JESUS’ SERMON
on the
SIGNS of the END TIMES
PEANUT GALLERY LINK
http://www.christianforums.com/t7828003/#post65827169
Matthew chapters 24-25
JESUS BEGINS TO EXPLAIN ABOUT THE END TIMES
Matthew 24:1-2 (KJV)
1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and His disciples came to Him for to shew Him the buildings of the temple.
2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you,
There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
In 70 A.D., the city of Jerusalem was destroyed. Every stone of the Temple was thrown down. Some of these stones were 94 feet by 10 ½ feet, by 13 feet. There were 162 marble columns that were 52 feet high. These stones were thrown down, and the destruction was so complete that Micah’s prophecy was fulfilled, that the site would be plowed.
Micah 3:12 (KJV)
12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
The Temple was set afire, and the gold melted and went into the cracks of the stones. This required the soldiers to move and cast away all the stones in order to retrieve the gold.
In a few days, the nation of Israel would begin their rejection of the Messiah, Jesus, that had come to them. They would reject Him, crucify Him, and reject the idea that they had sinned in so doing. This would bring this swift judgment of God allowing the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple.
The Jewish nation had considered themselves the "chosen people." They had an exclusive claim to God, they thought. They have over the centuries come to believe that God preferred them over all other nations. This is not the true meaning and concept that was taught of God. God presented Himself to this world as One who "no respecter of persons." He is also presented as "the same yesterday, today, and forever." So He does not prefer one nation over another.
The idea of being a "chosen people" refers to Israel being chosen to perform a special ministry for God. The Jewish nation were chosen of God to be the vessel that He would use to evangelize the rest of the world. They not only failed in that mission, but many lost their own salvation and rejected the Messiah that was to come and to provide the salvation for all of mankind. God turned from this "chosen people", and chose the "church" to now be the ones given that special ministry to the world.
There is no distinction with God. He loves all. He has no preference in people. The church, however, has the same tendencies as the Jews. The church has tended to shut out certain people, races, etc. throughout its history. There have been cliques, denominational factionalism, bigotry, bias, and exclusivism in many church peoples.
The church is to be "one body in Christ." It is to have many members, but each are to be dependent upon the others. God does not give preeminence to any. He does not even want a priesthood in the church. All of the church are equal in God's eyes. He may give different gifts and offices to those in the church, but never makes any person, or persons, superior or more favored than another. Male or female; rich or poor; right-side-of-the-tracks or wrong-side-of-the-tracks; educated or uneducated; black, white, red, or yellow; are all loved and cherished by the same God -the Lord of Hosts.
I Corinthians 12:13-26
"For by one Spirit are ye all baptized into one body... one body is not one member, but many... if the foot shall say -Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body - is it therefore not of the body? ... God hath tempered the body together."
Galatians 3:28
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ."
Colossians 3:11
"Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian (strangers and foreigners), Scythian (lowest type of bond slaves), bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all."
There is universal salvation offered to everyone. He created many different races, two genders, and allowed many cultures, not to later choose to love only part of them, but to love all. He is desirous of having us, as He, to look beyond the outward to the inner person.
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world."
I Timothy 2:4-5
"Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
II Peter 3:19
"not willing that any should perish."
Revelation 22:17
"And the Spirit and the bride say 'Come'. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely."
God intends for the church to carry on where Israel failed. We are to do now revival what the Jewish people failed to do then. We are to carry the gospel to all genders, all races, all economic levels, to everyone. God is the "Lord of Hosts."
Jesus, in this first part of His sermon, is beginning to explain what would cause the great judgments to come. Someday, as Jesus would teach the nation would be judged for its rejection of the true Messiah. Some of the church is also shown later to suffer judgment, for it failing to present Jesus as the Messiah. The world will be judged too, for its rejection of Jesus through the ages. These judgments are going to be explained by Jesus in this sermon.
The message of Jesus about this first event of judgment to come, with Jesus speaking so plainly, so confidently, so specifically, whetted the appetites of the disciples to know more about what was to come.
Jesus is going to, in this sermon, detail much of the coming judgments of the last days. This first event of judgment happened in 70 A.D., and the reminder that comes with it is that the rest of what Jesus predicted will be fulfilled, as was this first judgment, where the Temple and Jerusalem suffered great destruction.
THE DISCIPLES QUESTION JESUS
The disciples were leaving the Temple area when Jesus gave them that news of verses 1 and 2, and now they are reaching the nearby Mt of Olives. The walk was proving to be educational, and their curiosity was aroused.
3 And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?
It is said that ‘you can’t make a horse to drink, but you can feed it salt.’ This is the tactic here of Jesus. He has fed them a truth about the future that makes them more curious, what is going to happen. There must have been many followers on this excursion from the Temple, but the next verses of this sermon was reserved for just the disciples.
We see in the trial of Jesus that some misquoted, misunderstood, and falsely accused Jesus using that first part of the sermon. They said Jesus had said that He would destroy the Temple. That would have been blasphemous, and evil for Jesus to destroy the house of God on this earth, where God had invited people to come and worship Him. Yet, Jesus did not say He would destroy the Temple, but Jesus was referring to what God was going to allow the Romans to do soon, in about 37 years.
Matthew 26:60-61 (KJV)
... At the last came two false witnesses, And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God.
The Temple would be destroyed, but Jesus was not going to be the One to do it. His message was distorted, misused, and lies were added to the truth that Jesus had preached. The destruction was allowed by God, in that He was turning from them who had rejected by that time, the Messiah, and God would be turning to the church to fulfill the mission of sharing the Messiah to the world. Destruction, judgment, will come for failure to accept Jesus, the Messiah.
So, ‘privately’, Jesus shares much more of the coming judgments. The scoffers, hypocrites, pharisees were no longer in the crowd, and the one morsel they did hear of this sermon, they would greatly misuse. There are revelations of the Lord, in the Word, and spoken directly to our hearts, that we need to have ‘ears to hear’ and hearts to believe, if we want the Lord to share the deeper truths.
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