This morning is from Joel chapter 1. Joel chapter 1. The second of the minor prophets. And I might mention to you that over the next few weeks as we study Matthew 24, I'm going to read through the book of Joel. There's three chapters, and we're going to probably look at Matthew 24 in three parts. And with each of those, we'll read a chapter in Joel, as the book of Joel very much has a parallel to Matthew 24. So here now is I read to you from God's word from Joel chapter one. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders, and give ear all you inhabitants of the earth. Has anything like this happened in your days or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children and their children and other generation. What the chewing locusts left, the swarming locusts has eaten. What the swarming locusts left, the crawling locusts has eaten. And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, strong and without number. His teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a fierce lion. He has laid waste my vine and ruined my fig tree. He has stripped it bare and thrown it away. Its branches are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The grain offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn who minister to the Lord. The field is wasted. The land mourns for the grain is ruined. The new wine is dried up. The oil fails. Be ashamed, you farmers. Wail, you vine dressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. The vine is dried up and the fig tree has withered. The pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree. All the trees of the field are withered. Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men. Gird yourselves and lament, you priests. Wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you who minister to my God. For the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast. Call a sacred assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord, your God, and cry out to the Lord. Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand. It shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seed shrivels under the clods. Storehouses are in shambles. Barns are broken down, for the grain has withered. How the animals groan. The herds of cattle are restless because they have no pasture. Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment. O Lord, to you I cry out, for fire has devoured the open pastures, and a flame has burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field also cry out to you, for the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the open pastures." And there we'll end the reading of God's holy word from the Old Testament. Our New Testament reading is from Matthew 24, and we'll read the first 14 verses this morning. Here is the word of Argon. Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. Jesus said to them, Do you not see all these things? Surely, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. Now, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass. But the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, The love of many will grow cold, but he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations. And then the end will come. May God bless the reading of His holy word to us this morning. Now, let's turn to our next psalm of praise. It's Psalm 94. Junior, his first gardening lesson. As Junior holds the little pumpkin seeds in his hand, his mother says, these are pumpkin seeds. If we put them into the ground, then they will grow into little plants, and then the little plants will have flowers, and the flowers will grow into pumpkins. Junior looks at the little flat seeds in his hands with curious amazement. He and his mother go out and dig the little holes, put the seeds in the ground and cover up with mounds of dirt. The next day, Junior rushes out to the garden. Mom, something's wrong. There are no pumpkins. We put the seed in and there's nothing here. Mom says, well, it will take time, Junior. The seeds have to sprout first. And then they have to grow into plants. Remember, I told you about that. Then the flowers. And there'll be little pumpkins that will grow into bigger pumpkins. You will have to water them and pull the weeds that come up all around them so they can grow. But mom, I wanted to have a pumpkin today. If we water them today, will they come up tomorrow? No, you have to be patient. It will take a long time. A couple of weeks later, the little plants come up. Junior had pretty much given up by that time, but his mother shows him the little plants. Junior looks on with delight and asks, can we have pumpkins tomorrow? No, Junior, I told you before, the flowers have to come, and then after that, the little pumpkins grow, and it takes a long time before they become big pumpkins. But mom, I don't want it to take a long time. I don't want to water and weed. I want to have the pumpkins now. Isn't that the way it is with the whole human race? We want our pumpkins now. We want them without having to plant them, without having to water them, without having to wait. It's no different for us as believers. We have come into Christ's Kingdom, and we always want to know When do we get to the good part? Indeed, we are told that we are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. We are waiting for the good part. We say, when do we get the good part? The best is yet to come. We want to know, when will we get there? But our Lord says, don't keep asking that. There's a lot that has to happen first. This is what we find Him saying to His disciples in the first 14 verses of Matthew 24. And of course, the Holy Spirit says it to us. The Lord says it to us as these words are given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Scripture. In verses 1-3, we have the disciples essentially asking, when do we get to the good part? And in verses 4-8, we have Jesus saying, don't keep asking that. And in verses 9-14, he says there are a lot of things that will have to happen first. A lot of things that you'll have to endure. The Lord is telling us in this passage that we will have to bear much tribulation as believers before the end of the world comes. And that we should not expect it