Now sometimes I preach as many as three or four verses at a time, but today we're gonna slow it down to one. But it's a big verse, there's a lot here. Matthew 24, 36. Jesus says, but of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the sun, but the Father alone. Do we have a audio signal there? Just checking. Okay, that's good. Well, I did that first. Well, just check that. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for its inerrancy. We thank you for its infallibility and for its sufficiency. The Apostle Peter says that you have given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. All the content of truth, all the content of revelation is found in the pages of scripture. And the power for life comes from your spirit. And so we ask this morning that your spirit would open our eyes, help us to see more clearly, help us to hear more clearly. Lord, given the week that some of us have had, we need to be able to set our eyes on the second coming of Christ and the hope of eternity with you. But we need to do so within the boundaries that you establish in your word. And so I ask that you would help us to do that today. In Jesus' precious name I pray, amen. This is a very simple verse. We're just going to basically take it phrase by phrase just by way of setting as a reminder. Matthew chapter 24 and 25 is called the Olivet Discourse. Jesus' disciples wanted to know three things. When would these things take place? What would be the sign of the second coming and what would be the sign of the end of the age? Jesus answered first of all with the signs of his coming and the signs of the end of the age. That was his initial focus. And finally here in verse 36 he answers the question of when and the answer to when basically the quick answer Toulon didn't read is none of our business. That's the father's business it's not our business. But what Jesus says is enough to give us reason to kind of meditate and consider what the scripture says. for our benefit, that we may glorify him. So as we move through, but of that day and that hour, Jesus is speaking of the second coming, the end of the age. We don't need to dive into that. I've been preaching on that now for several weeks. Of that day and that hour, no one knows. No one knows. We understand that no one knows. We get that no one knows. That's why his disciples are asking, because they don't know. If they knew, they wouldn't be asking. There's no shame in admitting that our knowledge is limited, that we will never know as much as there is to know, certainly, and we'll never know as much as we want to know. I use a laser to engrave tumblers. Most of you know that. I don't know how a laser works, though. When I looked it up, the word laser is an acronym. It means light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, which doesn't help me in the least. I still don't know how they work, but it works. So I don't have to know. We can understand that something is without understanding why it is or how it is. We don't have to understand the foundations, in other words. Deuteronomy 29, 29 is helpful here. The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever that we may do all the words of this law. There are simple things we don't know. Science has apparently explored about 5% of the ocean floor. Given enough time and technology, maybe they'll hit the rest of it, maybe. There are some places that are hard to get to, but maybe. Technology is important, time is important. That's not a thing that matters. There are other things that we don't know that matter, and we don't know them. I'm confused about how prayer works. The Bible says that God has decreed everything that comes to pass, and the Bible commands us to pray. How does that work? If God knows everything that is going to come to pass, And he calls us to pray. How does prayer work? How does prayer fit in with that? I haven't got the faintest idea. I don't need to know. God is sovereign. He has decreed all things that come to pass. He calls us to pray. That's one of those secret things. The how is a secret thing. Just as a reminder to you, we are not responsible for the secret things. God is good. He isn't cruel. He isn't unfair. He doesn't judge anyone according to his secret things. We are not accountable for those secret things. We are accountable for what he's revealed. We're accountable for far more than we want to be accountable for. We would rather not be accountable for a lot of things that scripture says. Romans 1.20 says that God has concealed within, not concealed, but displayed within creation the proof and evidence of his own eternal power and divine nature so that no person has an excuse No person has the right to say, but I didn't know that there was a God. I didn't get that there was a God. Creation itself reveals that there is a God. We're not responsible for the secret things. We are responsible to what is revealed. Matthew 24 and 25 are in our Bibles because the disciples wanted to know information. They wanted to know. The first piece of information they wanted to know was the one that they can't know. When? When are these things gonna happen? When? According to Jesus, that falls into the realm of secret things. No person knows, no angels knows, the son of man doesn't know, only the father knows. Just by the way, parenthetically, before we move on, God knows your secret things too. So Ecclesiastes 12 14 says God will bring every work to judgment everything that is hidden whether it is good or evil. In Hebrews chapter 4 verse 13 says there is no creature hidden from his sight but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of him to whom we have an account to give. I know a man who is extraordinarily gifted in construction and I won't bother to point him out because it would embarrass him if I did that. But that man that I know that is extraordinarily gifted in construction can look at these walls and know what's in them. I've only seen him not get it right one time and it was on that wall and that's just a weird wall. But every other wall this guy's dealt with, he has simply moved on to it and found the studs and he just knows. It's like he's got x-ray vision. It's like he's Superman and he can just see