Apocalyptic Advent: Series Intro -- Matthew 24:1-35 • Geoff Bradford

We're going to turn our attention this morning to the book of Matthew chapter 24 verses one through 35 and I invite you to follow along as I read God's word.

Jesus left the temple and was going away. When his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple but he answered them, "You see all these, don't you? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. 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 close of the age?' And Jesus answered them, 'See that no one lead you astray, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ and they will lead many astray and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not alarmed. For this must take place but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places and all these things are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then, they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake and then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray and because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold but the one who endures to the end will be saved and this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then, the end will come. So, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak and alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days. Pray that your flight may not be in the winter or on the Sabbath. For then, there will be great tribulation such as not been from the beginning of the world until now. No, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved but for the sake of the elect, these days will be cut short. Then, if anyone says to you, look, here's the Christ or there he is, do not believe it. For false Christ and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray if possible even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, look, he's in the wilderness, do not go out. If they say, look, he's in the inner rooms. Do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the son of man. Wherever the corpses, there the vultures will gather. Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from the heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then, will appear in the heaven, the sign of the son of man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. From the fig tree, learn its lesson. As soon as you see branches become tender and put out leaves, you know the summer's near. So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and Earth will not pass away but my words will not pass away.' This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Matthew 24:1-35

Why This Series at Advent?

Today we're starting a short preaching series for Advent from the Gospel of Matthew chapters twenty four and twenty five. This has been called throughout church history the Olivet Discourse. Jesus taught this last sermon—Matthew has five teaching sermons of Jesus and this last one takes place on the night that he was betrayed and he goes to his death. He teaches his disciples about the end times. Jesus gives his disciples a picture of what's to come in the future including his return at the end of time to put all things right.

Now, I know if you are tuning in this morning or here, you're probably thinking, what in the world? Why would the crazy bald man think this was a good idea for us to study this at Christmas time? I mean, Advent means you expect sweet little baby Jesus and shepherds and angels, maybe a couple kings thrown in. We want the Christmas story, right? This is what we expect. Welcome to CTK.

This is what we're doing. I think that many of us, we don't have trouble with the first advent but it's a lot harder for us to get our heads around the second one.

Instead of getting the star in the sky, you get all the stars falling out of the sky. Instead of getting baby Jesus in a manger, you get Jesus, the son of man from Daniel, returning on the clouds in power. I mean, it looks like all hell is breaking loose. This is not what we want for Christmas. Thank you very much.

So, here's where we're going today. If you're a note taker, here's my three points. Number one, isn't this cray cray? Number two, what in the world, what's going down, and number three, why do I need to know this?

Isn't This Cray Cray?

I know that when I start talking about the second coming, some of you may internally sort of roll your eyes. Maybe you grew up in a church that overemphasized the second coming and you had a lot of charts in your church growing up. You learned about who probably was the false prophet and who was the beast and depending on what faith tradition you came from, that was the pope or the current president or somebody in China. You know, all kinds of people the churches used to fit those bills.

And you may know all the difference between pre trib and pre mill and post trib and Amil and all that. And you may wonder like, what kind of church have I come to today? Is this CTK? Is this my church?

You also may wonder like, what did we do with Jesus? You know, we spent our whole fall studying through the compassion of Jesus and we saw Jesus's incredible care for people and this Jesus sounds like a crazy fire and brimstone preacher at the pit at UNC. You know, who's calling down the judgment of god. What happened to Jesus? And you may also wonder, what happened to Advent and Christmas?

But here's my encouragement to you. Don't worry, you're in the right place and we have the right Jesus and we're still celebrating Christmas. But let me explain what we're doing by referring to Alice in Wonderland. Specifically, Alice Through the Looking Glass. It's a fairy tale and Alice encounters the Queen of Hearts in one of the books. She has this conversation with the Queen of Hearts—who's a playing card, full size human sized playing card—about the past and the future and it goes like this.

The queen says something to Alice about living backwards. "Living backwards," Alice repeated in great astonishment. "I've never heard of such a thing." But that's one of the great advantages of it. One's memory works both ways, said the queen of hearts. Alice remarked, "I'm sure mine only works one way. I can't remember things before they happen." "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the queen responded. "What sort of things do you remember best then?" Alice ventured to ask. "Oh, the things that happened the week before week after next," the queen replied in a careless tone.