to be different. Heaven will not come until we get to heaven. Heaven will not come on earth. Until then, we must endure tribulation for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let us examine, then, these first 14 verses of Matthew today, that we might gain a heart of patience. First, there is the question that the believers ask, found in verses 1-3. When do we get to the good part? This is essentially what Jesus' disciples were asking. Their hopes that paradise was about to break into their lives had been stirred once again. Jesus had, remember all these things that we've looked at over the last few chapters have been all happening in one week. It was only a few days before that Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem. And that people had proclaimed Him as the Messiah. And their anticipation and hope had been very elevated by that. And then He had gone in with authority and cleansed the temple. And then he had publicly defended his authority with all those parables that he told to the leaders of the Jews. And now, most recently, he had denounced the scribes and Pharisees, concluding with the statement that their house was left to them desolate. And in chapter 24, we find him departing from the temple with his disciples for the last time, making way toward the Mount of Olives. The disciples point out to him the temple. The temple was truly a remarkable building. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, who is known to exaggerate sometimes, but nevertheless, it's roughly the idea, some of the stones in the temple were over 38 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 12 feet high. Herod had employed 10,000 workers for eight years to work on this project steady. Now, if you figure this, if you've employed, if it costs $12,500 a year in our money to employ each one of those workers, that would come to $1 billion just for the labor, 10,000 workers over eight years. Everything in the temple that was not covered with gold was polished white marble. Josephus says that when the sun arose, that you had to shield your eyes when it fell upon the temple if you were near it at hand. And from a distance to a traveler, it looked like a snow-covered mountain as you approached. Now, the permanence and the glory of that building stood as a symbol of the permanence and the glory of God to the disciples and to the Jews. It's very easy to find our security in the church's great monuments. But we must remember that many of them were built by wicked men like Herod who hated our savior. St. Peter's in Rome was built with the proceeds obtained by the selling of church offices, by the trafficking of indulgences, and by revenues charged for those who would view relics to supposedly shorten their time in purgatory. It was built at great wickedness. Jesus is not so impressed with this great monument. He says to the disciples, do you see all these things? This is in verse 2. Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone will be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. And I might add that in 70 A.D., that prophecy was very literally fulfilled. The Roman armies of Titus tore down the temple stone by stone in order to gather the gold that had melted in the fires that they had set the portions of the temple that were wood and covered with gold on fire. And some of the gold had run down between the stones. And so they took all the stones down, took them apart in order to gather all of the gold. They did not leave one stone upon another. The wailing wall that we see today is not a part of the temple itself, but it's part of the it's a retaining wall that that supported the temple. The huge and glorious building was completely flattened. Now, to hear Jesus say that this magnificent building would be flattened like this must have really got the disciples thinking. is they heard those words. From their infancy, they had been taught that this temple would stand until the end of the world. Surely Jesus must have been telling them that the time of the end was near. Paradise was at hand. But when will it be? Well, in verse three, we find Jesus seated on the Mount of Olives from which the temple could be seen. They were probably looking toward the temple, glistening gloriously in the sun. And his disciples break the question to him privately and say, actually, we're told in one of the other gospels that Peter, James, John and Andrew were the ones who came and asked him this question. Tell us, when will these things be? What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Now, look at that question. It's clear that they expected all those things to happen at the same time. The temple would be destroyed. Jesus would come to usher in everlasting happiness and an end to the curse for all of his disciples. Now, I should point out that the word translated coming in the Greek is parousia. It's a very specialized word. It's not used in the other Gospels at all. The word parousia is never used in the other three Gospels. And in Matthew, it's only used in chapter 24. And the word signifies being present. And it was used to refer to a personal visit, coming into the presence of a person who is very important, like a king or someone like that. Now, this word is used frequently in the epistles. And it's used to refer to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the physical appearing and presence of our Lord. It becomes the standard word of the epistles. But it's only used here in Matthew 24 four times and every time to refer to the physical presence, the physical coming of Jesus Christ. So this is what the disciples are asking. You see that in asking this question, they're expecting the temple's destruction and the appearing of Jesus, the presence, the parousia of Jesus to all occur at the same time. And that this will be the beginning of paradise, the end of the world and the beginning of the new world. Well, we can be sure that this is what they had in mind because This is what they always had in their mind if you see them as they go about with Jesus. Two of them had only recently asked Him if they could sit on His right and left hand when He came in the glory of His kingdom. They obviously