through the sheetrock and he knows what's there. As though the sheetrock wasn't there. God knows your life as though there's nothing covering it up. So I'm gonna cover myself up. I'm gonna put on more clothes. It doesn't matter. You may as well be wearing glass. I'm going to conceal myself with good ideas and good works and good intentions and all these other things. And it doesn't matter. Those things are like cellophane to God. They don't obscure his vision at all. God knows your secret things even though you don't know his. So a question here is what are we content with? Are we content with what we know? More specifically, I guess, are we content with the secret things remaining secret? We should want to know the things that are revealed. We should want to know. We should never get tired of learning more. I learn every single week. I even, I think I said to Linda a couple of days ago, I learn every single week. And this week I learned, and I can't remember what it is because that's starting to happen now, but do you remember what it was? She can't remember either because she's, it's just every day there's just something that's there. But in terms of the secret things, are we content with the secret things being secret? Many people are not. Many people are not. What drives much of the charismatic movement is this desire to know what the secret things are. I want to know the secret things. The problem is that can lead into occultic things. There's a woman named Ellen Davis. She's been promoted by Bethel Church. She wrote a book called The Physics of Heaven. She says this in the book, I decided to examine new age thought and practice for anything precious that might be extracted from the worthless. Let me summarize that for you. She decided as a Christian to go to see if the devil had something to say. He doesn't have anything to say. Even in biblical times, people long to learn and lean into the secret things. They long to look into the secret things. They try to pry open closed doors and open up sealed books. So in Deuteronomy, God says the secret things are mine. The things revealed to you are yours so that you can do them. The secret things are mine. He says in Deuteronomy 18, that his people were to be content with the revelation that he gave them and never under any circumstance try to uncover what he had hidden, what he had not revealed. And to ensure that they didn't misunderstand him, he tells them in detail what he means. In Deuteronomy 18, 10 and 11, he names the practices, beginning with child sacrifice. which was not simply done for the sake of doing it. It was done in order to appease some god so that that god would bless you with some kind of information. He goes on to say divination, soothsaying, interpreting omens or dreams, practicing sorcery, casting spells as an enchanter, or trying to communicate with the dead as a medium or a spiritist. Most of those things have to do with the secrets. I want to know the secrets. And God isn't telling me the secrets, so I wanna know the secrets. Do you remember the story of Saul? Saul had been rejected by the Lord, and he is so desperate to know the secrets, he goes to a witch. And the witch had a familiar spirit, that means that there was a demon that worked with her, that really controlled her. And she decided to bring the demon up, but the Lord sent Samuel back, which she didn't expect. Then God passes judgment on those who do these things. Deuteronomy 18 verse 12. For whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh and because of these abominations, the practices, Yahweh your God will dispossess them, the Canaanites, from before you. The word abomination describes the utter sinfulness of certain actions like homosexual behavior and child sacrifice. These practices are an abomination and so are those who practice them. An abomination is something that God loathes, he hates. An abomination is like a rotting corpse and God says it's not just the practices that are that, it's the people. There are people that well-meaning, who say God loves everybody and hates the sin. God hates these people. He hates the people who pursue these things by demonic means. We must take that seriously. God expects us to be content with what he's revealed. And so he makes his revelation very clear. Now this is how he did that. The Bible opens up with the Torah with the five books of Moses. God sent Moses as his prophet. Moses is really his first prophet as such and God confirms Moses through miraculous works and everything that Moses comes to pass just as he says. God confirms Moses through the miracles that he performs through Moses and through Moses' accuracy and everything. After Moses, God sends other prophets. Most of them didn't work any miracles. How would we know if they were true? We know that they're true because they're perfectly in line with Moses. God confirmed Moses with miracles. He doesn't confirm every prophet with miracles. He set a milestone an anchor in the ground, Moses. And as long as there's consistency with Moses, as long as there's agreement there, this is a prophet of God. What they say also has to come to pass, that's part of the test in Deuteronomy 18. And then what they say has to be followed with a consistent worship of Yahweh So in Deuteronomy 13, he says when a prophet or seer, a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you word and it comes to pass or he works a sign and wonder and it's real. And then he says, let's go after other gods, you don't go with him because the Lord your God is testing you. Which raises an uncomfortable thing for us that God sent false prophets into Israel with the ability to predict the future and perform miracles. but then they would try to lead God's people away. And God said, are you committed to my word or are you committed to your experience? He was testing their love. So the Old Testament begins with the books of the confirmed prophet Moses. It continues with the writings of those who are proven true by their perfect agreement with what Moses said. The same thing is true of the Lord Jesus. Jesus came teaching and everything that he taught was in perfect agreement with Moses and the prophets. Do not think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets. I