Matthew 23:39

Matthew 23:39

In the last verse of Matthew chapter 23 Jesus said, addressing Himself to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, “You shall not see me again until you shall say, Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus would soon be crucified, but He was thinking of the future. A tremendous judgment and condemnation had just been pronounced by Jesus against the Jewish nation, because they had rejected the opportunity that God gave them to know the Messiah.

But the failures of man only open the door for the blessings and the power of God to be shown. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That which is impossible with man, is possible with God. In spite of the great failures of the Jewish people at the time of Christ, and in spite of God’s judgment upon them because of it, the Lord was not finished with them. One day Jesus will come to Jerusalem again. He said that He would, right here in Mat. 23:39.

But the second time that He comes, He will not be rejected like He was the first time; He will be accepted and believed on by the Jewish people as a group and as a unit. When He comes the second time, the Jewish people will see Jesus and they will say, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” The same thing is prophesied in Zechariah 12:10 about the ultimate repentance and conversion of the Jewish people when they see the Messiah. It says, “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”

In the last verse of Matthew chapter 23 Jesus made a statement about a prophetic event: His own Second Coming. And then in the last great presentation of His teachings, He emphasized prophetic events. All of Matthew chapter 24 and chapter 25 are the teachings that Jesus gave about prophesy. If you understand these two chapters, and if you understand these things that Jesus taught about prophesy, you will never be deceived and you will never be misled by anyone on the subject of Biblical prophesy.

Jesus gave us in these two chapters, the broad outline of prophetic events. He gave us the main points, and the most important ideas of the things that must come to pass. Any other thing that you hear about prophesy must be consistent with what Jesus taught in these two chapters. If it is not, then you can know for sure that what you heard was wrong.

Mat. 24:1-2 says, “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him in order to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, Do you see all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”

This is both a reminder of the temporary nature of material things, as well as a direct prophesy about what would happen to Herod’s temple, the building made of stone that so impressed the disciples. People who are impressed by buildings and structures and cathedrals in reference to religion and the worship of God tend to be spiritually immature. God is a spirit, and the more that you come to understand this, the more that you will realize that you can worship God anywhere.

Not only was the temple temporary, but all buildings are temporary; because this life is temporary, and the order of things as we know it is temporary. One reason that God permitted the destruction of the temple was as a sign of the fact that the Old Testament law and ceremony was to be done away with; especially in regards to animal sacrifices which were done in the temple. There were to be no more sacrifices because Jesus sacrificed Himself, once for all. We no longer need a temple because we no longer need the priests who worked in the temple. Jesus is our priest. Heb. 4:14 says, “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, who is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God...”

When Jesus told the disciples about the eventual destruction of the temple, they were in Jerusalem looking at the temple. They left Jerusalem and went the short distance to the Mount of Olives, but the disciples could not stop thinking about what Jesus said about the destruction of the temple; and they brought the subject up again at the Mount of Olives. Jesus had turned the subject to prophesy; He had turned the conversation to the doctrine of things to come. It says in Mat. 24:3, “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 your coming, and of the end of the world?”

The disciples did not ask one question, they asked two separate questions. It is important to recognize this, in order to understand the answer that Jesus gave. The first question that they asked was, “When shall these things be?” In other words, the disciples asked when would the temple be destroyed. They asked the same question about prophetic events that most people ask. They wanted to know the same thing that most people want to know: when? But Jesus did not tell the disciples exactly when. He did not tell them how many days or how many years would pass before the temple would be destroyed.

This is true about almost all of the prophetic events of the Bible. We are given certain information about some of the events of the future, but we are not given the time. Jesus said the same thing after He rose from the dead. He said about His second coming in Acts 1:7, “...It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power.” One way that you can recognize someone who does not know what they are talking about in the teaching of prophesy is when they give dates or times or seasons in their teachings on prophesy; because God determined that such information would not be made known.

The disciples asked Jesus when would the temple be destroyed, and they asked Him another question. They asked Him, “what would be the sign of His coming and of the end of the world?” Evidently the disciples equated the second coming of Jesus with the end of the world. The word that is translated world, would be better translated as “age”. The disciples did not ask when would be the end of the earth, but when would be the end of the age. An age is a period of history that is defined by certain distinctive characteristics. The characteristics of the age in which we now live are defined very clearly by Jesus up through verse 14 of this 24th chapter of Matthew.

You might call the age in which we now live the age of the church, or you might call it the age of grace, or the age of the gospel. But the age in which we live has certain characteristics about it, and these characteristics will continue until Jesus returns and puts an end to this age. If you understand the characteristics of this age, then you will know what the future holds. So far the age has lasted for almost 2,000 years, and as long as it lasts, there are certain types of events that will continue to happen.

The first thing that Jesus said in describing the age in which we live is found in Mat. 24:4-5. It says, “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” Jesus said that there would be false christs, and there have been. There have been false christs even in our life time. The way that you can avoid being deceived by a false christ, is to make sure that you know the true Christ. If you know the true, then the false will stick out like a sore thumb. Be a follower of God and not of man, and make certain that you understand the scriptures, or you may be deceived. If anyone ever invites you to go hear someone who claims to be christ, then you will know immediately that he is false; because Christ will not come like that. His coming will be a worldwide event; and everyone will know immediately and automatically about His coming.