expected this to happen in His lifetime, His glorious coming. And just another day or so at the Last Supper when Jesus was announcing to them His death of all things and His crucifixion, Jesus would have to expose their folly when they began to argue about which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom. Again, supposing that very soon that they would have honors in this world as they sat on those twelve thrones that Jesus had told them that they would one day sit upon. And even after His resurrection, they still carried the same hope. Their great question to Him in Acts 1.6 was, Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel? Is this the time? Is it now? Are you going to do this now? Are you going to give us pumpkins now? Bring paradise to us with having us reigning on those thrones at your right hand with everybody coming to us. They were just like little Junior, looking for his pumpkin. When do we get to the good part? But now I have to ask you a question. Do you not often find that your heart is inclined in the very same way? Do you not often find that you would much rather reap the harvest than sow the seeds? That you would rather have the pumpkins now than wait until they grow? This is particularly a plague in our society, distinctively so in our society. We want to spend money that we don't have because we want something now. People play the lottery because they want to harvest without having to do the work for that harvest. We want everything to come to us the quick and easy way. Now, of course, that's always been a characteristic, but it's especially so today, probably because we do have so much. Of course, there's not one of us who likes hardships and trials and testings and crosses and things like that. And I don't mean to say that you ought to like those things. They're part of the curse that is upon this world. The Lord has indeed promised paradise to us in which nothing that will take away from our happiness will be present. There won't be any of those trials and difficulties. But the problem is that He hasn't promised it now. It's not yet. And we can't expect to reap the harvest until the appointed time. We have to now set our minds on the work that He has given us to do. Now let me ask you this. Do you ever find yourself saying, why does all of this happen to me? I try to serve the Lord, but it seems that I go from one hardship and one difficulty to another. Why doesn't He bless me the way He blesses those other people? One person is wishing that they had a spouse. Another person is wishing that they had a different spouse than the one that they have. Another one, almost everyone, is wishing that they had more money. If I just had just a little bit more, then it would be just right. I don't want a whole lot like those people over there. If I just had just a little bit more, then we could be really comfortable. Do you often find yourself wondering why God doesn't give you that happiness that you crave? Silly little Christian sentimental songs are sung about how happy we are. And we forget that the Lord calls us to hardship now. I don't mean to say that we don't have a happiness that the world knows nothing about. We have the forgiveness of sin. We have the hope of eternal life. We have communion with God. We have fellowship with one another as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. But we don't have paradise yet. We don't have our pumpkin yet. And Jesus tells us to quit looking for it in the sense of wanting it now on our terms. It's right for us to look for it as our hope that is reserved for us in heaven. But don't keep asking for it and expecting it before the time. You're like the worker in the field who starts asking in the early morning, is it time to quit yet? Instead of bearing with the heat of the day and doing the work that he's been called to do until the end. We're like a little child on a long trip. Are we there yet? From the very early beginnings of that trip. And that brings us to our second point in verses 4-8. Having seen that we tend to keep asking, when do we get to the good part? We see Jesus' response. Jesus says, don't keep asking that. First off, He warns you that it's dangerous to keep asking that question. You will easily fall into the hands of deceivers if you keep asking for paradise now. You'll be bait for these deceivers and false Christs. The first thing He says to them when they ask this question is, Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name saying, I am the Christ and will deceive many. These deceivers claim to be Christ, the promised Messiah. They will claim that the end that you're looking for has come. They'll claim that they have the pumpkins, that they are Christ, the One that God sent to redeem the world, to bring the paradise that you're looking for. They are antichrists. Remember, I've told you what an antichrist is. The prefix anti- means instead of. They are substitutes who come in the place of Christ to stand in the place of Christ, claiming that they are Christ. And you see, If they don't directly claim that name, that they are Christ, then they promise that they can give you what Christ alone can give you. That they can give you paradise now. Now, if you're looking for paradise now, you'll be easily deceived by them. If you're following Jesus of Nazareth as He is revealed in the Scripture, and that doesn't seem to be giving you the happiness that you expected, then here's someone that has the answer. Here is someone with his higher life promises. With second blessing promises. With paradise now promises. And you forget to check and see if the answers that that one brings are from the Scripture. But it gives me the hope of the thing that I'm looking for. Jude tells you how deceivers work their way into the church by grumbling. He says that they are grumblers. They look for people who are discontent and then they stir it up. Isn't that what happened to Israel in the wilderness? When all of them grumbled, how did that get going? Well, the leaders of rebellion found a bunch of people who were dissatisfied. And they fed into that. They eventually said to God, we wanted the promised land. And instead, you brought us