have not come to destroy them, I have come to fulfill them. And then he goes on in Matthew five to explain how the people, the Pharisees and the teachers had in a sense destroyed them by twisting them. And he tells us what the sense of those things actually was from the beginning. You've heard that it was said you shall not murder, but I say to you that if you hate, If you use insulting language, you're as guilty as the murderer is. That wasn't new. That was Moses' intention all along. Jesus came working miracles, and the miracles that he worked confirmed his identity and his authority. They weren't just random nice things. They were fulfillments of prophecy. John the Baptist was in prison. He sent disciples to Jesus to say to Jesus, are you the one that we're supposed to look for? Or is there another? And Jesus said to his disciples, go back and tell John what you see. And he quotes from Isaiah 35. The deaf here. the blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. Jesus says, I'm fulfilling scripture. I'm fulfilling the prophecies that were given in agreement with Moses. So there's a consistency to God's revelation from beginning to end. Is there more that comes through Christ than through Moses? Of course, but there's nothing contradictory that comes through Christ. Jesus then ascends and he sends the Holy Spirit upon his apostles, they work miracles, that confirms them as his apostles so that we know that what they write that we have as the New Testament is confirmed scripture. There's not a need. There was not a need in the Old Testament for every new spokesman for God to work miracles to be confirmed as a spokesman for God. They simply need to be in agreement with God's prophet Moses. There's no need for ongoing miracles in the church to confirm anything. All we need to prove is that we're consistent with the confirmed prophet Jesus, the Lord of glory, God in human flesh. And so because of all of this, we should be completely secure and completely content with what God has revealed in his word. We should be content with the things that are secret, being secret. We should be content with leaving those things in the hands of God. I said last week that there is nothing that Satan will not exploit to destroy you. quite frequently on social media. You'll see some event happen, some painful thing, and then somebody will step up and make a joke about it. And then kind of the cliche is too soon. Is it too soon to joke about it? Well, quite often it is. Quite often it is. Quite often the person experiencing that is not yet at the point where they can laugh about it, whether it's a little thing or a big thing. And so as human beings, as people who love and as people who care, as people who regard the feelings of other people, we try to not do that. When somebody is suffering, we don't make light of their suffering, do we? We respect that area of pain. We'll just leave that untouched. My point last week was that Satan will not do that. There is no point of pain in your life that he will not exploit. There is no point in your life that is so tender and so precious that he'll leave it alone out of respect for you. He'll aim for that very point to destroy your confidence in Christ, to destroy your hope in the Lord, to get your eyes focused on right now, what you think, what you're experiencing right now. I've been there. You've all been there, every one of you. He convinced Eve that eating the forbidden fruit would make her wise. And all of a sudden she realized how much she wanted more knowledge. She wanted to know the secret things. And I wonder, kind of reading that this week and thinking about that in light of this, I wonder if there's an implication when Satan says to Eve, God, you're not gonna die, God doesn't want you to eat that because he knows that when you do, you'll be like him. I wonder if Satan is implying God got to be who he is by eating that. God got wise by eating that, but he doesn't want you to. I don't know. Eve allowed her desire for hidden secret information, the secret things that belong to God, to dominate her imagination, and it was all over. That desire took over. So Jesus says no one knows the day or the hour, that's us. Then he says not even the angels of heaven, and frankly we don't need to spend a lot of time on this, not even the angels of heaven know the day or the hour. I will say this, in 1 Peter 1, Peter writes about our salvation. He says, concerning this, concerning the salvation we have in Christ, the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time, when, or what kind of time, The spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. The disciples wanted, or the prophets wanted to know what the disciples wanted to know. When? When? My servant with whom I am well pleased. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves. In writing these things, they were serving you. through those who proclaim the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." And here's the shocking statement, things into which angels long to look. He doesn't say things into which angels longed to look, but now they're satisfied. So you might think there are secret things that I just want to know. And I kind of feel a little bit robbed. I kind of feel a little bit deprived that I don't know those things. But God has revealed things to you that he has not revealed to the angels. They're on the outside looking in, trying to figure out what the details are. They long to know those things. They still long to know those things. That's the meaning of this text. There are things you've been privileged to know that the angels are not privileged to know. They're not omniscient. They're not God. We want to know more about the second coming and the end of the age, and we want to know when, but the angels want to know about Christ's suffering and about his glory and his resurrection. They want to know about our salvation. Linda taught me this week, it's a prime example of God revealing what he desires to whom he desires to reveal it. And so of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven. And then we come to the kind of the kicker of this passage, nor the son but the father alone. How