00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
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.
Tribulation for Believers Until the End
Series Matthew
| Sermon ID | 419201948491246 |
| Duration | 1:00:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 24:1-14 |
| Language | English |
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.