out here in the wilderness to die. We want our pumpkin now. And you gave us this wilderness." And their grumbling destroyed them. Jesus tells us that many such deceivers will come. And that many will follow them. Not just a few. He's not saying, hey fellows, this is a theoretical danger. It's not really going to happen, but I just want you to just kind of know about it. But He says this is going to happen. Like, it's going to happen not just to a few. He says many deceivers are going to come and many people are going to follow them. It's something that you need to be careful about when you find that you're asking, where's the good part all the time? I'm dissatisfied. When do we get to the promised land? When do we get our pumpkins? And of course, history has proven that many deceivers have come and many have been led away by them. In the generation of Jesus, there was the expectation of the coming of the Christ, because the prophets had foretold that Christ would come at that time. So, many people were looking for Him the day that He did come. And because Jesus didn't meet their expectations of the paradise now that they were looking for, then we have record from Josephus, again, the Jewish historian, that there were many claimants. who said that they were the Christ that appeared at this time. He mentions two or three that had the same name of Theodos, and one by the name of Dostos, who said that he was the Christ that Moses had promised. Many were deceived by these ones, and that served them right, because they had rejected the real Messiah, so they were open bait for whatever deceivers came along. There have been many more all through the ages that have since made this claim. There is a sense in which the grand claim of the centuries by the Pope has been that he is the vicar of Christ, a substitute Christ. And he has offered the world an alternative way of salvation in connection with that. We have those individuals that have come along as radicals who have claimed to be Christ. Those like Charles Manson would come to mind. And of course, there are many others who, perhaps not claiming themselves to be Christ, promise salvation to their disciples on terms other than those terms that Jesus has given us. We have Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, who taught that if we follow her, that we would never know sickness again. And we have Kenneth Copeland, who promises that you'll have perfect health and great wealth. If you will follow His teachings, and we have those more sophisticated dreamers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who promised Messiah in education or in politics that we could bring in a utopia through public education or that we could end poverty and war all over the world if we would only follow their political visions and dreams. But Jesus is telling us that we must not look for perfection in any of these ways. We should not be expecting that He has come. When someone comes and says, I've got the answer. Here's the paradise that you've been looking for. He elaborates more on this in verse 24. Which is what we're going to be looking at next week, where he says that these antichrists will tell you that, or people will tell you that these antichrists are in the desert, that Christ is in the desert, or he's over there in those inner rooms, that he's physically present somewhere on earth, that he has come. But he says, Jesus says that his second coming will not be like that at all. It won't be that you'll have to go out in the desert somewhere or that you'll have to go into some inner room. His coming, he says, is going to be like lightning that flashes across the sky. It's going to be very visible and very unmistakable. It won't be over in some corner of the world somewhere that people will have to say, hey, hey, it's over here. Look at this philosophy or look at this idea or look at this person that has come. He says, don't always be so anxious to get your pumpkin that you settled for one of these substitutes, that you choose a stone instead of a pumpkin because you're so desperate to have it now. Don't always be asking if this is the end. He goes on to warn us. Do not think that all the problems that you see in the world are a sign of the end, as so many do. He tells us, first of all, that wars are not an indication that the end has come. Verse 6, listen to what he says. It's very clear. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. It's quite remarkable to me that there are so many in the church today who completely turned this around backwards. Instead of recognizing that the wars are not a sign of the end, which is what Jesus says here, they take this very verse and say that wars are a sign that the end has come. As soon as there is some disturbance in the Middle East, then these frantic souls get out their prophecy pens and their prophecy glasses and they start trying to find Kuwait or Al-Qaeda or whatever it is somewhere deep in the prophecies of the Scripture. They say, look, there's wars and there's disturbances. That means that the end has come. Jesus says it means the end has not come. Now, I'm not saying that he's saying it necessarily means that it hasn't come at all, but it's not a sign that either way, And they make all these claims that the return of Christ has to occur because these things have happened. It has to occur in the next 10 years or the next 20 years or the next 25. And then the 10 years go by and these same men are still making the same claims for another 10 years or another 20 years. And after so many years, you would think they would be ashamed and that they would give up on this. But the old prophecies fail and new ones come. Don't you see, brothers and sisters, if you look at this verse, Jesus is saying the very opposite here. His point that these things are going to go on. And that they're not signs either way. In the section we will look at next week, He tells us that there will be very clear sign of the destruction of Jerusalem. But that's a sign about the destruction of Jerusalem. A local judgment in one corner of the world. He tells us that the second coming Well, have no signs that it will be like a thief that comes in the night