I think that's helpful because I used to think for years that Advent was sort of a time in the church where we played pretend. We did this mental game together where we sort of pretend we're like the people of Israel way back two thousand years ago and we try to mentally put ourselves in the place that they were in waiting for the coming Messiah. It was just a kind of a big pretend time for us to try to enter into that moment.

But as I've gotten older and I've become more familiar with the practice of the church over centuries, the church calendar, I've been surprised by this. It was shocking to me to realize that over the centuries, they've developed a habit of looking at passages including this one about the second coming of Jesus during the Advent season. The church came to a consensus that this is the best time of year to actually preach through the apocalyptic text of the Bible and that we, like the queen of hearts says, need a memory that goes backward and forward. We need a memory as a church.

So we're not play acting when we look at this together. The second coming is not just for those kind of weird churches out there. The second coming is a central doctrine of the Christian faith. When we read the apostle's creed, when we recite those things, we say together, "he will come again to judge the living and the dead." Jesus mentioned the second coming over and over. It is a central teaching of the New Testament.

So, no, this isn't crazy. No, it's not a different Jesus and no, we aren't nuts to preach this series at Christmas. In fact, I'll put it this way. You can't live a meaningful Christian life without knowing it. I would even say it further, stronger: you can't live a meaningful life as a person in this world without having a memory, as the queen of hearts says, that moves both backward and forward into the past and the future.

So, let's look at Jesus's teaching here. What is going down?

Jesus is at the temple with the disciples, and on their way out of Jerusalem for the day, the disciples begin commenting on how amazing Herod's new building project was. At this point in history, the Temple Mount was in the process of being built up and constructed. If you're not familiar with the Temple Mount, you can go even today to Jerusalem to the Dome of the Rock and go down to the very basement area and look at the foundation stones. You can see what the disciples were talking about because there are stones there that are so large that archaeologists this day cannot figure out how people at that time were able to even move them into place. Much less, the stonemasons made these giant rocks so perfectly that they fit together without any mortar. It would take an incredible building project today even to set those size stones—over twenty thousand tons, some of them—at the foundation of the temple in place.

So there's marveling at this, and Jesus tells them, "Hey, destruction is actually sitting on the doorstep of Jerusalem and nobody knows it yet." They can't believe it. They're like, "How can this be?" They ask him two questions. In fact, they want to ask him the timeline questions that people in our day, when they study this, want to ask. When will these things be? When will the temple be thrown down? And what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age? These are really two separate questions. In this passage, Jesus talks to them about both the destruction of the temple and the sign of his coming at the end of the age.

The Destruction of the Temple

Jesus prophesies about the destruction of the temple, and I need you to pull back and think like a good first-century Jewish person. The temple was the absolute center not only of their country but of their entire culture and their worship. The temple was not just a big building—it wasn't like the White House or the Washington Monument. This was a structure that represented God's relationship with them. It's how they related to him by going to the temple. It was a place where God's presence dwelt, and it was the absolute center point of their culture.

A little history on the temple: there were actually two different temples. The first temple was constructed by King Solomon about 1000 BC, and it was a grand structure. But when the country was overrun by Babylon, that temple was destroyed—absolutely wiped out. When people started returning back to Jerusalem and they saw the devastation of the city, a man named Zerubbabel and the people started to reconstruct the temple. Some people were old enough at the time to remember the first temple, and they wept when they saw the construction of the second one because it was like a double-wide trailer compared to a palace. The new second temple was so small and so lame compared to the first one.

Then in Jesus's day, Herod—Herod the Great, the same one we talk about with Jesus's birth story—began to upfit the temple to new grandeur. He builds it up into this gigantic structure. And here comes Jesus as an adult who says, "This is all going down. This will all be destroyed."

And actually, Jesus was right. Seventy AD—about thirty-five years after Jesus's death and resurrection—a Roman general named Titus came and surrounded the city and eventually wiped out the temple. It was called the Jewish War. In 66 AD, the people had already been shaking their fists about Roman oppression. Well, starting in 66 AD, the Roman governor started taking money out of the temple treasury and the Jews revolted. Over a million Jews were killed in the fights and in the starvation as the city of Jerusalem was surrounded and the temple was destroyed. The city got so bad that it's purported that people resorted to cannibalism to survive.

