the various roles that we play in life. There are those roles that we have in terms of work, if we have a job. There's the roles we have in our families. Each of us, we start off as a child. We become eventually at least quasi-independent. If you marry, you become a husband or a wife. You have children, you become a parent. Your children have children, you become a grandparent. If you live long enough, then you become a great-grandparent. You've got siblings and they have children, you become an uncle or an aunt and so on. And these are callings we have, relationships that we are called to be faithful to God in. Husbands love your wives. Wives submit to and honour your husbands. Children be obedient to your parents. Parents don't exasperate your children. Yes, the Bible says don't exasperate your children. Younger people learn from older people. Honour your elders. Older people teach the younger. Be the sort of people that they find easy to respect. That's faithfulness. Be a faithful Christian in your workplace. Do your job. Turn up on time. These are not great and amazing things, but these are being faithful. Church members, be faithful to one another. If you see another church member going astray, or if you see them cast down, come alongside, help them. Be faithful in attendance of worship. Be faithful in the callings God has given you, whatever they may be. Faithful in our callings, faithful to God. And be faithful as a Christian. to share the gospel with those around you as God gives you opportunity. Pray for opportunities. Be wise, be sensible, be faithful. And that's what it means to be watching, to be living as a Christian. Because Christ is coming. Jerusalem has fallen. His witness to the end of Jerusalem is so faithful that there have been scholars who have said, well surely this is written after the event. The response is no. Christ knew and he said what would happen. And you see the great witness that these things were not written after the fall of Jerusalem is this, he doesn't say and so all these things were fulfilled. They hadn't been yet. But they were and Christ is coming back and we don't know when. And so our calling right now, here and now, is to be Christians in the world, to be faithful, to fulfil our calling. And as Mr. Wesley puts it in one of his hymns, our prayer should be our cautioned souls prepare for that tremendous day and fill us now with watchful care. and stir us up to pray. Amen.