when people aren't expecting it. Thief doesn't say, hey, next week on Tuesday night at two o'clock in the morning, I'm going to come and rob your house. And then he puts up a bunch of signs and banners to remind you when he's going to come. No, his very point here is that wars and rumors of wars are going to go on before the end and they don't tell us that the end has come. He is telling you to quit asking. Whenever you see wars and rumors of wars, that, oh, this is the end. This must be the end. Just be sure that you're serving Him when the end comes. Well, he further tells us in our passage that famines and earthquakes are not a sign of the end either. They're just the beginning of sorrows, he says. In verse 7 and 8, he says, For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. Now, you see, in various places, he's looking worldwide now. He's not looking locally just at Jerusalem. Earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginnings of sorrows. It is clear that Jesus is not talking then about Judea here. These things will occur everywhere. When we see them, it doesn't mean that God is starting to bring the final judgment necessarily. These are things that will be going on all along. He even says that they're the beginning of sorrows. So there is a sense in which catastrophes and disasters and things like that do point to the final judgment. All suffering points to the final judgment. It is a prelude to the final judgment, but it doesn't tell us about the time of the final judgment. God has afflicted us with these things ever since the fall. And they are to serve as reminders to us that there is a God in heaven who judges. Because if we had no judgment, we wouldn't believe that there's a God in heaven. We have a hard enough time believing it anyway. We want to say these things just happened and God had nothing to do with them. But how much more difficult it would be for us if we didn't have all these sorrows and afflictions and difficulties that go on all through the ages. You see, the idea is that these aren't indicators of the time of the final judgment. There won't be a kind of a gradual ramping up. to that final judgment. But that all along the way, these things are going to be going on. And then the end will come suddenly. Just like the flood in Noah's day. The people were happy. They were marrying. They were giving in marriage. They were living their lives. And then suddenly the flood came. Well, so our Lord is essentially telling His disciples and us to stop asking if this is the end. Every time something happens in the world. When it comes, you'll know that it has come. But until then, there will be many, many things that you will have to endure. This is the third thing that I want to show you from this passage. There's a lot that has to happen before the end, our Lord is saying. A lot of hard things that you will have to endure. Don't expect it to be otherwise. First, He tells you that you will have to endure persecution. This persecution will not be light. Verse 9 says, they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you. He's not just talking about people not quite accepting what you're saying to them. He's talking about beatings, and imprisonments, and impoverishment, and banishments, and torturous death. They will not stop, but will shed even your blood. Yes, you will have to endure the common afflictions that everybody has to endure that we've just looked at. The earthquakes and wars going on. Nations that unrest with each other. But on top of that, you as a Christian will also have to bear persecutions. You will be deliberately targeted as those who are the objects of persecution. Jesus' disciples had thought that they would soon be sitting on thrones with a lot of honor in the world. Jesus is telling them something that is radically different than what they thought. He had told them that this would happen in the end, that they would be seated on thrones. But he is also telling them very plainly and told them repeatedly that until the end, that they would have to suffer. And now he's telling them the end is not going to come for a long time. It won't come in your lifetime. He's telling them that you will die. You will be killed. They had expected, as Jesus' followers, to receive better treatment in this world. Jesus tells them to expect worse treatment than others in this world. We sometimes suffer from that same misguided expectation. is those that have been taught by the Lord Jesus Christ to love one another and who have, to certain measures of grace, learned to love others and to enjoy happiness in our home and good relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And we expect people to think well of us. We expect that they will be nice to us. But, brothers and sisters, this is often not the case. And you shouldn't be surprised when people hate you. And when they call you evil, even when you're doing what God has called you to do, Jesus tells you to expect these things if you're following Him. In His epistles, Peter says, don't be surprised when these things... if some strange thing was happening to you. The disciples had seen this maltreatment, Jesus is talking about, of their own master. They had seen it already by their own Jewish brethren. They had witnessed how the scribes and the Pharisees and the high priests had opposed Jesus. And soon, very soon, in the next day or so, they were going to see just how deep this hatred and malice really went. When the same ones would take Jesus and deliver Him to be crucified. Jesus is saying, that's what you can expect to happen to you. But he tells them to expect it not only from their own countrymen here, which they would soon had already begun to experience. But he says you expect it from every nation, wherever the message of the gospel goes. You will be despised and hated, he says. Jesus says you will be hated by all nations. So again, he's not here talking just about Jerusalem. He's looking into the future. And he's seeing his people despised wherever they go. You know, there is hardly a nation in the world that has ever welcomed the Gospel when it first came to them. There is almost always a strong resistance at first. Look