This is what Jesus says is going to happen. This is why Jesus tells them in verses 16 through 27:

Look, at that time, let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who's on the housetop not go back in your house and get your stuff. Alas for women who are pregnant and nursing during that time. Pray this doesn't happen during winter time. There will be great tribulation. Those days have not been cut short. Nobody would survive but for the sake of the elect, those things will be cut short.

He goes on to say, "Look, if anybody says to you, 'Hey, there's the Christ. He's coming back now.' Don't believe it. Don't believe it. I've told you beforehand. It's going to be like lightning. You're not going to be able to miss it."

So, let me sum up Jesus's teaching here. He's telling them the destruction of Jerusalem is coming. Five things: False Christs are going to come—don't be fooled. The world is going to get crazy and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The brokenness of the world doesn't mean anything about the brokenness of my plan. You have to be ready. Being ready means taking care of other people. And lastly, all of this is going to happen and you'll have to persevere.

In verse 15, he says something about the abomination of desolation. Do you remember reading that?

The abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place — Matthew 24:15

He's referring to the temple, but he's telling them something that they already knew. See, everything Jesus had said to this point is about the future—about the coming destruction of the temple. But here he refers to an event from their past. The holy place is the temple itself, and he says, "Look, there this general is going to come and they're going to be surrounded. The city is going to be surrounded. Look at, he says, what's going to be left of the holy city?"

Verse 28: the corpse. The vultures are going to come — Matthew 24:28

The actual word there in Greek is the word for eagles, and notably, the Roman standard had a giant eagle at the top of it. So Jesus says, "Look, this coming destruction of Jerusalem—the vultures, the eagles are going to come surround the city." And he was right about this. This was the coming destruction by the Romans.

Verse 34: Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened — Matthew 24:34

And he was right. Thirty-five years later.

So, I know some of you are like, "Oh, okay. This is interesting historical study. Why do I need to know this?" Well, you need to know this because 2020 has been crazy. It's been nuts. I'm sure you've seen plenty of the memes that I've seen and probably lots more. "Go home 2020, you're drunk." Or if 2020 were a person, and it shows you a picture of Toby from the office, right?

And we've all been through this process this year of saying, "When is this going to be over?" We've had a worldwide pandemic that's not going away. Racial unrest, murder hornets, the hardest election of our lifetime. And it feels like right now the very foundations of the world are being shaken up. It feels like everything is going down, and it's not over, right? The virus is spiking. We hear news of hopefully a vaccine coming, but we also hear news of unemployment coming, of economic downturn, and mental health concerns at an all-time high. Physical safety concerns for us and our children all-time high.

And like the Jews at the destruction of the temple, we might be tempted to freak out and say, "This is the end of the world." To be shaken, to live in fear.

And here's Jesus's main point: knowing the past and the future helps you to live in the present. Having a memory that goes backward and forward helps you to live with purpose and peace during a time of hardship.

You know, even in this prophecy, the future, Jesus reminds them of a historical moment from their own past. Again, when he refers to the abomination of desolation in verse 15, he's actually referring them to something that they would remember—you probably don't from Jewish history. It's an event from about two hundred years before Jesus gave this sermon, during the days where we get Hanukkah from. It's the Maccabean revolt. There was a Greek king who took over Jerusalem. His name was Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes. And he wanted to humiliate the Jews, so he set up an altar to Zeus in the middle of the temple and slaughtered pigs in the middle of the temple. If you know anything about the Jewish people, pigs are unclean animals. He did this on a Sabbath day regularly to desecrate their Sabbath. He also outlawed circumcision—a sign of the Jewish people. It was a horrible time.

Now, you think, "Why would Jesus bring up this really shameful, hard time in their past?" Because these people could say, "Oh yeah, two hundred years ago, everybody was freaking out. Two hundred years ago, everybody thought the world was coming to an end." But Jesus is reminding them, "Look, you endured that. That wasn't the end. That wasn't the end."