Jesus continued telling us about the future by telling us about the current age in which we live, and He said in Mat. 24:6, “And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” People desire peace, but never seem to be able to find it. One reason is that not enough people know the Prince of Peace. We should work for peace; it’s good to desire peace and to plan for peace. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” If you are a child of God, you should be a peacemaker, and not a troublemaker.

But whenever there is a time of peace, you can be sure of one thing: it’s only temporary. If the Lord does not come back soon, there will be more wars. One of the reasons that wars are so horrible is because it is the young men who fight them, and the young men who die and are crippled because of them. Everyone deserves to life their lives to the fullest, to pursue happiness, and to strive to reach their potential. How horrible is the loss of life at the first bloom of adulthood, and the greatest destroyers of such young life are the wars that have ravaged humanity.

Every country has dug its graves of row after row of white crosses; and the mothers and wives have cried their tears and mourned their losses; and the songwriters pen when the tide of war rolls in, “Where have all the young men gone? Gone to battle every one; when will they ever learn?” Jesus said that they will not learn. Wars are a permanent and repeating characteristic of this age in which we live.

Do you want to know what is going to happen in the future? In spite of the best efforts of good people, and in spite of some periods of peace, there are going to be more wars. But Jesus said, “see that you be not troubled.” No matter how bad things may one day get because of the hatred and cruelty of man, this world is on God’s timetable, and He will put an end to this age when He is ready to do it. The Lord has revealed to us the characteristics of this age in which we live, so that we will not be deceived and so that we will not be troubled when the horrible events come to pass.

These horrible events and human disasters are not signs that the Lord is about to come. He is about to come all right, because He can come on any day. But the horrible events are characteristics of the age that have been present for 2,000 years and that will continue to be present until the Lord returns at the end of the age; whether that be this year or another 2,000 years from now. It’s just like Jesus said in verse 6 that even though these things happen, “the end is not yet.” And in verse 7 He said, “For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.”

We should be positive and look on the bright side. Maybe we will be more fortunate than others and have a time of peace that lasts through the rest of our lives. But eventually there will be another war, and the wars will be even more destructive than they have been in the past because the weapons are more powerful and destructive. Humans have always used the weapons that they created, and it probably will not be any different with the weapons that we have today.

The characteristics of the age in which we live are not just wars and rumors of wars. Jesus gave two other things in Mat. 24:7 that are the enemies of humanity and that cause much suffering and that are the characteristics of this age. He said, “there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places.”

A famine is a wide-reaching and drastic shortage of food. Famines occur because of the uncertainty and fickleness of nature. Too much rain or not enough rain, too much heat or too much cold, or the destruction caused by insects or disease or manmade pollution can precipitate a famine. We may not know what famine means in our country, but there are many millions of people around the world today who are experiencing the suffering and the anguish caused by famine. It takes a lot of food to keep one person alive, and when the sources of food begin to fail; there is sorrow and death that will surely follow. Jesus said that we will always have famines. As powerful as man is, he cannot control the forces of nature. Prosperity will not continue forever. According to Jesus there will be times of famine, because that is also a characteristic of the age in which we live.

Jesus also said that there will continue to be earthquakes in this age. This is not so hard for us to believe, now that we understand a little bit about the movements of the plates that make up the layers just below the surface of the earth. The repeated nature of earthquakes that Jesus prophesied is now known to be a fact of science. Again the Bible and science prove themselves to be in agreement with each other. The Bible is true, and true science is the pursuit of truth about the natural world. Science will always prove the Bible to be true, except at times when scientists ignore the evidence, or misunderstand their data.

In Mat. 24:8 Jesus said, “All these are the beginning of sorrows.” One of the questions that the disciples asked Jesus was , “What would be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age.” Jesus starts His answer by telling them what would not be the sign of His coming. These catastrophic events that Jesus mentioned are not signs of His coming, but they are characteristics of the age in which we live. Don’t be surprised by them; don’t be troubled by them. They are going to happen. It turned out that the destruction of the temple was a result of one of these 4 things: war. War eventually broke out between the Romans and the Jewish state, and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in the year 70 AD.

Jesus mentioned 4 things about the characteristics of the age in which we live: false christs who shall deceive many, wars and rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes. Some of the sorrows are caused by the deception and hatred of man, and some of the sorrows are caused by the fragile and temporary nature of life on this earth. But Jesus said that these are just the beginning of sorrows. No matter how bad it can sometimes get in the age in which we live, there will come a time on the earth in which sorrows and troubles shall increase in a way that has never before been experienced by mankind. The book of Revelation goes into much detail about that period, and Jesus talks about it also in verse 21 when He says, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

Jesus reminds us that the age in which we live is not only prone to danger and to suffering, but that it’s also temporary. Blessed are those who find eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. No matter what they may suffer in this life, they look forward to an eternity in the Kingdom of God where there is no war or death, no famine or destruction; only the eternal bliss of life with God.

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