at the places where the Gospel is breaking ground today. Like China. What do you see? You see persecution. Persecution comes first. Now, you may say, but why? Why do they hate us when we're bringing them the good news? Jesus tells us why. He says, it's for my sake. There's something very glorious and comforting about that, that you suffer for my sake. When people come at you because of your service to Christ, that should be an encouragement to you. Of course, it's not pleasant. But it's a blessing, Jesus says. Blessed are you when men persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you because it shows your identification and your union with Jesus Christ. They're dealing with you the way they dealt with Him because you are like Him. Now, I'm not talking about when you're obnoxious. You bring it on yourself. I had someone recently say, Oh, I'm being persecuted when they had been obnoxious. I'm talking about when you're loving people and when you're serving people and when you're following Christ and the world comes after you because you are doing those things. Because your light is shining. And it's like when I talk about the temple where they had to turn their eyes away. There's too much light. Too much light of Christ around. They hate Christ because they hated the light. The light exposed their wickedness. whenever you came around and showed that their ways were evil, the things that they were trying to cover up and hide. Even our own testimony as Christians that we're not trusting in our own works, but in Christ who died for our sins, becomes a saver of death to those who do not believe. It tells them that you, a person who in their eyes is living very closely to God, need a Savior. or you'll perish in your sin. That's what you're saying to them by your own testimony. And in their eyes, if you need a Savior, what does that say about them? Now, of course, the logical thing would be for them to just come to the Savior. Come and trust in the Savior. But you see, that's the thing that they're wanting to avoid. They want to be able to work things out on their own. Don't tell me that I need a Savior. Don't say that you need a Savior either. You don't need a Savior. And as I showed you recently, when your life keeps saying to them that they do, and they've become rather desperate to put you to silence, they will resort to whatever method will work, as we saw when we studied Matthew 23. When that happens, Jesus says, rejoice about that. It's for my sake, He says. It means that you're in union with your dear Lord who died for your sins. And it means that your light is shining so that people are noticing you and they're seeing Christ. Maybe some of them will be saved because the light's shining. So you see that persecution is something that we, the church, will have to endure throughout the ages. And let me add that according to the statisticians, more people were slain for Jesus Christ in the 20th century than in all other centuries combined. Just because we live in a world where the gospel in a part of the world where the gospel has has spread quite far and where not many are called to shed their blood for their faith. It doesn't mean that the worldwide church of Jesus Christ is not suffering much persecution even today. But Jesus tells of a second way that we will also have to suffer until he returns, a way that is very common for us in the West, in the Western church. Second, he tells you that you will have to bear with the corrupting of the church. That's right. You have to bear with the affliction of seeing, first of all, your brothers apostatize. Jesus says, then many will be offended. The word offended in Greek is skandalon. It refers to a trap that catches something. It's like an animal trap. As it is used here, Jesus is talking about these professing believers who are caught in the trap and they feel that they're caught in the trap. He's talking about people who come to follow Christ with high hopes and expectations and who after a time decide that they're just not getting what they want. They feel that they were deceived, that they were duped. They did not come for persecution. They did not come to endure hardships. They thought that the pumpkins would be here. They don't rejoice in the hope reserved in heaven. They want peace and safety now. And instead, there's persecution. And they still have all those tough relationships and the sickness and the poverty. What is the point of all this religion, they say? So they turn away from the truth. They're offended by it. They stumble. Well, now you see, this becomes yet another thing that you as a believer have to endure. You have to endure the persecutions on the outside. And then you have to endure the painful and discouraging experience of seeing your beloved brothers and sisters in the church reject the Lord. And that can be very painful. Jesus says that they will even betray one another. Those who used to serve you, who used to stand by your side and encourage you to go on in the Lord, become those who try to get you in trouble with the authorities, who turn you over to your enemies. They become worse than those persecutors that you know are enemies, because they are like Judas, who betrayed his master with a kiss. They hate you all the more than if you had never been in fellowship with them at all. Jesus says they hate one another. Those who used to live in communion of Christian love now live in a communion of hate and bitterness. You will have to endure such apostasy in the church. But that's not all. Jesus says that you will also have to endure false prophets who rise up and deceive many in the church. We have already seen Jesus' prediction that this would happen, but here he speaks to the reality of the church body being split up because of it. He speaks of those ones who come along as teachers in the church and who benefit you and many others by their teaching and who then take a detour into error and lead people astray, having benefited the church. Now they become a disaster to the church. And the difficult thing is that they leave many of your brethren with them. It has been extremely painful to me to see persons that I love being slowly corrupted by men