can the father know something that the son doesn't know? This verse is used by Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Muslims to argue against the deity of Christ. They'll look at it and they'll say, well look, God the Father, God knows something that Jesus doesn't know. If Jesus doesn't know it, he can't be God. And so in order to understand Jesus' meaning and in order to be able to answer those who deny his deity, we've gotta try and get our heads around what scripture says about him. That's an area of study called Christology. Christology was the main topic of the early church councils and creeds. It's hugely important that they figure out exactly, as much as they could, who Jesus was and what he did and what his relationship to the Father and the Spirit is. If you glance through systematic theologies, you'll find that vast amounts of discussion goes on about who Christ is. John MacArthur's book, Biblical Doctrine, a systematic study of Bible truth, devotes more than 45,000 words to Christology. He's really a piker though. John Gill was a 19th century pastor. He devoted more than 65,000 words in his theology. Charles Hodge, a 19th century theologian, wrote over 91,000 words on the nature of Christ. It would take more than our sermon time to even list the topics that come into play. So buckle up and order pizza because we're going to be here for a while. I'm just going to boil this down to two things and then we just continue to learn. The first thing is that Jesus Christ is completely and fully human. That's not the surprising thing. John 1.14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory. Glory is of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus' humanity is clear in scripture. It's simply not disputed in scripture. It's not till you get to the very end of the first century that the Gnostics begin to raise questions. And John says anyone who does not confess Jesus has come in the flesh is antichrist. But that certainly was not true during Jesus' lifetime or in the early decades of the church. Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb, carried to term, born in the usual way, circumcised the eighth day, raised to manhood along with his brothers and sisters. He ate, drank, walked, sat, slept, stood, touched, saw, heard, spoke. He was a man. And second, Jesus is fully and completely God. That was the shocking thing. Jesus said to the Pharisees, why are you trying to kill me? They said, because you being a man, make yourself God. They didn't say because you being God, make yourself man. There was no question about his humanity. But his deity was stunning. It was shocking. Who do the people say that I am? Oh, you're Jeremiah, Elijah, John the Baptist, or one of the other prophets, but who do you say that I am? You're the Christ, the son of the living God. You're God, you're divine. Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you. My father in heaven revealed this to you. It's the first time we see in scripture anyone acknowledging and understanding that Jesus was God, and they, I mean, that was all they had. Charles Hodge writes 91,000 words Peter has something you can put on a business card. But it was true and it was the beginning of all of that. Colossians 1 15 and on says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation for in him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities All things have been created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together, not by him, in him. He's a big person. And he is the head of the body, the church. who is the beginning the firstborn from the dead so that he himself will come to have first place in everything for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And then verse 9 of chapter 2 of Colossians says for in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily. Remarkable statements made about the deity of Christ. If you want more on that, you can read John 1, Hebrews chapter 1. Jesus Christ is God. He is fully divine. He possesses all of the attributes of deity. Jesus Christ is a man. He possesses all of the attributes of a holy, sinless man. We have to remember that our sin nature, our weakness, our vulnerability to temptation are not part of God's image. They're the fallenness of our lives. So what does this have to do with Jesus saying, of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone? It's this. As you read Matthew 24 and 25, if you'll read through it on your own time, you'll find seven times in six verses where Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of Man, as the perfect representation of man, as the ideal man. He doesn't call himself the Son of God at all. He doesn't call himself the Lord at all. So when he says, no one knows, not even the Son, he's referring to himself as the Son of Man. He's referring to himself in his humanity. The attributes of God of those two natures, the divine nature and the human nature, don't communicate. They don't overlap. The theological term is confounding. They are not confounded. What that means is, as God, Jesus is omnipresent. As man, he has dimension. Even today, he was resurrected in the body. That body wasn't a fantasy. It wasn't a ghost. So the mind-blowing thing, of course, is Jesus is with us now, and he's located somewhere that we call heaven, the Bible calls heaven. We typically think of heaven being up and out and away, but he could be standing in heaven right here, we would never know. The Bible says that God is eternal, God is unable to die. So Jesus as God is unable to die, but Jesus as man died and was buried. and had to be raised from the dead. Now he raised himself and the father raised him and the spirit raised him. A triune work. So very specifically here, if I can put it this way, what God the father knows, God the son knows and God the spirit knows. But Jesus isn't speaking of himself here as God the son, he's speaking of himself here as the son of man. In his deity, he knows everything the father knows. In his humanity, he only knows what the father reveals. We only know what's revealed to us. We know almost nothing that's not revealed to us. Almost nothing. I know that it's 82 degrees outside because my watch reveals it to me, not