Knowing the past and the future helps you to live in the present with peace and purpose. And so all the things I've read to you this morning about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD—that's ancient past for us, right? Some of you don't even know those stories because they're that far gone in the past. It seems that remote for us. And the rest of Matthew 24 is about the second coming. And Jesus is telling us, "Look, you need to know what kind of movie you're watching."

You know, when you sit down for a movie, it helps to know whether you're watching a Disney movie or a horror movie, doesn't it? If you're watching a Disney movie, these main characters that are part of this plot are going to go through some hardships but they're all going to come out on the other end of it. If you're watching a horror movie, most of these people are going to get picked off during the course of this movie. Not many people—one person might make it to the end.

See, it helps us as Jesus tells us about the past and then he tells us about the future. It helps us to live in the middle, to know what kind of movie we are inhabiting. The other prophecy from Matthew 24 is about his second coming. We're going to spend the next several weeks on his second coming. We're going to get five parables that Jesus tells in this section and then the rest in chapter 25.

But listen to how Jesus talks about his second coming. This is from verse 29 to 31:

Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from heaven, the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. — Matthew 24:29-31

All of this—the son of man talk and the picture of his coming on the clouds—all of this is future. Yet Jesus even says of this, verses four through 13:

See that nobody lead you astray. Many are going to come in my name saying, "I'm the Christ" and will lead many astray. You're going to hear wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not alarmed. For all this must take place but the end is not yet. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these things are yet but the beginning of the birth pains. — Matthew 24:4-8

Does some of that sound like this year? Some of that sound like the devastation and crazy of this year? Jesus tells them about the tribulation to come. Many false prophets will arise because lawlessness will be increased. The love of many will grow cold. The one who endures to the end will be saved.

Let me sum up again. What does Jesus say about not only the past and the destruction in seventy AD, but what does he say about our future? Five things:

False Christs are going to come. Don't be fooled. The world is going to get crazy, and there's nothing you can do about it. The brokenness of the world doesn't mean anything about the brokenness of my plan. You'll have to be ready. Being ready means taking care of other people. All this is going to have to happen. You're going to have to persevere.

And I can't think of better words for today, for anxious, fearful people today. This is what I need to hear and I think this is probably what you also need to hear. God is completely and totally in control. The world may feel like the very foundations are being shaken. It may feel like everything is falling apart but don't overreact and don't freak out. Jesus told us what would happen.

Living with Memory and Purpose

So we need a type of memory like the queen of hearts says—that can go backward and forward. Knowing the past and the future helps you live in the present with peace and purpose.

So what does this make any difference? Why do I need to know this? I hope that it does. For generation after generation before us, reading passages like this, studying the Book of Revelation—that book that Jesus gave to his people—have been sources of incredible hope for people working through hard times like we find ourselves in.

It's like Google Maps. Most of you probably have a smartphone and you have Google Maps or Apple Maps or something like that, and you know how that works, right? You pull out your phone, you plug in the destination you want to go to and the app looks with its little grid right at where you are and it plans out the best route to the place that you want to go. All you have to do is follow the map. It tells you where you need to go.

The only problem for me is when I think I know a Bradford shortcut. I know a way that's better than my map, and I know how to get there faster, and most of those turn out to not be such great shortcuts. The same is true with our God. He has told us the future endpoint. He's told us, "This is where I'm taking you." You know the past. I'm telling you the future. Can you trust me? Can you trust me with the route?

We know he's coming back, and all we have to do is trust his navigation. Trust him. My problem and your problem though, I think, is doubting the Lord. Does he know what he's up to? Is he up to good?

I feel like I'm in a horror movie today, not a Pixar movie. I feel like things are falling apart but remember, knowing the past, knowing the future, a memory that moves backward and forward helps us to live in the present. You can trust the Lord of history. He is taking us somewhere and he knows the way.

Would you pray with me? Father God, we come to you this morning as people who have survived so far a very anxious, tumultuous year and Lord, it is hard for us to hang on. It's hard for us to hang in. We're fearful. We have good reason to be afraid. There are many things in front of us that cause us to feel like the very foundations are being shaken.

And we pray today, Father, that you would help us to trust you. Lord, you know the way, and we need you now more than ever before. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.