in the pulpit that have rejected God's word. It can be very hard, very lonely, to follow Christ at times. What must it have been like on the day when Jesus fed the 5,000 and they wanted to make Him king that day? Jesus said, it's not time, basically. The thing that you're looking for, you can't have. And He preached to them that they needed to trust in Him for salvation. And they went away because they found that Jesus didn't give them the pumpkins that they were looking for. Remember, the 5,000 went away and the disciples were left. And Jesus said, will you go away also? He wasn't king on their terms. They were offended. How difficult that must have been for the disciples to see grumblers rise up among that multitude, begin to say, this isn't what we were looking for. This isn't what we came for. And to lead the people away. How much more difficult it must have been, though, in later years when they had planted churches and they had labored for years among the people that had come into the church. And then some leader, maybe even one that they discipled, rose up and began to draw people away into error and falsehood. And people began to follow and pull disciples away. Paul says, I am concerned that I may have labored over you in vain. It was very, very distressing to him. These are very grievous things that you have to endure. But Jesus says, expect these things until I return. This is still not the end. See, we have to endure these things as far as the corrupting of the church. Thirdly, He says we will have to endure in a context of growing lawlessness and coolness of love in the church. There will be disciples, at least so-called disciples, who don't have a love for God's law. Lawlessness. They look at the law of God as a burden, instead of a delight, because they don't have a new heart. They don't have a new heart, and so instead of wanting to be all that God calls them to be, they want to cut corners, they want to find loopholes, they want to dodge, they want to find ways around. Some of them do this by legalism. That is, they make much of certain externals. while their heart is far away. They want to find a righteousness in observing certain ordinances and abstaining from certain things. But they do not rejoice in the gospel and serve with sincerity. And those who don't go the legalism route go the antinomian route. That is that they openly claim that they're not interested in following God's law. They say, my heart is right. And so if I want to be promiscuous, then it's OK because my heart is right. I can go and have my homosexual relationship because I'm doing it in love and my heart is right. These ones ignore the letter of the law and claim that they're following the spirit of the law. The legalists make a letter of the law that goes beyond what the law actually says and ignore the spirit of the law. This is how they operate. Now, this too is a hardship for you as God's people. You have to endure with these things in the church. On the one hand, you are sometimes forced to keep a bunch of rules that God has not bound you to keep. On the other hand, you're enticed by your own brethren and even by church leadership to break away from those things that God has told you that you are to observe. This can be very trying for those who truly want to do the will of God and want to follow Jesus Christ. And it can lead them astray. Those who want to do right in God's eyes rather than doing what is right in man's eyes. Jesus says that you will be faced with lawlessness and lovelessness in the church. So don't be surprised when that happens. This is something you will have to endure all along with the persecutions and the apostasy as long as you are in this world until Jesus comes. You have to keep waiting for the pumpkins. You must see to it that you're not drawn away from Christ by any of these things. In verse 13, he says, he that endures to the end will be saved. Now, if you're always looking for peace and harmony in this world, instead of expecting persecutions and afflictions and corruption in the church, then you won't be able to endure when they come. And in the end, you won't be saved. You will never get the real pumpkins that Jesus promises. It's only those who lose their lives now for Jesus' sake that will find their lives in the end. Coming out of a fallen state and living in a fallen world is not easy. The world will oppose you when you come out of that fallen state. And your own flesh will oppose you. It is something that you can only do by the grace of God, that you can endure these things. But all of you who have truly turned to Jesus Christ to take you and to save you, you can be certain that through all these things, He will sustain you. And you will enjoy sweet communion with Him. The outward man will perish, but the inward man will be renewed day after day. You will be saved by His grace. You will continue in His fellowship and nothing will be able to separate you from Him. That's the good news. And look, Jesus shows a third thing that must happen before the end. A very encouraging thing. Third, He tells you that the Gospel will be preached in all the world. before the end comes. Verse 14, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations. And then the end will come. The gospel. What does Jesus mean by this gospel when he says this gospel must be preached? Well, no doubt if you look at the context, of course, gospel means good news. He's talking about what he He's referring to what he was just talking about. That whoever endures to the end will be saved. Whoever continues with Christ by faith through all of these ages and all of these difficulties, looking to Him for what He has promised instead of looking for paradise now. That person will be saved in the end. He will obtain paradise by God's grace. Those who are not enticed away from Him by empty hopes of false substitute Christ. Those who are not discouraged away from Him by common afflictions of this world, wars and rumors of wars. Those who are not driven away from Christ by persecutors. Those who are not disheartened away from Christ by a corrupting church. These who continue with Christ, who trust in Him and abide with Him until the end, will