because I have some inherent knowledge. Now, there are some mystical places here where this isn't true. And many of you would not understand this. Catherine, I think, would and Stan certainly would as a musician. But we know all of a sudden when we hear a chord progression, we know where it's going. And that's more of an internal sense of musicality. But even that is something that's been revealed to us by our experience. So Jesus says, of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son of Man, because the Father's not revealed it to me. But as the Son of God, Jesus knew. So why does he put it this way? Because he's got these men who are bent on knowing the secrets. And he says, I'm submitted to the father. As the son of man, I'm not demanding to know the secrets. I'm content to leave those in the father's hand. I'm content to leave the day and the hour to him. It's a secret thing. The answer belongs to God. There is an answer, when will these things happen? There is an answer, when will Jesus return? But it's a secret thing, it doesn't belong to us. As we bring this home and we begin directing our hearts and minds toward the Lord's table, we know that there are many things that God has not revealed to us that we would love to know. Among the highest of those is when is Jesus coming back? And there's a theological curiosity, I suppose. But so much of when is Jesus coming back is based on our own weariness and our own fatigue. And we're sick of this place and we're sick of the suffering of this world. And we know that when Jesus comes back, all of that goes away. And so we think if we know when he's coming back, we can hang on. We can hang on. It's like when Linda goes to see Grace for three or four days, I don't worry about doing laundry and stuff. When she's gone for a week and a half or two weeks, I do the laundry at least about three days before she gets back. I start doing laundry because I know that there's a time when she's coming. See, there's no question that Jesus will return. The very next night, by the way, I didn't explain this, this conversation is happening on Wednesday of Passion Week. It's probably late afternoon. They've stopped on the Mount of Olives. He was in Jerusalem teaching in the morning. They spent the night in Bethany, and so they're on their way. They've stopped at the top of the hill in the Mount of Olives in the shade, and the conversation comes up. The very next night, Thursday night, in the upper room, Jesus says to his disciples, do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. See, this urgency to know when had not left. And Jesus is talking about going away and these topics are coming up and he's been telling them for six months or more, the son of man's gonna be handed over, he's gonna be beaten, he's gonna be crucified and buried and rise from the dead, but they seem to only hear the crucified and buried part. Judas has left. The betrayer has left. One of you will betray me. Who is it? The one that I shared this with and Jesus shared it with him and then do what you must do and he left and now that's hitting them. Can't we be done? Isn't this the time? And Jesus says, guys, I'm coming back. I'm going to prepare a place for you and I'm coming back. So don't let your hearts be troubled. And he goes on in the rest of John 14 and 15 and 16 called the upper room discourse to tell them how to live in the in between. To tell them how to live between him leaving and him returning. His ascension is between him and the father. His return is between him and the father. He's given us something to do. About 40 days, 45 days probably after this, he gathers them in Acts chapter one when they had come together. They were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you're restoring the kingdom now? Is it now? You know what they did is, it's like they took a piece of paper. You can imagine this. They took a piece of paper and they wrote Jesus leaves on one side and they wrote Jesus returns on the other side and then they folded it in half so that those two touched and there's no gap. They're trying to remove the gap. Let's not have a gap between you leaving and you coming again. Is it this time? And Jesus says it's not for you to know. That's not for you to know. It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. Don't worry about me going, don't worry about me coming back. I have a job for you to do. Do that. Just do that. Do that until I come back or you die, whichever comes first. Don't stop doing that. Amazingly, after Jesus ascends into heaven, they just continue to stand there. They're waiting for him to come back. They've got that piece of paper folded that we don't want to gap. We want Jesus just to go around the corner, pop over to CVS, grab something and be back. I'll be right back. And the Lord sends two angels to say, What are you doing? He's going to come back just as he left. Go to Jerusalem and do what he told you to do. Go do what he told you to do. And that's a great application for today. Don't worry about the second coming. Jesus is coming in, coming again, just as he promised. Leave that in his hands. Leave it to the Father's will. Get busy in the in-between. Get busy in the in-between. According to his word and according to his gifting, according to his purposes, serve him, grow in holiness, live for him, grow in sanctification, strengthen his church according to your gifts, share the gospel with the lost as he gives you the opportunity. Go live your life faithfully for him. Father, we thank you so much for the truth that Jesus is coming again and for the comfort that that brings. We have a curiosity about when Jesus will return and we've got a lot of really good reasons for wanting him to come back and a lot of our reasons, Lord, is because we're tired. Because we don't see vast amounts of improvement in the world. Because even people in your church fail and stumble. We let them down or they let us down. You've not called us to guess when our Lord is coming for us and you've not called us to just sit and wait passively. You've called us to faithful action and faithful living. And so, Lord, I ask that you would help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name, amen.