be saved. That's good news. That's the Gospel. Jesus says that there will be a faithful church. that will bear witness to this good news in all the world. The end will not come until the message has been faithfully declared everywhere. He does not say what the results of that proclamation will be here, but elsewhere we're told that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, that all will know Him from the least to the greatest. That doesn't mean that there will be no tares in the end. Jesus tells us that there will be tares or weeds in the wheat field, but they will be tares in a wheat field rather than wheat in a tare field. The gospel will faithfully be carried to the ends of the earth. Now, how will we know when that has happened? We won't. Isn't that what we keep seeing in this passage? I've already told you that throughout this chapter, Jesus is telling us that there will be no signs to alert us that His return is near. Paul was able to say, even in his day, that the gospel had gone out into all the world. It says that in Colossians. The gospel has gone into all the world. So, in a sense, it had already happened way back then. The whole point here is that you're stop to stop trying to figure out when Jesus is coming back. Stop reading into everything that you see and say that, oh look, this is it. These are things that happen all along the way. Concentrate rather on loving Him and abiding in Him and enduring to the end and serving Him with all of your heart until the end. If you're always looking for the end, you're going to be discouraged. But if you're always mindful of the end, and living unto the end in hope of the end, that it will surely come as you continue in your Lord's service, then you will be filled with hope and rejoicing, with joy in believing. And at the end, you will have your pumpkin. Let's stand and call on the name of the Lord. Heavenly Father, how we thank You for Your great mercies to us, Your people, that You have promised us an everlasting inheritance when there will be no more tears and no more sorrow and no more pain, no hardships whatsoever, nothing to take away from our happiness. We praise You, Lord, that You have appointed that day for all who love You and who love our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray, O Lord, that we would continue And that we would endure in him, that we would not be like those workers that are always asking when the day will be over. But we pray that we would be those who, yes, yearn for the coming of your kingdom and who pray for it earnestly, but who do not always say, there it is, there it is. Father, we pray that you would teach us to put our hand to the plow. and to not look back and that you would give us grace to endure. We live in a world and even in a context of a church today in our world that is very anxious about these things. And we see all sorts of prophecies that are flying around. All the time. And we pray, O Lord, that you would help us to understand what your word says instead of casting our own interpretations and dreams upon your word as the as even your own disciples did in the in the time that Jesus was was tutoring them. We pray, O Lord, that we would get the message that we would realize and that like Peter, who got the message that we would go from those who are looking for the kingdom to be restored today to those who are saying, don't consider a strange thing when you're hated and despised and when these things come upon you. Father, we thank you for. The grace that you have given us to endure and father, the people that are in this room are a testimony of that grace that you have called them out of this world and you have gathered them to yourself and that they are seeking you and that they are following you and they are waiting for the thing that is promised. And I pray, O Lord, that you would hearten each one of us and that we would be an encouragement to one another. We pray that there would be no. wicked heart among us who would begin to grumble and who would begin to be drawn away, Lord, that we would all be supporting and encouraging one another. And even as we do struggle with these things, we pray, Lord, that we would support one another and help one another in the times of difficulty and hardship. And Father, that we would be a strength and abiding comfort to each other in the times of need. Father, we also pray that as the Lord Jesus says that the gospel will be faithfully witnessed all over the world. that we will go out and carry it to the world. It will be preached all over the world. We pray, O Lord, that You would help us to do just that. We pray that You would raise up faithful men who will carry the Word into hardships and into difficulties. We thank You for the wards who are out preaching Your Word in a difficult place to live, that they have forsaken many of the comforts of home. and have gone for the sake of your kingdom. And we think of our brothers all over the world, some of which are suffering persecution for your name today. We know that there are many, many, many around the world that are doing just that. We pray, O Lord, that you would give them strength on this day, that you would encourage them on the Lord's day and help them to be refreshed in your word and to build one another up. And we pray, Lord, that as we see increasingly temptations and persecutions in our own land, we pray that we would be stout and that we would be able to resist these and that we would be able to preach the gospel to others, that they would not be swept in by false promises and hopes that would come. Father, we pray that you would bless us on the remainder of this Lord's Day, that you would help us as we fellowship together and as we come to your table now. that we would be refreshed in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we ask these things in His name. Amen. You may be seated. I'll ask Dave Alexander to come forward and assist with communion. Brothers and sisters, I showed you today that we have to endure May the God of all grace, who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, strengthen, establish, and settle you. To him be glory and dominion both now and forever. Amen.